Trainers' SIG ~ Making Them Feel Good: Responding to Participant Contributions

Trainers like to lead interactive training sessions during which participants speak up to answer questions and share what’s on their mind. The Trainers’ SIG has provided several sessions to help trainers encourage participant interaction through questions, discussions and activities.

Getting participants to interact is one skill. Another is to maintain—and enhance—their self-esteem, once they’re contributing. 

• Maintaining Self Esteem when a Participant is Off-Track:  The challenge here is to let the participant—and the rest of the class—know the participant’s response was off track—and what a better response would be—without making him or her feel bad. We’ll practice six techniques a trainer can use to respond to off-track answers and comments. 
• Enhancing Self Esteem when Participants are On Track:  Most of us like to feel good about ourselves when we’re on track, so we’ll practice 6 tips for responding when participants are on track.  It’s likely you’ll already be using some of these best practices much of the time and others occasionally...that said, once you start using all of them deliberately, you’ll enhance your training delivery.

Come to the meeting and there’ll be plenty of opportunity for you to develop some “muscle memory” by practicing these techniques during the session so that you’re more likely to use them when you’re back on the job.  We hope you can make it!

Our Facilitator

Anthony Harmetz is a long-time ATD-OC volunteer and a chapter Past President. Anthony spent 13 years establishing and leading the training function at Bally Total Fitness, at the time a major services sector corporation.  He is now a training consultant helping organizations design, develop, delivery and implement training and various styles models such as DiSC.