Teach, Coach, Train! Patrick W. Knight 2011 JCI Training Director

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Teach, Coach, Train!

Patrick W. Knight

Prologue In my day job, I work as a lawyer, but my real passion is teaching and training. Where did this passion come from? Well, mostly it was my exposure to some of the best and most charismatic trainers in Junior Chamber International (JCI). It wasn’t just seeing them on stage or in the front of the room that captivated me. I was hooked by the care they took to make sure their participants received the best possible training and to make sure that real adult learning was taking place in the room. It was the way that they would mentor a new young trainer and freely give out advice for my own training career. It was the humility they displayed despite their charismatic personalities and impressive credentials. I learned so much from the trainers that came before me. Not only did they share with me interesting methodologies for conducting better courses, but I also was able to watch them in action to pick up on the small details that made them dynamic trainers. When I was coming through the JCI trainings system in the early 2000’s, there were so many high-level trainers that had an impact on me and here are just a few that may also have impacted you: Bruce Rector, Lars Hajslund, Faye Lawrence, Gunther Meyer, Kjersti Bergsåker-Aspøy, Suzette Plaisted, Fernando Sanchez-Arias, Desmond Alufohai, Rune Møller-Hansen, Søren Ellegaard, Karen Smythe. Currently, I serve as the 2011 JCI Training Director and the Training Commission decided early this year that we wanted to give real value to the trainers that are so committed to JCI. We decided to create a manual that can be used for trainers as they move through the JCI system and even afterward if they embark on a professional training career. The first part of the manual simply provides some material to refresh your training knowledge and provide some insight into how you can take your training skills to the next level.

In the second part of the manual, we solicited tips and techniques from all of our trainers around the world and compiled them for you to read and incorporate into your training courses. Just as I cannot take credit for these wonderful tips and techniques submitted from our JCI trainers, I also can say that I do not necessarily agree with all of them for my training style. The beauty of this manual is that you can figure out what tips or techniques might work for you. Many thanks go out to the JCI Training Administrator, Günther Meyer as well as the 2011 JCI Training Commission: Patrick Knight – JCI Training Chairperson Kola Osinowo – Commissioner for Africa and the Middle East Yogesh Chandak – Commissioner for Asia and the Pacific Marciano Lie A Young – Commissioner for the Americas Dave Synaeve – Commissioner for Europe

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The JCI Trainer

What makes a great JCI trainer? First and foremost, it is a commitment to the organization. The JCI trainer wants to help the organization grow and to create more active citizens. A JCI trainer does not want to simply use the organization to get more business, get a certification or to build their resume. These things are a by-product of the actions taken by a JCI trainer as he/she conducts seminars and courses in the organization.

Second, a great JCI trainer would never submit false hours to get a higher certification or pretend to conduct courses that did not really happen or give a presentation at a meeting and then call it a training session. These are the actions of someone that should not even be a member of the organization and certainly would not be done by a great JCI trainer.

Third, a great JCI trainer knows that there is no reason to speed through the certification process too quickly or to train internationally before he/she has attained the skills necessary to be on the big stage. Patience and hard-work are the greatest virtues of a JCI trainer.

Fourth, a great JCI trainer is not a “prima donna.” The term "prima donna" has come into common usage to describe someone who behaves in demanding, often temperamental, fashion revealing an inflated view of themselves, their talent, and their importance. It describes a vain, undisciplined, egotistical, obnoxious or temperamental person who finds it difficult to work under direction or as part of a team. These are not qualities of a great JCI trainer.

Fifth, a great JCI trainer always helps others to grow. He/she will take the time to coach other young trainers and give them opportunities to advance their training careers. The JCI trainer wants to make sure that each seminar provides an atmosphere where the participant has a chance to gain knowledge and learn behavioral change. The JCI trainer cares less about applause and more about creating positive change in each participant.

Finally, a great JCI trainer never stops learning and growing as a trainer. Despite the fact that they have extensive experience as trainers, advanced knowledge of their chosen topic, dynamic personalities and a strong command of adult learning methodology, they want to learn more. Despite the fact that they have successfully conducted seminars at World Congress to an over-flowing room of participants and have received high praise on evaluation forms, they still ask their peers how they can get better. A great JCI trainer wants to be better!

Teaching vs. Coaching

Teaching is the transfer of knowledge from one person to another. Teaching can also be used to show a skill or explain a new methodology where the learner has little or no experience in that skill or methodology. Oftentimes, we think of teaching as something that is commonly done with children, but the reality is that adults also need to be taught when there is no knowledge of the content or skill be presented.

Coaching is the practice of supporting an individual through the process of achieving a specific goal – whether professionally or personally. Coaches are often seen as facilitators who ask many questions and re-focus an individual in order for the individual to determine the correct path to proceed. They provide positive support and feedback. A coach rarely gives the answers and merely helps the individual think through the issue and come up with his/her own solution or path to success. A coach is also a motivator who encourages the individual to achieve the goal and helps the individual find his/her true passion.

For an example of when teaching should be used, suppose you are trying to show participants how to use a computer, but they have zero experience operating any type of computer. There is no amount of

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encouragement or coaching that can be done in order to have an end result of these participants understanding how to use a computer. Instead, you must begin with presenting the basic information about a computer, providing step by step instructions for using a computer and then even doing hands-on demonstrations so that the users can try it themselves under the guidance of the teacher. Once they have the basic knowledge and skill-set to operate a computer, you can encourage them to experiment on their own or read additional materials in order to become more proficient. But the initial method used here must be teaching.

Conversely, for an example of when coaching might be used, suppose a young manager in your company comes to you depressed because his team is not working together efficiently and asks what to do. Some people may instantly give this manager two or three stories from past experience that they have encountered and maybe two or three strategies that might work to solve the manager’s problem. (i.e. teach them). They typically do this because it is easier and less time-consuming to just give the answer to the solution and send them on their way. However, this will not help with the development of that young manager for the future.

The more seasoned person, will try to coach the young manager by discussing the problem, asking the

manager what solutions he/she might try, using Socratic method to force the young manager to think through the problem and by providing encouragement that the young manager has the ability to deal with the issue. Of course, I am simplifying the process and coaching is a methodology that requires much practice, but by taking the time to coach the young manager, it will help with the development of that young manager for the next issue he/she faces in the office. In the long run, it makes your company better and it may avoid that manager coming into your office in the future for a small issue that he/she can now figure out personally.

The Art of Training As a trainer, you must be well learned in the art of teaching and coaching. Moreover, it is essential that you understand when to use each approach in a training session. Adults typically prefer a facilitation session where the participants can interact with each other and share their own thoughts or ideas. However, there are times when a trainer must give new information to the participants or teach them a skill, which the participants are not already familiar with in their lives. A trainer must seamlessly move back and forth between the two methodologies. Interestingly, the Commission has seen many trainers that do not seem to understand the concepts of adult learning or the methodologies for training adults. Many trainers take a trainer’s guide and simply repeat what is in the guide - word for word - without applying the information to real life examples or stories. Even worse, there are too many trainers who simply put a slide on the screen, read from the slide, ask if anyone has any questions and then advance to the next slide. This is not effective adult training! Another type of mistake unseasoned trainers make is to use activities simply to inject fun into the course or to break up the monotony of the lecture and Power Point method described above. A trainer might see a fun activity in a course and realize that the participants seemed to have a great time doing the activity. So, this trainer takes the activity and inserts it into their next training session without regard to the learning point or whether it even fits the material being presented. Believe it or not, this is a very common occurrence and we see it in the course submissions sent to us each day. We are left scratching our heads as to why the trainer felt this activity was necessary for the course and what was the point of the activity. Regarding facilitation, some trainers believe that an entire course can be presented simply by doing discussions and presentations among the participants. We have literally witnessed trainers who spend three hours doing the following: (1) ask the participants to discuss a topic for 10 minutes at their table and prepare a flip chart with answers or pictures; (2) give each table 3 minutes to present their findings; (3) after the final team presents their findings, the trainer asks the entire room what they think; (4) repeat steps 1 through 3 with a new question. This can be a great activity to use in a course once or twice, but the entire course should not

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be this way because it only reaches certain participants’ learning styles. They may want a little more structure or content or real life examples from the trainer. In certain specific circumstances, a workshop could follow this format, but for most JCI sessions, this would be too simplistic. Giving instructions for activities and debriefing are other areas where many trainers could improve. It amazes me to watch trainers try to give instructions for an activity that they do not fully understand themselves. With any activity, your preparation has to start with the learning point. Once you understand what you are trying accomplish with the activity, you can do a better job leading the participants through it. Watch the faces of the participants as you give the instructions to make sure there is some understanding. When finished, ask the participants if the instructions were clear or if they need to be repeated. Too many trainers conduct chaotic activities that completely miss the learning point because of unclear instructions. After an activity, an equally important part is the debrief session. This is definitely an art form and can only be improved through practice. When an activity ends, we see many trainers ask a question like: what did we learn? Then, they get a few answers and then they state what they think the learning point should have been. This can be mildly effective, but it is so much better if you can direct a real conversation among participants to lead them to their own conclusion about the learning point. That means that you might have to ask deeper and more pointed questions to the participants to really create that “ah-ha” moment. Challenge them and force them to reflect on the activity and think things through. Don’t be impatient or feel that you need to speed up the process by giving them the answers. After all, you are trying to create a change in the way they are thinking, right? It is important to avoid some of the mistakes listed above and to really see training as an art form that can be constantly improved. By combining the methodologies of teaching and coaching (learning and problem-solving) into a single process, we can help take the participant through a learning circle that will lead to real learning, real growth and hopefully, real behavioral change. Only then can a person feel that they are starting to learn the art of training and only practice can help a trainer master that art.

The Adult Learning Experience

After taking JCI Designer (and maybe even JCI Trainer), it is expected that a trainer should understand adult learning styles, adult training methods and the adult learning experience. But do you really understand these things? Do you really utilize these concepts in your own courses? Have you designed your course with the appropriate activities, learning points, resources and content to reach each of the learning styles? Below is a refresher course on the concepts with ways you can utilize some of the concepts in your courses.

Learning styles: As we learned in Prime or JCI Trainer, adults approach learning tasks and information in different ways. Some people prefer to look at the Big Picture and they like to get an overview of what they are learning at the outset. Others prefer to take small parts and put them together to get the whole picture at the end. According to Honey & Mumford (1982), the different learning styles can be described as: Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist. The Activist learns best from constant exposure to new experiences. They like to involve themselves in activities, games, role plays and discussions. They like hands-on demonstrations and opportunities to immediately try out new things during the seminar. You will recognize the Activist because they speak a lot, raise their hand often and will be visibly bored if there is too much lecture or theory without more stimulation. If you do not have opportunities for an Activist to be involved in your seminar, they will not find you effective as a trainer. The Reflector learns best from activities that allow them the time and space to ponder an experience or assimilate information before making a judgment. They often spend a good deal of time listening and observing and are perfectly happy never being called on during a seminar. If you want a Reflector to participate more, give them ample time to think about their answers before calling on them. For example, you might pose a

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question to the audience and ask them to write down one or two answers. Give them a few minutes to write it down. Once a Reflector has a chance to think about it and write it down, they are more likely to offer their answer. You might also allow Reflectors to be involved by pairing up your participants with a partner or by putting Reflectors in small groups for discussion. Theorists learn best from activities that allow them to integrate observations into logically sound theories. Theorists will never accept what the trainer says just because they trainer says it. The Theorist wants to know the source for your information and whether the trainer has credibility. Theorists like to have hand-outs with the information in front of them and references listed in the back. Theorists are logical and often like structure to a seminar, including an agenda and an idea about how the seminar will proceed. So, even where a seminar is free-flowing and informal, a trainer needs to give it some structure, use hand-outs and give resources, if he/she wants to reach the elusive Theorist. Pragmatists learn best from activities or information that has clear practical value. If you can show a Pragmatist how a piece of information or a new skill can benefit them in their real life, they will think you are an excellent trainer. Often times, Pragmatists are happy with even one or two new ideas that they can apply to their JCI or work life. If you have no credibility with the information you are presenting and you have no stories or examples to show how the information has worked for you or others in the real world, a Pragmatist will get bored with your seminar very quickly.

Learning preferences: In addition to the learning styles, a good trainer must be aware that participants have different preferences for how they like to receive information from a sensory point of view. The three commonly accepted receiving styles are: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Learners use all three modalities to receive and learn new information, but typically one or two of these receiving styles are more dominant. Visual learners obviously like to see information that is presented to them. Some visual learners prefer this information to be in written form on hand-outs, Power Point or written on flip charts. By seeing the written language, it helps to reinforce the ideas in their minds. Other visual learners have difficulty with written language and do better with charts, pictures, demonstrations and videos. To appeal to the visual learner, use graphs, charts, illustrations and pictures both in your Power Point slides and with flip charts. Use hand-outs that include outlines, concept maps, mind-maps, agendas, etc. and leave white space in the hand-outs for note-taking. Post flip charts around the room to reinforce the learning and emphasis key points with underline or a color change. You can also use visualization techniques to have the participants picture things in their minds in order to help them “see” how the content applies to them. Auditory learners like to hear information that is presented to them. You will often see auditory learners talk to themselves and they might even move their lips when they read text. These types of participants prefer to hear information presented in lecture style or in discussion groups where the ideas are being spoken and related to the content presented through other forms. Music also helps auditory learners feel that the environment is pleasant and soothing. To appeal to auditory learners, begin new material with a brief explanation of what is coming next and conclude with a summary of what has been covered. Use music to enhance the learning environment as follows: use faster music at breaks or to get energy in the room; use slow and low volume reflective music during writing activities or visualizations; find music to use when you want to inspire or motivate people. Learn the Socratic Method of questioning learners to draw information from them as you fill in the gaps with your own expertise. Include auditory activities such as: brainstorming, buzz groups, quiz shows and discussion groups. Kinesthetic learners learn best with hands-on activities while they are moving about the room. They prefer external stimulation and like to be involved in the seminar. One element of kinesthetic learning involves touch, so it is important to allow these types of participants to feel samples, build their own creations at their tables or follow along with demonstrations. The other element of kinesthetic learning is movement and allowing

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participants to leave their seats, role play or play games that hold their interest. They prefer to get the big picture first before focusing on details. To appeal to kinesthetic learners, use activities to get them up and moving. Use role plays, quiz shows, discussion groups, presentations and other energetic activities. Use colored markers and pictures that stimulate their senses and allow them to use colored markers to make pictures or flip chart presentations. Give frequent stretch breaks. Provide toys like stress balls and Play-dough to keep their hands busy. You can also allow these types of participants to transfer information from one medium to another such as: from paper to flip chart or to a laptop. Just keep them involved and moving as much as possible. Of course, a trainer must use all of the above activities to meet the needs and learning styles of the participants. So, when designing a course, a trainer must include activities and content that will reach the different learning styles and preferences. Even when training a JCI course, a trainer needs to be aware of the reactions of the participants to certain activities and make sure not to fall into the trap of only presenting information according to YOUR learning style or preference.

The Learning Circle: One of the issues that this Commission has been focusing on is the ability of our trainers to understand the learning circle, apply it in their training sessions and utilize it when designing their own courses. We see this as one of the biggest weaknesses of our trainers. During training sessions, we often see trainers that are unable to bring the participants through the stages of learning and lack the ability to link back to prior concepts learned in the course. Even worse, more than half the courses that are submitted for IG and ITF have little or no application of the learning circle to present their content to participants. The learning circle is taught as follows: at the top of the circle is “concrete experience”; move to the right side of the circle for “reflective observation”; at the bottom of the circle is “abstract conceptualization”; and on the left side of the circle is “active experimentation.” Often, by having an experience, we begin to think differently about things. These experiences can prompt us to reflect on the possibility of making changes or improvements. When we examine the experience, we are in a position to form generalizations or theories about what is the best way to proceed. Finally, we can test our theories in practice to see if they work.

Quite simply, the learning circle can be described as follows:

(1) You have an experience; (2) You review the experience; (3) You draw conclusions from your experience that lead to theories; (4) You plan the next steps to test out your theories. (5) You test out your theory with a new experience (i.e. go back to step one)

It seems that many trainers do not realize that they must bring their participants through the various

stages of the learning circle in order to reach all the learning styles and begin the process of change in behavior. There are many seminars that are heavy on theory and content, but provide no chance to practice the content, reflect on it or relate it to real life. Other seminars are full of activities and discussion, but never apply the content to JCI or the real world. In other seminars, activities are done without a good debrief and this allows no time for good reflective observation.

When a trainer is designing a course, he/she must respect the learning circle. All modules must start

out with a mind-grabber to attract their attention. Then, when introducing the content of the module, it must be related to the concrete experiences of the audience. In other words, the trainer should identify those areas in the lives of the participants that make this particular information useful to those particular participants.

Once you have related the content to the participants, you have two choices: (1) do an activity to create

an experience that you will use as the basis of the learning point; or (2) utilize an experience that has already happened to the participants (or use a case study) to be the basis for the learning point. With the events that

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occur during the activity or that occurred in the past experience, you can now allow time for reflection, debriefing and discussion among the participants.

Many trainers feel that activities are for Activists and reflection is for Reflectors. This is not entirely true.

These learning styles learn best during that part of the circle related to their learning style, but they still need the other parts of the learning circle to formulate new ideas. For example, Activists like discussion groups because they get to speak, but discussion groups are really best used to reflect on the experience. Similarly, Reflectors need activities in order to observe the actions of others. Sometimes, the people watching a role play or a small group activity learn more from the activity than those participating in it.

After identifying real observations and issues from the experience, the trainer then must take the

participants through the process of developing theories about their observations and how they could do better with that experience the next time. Again, this is where a strong debrief can be useful or having content that explains different methodologies for dealing with that particular experience. The reflective observation simply helps participants to realize that things could be better, but now the trainer helps them develop theories on how to make it better.

The final stage is to plan the steps necessary to test out the theories in the next experience. Here, the

trainer must have real life examples to use in order to show how the theories have or have not worked. Using a case study can be helpful, but equally useful are the examples that come from the audience. Doing an activity, reflecting on it and developing theories is a useless process unless you show the participants how it can be used in the real world after the seminar ends. When participants can see how this information and the theories developed can be used to improve their lives or their situation, the trainer has begun the process of real behavioral change in the participant.

Credibility of the Trainer Have you ever sat in a seminar and asked yourself: “Why is THIS guy teaching this seminar?” Or, you listen to a trainer talk about leadership and you personally know that this trainer was a terrible leader when he/she was president of the organization. Without credibility, a trainer as almost no chance of being effective as a facilitator of adult learning. Every trainer should be fully aware of their background, experiences and reputation before deciding to train any particular course. People often say that to be an effective leader or trainer, you have to “walk the talk.” (“walk it like you talk it”). To have credibility with your words, you need to practice what you preach. In other words, people will watch your actions and see if they correlate to the words you say in speeches and seminars. If you do not have experience in the field that relates to the topic that you are training, a large majority of the room will wonder why you are the person training this particular course. In JCI, this is particularly important with our official courses. How can someone who has never been a Local President or even a Local Vice President conduct the course JCI Admin? If a trainer has no experience running a small company or dealing with social responsibility issues in a large corporation, why would they try and conduct JCI CSR? If you have never designed a course or if the only course you ever designed was a one hour course for NG submission, do you think you really have credibility to conduct JCI Designer? Furthermore, as discussed later in this manual, you need to be very careful when you consider what topics you pick for your own courses. Just because you have read a book about management and can write a seminar about it, does not mean you have the credibility to conduct the course. Have you ever been a manager? Did you ever lead a team and have to deal with conflicts between team members? Do you have personal stories and examples to give the participants about management? If a participant asks you a question about how to handle a particular situation in his office, can you think it through immediately and help them think of a solution? I cannot stress enough how important credibility is to the success of your seminar.

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If you do have experience in the field you are training, the next thing to consider is how you present your credentials to the audience. In short, how do you let them know that you have the credibility to conduct this course? Some trainers will start off their seminars giving a detailed resume of their past successes, including job experience, JCI positions and awards won. This can sometimes turn into a bragging session and it might actually turn off the audience. Other trainers that are extremely qualified to conduct a course, never let the audience know any of their qualifications. While this shows humility, it does not do the trainer justice in reaching each of his/her participants. The best way to be credible is to be a savvy trainer who works certain information into his/her seminars. For starters, the trainer can have a short introduction prepared so that the organizer of the course can give some brief qualifications. There is no need for the trainer to then share his/her resume with the audience at the beginning of the seminar. A seasoned trainer will let the audience know of his experience through the examples he uses, the stories he tells and the answers he gives to questions. If you are a savvy trainer, the audience will get the message that you are qualified to conduct this course and they will never realize why they know that to be true. One final way that a trainer can build credibility with the participants is to know the audience and to match their expectations with your objectives in the course. As we learned in JCI Trainer, you need to know who is in your audience, including their demographics, their knowledge level and their experiences. Moreover, we learned that a good trainer always discovers the expectations of his audience early in the seminar and tries to realize their needs and wants, while dealing with their fears and threats. Accordingly, a seasoned trainer will always find out their realistic expectations and relate them to the objective of the course. If necessary, the trainer will alter the content to meet the knowledge level of the participants. When a trainer does these things effectively, the participants will find the trainer credible.

Your Training Style The remarkable thing about training styles is that so many different kinds of trainers can be effective despite the fact that they have completely different training styles. Some young trainers will try to copy the training style of a more experienced trainer, especially if that trainer was a mentor to the young trainer. However, the thing that makes a trainer unique is his/her training style and you should never try to copy the style of someone else. Some trainers have a more dynamic personality and can infuse energy into the room as soon as they enter it. Some trainers are very motivational and inspirational with the ability to challenge their participants to greater goals. Other trainers have more of a motherly or fatherly style where the participants feel safe with them and trust them. There are some trainers who really make the participants feel as though they care about them. Still other trainers are so intelligent and educated that participants believe nearly everything they say. There are trainers that can tell amazing and inspirational stories. Other trainers are great at painting a picture with words or being very detail oriented. Some trainers are humorous in general and some trainers are witty only during the dialogue with participants. I have watched trainers that are emotional themselves or that can bring out emotions (even tears) in the participants. There are trainers that can speak for an hour without notes, some that use mind-maps and some that are very effective trainers who use the trainer’s guide frequently during the seminar. Knowing this to be true, it is important that you utilize your strengths as a trainer and perfect your style of training. Of course, you can try adding certain techniques to your arsenal of training skills, but you must always be true to yourself first. Just because a certain technique works for one trainer does not mean that you will be able to pull it off effectively. Trainers are different and some trainers are polar opposites. In fact, that is why some of the best JCI courses are conducted where two trainers have very different styles and thus, can reach all of the learning styles and preferences of the participants.

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That being said, it is always useful as a trainer that you continue to learn and grow. Try and push yourself beyond your comfort zone in some seminars. If you have problems with the volume of your voice, try doing a seminar where you really focus on keeping your voice up. If you are a very serious trainer, try one seminar where you are more informal or even try humor. If you love Power Point, try doing a seminar with only flip charts and props. You never know how good you can be as a trainer until you get out of your comfort zone. When you speak, you must be aware of your tone, volume, pace and pronunciation. Some trainers speak very fast and this can be difficult for participants (especially at the international level). The audience cannot process the points as fast as you can say them. You must give them a chance to catch up and think about what your last words. When training internationally in English, you must speak slowly, use simple words and pronounce your words correctly. It is also a necessity that you avoid being monotone, which is a more common problem than you might think. Don’t bore the audience, practice how you speak. Another effective tool is silence. If you learn how to use silence or even a pause in your delivery, you will find multiple uses for it that can be effective in different situations. A pause can be used to stress your next point or the previous point. It can be used to regain the attention of your participants or to make talking participants be quiet. Silence can even help stimulate the creativity of participants or to help them be more interactive. The key is that a trainer has to be comfortable with silence and this is no easy task. As with everything, this, too, takes practice. Additionally, a good trainer needs to know how to ask effective questions. Too many times, we hear trainers ask close-ended questions that elicit one word answers. You must learn to ask open-ended questions. To practice this, look through your seminar and find areas where you might ask the audience to answer a question. Then, think of three or four versions of the question until you find a version that you are comfortable asking. Also, you should learn how to use the Socratic Method of questioning. I will not go into detail here, but ask an experienced trainer about it or look it up on the internet. During any training course you conduct, it should come natural for you to repeat information from earlier in the course or relate content in one module to the content in a previous module. If this does not occur naturally for you, then you need to write notes into your trainer’s guide to force you to link the material in different modules. Participants learn best if they can see how new information relates to information previously provided or activities that were previously performed. Further, they will have a better chance of remembering the information, if you repeat it and summarize it several times. As stated elsewhere in his manual, you must have stories and examples at your fingertips to have credibility with the participants and to make the content come to life. Where can you get these? Well, you should be able to pull a vast number of examples and stories from your own past experiences, so you should first sit down with the material and think of some stories from your own past. You can also speak with other leaders or managers in your organization or use Google to find interesting examples. Reading business and leadership books can provide case studies and additional stories, too. Sometimes, you can find such stories in children’s fables or from ancient mythological stories. Don’t stop until you have examples and stories for each learning point – whether you ultimately use them in the seminar or not. Finally, you should always finish strong! Trainers have to be careful that they do not just rapidly move through the final modules, closing and feedback just because you are running short on time. A good closing should summarize the material and check to see if the participants understood the concepts. There needs to be time for questions and to tie up loose ends. The trainer should also create an environment that motivates the participants and calls them to action. Or, it might be an emotional closing or an inspirational closing. Whether it is a captivating story or an analogy that tugs on their heart strings, the closing should be the final step in the process of changing the way participants think and behave.

Sometimes, trainers provide opportunities for the participants to give final comments and share what they will take away from the course. Other times, the final part of the course includes feedback from the trainers to the participants about skills they practiced in the course. (for example, the presentations in JCI

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Trainer). When giving feedback, you already know the sandwich method, but do you really give good feedback? You must offer more than the basics if you really care about their improvement. Write down one specific thing good and bad for each person in the presentation. Quote the exact thing they said to show you were listening. Ask permission to give them constructive criticism and tell them that you want them to be better. Make sure that the personality of the participant comes out during their presentation. If you do not feel comfortable with feedback, learn from an experienced trainer. It is that important! Whatever you do in your session, just remember to always be yourself. Focus on your strengths as a trainer and show the participants you care about them. Try to develop your own training style and be proud of the unique style that you create for yourself. In the end, great trainers are always trying to improve their skills and they share knowledge with each other. That, in fact, is the very reason for this manual and we hope that you enjoyed it.

Preparing to Conduct a JCI Course as Assistant Trainer In preparing to conduct a JCI course, here is a suggested preparation checklist:

Read the introductory information for the course and understand which modules you are allowed to conduct, what resources need to be prepared and the layout of the room

In every trainer’s guide there is an explanation of the Role of a Head Trainer and the Role of an Assistant Trainer. Be familiar with your role and what is expected of you.

Read through the entire trainers guide at least once to get an understanding of the course and so you can see how modules can be linked together.

Make a note of any concepts that are not clear to you, so that you can ask the Head Trainer or another respected trainer to help you understand the concept.

For each learning point, think of an example and analogy and/or a story that could be used to describe the learning point. You might not use them all, but they will be at your fingertips if you need them during the course.

If you do not have a story or example for any particular learning point, you must read books, ask others who may have more experience with that learning point or ask other trainers for some kind of example or story to use there.

Write notes to remind you of these stories and examples in the margins of your trainer’s guide so that you will remember when to use them.

NEVER conduct a seminar on a topic where you have limited knowledge or experience. If you do not have stories and examples, you will not be a credible trainer.

Always apply the content of a seminar in your own life as a leader and business-person. If you are teaching a leadership course and the participants know that you were a bad local organization leader, how will you have credibility?

Write down notes in your trainer’s guide that show you how to link concepts in your module with previous concepts learned in the course.

Set up a meeting with the Head Trainer to go over the concepts of the course and discuss the modules that you will be training.

Practice using the slides in the Power Point presentation, so that you are familiar with when to advance a slide, how to use the timing features and how to use slides that involve multiple clicks before the entire slide appears.

Practice the opening for the course and for each module. Make sure that you understand the mind-grabber and how to introduce the material for the module.

Think about every transition from an activity to the learning point, from the opening to the content of the module, etc. Transitions are an important aspect to sounding like a seasoned trainer.

Prepare any Notes, Charts, Checklists or Mind-maps you need to help conduct the course. Please note: Trainers should never conduct courses simply by reading the slides and merely saying the words in the trainer’s guide. If you cannot state the learning points and concepts in your own words, you should not

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conduct the course. If you have no examples or stories to share with the class on this topic, you should not conduct the course. If you are not proficient in the language that the course is being conducted [where you merely read the slides], then you should not conduct the course in that language. If you are unclear on a concept, an activity or a learning point, you should ALWAYS ask the Head Trainer or a Training Commissioner or the Training Administrator (Gunther) to explain it to you. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, rather it is a sign of maturity in a trainer.

How to Research and Develop Your Own Course

Every week, the JCI Training Commission has to evaluate 3-4 courses submitted by trainers who are seeking NG, IG or ITF status. For as many great courses we receive, it still amazes me how many bad courses are submitted. Some trainers seem to have no idea how to develop a course, how to write a course for other trainers or how to link activities with learning points. here are several ways that you can go about researching and developing your course. In the paragraphs below, I am going to detail one way that you can use to help ensure that your courses meets the high standards we require for approval as an international trainer.

I will not go into any detail concerning training needs analysis. This was covered extensively in the JCI

Designer course. However, I will briefly touch on course topics. When choosing a topic for the course, you must have an end-result in mind. For example, you should be able to complete this phrase: “At the end of this course, participants will be able to...” Following that phrase, you should be able to complete this phrase: “It is important that participants will be able to this because . . .”

Too often, people design courses based on a book they read or a methodology they learned in another

seminar. You can take Steven Covey’s book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and make a seminar about it, but why are you doing this seminar? It would be very easy to break up the seminar into seven main points, use examples right out of the book to illustrate the points and throw in a few fun activities, but what would you hope to achieve with this seminar? Will you offer anything different to a participant that they would not get from just reading the book? Will participants think your course was worth attending? If you cannot answer these questions, you might want to reconsider your topic.

Similarly, you might have attended a negotiation workshop and maybe you learned some great tips and

tactics for effective negotiation. As a trainer, you return home and start designing a course based on those tips and techniques that you felt were most useful. Then, you might submit the course to the Commission and we can see the wonderful techniques, but there are deficiencies. Where is the mind-grabber? What is the theory behind the techniques? Where are the resource citations? Has this trainer used these techniques in real life or just learned them in a seminar? How would you apply this in a real world situation? Why are the techniques presented in a way that does not respect the learning circle? Of course, you can imagine that this trainer would get an email asking all of these questions and asking for improvements to be made. So, where should you start? First, you should choose your course carefully with a couple of things in mind: (1) Do you have expertise in this area? (2) Do you have real life stories and examples for this content? (3) What do you want the participants to accomplish when the course ends? (4) Why is it important that the participants understand this information or learn these skills; (5) Why would participants want to attend this seminar? Once you are able to answer these questions, you can then begin formulating your ideas. The next step is for you to do research. You might begin by reading books on this subject or doing internet research on the topic. Do not just stop with one or two books because you might miss alternative theories or techniques that are even better than your original find. Write down the main ideas and divide the information into small chunks. There are many ways to do this, so do not get stuck with one acceptable way. Some people use mind-maps, while others use bullet points and still others simply use a grouping method with circles. Find a way that works for you.

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Once you have your overall objective and your main learning points, you simply need to follow the methodology set out for you in the JCI Designer course. I will not cover that information here because you can look through the participants manual from JCI Designer to re-learn the process. I would suggest, however, that you consult with a more experienced trainer during the development of your course to stay focused on producing a quality course worthy of submission. Do not put your name on a course that is below your normal training standards. Once you have the majority of your course finished, think of a good mind-grabber for the beginning of the course and for each new module. Even better, think of two or three mind-grabbers for each module and for the opening. Try different forms of mind-grabbers from statistics to humor to story-telling. Stretch the limits of your creativity until you are comfortable that your mind-grabber really grabs the attention of the audience. Add devices into your course that help to emphasis the learning points. You might use alliteration: The Five P’s of Motivation. You could use a fable, parable or myth to tell a story. Are there slides or special flip charts that are used to emphasize key points? Do you repeat information several times and link content from one module back to what was learned in the beginning of the course? Are there summaries at the end of each module and again at the end of the course? Use these elements of course design to make your course stand out. When you add activities, games and role-plays, make sure that you provide detailed and clear instructions for the trainer, not just for the participants. Remember that you are writing a course for another trainer and that trainer might not have seen an activity or game like the one you describing in your trainer’s guide. There should be an overview of the activity, instructions on how to present the activity and even some text for the trainer to say in order to clearly instruct the participants correctly. Be careful not to use activities, stories or phrases that have become over-used. If your course has an activity or illustration in it that has been used by many other courses, it will not be effective, especially when you are training professionals who have attended many courses. For example, this illustration/activity has been used over and over again: “Everyone raise your hand as high as you can. Now, raise it a little higher. See? You can always do a little more.” If you have seen it several times in different courses, don’t add it to your course. Also, make sure that you understand the real meaning behind a story or activity before you simply insert it into your course. If it makes no sense in your course, it causes the Commission to question whether you even understand the concepts of adult training, not just course designing. Assess your course to determine whether it respects the learning circle. Does your course relate to the experiences of the participants? Do you use case studies, activities or other sources to allow discussion about a concrete experience? Is their sufficient time allowed for participants to reflect on the experience and discuss how things could be improved? As a trainer, do you then lead the group on a quest to develop new theories based on their reflections and observations? For these new theories, do you have stories and examples showing how this would work or not work in real life? Does your course take them through the next planning steps to utilize these new theories in the real world? If you answer “no” to any one of these questions, you need to go back and read the section on the Learning Circle again. Prepare your handouts and Power Point slides in accordance with what JCI teaches in JCI Trainer and JCI Designer. Your handout must make sense with the course and must be an effective tool to help engage the participants. Do not just copy your slides onto paper and call it a handout. Do not just put a few key words on a piece of paper and call it a handout. Think about what the different learning styles and preferences require from a handout. Similarly, with your slides, make sure that they include only key points and pictures that are relevant. Do not make your course merely a slide show presentation. Finally, when your course is completed, do not simply upload it for submission. The first thing you should do is to conduct the course yourself to see if the concepts and activities work. Subsequently, you should have another trainer attempt to conduct the course simply from reading your trainer’s guide in order to see if he/she can present it correctly. You should also send your course to your mentor or some high level

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trainer to get their thoughts on the course. Be patient to ensure quality in your course. Rushing to upload your course before you are sure it is a quality course, only works against your reputation and your credibility as a trainer. The JCI Training Commission is proud to serve this organization by certifying new trainers and evaluating course submissions. We are here to protect the credibility of our trainers and the integrity of our organization. Sometimes, trainers can feel as though the Commission is too strict or that we are making the process too difficult. There are some trainers that feel that they are good enough to rush through the certification process quickly. That might be true, but when there are hundreds of trainers from hundreds of countries all trying to move up as quickly as possible, the Commission must exercise caution to make sure that quality trainers are being certified and quality courses are being approved. It has been a pleasure to serve JCI in 2011 and we wish good luck to all the JCI trainers world-wide. Patrick Knight 2011 JCI Training Chairperson

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Part II

Training Tips and Techniques From JCI Trainers World-Wide

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Roberto Noronha (ITF) JCI Macao

Never rush Assistant Trainers to end a module when they are over-running: There are many factors that can lead to modules over-running. As a Head Trainer, if you discover your Assistant Trainer is over-running in his/her assigned module, NEVER rush the Assistant Trainer to end the module. This will only make the Assistant Trainer panic and fumble through the remaining Power Point slides. For the participants, it will mean messages become unclearly explained and poorly presented. As the last impression can leave a lasting impression, this rush to end the module could induce the participants to believe the training was not conducted professionally. Instead, if you discover your Assistant Trainer is over-running in his/her assigned module, step in and quickly summarize the remaining main points that need to be addressed in the module in point form. This way, the participants can receive the remaining main points in a clear and structured manner. After the training, as Head Trainer, don’t forget to evaluate with the Assistant Trainer what caused him/her to over-run. This will help the Assistant Trainer to improve upon his/her time management.

Testing your Assistant Trainers for JCI courses: As Head Trainer, in order to facilitate your Assistant Trainers to master JCI Courses, inform them before the course to carefully observe whole course as you will be testing them after the course to see how much they have mastered it. Assistant Trainers become more attentive when they are told they will be tested. After the course, ask the Assistant Trainer to explain to you how some of the activities were conducted, some of the examples you had cited to help the participants understand concepts and how some messages in the course were conveyed. If the Assistant Trainer can answer them, it means that they had observed what was going on in the course, but more importantly, they do understand how the course is conducted and it will be remembered. This simple exercise can effectively help the Assistant Trainers master the course. If the Assistant Trainer has difficulties in answering the questions, DO NOT PUNISH THEM. This exercise is purely to help the Assistant Trainer. It is not an EXAM. It merely points out where the Assistant Trainer needs to put more time into studying the course to master it.

Two ways to enliven what you have to say: All of us have experienced what it is like to listen to someone who talks in a flat tone. It creates a boring atmosphere. Here are two ways you can avoid a flat tone in your trainings: (1) Smile when you talk – It’s strange but true. When you smile and talk at the same time, your voice

automatically becomes livelier.

(2) Develop your story telling skills – Have you noticed when people read stories to their children or tell things to friends as a story, they have all the exciting intonations in their talk. It’s strange but true. Practice your story telling skills and apply it to your trainings and you can enliven what you have to say.

Flipping through Power Point slides Without Anyone Knowing: You are on slide 12 and need to go to slide 16. If you flip through slide 13, 14 and 15 and their animations, you could look disorganized skipping through slides. What can you do? Press ‘1’ and then ‘6’ (for 16 – the number of the slide you want to go to) then press ‘enter’ and you will automatically be directed to slide 16, without having to go through slide 13, 14 and 15. It is like slides 13, 14 and 15 were never there. Of course, you will need to know the content and order of your slides to perform this trick!

An alternative to a laser pointer: A laser pointer can be irritating when the red dot is waved madly on the screen. An alternative is to use the highlighter in MS Power Point. In your Power Point presentation mode, right click your mouse and select “Pointer Options”. In the sub-menu that appears, select “Highlighter” and you are ready to highlight any text. To cancel the highlighter function, just right

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click the mouse again and select “Arrow” in the “Pointer Options” under the sub-menu. If you select “Felt Tip Pen” in the Pointer Options, you can actually draw on your PowerPoint screen too. This is great for words you may want to circle.

Avoid the word “TEACH” in your training for adults: Avoid using the word “teach” (or its synonyms, such as “advise you”, “educate you”, “demonstrate to you” “instruct you” or “show you”). When adults hear the word “teach”, they immediately feel that you think they are ignorant and you are more superior to them. Strange but true, adults do not like to hear the words “I am here to teach you”. Psychologically, adults associate teaching for children. So, if you tell them you are here to teach them, they will think you are degrading them to children. They may then develop a natural resistance to what you are ‘teaching’ them. Worst-case scenario, when you tell them you are here to teach them, they will want to prove you wrong.

Instead, tell the participants you are here “to discover with them”, “to find out with them” or “to discuss with them” how we can make improvements”. This way, the participants will feel they are evaluating the issue with you. Psychologically, adults accept evaluations. Furthermore, through an evaluation, they feel they have a contribution to make improvements. This will create an atmosphere that is more open-minded compared to an atmosphere which is more close-minded when one feels he/she is being instructed through the word “teach”. Setting this open-minded atmosphere will better allow you to take the participants on the learning circle journey and encourage more inputs from them.

Slides with less give you more: It is very common to see PowerPoint slides (or flipcharts) that have too much information on them. This can hinder the flexibility of your training. As a trainer, place only the main points you need to address on the slides. This will give you the flexibility to better control the training. Remember, if you put a sentence on the slide, you have to discuss it. By putting less on the slide, you have more flexibility to control the direction of the training and the subsequent discussions. You can more easily adapt the training to the level of knowledge of the participants. You more easily add and develop points or skip parts that are already known by the participants. Don’t allow the contents of the slides to determine what you have to say. Put less on the slides and you can have more control of the training. Remember, you are the trainer and the Power Point is just a guide. You control the training program, not the slides. Also, slides with less prevent you from reading slides so you can really face the participants and transfer your knowledge to them, instead of transferring what is written on the slides. However, if you plan to use this strategy, you need to be very familiar with the contents of the training program.

Dealing with the challenger: When training people you know, the training can be smooth. However, when training people you do not know, the training can be disruptive as there may be people who like to challenge you. As you are not with your home crowd, people may not be so ready to accept the messages you present. Do not worry. Always allow the challenger to present his/her ideas. Embrace what they say as an alternative solution to problems. Remember, there is no right or wrong answers. Furthermore, you can present the training as a sharing among the participants. In training, participants learn from each other as well. Never confront the challenger. This will only make matters worse. Remember as a trainer, you have to be open-minded to serve as an example to the participants to encourage them to be open-minded. If you insist on your point, so will they and the arrogance can lead to open conflict. People who challenge your ideas may not be disruptive for your training, if they are properly handled. They could add value. Respect what they say and they can serve as a resource person. You may even learn something from the points they raise.

However, if the challenger is out to mock you and what they say is of no value, then you may need to put a firm stop to it. You can do this by evaluating what they say with the participants. If the participants evaluate what the challenger says is of no value or makes no sense, the challenger will soon step

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down. Properly handling challengers is a skill that can greatly help you control the success of your training, especially among people you do not know.

Handouts are useful: When people go to trainings, they expect to learn something and take something away. This is why they look for a handout. If no handouts are available, they will have a discounted impression on your professionalism. The worst thing that can happen is when they ask you for a handout and you reply that you do not have one! Professional trainers will always have handouts. Don’t let people discredit your professionalism as a trainer because you do not have a handout. Always prepare one, whether it is printed in hardcopy or can be downloaded from a website. Also, remember that your handouts should be properly prepared. A poorly presented handout can also discredit your professionalism as a trainer. Moreover, avoid giving handouts that are just a copy of your Power Point slides. Remember, this is a training and not a presentation.

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Nicole Van Hooy (ITF) JCI Netherlands

Check your venue: Always, and I say Always check on your venue and room where your training is planned. A good trainer cannot afford to come in, discover the room is too little, too large, too warm, too cold, not equipped as requested etc. A good trainer always checks out the venue before the training, preferably even one or two days before so you can adapt your seminar if necessary to the room of so you can arrange for materials that are missing, equipment that is different etc. Getting into the room for the very first time at the moment that you are supposed to start is delivering bad quality as a trainer.

Feedback basics - Most trainers know the basic rules for giving good feedback; it has to be timed right, to the point, addressing the issue not the person, is specific, is formulated from yourself and gives a direction you would like etc.

Action-based feedback: A very different aspect for trainers to give good feedback is that you never give feedback on the content of an exercise. What do I mean? As a trainer you will use a lot of different techniques to try to learn your participant’s new ways of doing things. One of those techniques is for example a role play. So when the participants did the role play it is not important WHAT they choose to do but only HOW they choose to do it. So, if in a role play a participant chooses a different path or solution than you would have chosen, this is not important. It is important how he chose the path/solution and you as a trainer should not give feedback about the chosen solution but only on the way the solution was chosen and/or implemented.

Entertain your audience: It becomes more and more necessary that you as a trainer entertain your audience. Your audience has a lot on their minds, a lot to do and too little time to do it. So, if they choose to spend their time on your seminar, you have to give them everything they hoped for. I have seen a lot of good people, stars on their professions, but not good trainers. I good trainer plays with his/her audience, makes it a pleasure to learn, uses practical examples from daily work or daily live to enlighten the training. The energy level in the audience is high. If you feel that the energy level in the audience is not high, please do not continue in boring your audience to death! Be a professional; use different techniques, different styles, different exercises to make your point, because nothing is as boring as a trainer that just delivers his/her message and not caring about the audience.

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If the exercise did not go the way you planned: Sometimes you plan an exercise and it does not go the way you planned. The direction the participants choose was not the direction you planned; the way the participants acted did not reflect the purpose of the exercise etc. For this reasons you cannot make the point you wanted to make about your subject when you decided to use this technique. What to do? Never, never try to talk about how the exercise should have gone. If an exercise failed in proving your point; just admit it. Say things like; Ok, this was not exactly what I planned, what I wanted to point out is… or things like it. A trainer that tries to change the way an exercise worked by trying to talk the exercise in the way ”it was supposed to be” loses his/her credibility.

Always review an exercise: What is the whole point of doing an exercise and then failing to review it or give feedback to it. An exercise without proper feedback should not be done; it’s wasting the participant’s time! So any trainer that decides to lose the feedback or review due to lack of time should not do the exercise at all! Exercises are not for the amusement of the crowd, in a training they are supposed to teach your participants something about your subject and this is not possible without reviewing them!

Always debrief your assistant trainers: If you are a head trainer of a course, you always have to debrief your assistant trainers. Even if there is no time after the course, be sure that in one way or another (SKYPE?) you debrief your assistant trainers. Go over the parts that went not smoothly, give them tips about how to do better, give them time to talk about their fears, accomplishments and failures. A good debriefing learns the assistant trainers more than they learn “on stage” it’s your task to help the assistant trainers to learn and to become better. There is no excuse not to have at least 2 hours with your assistant trainers after a training course.

Delivering bad news: As a Head Trainer for a JCI official course you are responsible for developing other head trainers. This is a serious task that you should not take lightly. A lot of trainers are scared/unwilling to tell their assistant trainers that they should do better, know their training modules better, deliver them better, etc. They do not want to deliver the bad news. But who are you helping? The assistant trainer, which you deprive from becoming a better trainer? The audience, that has to cope with new head trainers not suitable for the job? Our organisation, that has to deal with bad references about JCI trainers? Nobody. So, be a good head trainer and take your job seriously; get over your reluctance but do your duty.

Hide your mistakes: Nobody knows what the exact content is of your training. So if you make a mistake (forgot a remark, made a mistake in a story, forgot a slide, skipped an exercise) nobody will know unless YOU tell them! And why would you? They will not know what they missed and so they do not miss it at all. Just go on with the show and do your training. Only if the exercise/remark/slide is absolutely necessary to understand your training, you have to show it/tell them. And if you do; do not introduce it like “I am sorry, I completely forgot”, or even worse “sorry I did not prepare for this”, but be a professional and fit the thing easily somewhere in your speech/story.

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Patrick Knight (ITF) JCI USA

Losing your place: If you are in the middle of a module, forget where you are in the manual and you are far away from your notes, don’t panic. Just repeat the last piece of information you gave to the participants and ask them to think of a time where they encountered that issue. Tell them that you will give them about 20 seconds to think about it. This gives you 20 seconds to walk over and check your notes. After finding your place, ask anyone if they want to share their story and then you can just move on smoothly.

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To make beautiful flip charts: Find an image on your computer and use a projector to show the image on your flip chart. Then, you just trace the image on the flip chart, color it in and you have professional looking flip charts pre-prepared before your course. Why use smiley faces and stick figures when you can have professional looking clip art and cartoon images?

Preparing an Assistant Trainer: When you are Head Trainer of a course and you are assigned an Assistant Trainer, have the AT study the entire trainer’s guide before telling them which module you will assign them. Then meet with them a few days before to go over the whole course. Only after this meeting, should you assign modules to your Assistant Trainer. This will ensure that they understand the whole course and learn how to link to other modules.

Clear instructions: Whenever you give instructions for an activity, you need to make sure that the instructions were understood by the participants. However, you should never say: “Do you understand the instructions?” No participant wants to be the ignorant person who did not understand, so they may not respond even if they do not truly understand. Instead, take ownership of the instructions and ask it this way: “Were my instructions clear or shall I repeat them?” In this way, a participant can ask you to repeat without feeling ignorant.

People are human first: Remember people are human and may have other things going on in their lives

besides the training. That includes your co-trainers, as well as your participants. As much as you need

to keep control of your seminar, don’t ever forget that people might be dealing with tragedy in their life:

loss of a loved one, loss of a job, going through a divorce, etc. Before chastising someone, talk to them

and see what is going on in their head. Show compassion and understanding first.

Covering topics needed by participants: Before the course starts, have participants write down one

topic or question that they hope is covered in the course. Ask them include their email address if they

would like to do so. You can review the responses at one of the breaks to see if there is a topic or

question you can fit into the training, or you can tell them that you will respond to them via email after

the course with some thoughts. For outside training, this gives you a great way to continue the

conversation and get repeat business as a speaker/trainer. Plus, since few trainers actually follow

through with these types of things, it will set you apart.

Use local music: As international trainer, find local music of the country where you are training and try

to use it during breaks or even during course. While music from your country is also a nice mix into the

playlist, having local music helps put the participants at ease and may even spark a conversation as to

how you knew about that music.

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Deniz Senelt (ITF) JCI Turkey

When participants arrive early: Although participants are expected to arrive before the time of the training session, in many occasions, a lot of people come late. I don’t want to lose the late ones but also I don’t want to punish the ones who were there early by waiting. So, I always start my session on time with some extra material related to my topic but not crucial for the session. I use something fun like a video clip, a song, a joke or a story. After this bonus material, I greet the late-comers and start the training. This way, the ones who were on time feel like they got something extra for being on time and it adds to the mood of the session.

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Greet the participants: I make my sessions personal. First of all I greet the first-comers (the first 15-20 participants at the door) by shaking hands and learning their names. This assures some people to be more interactive, making them less hesitant to answer questions. Secondly I give something to the participants sitting at the first two or three rows - something like Turkish delight to taste or a little ‘boncuk’ sticker, which has a story in my culture. This also makes people more willing to sit in the front and helps to create some bond from the start.

Analyze your participants: I analyze each and every one of my participants looking for hints that reveal some potential in them and I casually tell what they have that would significantly add to them if they invest in it. That means I personally tell motivational words to participants - no lies no exaggeration. But as we are experienced trainers, we should be able to recognize where the potential lies in people and it takes just more concentration and a bit willingness to look for it. In the end, I may find something to tell a few of the participants that really changes their lives and years afterwards, they tell me that they continued in this or that field thinking. In the end, I made them aware about themselves.

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Yogesh Chandek (ITF) JCI India

Designing a course: This is how I used information in the JCI Designer Module 4 –Trainers Guide in order to design my own course:

Research and finalize the resource text: Let’s say you plan to do a module on this very popular book -

One Minute Manager - (showing the book to participants while holding it high), you will be reading the

book, or say a business article, or other resource text.

Divide the text in small chunks: Upon reading, you found out that the book contains three important

parts or major points, namely: one minute goals, one minute praisings and one minute reprimand and

how they will work for you...so, in this case, the training module that you will do will have three parts as

part of the body of the contents...similar to how the reference was partitioned logically for easy

understanding of the readers.

Create Slides with major points of each chunk: Aside from the usual opening slide and slides on

introducing the participants, training objective, training outline, etc., we begin to create the contents of

the training module by dividing the major points into slides one after another.

Write additional information and instructions for each major point: If there will be further insights or

further sub-topics per major point of the contents, we add more slides to further discuss the

same....additional slides per major topic may also include proposed learning activities(which will be

discussed in a different module) among others...” (here you may show that one minute

goal/praising/reprimand has sub-topics as shown in the reference book, cite if there is, then say that

you will add more slides to discuss or explain each sub-topic of the major points.)

Review and update slides: Go back to the slides per major point, further review the reference material

and make further editing of the slides to make it more understandable to its prospective participants.

Repeat process for each chunk: We repeat item 5 to each major point until all major points have been

reviewed and slides updated.

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Combine all chunks in one course: We finalize the major points or chunks to one course...and come up

with a course to be titled “One Minute Manager and the JCI Chapter Leader.”

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Reggie Yu (ITF) JCI Philippines

Use short stories: While most JCI official courses are designed to incorporate group activities, the

general direction is still geared towards lecture format, with limited opportunities to allow for personal

innovation. If I come across a concept that is too technical that may bore the audience, I usually employ

short stories that will engage the participants more. The stories should, of course, relate to the topic at

hand. Adults love to hear short stories and personal experience, group support, and mentoring are the

best methods I've discovered in sustaining their interest over an extended period of time. Moreover, I

provide participants with ample opportunities to respond by asking questions, encouraging them to ask

questions, answering their questions, and questioning their answers.

Tailor your training to the participants’ culture: In the course of my training internationally, I have found

out that Asian participants respond better to training games, simulations, and role plays that add

emotional elements to learning; while Europeans and Westerners are more comfortable with sit-down,

problem-solving activities. I tailor-make my training to suit cultural preferences while adhering to the

training objectives laid out in the training manuals.

Make eye contact by looking at eyebrows: I found out that many JCI trainers are having a hard time in

looking people in the eye. Making and maintaining eye contact shows interest and is an important part

of social interaction with other people. People who constantly avoid eye contact usually appear

nervous, shifty and lacking confidence. A good tip in giving the participants the impression of having the

JCI trainers looking them in the eye is to look at their eyebrows instead.

Be careful with your words: Avoid messages that reinforce your power as a JCI trainer or one that

emphasizes extrinsic rewards. Instead of saying, "I require," "you must," or "you should," I usually say,

"I think you will find..." or "I will be interested in your opinion/reaction/feedback." This way, it will

strengthen and make the participants realize their own self-worth.

Respect participants: Treat all participants with respect, regardless of background and training level.

Patronizing behavior may work for primary school teachers, and "drill sergeant" strategies maybe

effective in military book camps. However, as I have learned, most adult learners (JCI participants, in

particular) will not respond well to these techniques. Give participants their dignity, and they will give

you their best efforts. Moreover, hold JCI participants to a high standard. If they are not required to

maintain a specified level of learning and performance, only the most highly motivated participants will

devote the time and effort necessary to learn. In contrast, maintaining high standards not only will

motivate adult learning, it will also be the source of personal feelings of self-accomplishment when

those standards are met.

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Frédéric de Boulois (ITF) JCI FRANCE

Have self-confidence: I'm self-confident with the participants. And I’m convinced that the knowledge is

most of the time in the room. So while training, by questioning participants properly we can lead then to

discover theory of the course then, when showing the slides…..the participants surprised themselves of

their own knowledge and have the impression that in fact they know that for long. So in my opinion, we

obtain better memory of the training content.

How to get the room silent: To obtain silence during a training, while participants are taking, just stand

face to the participants with a sincerely smile and have ours eyes catching each participant one by one,

we obtain silence in less than 15 ".

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Olga Majzoub (ITF) JCI Lebanon

Answering questions from the audience: If you receive a question from the participants and you are not

able to immediately think of an answer, direct the question to the participants saying "What do you think

the answer is?" and get their input. You will gain enough time to think of a good answer and you might

even receive a few good answers from the participants themselves that you can build on.

Choose your training topic carefully: Select something that you are very passionate about. Then you

will really enjoy the researching process and you will end up reading more and therefore have more

knowledge about the subject. Also, when you are delivering your training, you will be more excited and

your passion will give you energy which will boost your performance.

Walk the talk: Make sure you apply all the techniques of your training in your everyday life. This will

make you more credible and will give you many personal examples to share. It will also help you handle

any questions that you might get. Also, you should be a living example to your participants and the

proof that these techniques work well.

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Carlo van Tichelen (ITF) JCI Belgium

Help participants remember: No course content is secret. The more a participant repeat the knowledge

the higher the change of reaching the long term memory. Use flipcharts, with models, graphical charts

and graphics to decorate the room in order to help your participants remember. It can also be helpful

during your own recap in order to mention everything they have learned so far and prime knowledge

they will learn in the next part of this course.

Always use the rule of three: Tell them what you are going to tell, tell it and tell what you told them.

Also, your modules can be broken into three main arguments, again split into three parts to learn, and

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based on three theories or methods. It’s easy to remember, helps you to recap, downsize or deepening

any matter at all times.

Tease the audience before breaks: Before breaks, between modules or days, make your participants

eager to learn or take the next step. End with sentences like: Would you like to know more of the

secrets of online communication? Are you eager to know how others perceive you day by day? Or find

out how you can turn Facebook into a cash cow ... that’s all for you at 14.10 pm after the break you

earned so far.

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Filipe Carrera (ITF) JCI Portugal

Invest in those who show up: You are the trainer in one session that organizers say that will have 100

participants. Time to start arrives and you have 6 people in room for 100 people and they completely

dispersed, they are interested in your session and you feel unmotivated because of the 94 that are

missing. First, concentrate on the 6 people that are willing to invest their time and effort on what you

bring, forget the 94. Second, move the chairs and put people in a circle in which you are included and

then start your session in a conversational mode. Participants and you will enjoy that rare opportunity.

Use videos: In YouTube you can find great videos that can help you illustrate a situation or a concept,

use then in trainings, but avoid to use them online, because “Murphy’s Law” will be present. There are

extensions in browsers like Firefox or Chrome that enable you to download the video to your computer

or to any external driver, that way you will not be caught by surprise.

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Timo Holopainen (ITF) JCI Finland

Signs between trainers: If you are working with co-trainer or assistant trainer, agree beforehand how

you will communicate with your body language that the trainer who is not on the stage has something to

add. One possibility for relevant information, which onstage trainer can add, is to either stand up or turn

to face the trainer who has the stage. Works best if the co- trainer/assistant trainer is behind the

participants.

Remember always to repeat the question: This way you ensure all participants hear what the question

is and you also buy yourself time to form the answer. Repeating question is especially important in

training with large attendance and large auditoriums.

Use the participants and co-trainers as a resource: If you run into topic or word which you do not know,

or if there is a question which you do not know answer, you can always turn to your participants/co-

trainers and ask “do any of them have experience in this matter”. This way you can avoid panic

reactions and you also buy time for yourself to form the answer if no one else has knowledge.

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Meet with AT via Skype: When you are Head Trainer of a course and you are assigned an Assistant

Trainers, schedule beforehand physical or online meetings with Skype. Send the latest course

materials to the assistant trainers before this meeting and ask them to read though their modules and

explain to you what are the main topics/slides and possible issues they have with the module. This way

you get to know your assistant trainers style, ensure that they have prepared well beforehand and you

get a feeling how they would ensure learning possibility for the participants and themselves.

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Sébastien Monnet (NG) JCI France

Problems among participants: How to get back a group that starts to have interpersonal problems?

This situation often happens when there is a big group assignment where all group members have to

actively participate in it (JCI Trainer, JCI Designer). The tip I use is to first; repeat the importance of

what they are doing for the members of the organization. Then I make each group member to tell me

why he/she thinks the subject is important for the people in the organization, and for the organization

itself. Then, I ask them why the way they chose seems to answer well to the need.

Usually people that are misunderstanding each other are not sharing the same vision and don't have the same context in mind. After discussion, the group members agree on the vision and the objectives. And the work starts again, and people are enriching themselves from the difference of point of view. Sharing and agreeing on vision and objectives is often useful to coordinate individual actions in group action. This tip works in project management as well.

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Suzette Plaisted (ITF) JCI USA

Pretty flip charts: You can print photos or clipart and paste them onto the flipchart pages. It adds a lot of color and texture, especially if drawing on a flipchart is not a strength for you.

Prepare flip chart in advance: It is always a good practice to prepare your flipcharts in advance of your training. Bring a backup flipchart pad so if a page is missing or you need to change something you have an extra pad to change out. You won’t be seen flipping to pages to find an empty sheet.

Hand signals between trainers: Make sure you and your assistant trainer confirm hand or body signals prior to your training course to keep yourselves on time and also when one of you needs to interject a comment or ask a question. Critical is the “I’m lost and need you to jump in to save me” signal. With a look or gesture, you can help each other without your participants ever knowing.

Carry handouts with you: If you are traveling to present a training, make sure you carry your handouts, laptop, LCD projector (Beemer), training supplies with you. If these items are packed and your luggage gets misplaced, they are hard to duplicate or replace.

Be prepared: Always make sure that you have at least 2 ways to present your session READY. Technology can be our best friend but if you lose the capability to use it and you are not prepared it can cripple a training or if you are dependent on PPT or video. At a minimum, your start will be weak (which can be harmful). Nothing loses credibility faster than when you can’t get your equipment to work

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and you have to delay the presentation until it’s fixed. Have a back-up facilitator’s guide and your trainer’s tools to present your seminar in another way. The alternate way needs to be ready to go at the beginning of your presentation. Also, if your preferable mode of training breaks down you have a seamless transferable process of moving to the next mode of training (because it’s already to go). This also includes having your files in several places so if one file becomes corrupt, you have a backup.

Keep moving forward: Remember, “no one knows what’s going to come out of your mouth until you tell them. If you make a mistake, don’t tell them.” Your audience won’t know you made an error. If it is a huge error, take it in stride and move forward. Laugh it off or make a transitional comment to get back to your place. Keep in mind, you judge yourself harder than your audience judges you. Besides, if you are a great facilitator, your audience sees you as more human (approachable and not arrogant).

Network with other trainers from around the world: Work with each other to open doors and gain invitations to train at different venues. Also, ask a more experienced trainer to be a mentor. They can open doors for you and help you overcome obstacles.

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Albert Satre (IG) JCI France

Mind-grabber: Every participant has 10 minutes of attention span. After, they will think to another subject – they are hungry, what is next, the weather, etc. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo). To bring back your audience, you have to change something to get new attention. For example you can speak louder or lower, ask question, and make an activity. Sometimes, we need reaction for our audience (during training or presentation) to show our purposes.

How we can wake up the audience and make our presentation striking: First, ask yourself what the result is that you want or what do you want people take engagement for. For example, you want to show that we are all mentally programmed by TV and society. Do not announce the result before the activity. Ask with a nice and slow voice that volunteers close their eyes and breathe slowly. Ask them to think about their dreaming place, where they will love to spend all day with no stress, where they will feel a lot of happiness. Let them some time to think, dream, and smile. Ask with a nice and slow voice that everyone keep their eyes close and whoever imagined a place with the sea, the beach, island or ocean should stand up and keep their eyes close. Give them some time to stand up. And ask to everyone to open their eyes. For this example 90 % of the participants should be standing up. You can use this tip in order to hold up the hand and wake up your audience. Moreover, you can use this tip more and you will see how you can have more impact on your audience. You give to your audience a chance to live an impressive experience.

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Kola Osinowo (ITF) JCI Nigeria

Create an image: Sometimes, if I have to train a new concept to my participants, I always try to find out

if they really understand and can express in their words. So, one easy trick I use is to have them draw a

picture of what they think that concept means to them and/or how they will apply same in their personal

or professional life. This helps you as a Trainer to get into the "head" of your participants to know if their

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understanding of the concept is in line with your objective. You can take leanings from them and also

correct wrong perceptions.

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Esther ter Beek (ITF) JCI Netherlands

Be on time in the training room and make it ‘yours’: With some personal flip charts, some accessories you can bring (little toys, music etc.) you can personalize the training room. This gives the room a personal atmosphere and the participants feel it right away when they come in. Also the room tells the participants that you care and are prepared for them.

Energizers: Make sure you have a number of energizers prepared and ready. Whenever you feel your group of participants need some energy, use an energizer. Make sure you have different ones. Sometimes you need to move around and let them dance or jump. But a little riddle can also change the energy and will give the persons with a preference for introvert thinking what they like. (not everybody likes dancing or jumping around: even in JCI).

Use quizzes: A great way to review a training course is in a ‘Quiz-Estafette’. Make two groups and prepare 10 questions on the content of the training. Ask an assistant Trainer or someone from the organization to take one of the groups and you take the other group. You stand on one end of the room and the groups on the other end. They have to run one by on to the trainer and get asked a question. The groups have to race against each other and the first group who has all the questions right has won. Energy is back in the room and all the content is repeated;

Let participants reflect: At the end of a training course make sure you give your participants a little time to reflect and let them write down what they learned and what they are going to do with this learning point when they come home. Put on some easy music and give them 5 minutes. This way you make the possible impact of the training and the chance that participants actually will use what they have learned bigger;

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Teresa Alberto (ITF) JCI Malaysia

Voice exercises: When we wake up, drink 1 glass of warm water. Take deep breaths (say about 3

times each pace for 3 times) and breathe out of the mouth. Make all sorts of sounds with your voice,

high pitch, low pitch, groan, scream, and speak normal. Move your mouth in clockwise and counter-

clockwise. These little voice exercises will strengthen your lungs and help you to speak out during your

training.

Be careful what you eat: Another tip of mine (it works for me), I do not eat much for breakfast nor lunch.

No rice. This will give me more energy to build up my inner voice and strength for the afternoon.

Helping to think fast and more clearly, while your audiences may tend to doze off!

Minutes recording: In one presentation, I tried to show how to record minutes in a havoc meeting. So,

when things do not happen as you planned it to be, jump on to using human power. In this case, I had

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a role play of a havoc meeting, with another group to take down minutes, and then break for discussion

on their findings. During this time, you can work out your machines or think of other plans as well.

Training handicaps: Motivating handicapped people are different from motivating the able people.

However, the handicaps do not want to be treated as handicaps. In my session with them, I first used

pictures to draw their attention. Once I have their trust, confidence and to ensure that I understand

them, I used their energy to act out related activities so as to enhance understanding.

Example: Story of a snail. I will ask them to think of snails and to study these snails. What is

extra ordinary about the snails? Then after the discussions and presentation of each group,

then turn to them and asked them what makes them extraordinary? The rapport between

trainer and audiences is important, so as to learn from each other and be able to achieve the

training objectives as well.

Losing power: When there is a black out. I normally do one of the following: a) bring them out of the

classroom (if there is another place we can go) to continue with related activities or group discussions;

or b) take a break with a purpose. That is, while everyone take a break for 20 minutes - think of a

related break with an activity that can still make them learn together.

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Kristin Hampton (CNT) JCI USA

Make it personal: Make the material personal to the group you are working with in the session. While it

is a good idea to have examples in your arsenal, I have found that sometimes it is better to let the

group help choose a working example. Or, you can try to solve a common problem, which results in a

much more productive and energetic experience for everyone.

Debrief yourself, right away: Write down, in detail, notes to yourself about what worked, what didn't,

new ideas or a list of things to follow up on. Not only will this help with your post training follow up, it is

very handy for preparing your next session. It is also a good tool for seeing how you are progressing as

a trainer.

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Sonia Rodriguez (CNT) JCI USA

Dealing with a challenging topic: When training on a challenging topic without consensus, allow one

minute to quickly write down as many of the challenges/negatives relating to the topic they can. Allow

an additional two minutes for participants to share their thought with a partner they don't know well.

Then, allow 3 volunteers to share their negative list. Follow that up with a minute to write down the

strengths/positives, following the same process as before. The investment of 10 minutes near the start

of the workshop acknowledges how the situation currently occurs to the participants, allowing them to

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feel heard, so they can powerfully move the positive conversation forward during the rest of the

session.

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Patrick van der Spank (CNT) JCI Netherlands

Gaining trust: At some of my trainings it is essential to have a certain level of trust. What helps me to

gain this trust is setting the example by sharing my personal experience / stories to illustrate the

message I want to bring across. By putting me in a vulnerable position and by sharing these

(sometimes quite personal) experiences, people start trusting me more and open themselves easier to

share their own stories and experiences.

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Marco Tarsia (CNT) JCI Germany

Use images: Whenever a concept, person or object is in the focus of what you want to show to your

participants on PowerPoint, offer their brains a break from text and bring up a slide with only one full

screen image. It may have a single word or name printed on top of it, but no more. If there is additional

information you must have in this slide, read it out to your audience instead of giving the next bullet

chart.

Use an ice-breaker: If your group gets stuck thinking in circles, stop pushing the topic and introduce a

short ice breaker session that will require all participants to use both of their hands in a coordinated

way. A simple example is a set of juggling balls where each participant should have to juggle it in

between its right and left hand several times before passing it on. This will re-synchronize the brain

hemispheres and promote alternative thinking.

Learn to scribble and drool: The power of developing an idea right in front of your participants’ eyes on

a white board, flip chart or on a tablet PC projection is beyond anything a prefabricated flipchart, poster

or animated slide can do. All you need is a basic collection of simple elements. Any clip art collection

offers plenty of inspiration for and a lot of arrows and pointers. Grab a flipchart paper and a pen and try

it on 10 sheets of it. You will find out that the hardest thing to do will be the spacing and distribution of

elements across the available space - not drawing the elements. So you can do it!

Use visualizations: When it comes to topics on certain situations - may it be problems or desired results

and outcomes, leave the information level of communication and start visualizing it in the minds of your

participants. You may want to invite them to lean back for a moment, relax and imagine themselves

on a dark empty stage and then to put in the elements of the scene and turn on the light. Some

outstanding trainers don’t stop with the image but let the participants hear the sounds in the scene, feel

the objects surfaces and - most important - what it does to them - how they feel. Maybe suggest an

exaggerated modification like an enormous success or total failure… Now you have an emotional base

to work on as a strong motivation for either reaching this desirable state or to avoid or handle the

disaster.

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Catherine S. Williams (IG) JCI USA

Practice presentation: Practice your training and take time to rehearse and refine the presentation of

any modules. One way of doing this is to stand in front of a mirror and give the information out loud.

The mirror will reflect your body language and other physical manners of which, you may not be aware.

Try making a video while you are giving the information and be your own self critic. You will be aware of

how well you are communicating the information to others. If you can understand what is going on, then

so will your participants. This may also help you to prepare yourself to recover from mistakes or

missteps during training.

Learn from mistakes: As with all things, there are times that despite all the preparation, practice, and

experience of the trainer, things just didn't go right in the training. The key to surviving the aftermath of

something such as this is to recognize that you are human and that you are not perfect. Take some

time to think about what went wrong and make it into a learning experience. Then, you will be ready to

grow from this experience when you do another training session. Be kind to yourself and accept that

even the most experienced trainer can have a bad day.

Above all, forgive yourself and any mistakes that may have happened during the training and leave it as

a past learning experience. If you get heavily criticized, just keep in mind what US President Theodore

Roosevelt said: “It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man

stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is

actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who

errs and comes up short again and again.” Finally, no matter what happens, continue to hold your head

up and understand you will almost always get another chance to do it again.

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Désirée Murk (ITF) JCI Netherlands

Take control over your voice: When I did my first international trainings in India, the head

trainer told me that my voice isn’t loud enough. Nobody had ever told me that, so I was really

amazed. But when I came home, I went to a speech therapist to get more out of my voice. And

it works! It did not only make my participants happy, it also made me very happy. Practice

speaking loudly and projecting your voice even in an empty room. Become comfortable with

your voice, including raising (or lowering) your volume.

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Katja Mayer (ITF) JCI Germany

Getting focused: Usually participants come to the training room with their heads still full of thoughts,

worries, to do lists that have nothing to do with the upcoming training. To get them focused, make them

write everything that is still on their minds on a piece of paper (so that they won’t forget about their to-

dos for after the training session) and collect all papers in a box (or anything that can be closed).

Assure the participants that no one else will read their papers; you just want to take away their troubles

until the end of the session. Promise them that everyone will get his/her paper back at the end of the

training. Remember at the end to offer to the participants to recollect their troubles from the beginning

of the training. Usually this results in a cheerful: No thanks!

Stretching concentration: You are getting very close to the end of your module (or end of day) but you

can feel that the energy level in the room is dropping very fast. What you have to say next is still

important and you want to make a point before breaking up. How to get the participants’ attention back?

Let everyone stand up and make them stretch with their arms up in the air trying to touch the ceiling.

After a couple of seconds, tell them to only keep their right arm up (left arm alongside body) and to

bend the arm at the elbow towards their back. They can now give themselves a good pad on the back:

“Well done!” Encourage them by telling them, that they are doing great and have done a great job so far

and we are no going into the final stretch. Usually people chuckle and are focused again for the

remaining of the session. This also works well in business meetings and workshops!

Participant expectations: What do you want to take home from this seminar? A nice way to use the

space in the room both factually and figuratively is to use the door for understanding participants’

expectations. Ask the participants to write on a Post-it® note what they want to take home from your

training session (their expectations) and to put the notes up on the door. Adapt the way you collect,

cluster and read-out the notes to your training situation (number of participants, time).

At the end of the training session, ask the participants to collect all notes (i.e. the content on the note) that they actually are taking home from the session. Again you should adapt the way you do this to your training situation. If you are really pressed for time, let participants actually take the notes off the door when they walk out the room or you might have time to let them sit down again and to discuss the expectations that were not met. Either way you can quickly assess whether you met their expectations by seeing the remaining notes on the door.

The seminar’s roadmap: If you plan a training session with a topic that you are really confident in and

for which it is possible to adapt contents spontaneously during the training session based on the

participants’ needs you may want to start off with a fairly flexible roadmap and outline of the training

session. For that use a Metaplan® board (or flipchart); use the first column for indicating times i.e. time

of start and end of the session as well as breaks; use the second column to pin cards for ‘Start’, ‘Break’,

‘Lunch’, ‘Break’, ‘End’ next to the corresponding times (leave space in between the fixed times!); use

the space to the right of the board to randomly pin cards with contents you want to cover throughout the

day.

You may ask your participants if they want anything else covered during the training session and add a

corresponding card to the right side of the board. You may consider using different color cards for

content and organization. As you go on with the training move the content cards into your schedule to

the left once you have covered them. Add a further content card if you have covered an additional topic.

With this method you can lead the participants through the training session; summarize what was

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covered and what is still on the agenda; you are flexible to add, delete and change while giving the

impression of always following a clear plan.

Getting further as a trainer: I am taking my role as a trainer very seriously and am usually very

concentrated throughout the training. Although it is something you would expect from a trainer, the fun

factor should not be underestimated in a learning environment. To challenge me on my seriousness,

my dear trainer friend Tin Vanroven, IG from JCI Belgium made me use little sketches and role plays as

integrated part of my training module. With that I was forced to switch to another character and to act.

From the participants’ feedback, I obviously did quite well and the module had a very good learning

success. Personally it really helped me to gain more self-confidence as a trainer and to being better

prepared for the unexpected in training situations and to allow for adjustments to the training plan as

required by the participants. My mentor clearly identified my weak spot and helped me overcome it for

better trainings!

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Søren Ellegaard (ITF) JCI Denmark

Ball possession: As a trainer I often consider what footballers call "ball possession". It is a term that

defines which team has the ball how much of the time during a match. Naturally, only the team who has

the ball – can score. I do my utmost to use the same principle for training sessions, and while

designing them, making sure that the maximum of time /activity / dialogue is on the participants’ side.

When that happens, participants learn more, draw more own conclusions, have more fun – and do

more of the work. Alas, this makes things easier and better for both them … and for me.

In the opening of a training session, show the agenda, or a relevant, mind-grabbing statement – and

ask the participants to discuss what that means to them in pairs of 2, with their next chair neighbor.

That way, they immediately start talking, and get into the mindset that this is not going to be a 1-way

lecture, but a training session where they will take an active role. When you next time ask them for

input, it's far easier to get them to respond and interact. Extra: you might even ask them to do this

standing up, and discuss with more than 1 person.

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Dakoua Kouadio (ITF) JCI Côte d'Ivoire

Humor: A good trainer should have some humor. Here are ways to add humor: (1) Search for

humorous stories or quotes on the internet; (2) transcribe text or cartoons into a personal document; (3)

try the jokes or humor with friends to work on the timing and the delivery; (4) go through the funny

stories and jokes to decide which might work with your seminar to illustrate a point; (5) keep two or

three stories on hold to use in case the training goes quickly and you have time to fill or to break up

serious content; (6) remember that certain countries have taboos about certain jokes, so make sure to

be sensitive to these issues as an international trainer.

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Positive Quotes: Impact the participants with deep thoughts that are consistent with the training

module. Example: “People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher or

better than themselves.” - Tryon Edwards

Become an expert: As a trainer, you must read a lot and be educated in various fields even beyond

what you are training. This opens the mind and permits you to be comfortable during the training.

Use stories, parables and fables: Find stories that have a learning point or moral to the story and use

them in your seminar. Don’t limit your search to stories from your own culture. Search Western,

Eastern, African, Middle Eastern and Latin cultures for stories that might highlight a point in your

course. This can be especially useful if you are an international trainer.

Be humble: Introduce yourself by giving only the information necessary for the training. Do not tell

people if you are sick to get pity. Stay as dynamic as possible and take care of the participants. Do not

give anecdotes that spread your greatness or your high knowledge level. Give examples of other great

trainers instead. Show participants that they are the most important thing, don’t just say it. Mingle with

participants before the seminar starts and at breaks. Finally, empty your cup! An already full cup

cannot get coffee. Likewise, a trainer who things to know it all will learn nothing from others.

A magic trick can stimulate interest and attention: Take skinny newspaper article with no headline and

no image but several paragraphs to it. Tell the audience that you are going to write down on the flip

chart a random line from the story. Turn the flip chart and write down the very top line of the article.

Then hold the article upside down (audience won’t be able to tell) and using a scissors move up and

down the article asking for the class to tell you when to cut the article. Once they tell you to stop, make

the cut and let the bottom piece fall to the ground. (Remember that it is really the top piece because

you were holding it upside down). Ask a participant to grab the paper on the ground and read the top

line. As they read it, show the participants what you wrote on the flip chart. It will be the same line.

Voila!

Forgetting a learning point: When you forget to cover an important point, tell the participants to

summarize the module. At the end of the summary, take the opportunity to deepen this point with the

information that you failed to give during the module. Link it to other parts of the module, as well.

Have your handouts with you always via email: If your USB drive does not work or you cannot open a

document on your computer, this can be disastrous. Before each training seminar, send an email to

yourself with attachments of all relevant documents. Since internet access is world-wide for the most

part, you can then open your documents anywhere.

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David Lo (CNT) JCI USA

After each break, start the session off with a question about a key point from a few hours ago. This will

help with the retention of the subject matter and you can also use it to link prior modules or as an

introduction to the content of the next module.

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Hernando Gomez (IG) JCI USA

Dealing with a distraction: Have you been to a situation while you’re conducting your training and a major distraction occurs? It’s like when you have a next door training with loud music or clapping participants every other second. How disturbing, isn’t it? Go with the flow. If the past 2 examples occurred (e.g. noisy trainer or clapping next door), play with the situation in a fun way (e.g. clap back!). In a “threatening event” you really need to think quick and in a split of second make sure your participants and yourself are not in danger (in the case of an extreme event). If it’s not a “lethal” distraction please do not freak out and do not start buying an argument with somebody you probably will never see again. I’d strongly recommend driving the attention of the participants immediately back to the topic as smoothly as you can. Whether you start a quick activity of the topic (e.g. ask the participants to come up with at least 5 ideas to welcome a new guest in a JCI local meeting and write/draw them in their flipcharts in 2 minutes – if it’s a recruiting training – the whole point is to keep their minds busy while having fun) or make them switch places to “stretch legs” and start a new game plan.

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Melva Lucia Jimenez Tabares (ITF) JCI Colombia

Ice-breaker: My favorite activity that I do in the majority of the courses is the exercise of the BANG. It is an easy, very fun exercise to execute, but is very important that the trainer memorize it very well before attempting it. It is important for the trainer to know when someone has lost the sequence and the trainer must pay close attention. The exercise should take 7 – 10 minutes and forces the participants to concentrate. It is especially useful late in the day when people are losing concentration and you must maintain their attention for complex information. A small gift can be given to the winner (chocolate, crackers, etc.).

All the participants are placed in a circle and they are instructed to count around from number one to fifty in consecutive order. Any time someone says a number with a three in it or says a number that is a multiple of three the person should not say the number, but should say “BANG.” For example 1, 2, bang, 4, 5, bang, 7, 8, bang, 10, 11, bang, bang, 14, bang, 16, 17, bang, etc.… The game should move quickly at a rapid pace with no pauses. Whenever a participant says a number instead of saying “BANG”, the person must leave the circle. Then, the game begins again starting at one. You continue until you have only one person left and that person is the winner.

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Subbiah Palanivel (ITF) JCI India

Warm-up methods: Starting of the Training Program is very crucial and important. It is better to warm up participants before beginning inputs on the topic slated for the training program. I wish to share some of my effective warming up methods. First, I let the class know that I am not the teacher or guru and that it will be an interactive course. I do this through a series of questions with discussion getting the class to agree that they can share ideas and disagree with my ideas. Then, I allow the participants

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to set the ground rules for interruptions and how long someone can speak to give their idea. After this initial interaction, the trainer can continue with the topic.

Team-building activity for a warm-up: Divide the participants into seven groups. Ask each group to

select one color from the rainbow. Ask each team to introduce their team with a song that includes

their personal details and the color of their group. Give 5 minutes of preparation and 90 seconds per

team to present. After the presentation is over, ask participants what they infer from the presentation.

Then trainer says: “As all the RAINBOW color integrates with each other WHITE COLOR will

appear. Like that if all the participants integrate with each other it will work as an effective

TEAM.”

Activity for motivation: Display a slide with the following letters (G B B N I M N I G M O R F E E C O). Ask the participant to make a meaningful sentence using all the letters only once. Give three minutes time. After one minute , say DO you want any clues? The sentence has got THREE WORDS. After 90 seconds if the participants are not able to make out the sentence say: The sentence starts with a letter B and ends with the letter G. After two minutes if the participants are not able to make out the sentence say: First & Last words starts with a letter B and ends with G. Even after two and half minutes if the participants are not able to make out the sentence, say: Middle word starts with a letter F and ends with M. After these clues participants will be able to make the following sentence: BECOMING FROM BEING .

Trainer can continue as (in the case of LOM officers training Seminar):You are all presidents of your LOM just because you are elected as the President and your present position is just BEING. If you will function as President, do projects, deliver whatever the members expect, You will become a successful President. This LOM President Seminar /Officers training Seminar is designed to take you all from the present BEING position to BECOME a Successful president. Being is a source, Becoming is converting into a Resource. 17 letters are just source to create a meaningful sentence, How these letters are put in their places to give a meaningful sentence, like wise all of you will be taught how to create your Team, how to fix your targets, how to schedule your activities, how to augment resources, how to manage your LOM….. how to make your Year as a memorable one. So participate well in this Seminar. This seminar is designed to equip you, to take you all to new heights.

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Maximo Alexis "beep-beep" M. Tan (CNT) JCI Philippines

Recycle during seminars: When running a half-day or whole-day training, where free-flowing coffee, water or other beverages are served and offered, using plastic or styrofoam cups, ask participants to write their names on the cups, to reuse them as much as possible. This helps the environment and saves the usage of more cups.

Bring a small token from your country: When invited to a foreign or out of town venue, where the hosts are not familiar with your place of origin, bring a small token, souvenir or candy that is local and not available at groceries or stores in their vicinity. Use this gift as a motivation for the first person or first few people that would participate to get the participants rolling for participation. It also develops rapport.

Speakers and microphones: Invest on a gadget/device to attach your internal audio output from your laptop to the audio system in the venue. Most of the time, the only cable readily available are the mic cables. There is a PLUG that you can use by removing the mic and inserting this plug. Then, it is converted to an RCA earphone 3.5mm, where you can plug directly to your lap top. This eliminates the

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use MIC with speakers that don’t sound very well and rather than making the video impressive, it becomes NOISE and irritates the audience. This is very handy especially when running JCI CSR.

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Narelle Stoll (CNT) JCI Australia

Debrief following group activities: It is really important that a debrief occurs after a game or long activity. The purpose of the debrief is to reinforce the objectives of the course but also allow participants to reflect on the experiential exercise and identify some lessons for them to take away. For this reason, the debrief must be well prepared and structured with some well thought out and targeted questions that will encourage conversation and input from the participants. This can be difficult sometimes to achieve particularly in situations where during the role play conflict may have arisen between the players. Allow at least 30 minutes for a debrief. Here are some ideas for questions to ask individual participants. I would recommend writing these on a flip chart so participants can read and reflect on the answers.

1. What role did the participants perform? How did it relate to the topic or objective of the game?

2. What were some of the positives in performing this role?

3. What were some of the challenges? Why did the participants think these

challenges occurred?

4. What are some things you might do different next time?

5. Can you see any similarities between what you experienced in the role play and what you have experienced either at work or JCI?

6. What might be some lessons we can take away and apply to our work or JCI

Chapters?

7. What are you committed to changing at work, personal life or JCI Chapter from what you have learned today? When do you plan to do this?

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Ninon J. Ahoudjinou (ITF) JCI Benin

Use examples often: Prepare enough examples for to explain the theory of the course. The examples must be linked to the experiences of the participants to create good impact.

Have enough breaks: When you must train a long course, make sure to have enough breaks and "time outs" in order not to see your participants to go to sleep. This is true regardless of how much information you are trying to teach them because they will not absorb it if they cannot concentrate.

Always have a Plan B: When you are preparing a training session, you should already think about which you will do if the computer, projector or speakers have a problem. Have some flip charts ready to go in case the PowerPoint does not work or has a material defect. Have hand-outs with you that show the main points of the course, so you can use them with our without a Power Point presentation.

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Susan Knoeppel Myers (ITF) JCI USA

When activities fail: There will be times when a training activity does not work and participants miss the

point or message of the activity. Do not panic. Do not make the participants feel like they did it wrong or

failed by not getting the “right” message. Instead, comment that you would like to add to their insights

with some of your own. That way the message is still communicated and participants won’t even notice

that it did not go as planned.

How to get discussion going: Here are two tips for getting a discussion going when an audience is

reluctant to engage in the discussion. 1) Ask a question and tell participants to pair up with another

person to share their ideas. Then have those two pair up with another group of two to share their ideas

and thoughts. Finally, ask for someone from each group to summarize what was said. Sometimes,

participants are initially more comfortable speaking to one or two other people rather than a whole

group, especially in a room full of strangers or a large training audience. 2) Make a statement and have

participants choose whether they agree, strongly agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the

statement. Designate one corner of the room for each of these and have participants move to that

corner of the room and discuss with each other why they feel the way they do. Ask for volunteers from

each corner to share the discussions. This can be a place to start a larger discussion.

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Pinar Kulacz (IG) JCI Finland

Shy participants: Imagine you are with a group of rather shy participants who you can’t make ask questions despite your various attempts. You may still have one more way that can work as it did work for me several times. It goes as follows:

i. Distribute small question papers of same size and color along with pens/pencils of same sort.

ii. Ask each participant to write down their question if any iii. Then you can do either of the following depending on the energy level you’d like to have. iv. Keep the energy level at same level: Collect the questions and shuffle them on the table

so that you make sure nobody knows whose question is where in the question papers deck; then address each question one by one

v. Raise the energy a little: Ask the participants to stand up and exchange question papers at least 2 (max 5 otherwise takes too long) times. Then ask for volunteers to stand up and read the question on the paper they received; then address the questions.

Getting commitment from participants: To make sure that all trainers and participants are committed to certain training rules throughout the training, one simple method is somewhere at the beginning of the training to prepare a flip chart called the Training Contract that includes clauses from participants as well. To get the commitment, make sure each and every participant signs the flip chart after all is discussed and agreed. Furthermore, you can use the same method for online trainings held in collaborative environments such as Adobe, Webex etc.

Evaluation and feedback are necessary: In many of the JCI seminars, especially those short ones held at conferences, the evaluation/feedback part gets totally forgotten. What improves a training course is the feedback collected. There are simple and efficient methods for evaluations/collecting feedback.

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-At reactive level:

(1) Come prepped with your evaluation forms (the classical one) (2) Prepare a flip chart in advance with the Feel/Learn axes and ask participants to mark their level on it via markers or stickers (3) The talking method: Bring along a nice looking stick and pass it from participants to participant while they’re giving maximum of one-word or one-sentence feedback

-At reflective level: Follow up with the participants later after minimum 1 week and collect feedback. Make sure you have the email addresses of the participants during the training and send out an online survey in an email. A good source for creating online surveys is www.surveymonkey.com.

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Ronald Goovaerts (ITF) JCI Portugal

How to build immediate rapport when training abroad: Most of young JC trainers aim to train abroad to

get international experience and hours. Training abroad is always an amazing practice and a challenge.

One of the things I used to do when I arrive the day before in the hotel is visit the hotel bar, …, no not to

order a drink, but to gather a list of 20 basic words of the language of the country. In case your

colleagues arranged home hospitality, you ask them to help you to arrange this list and how you

pronounce them in their native language.

Suggestion for the words you must have on your list

hi/hello/good morning thank you yes/no nice to meet you, food/drink some swear words (depending to the culture of the country, inform yourself before what is

possible, allowed or not) some shocking expressions (depending to the culture of the country, inform yourself before

what is possible, allowed or not)

Train yourself the night before to pronounce at least a few very well. Start your training to greet them into their language and spice the first hours with some of the words of your list. You will be surprised how people appreciate you made an extra effort to speak with them in their native language. If you have a co-trainer helping you with the translation, be sure this is surprise for them, a kind of present they receive without expecting it. They will appreciate hearing something in their own language.

Translators in a training session: Most of us train abroad in the English language, but this is not always

possible. Some trainees do not understand this and need to be trained in their native language. When

this happens and you do not have simultaneous translation available, normally a native person takes

care of the translation. Most of them are doing their utmost to translate what we are saying, at least

what we expressing verbally. As trainers we know that only a small part of all communication is verbally

(less than 10%) and although this part is crucial, it does not contribute a lot to transmitting our message

to an audience.

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But, how we use our physical body (body language) and we express ourselves, voice tonality, timbre, volume etc. are crucial to establish confidence and get impact on our audience. Unnecessary to explain you in detail what will happen if your translator does only limit her/himself to translate your words. Yes, all your efforts and energy will be worthless.

Prepare in advance and revise with your translator what are the key-points of your training you will deliver. If possible request a translator who is familiar with the contents of your training. Explain the importance of transmitting the whole communication, the verbal one and the non-verbal one. Coach your translator how to do this.

Remember your success will depend on the quality of your co-trainer who does the translation. Consequently consider your translator as a co-trainer and involve her or him actively in the training.

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Byron Soulopoulos (CNT) JCI Belgium

Breathing: When explaining anything to the group. Take some time to breath. This time will be used by the participants to absorb what you've just explained.

Involve everybody: There will always be quiet people in the group. These participants might be introvert or just shy. Involve them by asking very easy open questions. Let them know you will be asking them a question by smiling to them a few seconds before. This announcement will give them the time to get ready.

Right amount of chairs: Make sure you have the right amount of chairs set up in the room. Enough but never too many. This is to avoid empty seats as they can disturb the flow. Keep some extra chairs available in a corner or another room.

Good feedback: Before starting a feedback round, it is good to explain to the participants there is only one right answer to give when you receive feedback. And that is: "Thank You". There will always be at least one that will want to explain him/herself. Immediately look at him/her and say "Thank You" as a reminder. You might need to repeat "Thank You, Thank You" until he/she gets it. Often the group will help you by also saying "Thank You" to him/her. Just be sure to always say it with a smile.

Repeat for the group: When a participant asks a question be sure to always repeat the question loud and clear for the whole group. Not everybody may have understood or heard the question. When a participant answers a question or shares something with the group, be sure to always repeat his/her answer or remark loud and clear for the whole group. Not everybody may have understood or heard the answer or remark.

Social media: When you're invited to give a training share the date, location and registration link with your followers on Facebook and Twitter. This could generate a few extra participants for the organizers and they will appreciate it very much.

Pictures on social media: While performing your training make some pictures or have your co-trainer make some pictures and share them on Facebook and Twitter. This will engage future participants to come to this training. A graduation picture is also very nice as you can Tag everybody and bring the participants in contact with each other for the future.

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Learn as a trainer: At the beginning of a training it's a good practice to ask your participants to follow your training not only as participants but also as potential future trainers of this training. Let them also observe their fellow participants of what works and what could be improved. Their learning experience will be deeper and more profound.

Timing: Communicate clearly with the Organizers on breaks, lunch and end times. And set those expectations clear with your participants from the beginning. This way the catering can be ready on time and participants do not get nervous the last hour of the training. Also, always start on-time in the beginning and after each break. Participants will learn to be on-time. Starting late is a punishment for those who respected the starting time and will not come on-time after the next break. In some cultures on-time means 15 minutes or even 1 hour late. Recalculate your start times. Announce the training will start on 8:45 instead of the real 9:00. Starting late means finishing later. Set those expectations clear with your participants.

Walk the talk: Whatever you promise to your participants or organizers. Do it. Or do not make promises you cannot keep.

Check-in: I always like to start a training with check-in. Where participants introduce themselves I also ask them to share their current attitude. Are they frustrated from heavy traffic and waking-up on the wrong side of the bed? Or, are they happy and excited. Don't go into their check-in. It's not a coaching session. But by sharing their current attitude they feel more relaxed and there is more understanding in the group.

Final questions: When the training has finished reserve some time to answer questions from the participants before starting your clean up. Some participants will ask you an unimportant question first to test if you have the time for them and are open for questions. So, ask them if there is anything else they would like to ask after you've answered their first question.

Serve participants: Remember, we're doing this for the participants and the organization. The participants come first. When in doubt ask yourself one question: "What will serve the participants the most?"

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Kai Roer (ITF) JCI Norway

Questions and answers: If you do not know the answer to a question from the audience, be polite and

honest. If the question is relevant to the topic, ask the audience what they think. If there are no answers

available, ask the person to come to you after the training, so you can have the contact details so you

can look up the answer, and get back to that person.

Questions off-topic: If you get a question that is related to the training, but covered later (in a different

module, or slide), politely say that you will cover that topic later. If someone else is doing that particular

module, state the name of that trainer too.

Use experts in the audience: If you know that someone in the audience is an expert on some or all the

topics of your training, try to use him/her as a partner in the training. You can do that by asking this

person to elaborate on one or more topics you know he/she knows, or directing questions from the

audience to this person. You may want to ask that person if that is fine for him/her before your training

starts.

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Irrelevant questions: If you get a question from the audience that is not relevant to your training, or to

the topic at hand, politely state that the question will not be covered during the training since the

training is focusing on a different topic. You may add that if that person (or someone else) would like to

discuss that topic, you welcome such talk after the training.

Draw topics from audience: If you have a full day or longer training, you may want to put a flip chart on

the wall with the text «Open Topics», and ask your participants to write their questions there. Say that if

time allows, you will address the questions.

Remember your participants: Always remember that your job as a trainer is to maximize the learning

outcome of your participants. You are there for them, not the other way around.

Put remote control away if not using it: If you use a Remote Control presenter device (those things you

use to advance Powerpoint without going to the computer), put it away when you do not use it. If, for

example, you have a slide that will be used for more some time, put your remote in a pocket, or better

yet on the table. That way, your hands are free, and available to help you gesticulate the message.

Keep notes handy but out of sight: When preparing the training room, make sure that you place your

notes at a location where they are easily accessible to you, without being in the view of the participants.

Personally, I spread them out on a table, in a form so I can see all the next slides. This works as a

reminder for me, so if I should forget what to say or do, I do not need to fiddle with the papers - I just go

over to where the guide is, and with one quick glance, I know what I should say and do.

Make flip charts in advance: Prepare all your flip charts before your training starts. Set up the room well

in advance, so you can adapt and change your methods if required. Say the projector does not work, if

you discover this in time, you can get a replacement. Or, if it fails, you can adopt your style to do the

training without the slides, without the participants ever knowing.

Use participants to write on flip charts: If you know you need to write on a flip chart during the training

(you need to write down expectations, or other lists/notes from the participants), consider asking one of

the participants to do the writing for you. Just make sure that you ask the person in advance - that

means before the training starts. That way, you and that person know it is OK, and you don’t risk

alienating a paticipant. This approach also enables you to check if that person is OK with it, know how

to write (well, on a flip chart), and that this person understand the language well enough. Instruct

her/him well, so you do not need to spend time during the actual training to instruct.

Get yourself a trainer mentor: Even better, get several! There are many trainers around that would be

honored if you ask for their help to grow.

Build a trainers network: Meet and maintain contact with trainers around in your country, region and

globally.

Market yourself: If you want to do international trainings, prepare to market yourself. Contact national

training directors, and ask if you can conduct trainings in their country. Ask which chapters are most

likely to take on foreign trainers. Most importantly: Do not give up!

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Don’t cancel at conferences: If you are accepted to train at an area conference (or anywhere else for

that sake) – DO ALL YOU CAN to be there, on time, and to deliver the best you can. That is how you

build your reputation. And your reputation is what gets you training invitations.

Projector not needed if broken: Projector not working? Don’t waste time trying to fix it, do your training

without it.

Don’t over-rely on Power Point: Design your trainings in such a way that Powerpoint is an aid, a helper,

a support. Power Point should be something you can do without, if required.

Learn to tell stories: Storytelling is a great way of moving peoples emotions, as well as sharing ideas.

Tell stories that are related to the topic, and that are designed to enhance your message.

Laugh at yourself: Never be afraid of using yourself as an example. It is better to have the participants

laugh of you, than of another participant. Also, examples you have experienced personally, tends to be

stronger, and are told in a way that engages the audience.

Ask for help in course design: Designing your own training for the first time? Ask other, more

experienced trainers to help you.

Get feedback: Ask other trainers for feedback on your trainings and training style. As with all feedback,

remember that what they tell you are their personal opinion, and if you do not agree, you may disregard

it. A tip: If you keep getting the same kind of feedback from several people, you may want to look into

that topic. Also: Not all feedback are for things you do bad, it may also be things you do very well.

Don’t focus on training hours: Hours never count. Only experience counts.

Have fun in all you do: If you have fun, they have fun.

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Klaus Kilian-Grabert (IG) JCI Germany

Bring fun toys to enliven training rooms: To offer inspiring breaks, collect all the things your children stop playing with, such as playing cards, costumes, games of skill, waiting games, toys, etc. I felt really amazed when I saw adults playing with these things during breaks. Maybe you can use them in a role play, also? Do not throw away anything. Everything can give worth to your training as an example, at least when you combine a tiny story with it.

Know the knowledge level of participants: When you are invited to conduct a team training and you do not know whether the participants have basic or professional knowledge, have an individual work at the very beginning to check this out and rebuild your training course on the fly upon the knowledge they showed! This is one of my favorite stories: "You are a member of a bus travelling group in the Amazon area. The bus has an accident and you find yourself and some other people in the wilderness of the rainforest. You can save some backpacks with food, pocket lamps, ropes (2 á 50m), 1 large knife, 1 little hatchet and a radio set. The group decides to walk to one specific direction, as civilized life is assumed there. After 2 days of walking a huge creek crosses your direction. No bridges. No shallow bank.

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You take the radio set, climb a hill and after several attempts, you hear a voice! You explain, what happened. Then, you tell what you can see. The voice says: “Oh, I think I know where you are! Find a way to the other side of the creek, then walk..." CRACK! Low energy in your radio set. What will you do? Each participant is to write down what she or he will do now. From the answers you can tell the beginners (solution oriented) from the professionals (human being oriented). Let the group have a coffee break while you are reading the answers, so they will not know that you just redesigned the course!

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Andreas Ellenberger (CNT) JCI Germany

Activity to show motivation to learn: In order to get a better understanding of my target group, there different ways to identify on how to start the training, e.g. Let all participants stand up and ask them 5-6 questions related to the topic. Each time when the participants answer a question with “no,” they should sit down. The questions may provoke some laughter and will also show the participants that it is worth being in the course and to learn. It should be hard to remain standing after the last question – and if people still stand the trainer may ask them to share their success criteria directly or in a later stage of the course. The trainer may also reflect on these results later in the training to show that it is worth learning. Example of a training on a project management method: • Did you ever manage a project? • Did you ever complete a project successfully? • Do you think you were the main responsible for the project success? • Did you make all stakeholders happy? • Do you know why it all worked out?

Grouping participants: If the group is not too big and you have enough space to walk around: Prepare some questions and group the participants according to the questions – the questions may be general or specific to the topic and will help the participants to find communalities which they may refer to in the breaks. It also causes some laughter and may be commented by the trainer. Examples for general questions which may be complemented by topic specific questions • Who is local, who lives close by, who is from far away (in a course of more than

1 day the local may help the others with some tips) • Who has kids, who not (depending on the environment it may be enhanced to who

is single, who is engaged) • Who is a smoker, who not (helps bringing smokers together and is a good starting point to state

that you will have sufficient breaks for the smokers) • Question regarding years of experience in the topic

Rewarding participants: When teaching a topic where the participants need to pass a test, we check their progress in the knowledge with some test multiple choice questions after each module. To encourage them putting effort into the answers each time they get them all right (3-4 questions), they win a “smiley” card. It is like a small competition – the one with the most smileys at the end gets a specific reward.

Mid-course feedback from participants: When you are teaching a course which is more than one day, take your time on the morning of the second day to ask participants about their feelings on the first day. Explain to them that their feedback is important as it allows you to redirect the way the topic is trained. I use an easy way preparing a flipchart with 2 – 3 topics which are of importance and they need to mark

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their feeling. One topic is always how they get along with the trainer, the other is regarding the environment or the material. It should also include some general questions about how they feel and what their progress is like. Then don´t watch when they put their mark and ask them afterwards what could be done in order to improve the training. So, you show that you care about them and take their concerns seriously.

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Fares Ben Souilah (IG) JCI Tunisia

Be aware of personal experiences of your participants: I have noticed that in many trainings, the trainers choose some activities in order to help adults learning new skills. As trainers, we should take care about the activities content or topic. Because some topics or role plays can refer to violence, this can create anxiety in the participants. (i.e. war role-play, hostage taking, etc.). Since you might not know whether one of your participants lived through something like that, you must exercise caution.

Get a mentor: As trainers, we cannot evaluate our own progress without the help of experienced and qualified trainers. In JCI, they might be ITFs, IGs or even CNTs. We need the help of experienced trainers because they can provide us solutions to some difficult situation and show us how to deal with special solutions to some difficult situations and show us how to deal with difficult participants. To find a mentor, look in your LOM, in other chapters around your NOM or even on Facebook. It might also be good to find a mentor with a different training style or culture. You can even be mentored on-line by asking questions and exchanging ideas.

Bring a token from your country: When you train internationally, bring something from your country to share with the participants. It can be a great ice-breaker. Also, you can prepare a short personal introduction in the local language of your participants and will help you connect with them.

Time management: A great tool for time management is to use a WiFi remote to pass my Power Point slides. The remote is equipped by a digital timer and you can program your timer according to the module timing. It allows you to look from time to time to see how much more time you have to finish your module.

Let participants speak in native language, if necessary: If you are training abroad and one of your participants needs to express themselves correctly, sometimes, they switch to their native language. Don’t panic! In fact, you can encourage this if it helps them make their point more clearly. Simply, ask your assistant trainer or another participant to translate for you. The participants will appreciate the ability to articulate their thoughts in their own language if they need to do so.

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Thor-Erik Gulliksen (IG) JCI Norway

Place flip charts around room for good visuals: I always place flip charts around the room because I want to use it as stimulation and so that the participants can move around and be active.

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Frame your flip charts: When drawing my flip charts, I always put a frame around my words or pictures by simply using a marker and drawing a “frame” around the page. At the bottom of the frame, I leave a small opening and write “JCI” in the frame.

Start a session with a story: I always start my training sessions with a story to set the mood, even before telling my name. It draws the interest of the audience and creates the proper mood for the seminar.

Make the room feel full: Whenever I start a training, I always put out fewer chairs than needed and add chairs if necessary later. This allows participants the feeling that they chose to attend the right seminar because it is a full seminar.

Send out a newsletter after each seminar: After each training session, I send out a newsletter about the training with photos, a summary of the content and comments from some of the participants.

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Ratna Desai (IG) JCI India

Video clips: Using video clips in the training is very effective to focus the learning points. The movies

are the best source to find out the video clips appropriate to your training subject. You can find out the

DVD of the movie and by using the Software available for DVD cutter; you can cut the part of the movie

which is appropriate and use it during the training to focus on learning. You can end your session with

a video clip that covers almost all the important points of your topic. You can show the video clip and

ask them to observe and after the clip is over ask them to share their learning or observation. This will

be a very good recap.

Repeat, repeat, repeat: For any activity give the instruction using numbers. Eg. Instruction no. 1, no. 2,

etc. Repeat them once so that it is easy for participants to remember.

Make sure each group understands: If you have given any group activity to participants, after giving all

the instructions; go to each group and if necessary explain the activity. During the activity, do not sit on

the chair but please move to each group and observe what and how they are doing. When the activity

is over, after the participants share their observation and learning; you can also share what you

observed during the activity. This may turn out as the biggest learning of the activity.

Always relate to real life: Co-relate the learning of the participants with examples of day to day life, also

with daily routine or with their work, job or profession.

Music can make things lively: As an energizer, you can play the music and ask the participants to

dance on that. This can be very good and interesting energizer.

Build rapport with participants during breaks: In the tea or lunch break, interact with participants and

build a rapport by showing interest in them. Just make sure to start on time after the break.

Share your experience: Share your real life experiences and make the learning more effective. You

can share both successes and failures. It gives you credibility and also helps the pragmatists to be

interested in the learning.

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Use your participants when needed to give you a break: You can also ask the participant to show their

talent as an energizer or if you want to have a look at your notes.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Dennis Ament (CNT) JCI Netherlands

Energizer activity: Gather the participants in a circle. Tell them that the goal is to count from 1 – 20

where each person will shout out a number one at a time. The participants cannot go in succession

around the circle and they cannot speak at the same time. Any time two participants shout out a

number at the same time, you must start over. After two or three failed attempts, have them try again

with their eyes closed. On the final attempt, speak slowly and softly as you ask them to trust each other

and concentrate on the activity. Nearly every time, the group counts all the way to 20 without problem

and no one going at the same time.

_______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Kavanaugh (CNT) JCI USA

Follow up after the course: Follow up with your participants some time after the course, particularly if

your training had some sort of call to action in it. While you may not get much feedback, you should get

some and it will help you gauge what the participants got out of the training. An example from the JCI

official courses is JCI CSR, which asks for each participant to pledge to make one change within the

next 30 days. Here's an example of what I send out (I modify it somewhat after each course):

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hello! We are almost 30 days out from the JCI CSR course offered at JCI USA's annual meeting last month. How has your progress been towards your personal commitment? Have you completed it, or are you still working on it? Did you have to change it to fit new circumstances? Remember the lessons from the course: it does not matter where you start with CSR, it matters that you understand what needs to be done and that you take ACTION. Even small actions are a step in the right direction (remember the lesson of the starfish story).

Some of you may know that I went to Salesforce development training in San Mateo, California for five days immediately after national convention. I was very impressed with their commitment to the environment and to CSR. They recycle and compost as much of their waste as possible. They have signs like the attached picture in their lunchrooms encouraging their employees to "live clean". They donate their product (which is pretty expensive!) to eligible non-profits. Those are just a few of the environmentally friendly and/or CSR-related activities they do as a company. I found this video/PowerPoint presentation from a few years ago on some of the things they - and other companies that were part of the round-table discussion - do related to CSR. It's pretty long (about 51 minutes), but it is interesting.

Driving Business Impact with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Here are also two recent articles on subjects that I touched on during the training:

The Story of E-Waste: What Happens to Tech Once It's Trash Nine Tools to Help You Stay Green on Earth Day

Thanks again for participating in the JCI CSR course. If there is anything I can do to help you reach your goals, please do not hesitate to ask.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

________________________________________________________________________________________

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J.K. Baltzersen (CLT) JCI Norway

Use debate in the seminar: Organizing a debate as a part of the training may be a good way for

participants to attain knowledge. This is of course a natural part of a debating training, where there are

preferably several debates. However, it can be used in other types of trainings as well.

Consider the debating motion: "What you say is more important than how you say it." A debate with this

motion can be used to highlight the issue of what you say and how you say it. It can even be used in a

debating training, practicing debating and debating topic theory at the same time. The same motion can

be debated in a public speaking training. If you can find a motion that fits the topic you are giving a

training on, training attendees can attain acknowledge through fun, active participation. It is of course

important to remember that when you are doing this as part of a training that is not a debating traning,

or a public speaking training, to keep emphasis on the topic of your training.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

John Di Rico (CLT) JCI France

Jokes as introduction to ice-breakers: There's nothing like a good joke at the beginning of a session to

break the ice and set your trainees at ease. I generally recycle one of two of my favorites, though there

are a lot of them out there. Just make sure they are appropriate for your audience (and culture!).

Here they are:

"Hello everyone... We are going to do a quick ice breaker so that everyone gets to know each other. Let me explain the instructions first. You are going to stand up and without talking, go to the back of the room and line yourselves up from the least attractive to the most attractive person in the room..."

"Hello everyone... We are going to do a quick ice breaker so that everyone gets to know each other. I want you to turn to your neighbor, introduce yourself, and then pick out one thing your neighbor is wearing and criticize it."

Everyone should be looking at you like is he serious?! This is your cue to smile :-) and mention that you are joking, of course. Then, you can move on to the real ice breaker.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Ideas from the Trainers Forum in Brussels at World Congress

JCI videos: Take a look at the JCI training videos on Facebook and You Tube that were created by the

2009 JCI Training Commission for some insights from other JCI trainers.

Story-telling: To become better at story-telling, take several children’s books and practice reading them

while you record yourself with an audio recorder. When you play it back, listen for your intonation,

inflection, pronunciacion and emotion. Not only will this help you become a better story-teller, but by

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reading the books over and over, you will memorize the stories so you can use them easily in your

seminars.

Music as energy: During breaks, keep up the energy in the room by playing high-tempo music. It will

help the participants to recharge and re-engage after the break.

Use music to regain control: During an activity where the participants are actively discussing, it is

sometimes hard to get them to be quiet so you can debrief. One tip for regaining control is to use

music. At the very beginning of the course, during the first activity with talking, you should turn up your

music very loud when you want them to stop. Eventually, they will stop talking because they can’t hear

anymore. After that, any time you turn up the music during an activity, the participants instantly know

that it is time to stop discussing.

Clap to regaing control: Another tip for ending discussion during activity is to stand in the front of the

room and say: “Clap once if you hear me.” [CLAP] “Say: “Clap twice if you hear me.” [CLAAP, CLAP].

Say: “Clap three times if you hear me.” [CLAP, CLAP, CLAP].. Eventually, the whole room will be

clapping with you and it ends the activity.

Downloading videos from You Tube: There are many ways to download videos from You Tube and a

simple Google search will help you find out how to do it. There is software you can download to do it

and there is also an add-on in Modzilla Firefox that allows you to do it. One very simple way is to add

the word “kiss” in front of the You Tube link and it takes you to a page where you can download it in

several formats. For example, if the video is at: www.youtube/gx2hl, you simply type in

www.kissyoutube/gx2hl and it will take you to the page to download the video for your seminar.

Use local pictures: When training abroad, take pictures of the city in which you are training and add

them to your slide presentation to make it more interesting and relevant to the participants.

Get expectations before the course: We all know that a good trainer must know his/her audience and

find out their expectations for the seminar. If possible, you should even do this before the seminar

starts by sending an email to the organizer to send to the participants or to the participants directly to

obtain this information.

Fun way to summarize: To summarize the information at the end of a module, you can use a

competition among teams in a sort of race to summarize the information. Split the participants in teams

of two and . . ..

Thank you to all the JCI trainers who have contributed to this manual and I hope that many more trainers will continue to submit advanced tips and techniques in the future. Be better!

Patrick W. Knight 2011 JCI Training Chairperson Email: pknight1972@gmail.com Skype: patrick.knight.miami