How Contract Trainers Can Create Winning Learning Experiences
Contract CONTRACT TRAINING PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS
In the Learning and Development space, it is critical that you always keep your audience at the forefront of learning. This can be said whether you are a Trainer, Instructional Designer, or eLearning Developer. If your goal is to create a meaningful learning experience, then you need to really understand your audience in order to help determine what your content should be focused on. There is no one-size-fits-all approach since each learner is different.
Questions to ask about your audience
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What is their current role within the organization?
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What is their background?
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What motivates them?
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What are their goals?
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How do they learn best? (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic)
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What are their WIFT’s? (What’s In It For Them?)
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What do they already know about the subject?
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What gaps do they have?
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What types of skills are they missing that you’re looking to fill?
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How do they feel about taking this training?
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What are some daily challenges that they face?
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What is their typical day like?
Taking the time to really understand your audience will help you gather insight into their needs and challenges. The more that you know about your audience, the better you will be able to personalize your content, reach them and create a meaningful and lasting impact. Each group will have different needs, skillsets, and will react differently to certain delivery methods.
Cultural Context
Understanding your audience’s cultural and educational background will help you determine if you should use simple language or a more complex and technical language when addressing them. What kind of speaking style would work best for them – assertive, direct, tactful?
Business Context
Is your audience going through an organization-wide training or are they interested in taking this training for personal growth? Has their organization recently undergone restructuring or has there been a large amount of turnover?
Personal Context
Taking into consideration your audience’s age range as well as status or position within the organization can really help you to tailor and personalize your stories and anecdotes to appeal to them.
Showing your audience that you care about them is really important. When they realize that you care about them and their individual needs, then they’ll start to care about what you have to say. If you’re delivering a training, you can start off by reminding them of their identified concerns. You can say something like “I know that these are the three biggest things that you’re looking to get out of this course” or “I know that several of you have been wondering about XYZ”. Throughout the training you can also make your point and then ask the audience “Why should you care about this?” After you ask the question, be sure to tailor your response to your specific audience.