Before every workshop I spend some time thinking about my [...]]]> I train mainly in soft skills such as management, customer service, assertiveness, conflict resolution and negotiation. Planning training sessions and writing manuals is the easy bit; the real challenge is to engage each learner and encourage them to explore new ways of thinking and doing.

Before every workshop I spend some time thinking about my new group of learners: what difficulties are they facing, what do they want from this course? I try to consciously open my mind to them. The last thing I want to do is to replay a workshop that was needed by a different group of learners with a different set of problems and challenges.

Engaging each learner requires powerful listening and respect for the participant’s prior experience. Enabling people to articulate what they feel are their problems and challenges in the workplace, is usually the first step to enabling them to explore more productive ways of acting and thinking.

Fresh insights precede acceptance of new ideas or new models of thinking and acting, and to develop those new insights the trainer needs to tap into the experience of others in the group. The trainer facilitates group interaction by modelling a way of interacting respectfully, by introducing trigger questions or exercises that stimulate productive discussion, and at the appropriate time, introducing new models, ideas and techniques. And a powerful part of this group dynamic is the trainer’s own experience and observation.

The process of active learning is accelerated by exercises that stimulate thinking on a number of levels and by combining an experience of doing something oneself (for example, acting as the team leader in a role play) with the experience of observing and giving feedback on someone else doing that same thing.

As people gain new insights they instinctively want to revisit difficult situations from the past. So at some stage in the workshop a string of questions will arise about what could have been done or said differently in given situations. The trainer and the rest of the group now act as a sounding board, and have the opportunity to both challenge and refine ideas. And it is this stage, when people are deepening their insights and developing more powerful and productive action plans, that makes me passionate about training.

Post by Anne Watkins, Principal Trainer

At that time I thought of questions as basically [...]]]> I remember when I decided to become a coach. It was at the beginning of my first coaching workshop, March 31, 2001. We had learned something about what coaches call “Powerful Questions” and there we were, suddenly coaching each other for the first time, one-on-one.

At that time I thought of questions as basically informational – they required an answer. The moment I became a coach was the moment when I realized that the value of a question could be where it sent the person to look for an answer. Let me explain. The response to a question – what is the capital of Madagascar? – usually sends us to our memory or logical mind to “look it up” or “work it out”. One of the great values in coaching comes when we ask a question that sends us to somewhere other than the filing cabinet or analyser department to look for an answer, sends us to a new place, a place where we don’t often think to go. That new place can offer a new perspective – maybe a perspective a lot more valuable than our habitual perspective.

I remember the question I asked the nervous lady sitting in front of me on the morning of that first day of the coaching workshop – “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?” She answered with a bunch of stuff that sounded great – success and accomplishment-oriented… Something in me felt that it was too smooth, almost rehearsed. So then I asked other questions, ending with “No, I don’t mean what SHOULD you do with the rest of your life, I mean what do you really WANT to do with it?” She paused, teared up a little, then began to stammer out words about wanting to help women to flourish in recovery from abusive relationships.

It wasn’t what she said that blew me away… it was the way she transformed emotionally. I was seeing the real person, speaking about something she cared about passionately. I was seeing a person looking into a part of herself she hadn’t brought out into the daylight for a long time, if ever. I was feeling the energy of fierce passionate longing that a human being can have to change the world, and the exultation just at the mere possibility that she might be able to create the change she yearned for, by becoming a life-coach. Powerful Questions had sent this lady looking into a deeper place she longed to develop. The state of aliveness and certainty that resulted from her exploring there was inspiring to see.

I was amazed, she was embarrassed and overjoyed. She thanked me profusely, said our short had changed her life, given her a new path… I was hooked on becoming a coach.

Post by Geoff Crinean, Senior trainer & business coach
Crossposted at Geoff Crinean, Senior trainer & business coach