What have we learned here?

Does this sound familiar? After spending countless hours and dollars putting on an event, the attendees barely walk away with a single actionable piece of learning. Stop wasting time and money just for things to go in one ear and out the other. We don’t think it is too high of a bar to expect that your learning content results in someone actually learning something. To that end we have some suggestions based on what we have learned through hundreds of events that we have attended, designed, and delivered.

1. Make it memorable
   The same old isn’t going to cut it. It’s gotta have bite. Training and learning content that breaks the frame is more likely to result in concrete behavioral changes. As we like to say, boring leads to snoring. When attendees hear the word “drone” you want them to think about remote controlled flying devices, not the last speaker or facilitator they saw. 
   
   
2. Make it (slightly) uncomfortable
   That’s right, uncomfortable. If participants feel like they can check out - guess what? They will. The only way to avoid this is to invite people to push outside their comfort zones and into the learning zone. After all, our brains are wired to prefer the familiar; it’s not easy to try something new, but that’s how we learn. The best way to encourage people to get into the learning zone is to... 
   
   
3. Make it fun
   The easiest and most effective way to make learning stick is to make it fun. Your learning content needs to compete for attention with the hot-topic keynote speaker or the sales awards. Or it needs to follow 3 hours of tiny-font PPT metrics. Fun and surprise is your competitive advantage.
   
   
4. Make it experiential
   If participants aren’t practicing and walking the talk in the session it’s unlikely that they are going to put anything into action in their roles. Conversation-led, embodied activities give them a chance to try on what ‘great’ looks like so that concepts aren’t academic, they are lived and immediate.
   
   
5. Make it actionable
   Every key piece of learning needs to have a bite sized version that people can quickly call up from memory and utilize when it counts. A fun phrase is probably better than a meaningless acronym, but those can do in a pinch. Also, visualizations on takeaways can be a constant reminder of concepts that can truly shift behaviors

Did you find yourself nodding along, but also overwhelmed by the prospect of putting these into practice? We can help with that. Check out our creative learning solutions for live events.