Jen's Favorite Training Toys

Today I’ve got my Corporate Trainer hat— if you do too, I want to know:

Do you use toys in your classroom session?

I’ve been bringing what I call Fiddle Toys to my classroom learning sessions for nearly 20 years and they’re always a hit.  I find that giving learners something active to do with their hands not only helps them stay mentally focused, but it also is a help to those who are kinesthetic learners. Even grumpy, non-engaged participants will eventually loosen up a bit and find a reason to touch one of the items placed in the center of their table.

Because toys do wear out, I’ve been looking at refreshing my stash. That’s prompted a reflection on my criteria for appropriate Fiddle Toys.

My fiddle toys must be:

• Durable
• Quiet
• Safe—can’t pinch people or somehow “rub off” on them with ink
• Something that doesn’t invite too much “play”/interaction with another person

Also, a common toy that I’ve seen used is something “filled”—squishy items filled with gel, liquid or sand.  I’ve tried them all and have given up. Believe it or not, I’ve seen all three types destroyed by someone with just a tad too tight a grip.  You can imagine the mess.  At that point, the toy creates more distraction than focus. 

The biggest hits over the years of “typical” toys have been:

-Mini-Etch-A-Sketch

-Silly Putty

-Rubick’s Cube

-Slinkys

-Pipe cleaners

I’ve had also great success going to my local novelty shop, Kent Novelty. The prices are so much cheaper than any other retail outlet.  As a bonus, a trip to the novelty store is an instant stress-reducer. I took a picture of what’s in my Toy Bag (you knew I’d have one, didn’t you?) My favorites are shown above. A few other tips:

1. Aim for 2-3 extra toys per grouping of six people.  Nobody likes to feel like they got the “last toy of the bunch”.
2. Pay attention to the most popular toy and be sure there’s one at every table. I’ve even heard people negotiating for different toys during breaks.
3. Make the toys part of an ice-breaker. Put the same toys with varying colors (say, “stretchy guys”) on the table. Ask everyone to take a toy and create new discussion groups according to the color of the toy they selected.

So, if you’re looking to increase your classroom participants’ focus and participation, try tossing a few toys in to the mix and see what happens. Encouraging people to be childlike (curious, experimental) with the toys make indeed decrease their tendency to be childish (immature, uncooperative).

ENLIST YOUR AUDIENCE TO MAKE THE LOAD LIGHTER

Ever go to a conference break out session and experience 90 minutes of lecture, paired with the never-ending Power Point slide deck?  It’s not a very engaging experience, is it?  Now, imagine attending a four-hour conference break out session, with 70 other people in the room with you. This was my situation recently as I facilitated a communications break out session at a client’s internal leadership conference. Knowing that conference attendees want to be engaged in their learning, I decided to get creative with the management of the session’s discussions. Here’s what I did and it worked beautifully.  If you are ever in a situation that requires you to work with a large audience, give this “Sector Director” format a try.

Prior to the Session

Divide the room into “sectors”. For example, in my session, the hotel meeting room had nine round tables in it. So I created three “sectors” with 3 tables each: Red, Green Yellow. On each table, I placed a piece of colored card stock (red, green or yellow) in a place card holder on the middle of each table.

I then selected three chairs (one within each of the sectors) and taped an envelope to the underside of it.  Inside the envelope was a note that said, “Congratulations! You’ve been promoted to Sector Director. Please come to the front of the room for additional instructions.”

At the Session’s Start

Towards the start of the session, explain that you want to ensure that all participants have a chance to have their voices heard. In order to do that, you as the facilitator are going to seek assistance. Tell the group to reach under their chairs. Bring the three people who find the envelopes up to the front of the room. Introduce them and say, I’ve promoted (names) to Sector Director.  They will help me manage group discussions.  Brief the Sector Director on their duties. To keep the remainder of the group occupied during this 3-5 minute briefing, give them a question or issue to discuss that’s related to your presentation topic.

Here are the tasks that Sector Directors can help you with: 

• Distribute hand outs. 
• Lead discussions within their sectors.
• Facilitate debriefing of other activities. For example, one activity had my participants pairing up with two or three other people throughout the room to gather data. Then, I sent them back to their sectors to report their findings.
• Helping round up people and get them back from breaks.
• Ensuring that table groups selected a spokesperson for large-group report outs.

Encourage the Sector Directors to delegate if needed. For example, if the Director doesn’t care to write on large flip chart paper, she can ask someone from her Sector to take over that role.

Does It Work?

I facilitated the communications session three times over a two-day period, which presented me with nine Sector Directors. I gave all nine of them the chance to opt out, but none did.  Eight of the nine did a fantastic job and the ninth one needed just a bit of prompting to stay on task. In my opinion, the extra 10 minutes of session time needed to set up this format was time well-invested. The smaller sector groups were able to have more focused conversations, with people feeling more like they could contribute. Additionally, I had an extra three pairs of hands to help me get the 70 participants re-focused after the Sector Discussions.

Next time you’re asked to facilitate a large discussion—in either a learning or meeting context, consider delegating to your audience.  You’ll find that indeed, “a few extra hands” do make the work of managing discussions a bit lighter.

Should roles plays be part of your trainer's tool kit?

Over at the HR Bartender, Sharlyn Lauby has declared role plays in the training classroom passé, declaring Nobody Likes Role Plays. I agree with her assertion the traditional format in which the trainer announces, “Now, let’s put what we just learned into practice” and calling up two training participants to the front of the room for a “performance” will elicit little beyond eye rolling, self-conscious mumbling and/or over-the-top “acting.”  However, I’m not quite yet ready to throw out role playing as a valuable learning tool.  As a learning facilitator who has led supervisory and management skills programs for twenty years, I’ve had actual success with role plays. (Shocking, but true!)  Or, rather, success using my version of role plays.  You see, I don’t use the format that Sharlyn dislikes.  I dislike it too and have subsequently morphed the role play into something more effective. So let’s examine the role play in more depth before we decide whether or not to jettison it completely. 

Is It the Right Tool?
The role play is an instructional method, and therefore a tool.  As with any tool, if it’s not used properly, it has the potential to do more harm than good.  Just because participants don’t respond well doesn’t mean the tool is faulty; perhaps it’s the way the tool is being used. Before you decide to abandon the use of the role plays, be sure that it’s being used in the way it’s designed to be used.  There are advantages and misuses of role plays; be sure that a role play clearly supports your instructional objectives.  Moreover, keep your audience in mind. It’s true that no matter how you structure a role play, some learners simply will not respond well to that learning format. For example, I find that most executives are quite resistent to role play (perhaps for the reasons listed below). Conversely, if structured properly, role plays have worked well for my front-line supervisory audiences who are accustomed to a “hands on” approach.

Why Do People Resist Roles Plays?
I believe there are two main reasons people abhor role plays: situational context and fear. Typically, the role-play scenario isn’t detailed enough for the role player to convincingly come up with a dialog that flows naturally.  The role-player often lacks the context or situational background to sound convincing while carrying on a conversation in front of a group.  Layer in any new skills she’s been asked to demonstrate (“remember to build in the 6 Key Actions to Giving Feedback”), and there’s just too much detail to remember.  Add to that the highly inhibiting fear factor of looking foolish in front of one’s peers and it’s a recipe for a stilted, ineffective demonstration.

What’s Does an Effective Role Play Look Like?
The key to creating a skill demonstration that works is to remove the barrier of situational context and minimize the fear of looking foolish. Here’s how you as the learning facilitator can do that:  

Build a role play into a case study. This has worked very well for me when conducting supervisory skills classes. Create groups of 3-5 people. Give them a case study scenario featuring a typical supervisory challenge— for example, an employee counseling situation. Ask the group to create an action plan. When debriefing with the entire group, there’s usually a point where someone chimes in with a question or challenges the suggested action plan. This is the time to do a “role play”. Here’s the key: you as the facilitator are part of the role play. Say something like, “you know, I can see you’re struggling with what to say if the employee counseling session gets tough. How about if we walk through how that conversation might go? I’ll be the supervisor.  Who wants to be the employee?” Then, you can do a casual “walk through” of the conversation. Don’t even call it a “role play”; I think that phrase automatically puts people on edge.  One of the things that people object to (as Sharlyn points out) is being “on stage” in front of the whole class.  If you suspect this is the case, then just have the conversation partner remain in his seat as you have the conversation walk-through.

Here’s another twist: If facilitating with a co-trainer, then both facilitators can participate, thereby removing the participants’ from the demonstration altogether.  Over the years, I have been very fortunate to have worked with several highly-skilled co-facilitators. Some of the most rich and memorable group discussions have occurred after the two of us have played out a tense supervisor/employee situation for the class to critique.

Of course, these suggestions require that you as the facilitator be comfortable with this type of public “acting”.  If you’re not, no worries, you can still employ a certain level of practice in the face-to-face learning environment. Here’s another idea that may work and it takes the trainer out of the role-play equation.

Tag-team role-play. As mentioned above, a major impediment to any sort of public practice is that people fear looking foolish. After all, it’s an impromptu situation—and the learner is thinking, “What if I don’t know what to say?”  To help ease this concern is a technique called the “tag team” approach.  If you decide to conduct a role-play in front of the entire group, then give the person in the “lead” role (say, the person role-playing a sales person) the chance to call “tag”. If that person gets stuck during the role play, he or she can turn to his classmates and a) call a time out to confer and get ideas, then resume the role play or b) ask another team mate step in.  The overall approach to this format sends the message: this is practice, not a performance. It assures the participants that it’s ok to get stuck and ask for help. To make it more fun, and free-wheeling, I’ll sometimes bring in an old-fashioned service bell to ring when they get stuck.

What’s the Bottom Line?
The role-play need not be passé. With a few modifications and judicious use, they remain an excellent way for classroom learners to “try on” new behaviors in a safe environment.  As an instructional designer, just be sure that you are using them in the proper way.

Photo credit: © pixhook /istockphoto.com

Yesterday I was talking “shop” with two colleagues.  We’re all in the business of helping develop leaders and the talk turned to instructional design.  One of us asked, “How do you go about finding an instructional designer who also has deep experience in creating leadership programs for senior-level staff?”  

We noodled this idea around for awhile. . .  “Is it more difficult to create solidly designed content for senior leadership?”  Here’s where we ended up: as with many things in life, creating good content is always about the art and the science of it.

 One way to picture this issue would be:

I have a lot of leadership development readers out there.  What do you say?  Do you agree or disagree? How would you draw leadership development?  Send me your artwork (jmiller@people-equation.com) and I’ll post it!

One of my favorite experiential activities for management training is an oldie but goodie called the “Boo/Yay” exercise.  In it, two volunteers separately try to guess a per-determined task such as walking to the front of the room and picking up a marker. The audience is instructed to give the volunteers feedback to help them decide if they are moving closer to the task— they are to yell a disapproving “Boo!” to volunteer A and an encouraging “Yay! to volunteer B.

The feedback varies in one other way as well.  For volunteer A, the audience “boos” when the person moves away from achieving the task. When moving in the direction of the correct task, the group will remain silent. Therefore, the message is:

Boo = doing it wrong, need to change course

Silence = doing it right, keep going

For volunteer B, the audience cheers “Yay!” when the person’s moving in the right direction and say nothing when moving in the wrong direction. Volunteer B’s message is:

Yay = doing it right, keep going

Silence = doing it wrong, need to change course.

 When we debrief the activity we ask the volunteers for their reactions: How did it feel to be “Booed?” How did it feel to be “Yay-ed?”  The volunteer who was booed typically says he/she felt demoralized after awhile and tended to hesitate, not wanting to continue to make “mistakes”.  The volunteer who was yay-ed says he/she appreciated the support from the yays.  The silence wasn’t too troubling, because it gave her some space to think and figure out how to proceed next.

This activity sets up a rich discussion for the pros and cons of providing encouragement or criticism. We explore the roles of a manager— to coach, provide feedback and in some cases discipline.  All of these managerial tasks are vital to developing employees’ skills to the fullest, yet the way in which they’re employed will determine the manager’s effectiveness. I encourage managers to reflect upon this question: when you interact with your employees, do they feel “Booed” or “Yay-ed”?

The act of encouraging employees to bring out their best is a nuanced one.  Some employees will view too much “Yay-ing” as insincere cheerleading.  Others have a very high need for feedback and encouragement. The type and amount of encouragement needed may also be driven by generational issues.  Much is being written about Millenial employees’ need to get constant feedback due to their hi-tech, hi-touch upbringing. 

In the end, it comes down to paying close attention to the varying needs of each individual employee.  Pay attention to if your praise was well-received.  If not, consider how you might alter it next time— praise in private rather than public?  More low-key rather than effusive? Written versus spoken praise?

However you employ your encouragement, continually return to this touchstone: are you a Boo or a Yay manager?

We were at the dinner table the other night and my husband tossed out a word that was new to me: twitterpated.  He assured me it was a real word and made reference to the Disney movie “Bambi“.  I thought he was mocking my Twitter use, so I looked it up.  Sure enough, the online Urban Dictionary offers the simple definition of “to be completely enamored with someone/something”.

Hmmm….so I wonder if there is any connection to the name given to the Twitter site and this definition.  When first using Twitter, I was certainly “twitterpated”. I think I’ve moved past that stage now and am more focused when using this social media tool.

This emotional state has connections to the training function. When people are truly excited about something, especially something new, they have a high motivation to engage.  In the right setting, this can lead to accelerated learning. I see “twitterpation” as part of the learning process for participants about to engage in training. The flow goes something like this:

Highly Curious/A Bit Nervous> Drawn In/Want to Learn More> Fully Engaged/Making Mental Connections

Professional trainer and Speaker’s Hall of Famer Bob Pike talks about “breaking the preoccupation” of the participants at the top of a session—to get them to mentally “join” you in the training room.  If trainers can harness the excited energy of twitterpation and help learners focus it towards the learning goals, then the learners will benefit.

“But my learners are FAR from excited when they enter the training room” you say.  Yes, I’ve had my share of less-than-enthusiastic folks join me.  Here are a couple of ideas that will get them in a better frame of mind, if not exactly twitterpated.

Ahead of Time: Set Expectations
When at all possible, I communicate directly with participants in advance of the program.  I send an email that’s separate from the “logistics” type of stuff.  Just a quick note to say I’m looking forward to meeting them. I try to reinforce that the session will be engaging and interesting (but not necessarily “fun”—I find that some are put off by that word.)

On the Day of the Session
This is basic, but even we seasoned trainers get rushed and take a short cut.  Greet everyone before the class starts.  Look them in the eye, shake their hand and make an effort to know their name.  Participants have a more difficult time being saboteurs when the trainer has made personal contact.

If You Suspect Large Scale Resistance
Meet it head on!  People are amazed at this suggestion—“You mean, actually TALK about it—right out loud?  Where everyone can give input?!” Yep.  If you know for sure that the majority of the group is in a bad frame of mind, my opinion is to address it.  I’m not talking about opening the floor for a huge gripe session.  You can set the expectation by saying, “I’m aware that there are some issues of concern around XYZ…how about if we take a few minutes to get those on the table so we can air those concerns?  Then we’ll be in a better position to set those aside [for today’s session] and move forward.”

Or, a more subtle approach is to do an Expectations/Reservations opener.  Put the group into smaller sub-groups and have them create a list of “What I Expect from Today’s Session” / “My Concerns About Today’s Session”.  As you debrief this, you’ll surface some of the more pressing concerns and be able to set expectations about what the training will (and will not) be about.

These are just a few ideas for getting training participants in a positive mindset and ready to learn.  Please share with me some of your favorite ideas for engaging learners.  I look forward to the conversation.