I'm scheduled to run a training program for my internal training team and they are both my audience as well as my extended facilitators (i.e. they will go out and roll this course to other folks in the organization so I need to teach/TTT them the material as well).
My question is - how should I facilitate the session? Should I first cover it as a normal workshop, considering them as regular audience, and THEN discuss the facilitator files with them to show them how to teach, OR should I do a blended approach? For example, in the latter case, I say something like -
'So let's discuss examples of Principle A and summarize them together. <We do the activity> This was great, but watch out for people giving X example of this principle when you are facilitating this topic. We do not want our staff to touch that topic.'
Would this not get too confusing?
Another constraint is time. The regular training is 2.5 hours but I just have one hour to train, as well as teach them how to train others.
What is the best solution?
4 Responses
A big ask!
I'm not sure this is doable given your time constraints. I have delivered a number of "familiarisation programmes" for trainers who will be rolling out workshops etc. They ALWAYS take longer than the workshop itself. My method is to deliver it as though they are an "ordinary" audience but then stop the action for input around how they deliver it.
If you are really limited to an hour (and I would query this) I think the only way you could do it is for the group to have the course materials well in advance so they can look through it (and start to prepare to deliver it) and then use your hour to answer their questions and perhaps tackle one or two of the more tricky bits.
Happy to discuss if you PM me.
Good luck
Jenny
Agree with Jenny
… this is a challenge – forgive me if I'm wrong but presumably if they are your team, you set the time allowed for them to up-skill. I don't know the subject but I would ask you to consider 'can I really expect my people to deliver a quality session with just 1 hour's preparation?'
Another way of doing it maybe is to split your faciltator's up into smaller groups and let them observe you delivering the session to the actual learners. They can then make notes/questions and once everyone has seen it, you could use the hour to answer their questions and to get them some prep time.
Find more time
I agree with both Jenny and Clive, this type of event will always take longer than you think. Trainers make the worst audiences as they will ask numerous questions, want to explore different examples and what the time to really understand the subject matter before being confident to go and deliver it.
I remember being on a product update from a SME who thought that they could cover everything off in 30 minutes, however the session took over 3 hours, mainly as it was quite a complex product and we were asking a lot of "What if" questions to ensure that we understood it well enough to go out into the business and deliver it.
If you can offer them more time in the workshop or send the material beforehand, as well as offering support after I would encourage you to do this.
I split it up
Yes, there was a major time crunch and I couldnt go beyond one hour that day. But I was able to set up another follow up meeting to discuss facilitation flow and training materials.
Thanks guys!