DSA's Training Development Tips
A Day in the Learning and Performance Conference Life
by William Hall

“Maybe you could blog a bit about the workshop”, Jane suggested. Before I knew what happened I accepted. I’ve never blogged. I haven’t read any blogs. To me blog sounds like a stomach disorder. “I can’t come into work today, I’ve got a bit of the blog.” But not knowing how to do something has rarely kept me from doing it…..so here goes…
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The alarm goes off at 4:30am. I’m instantly awake and struggle across the room to turn off the alarm before it wakes Carla. I don’t usually get up this early but I’m surprisingly energetic. I’m on my way to Monterey for a day of training in training.

The sessions begin at 8am but the drive from San Francisco to Monterey could take 3 hours or more depending on Silicon Valley traffic. But as it turns out this morning it’s clear sailing and I’m at the Embassy Suites by 7:30 am ready to listen and take notes.

I’m attending the conference because I was talking with a friend and colleague of more than a dozen years Kat Koppett who with her husband Matt Richter work with Thiagi. Kat and Matt introduced me to the philosophy/methodology of Thiagi and after taking a two day workshop with him I found myself employing just about everything he taught. I even started reading my magic book again to add a trick or two into my training sessions.

For the past 18 years I have been actively involved in the study of Improvisational Theatre. I founded a theatre company in San Francisco (BATS Improv) and perform and teach there frequently. The theories of Improvisation, specifically rapid teamwork and collective story telling have been a great fit for the emerging companies of the Bay Area and have found their ways into many workshops.

Anyway, back to the workshop. Jane suggested that this Blog might be helpful to those who didn’t get a chance to return. So I’ll go through my note book and share with you some of the things that I’ve written….the rest is up to you.

Darryl Sink suggested that, “predictive ROI is more important than results after the event.” He said that ROI is more important in the decision making process than the after projects evaluation. He then went on to show us ways to think and calculate predictive ROI. He said that every department must predict ROI so we as trainers must find a way to add this to our sales presentation.

I was certainly intrigued by this idea, I’m usually brought in after the workshop has been ‘bought’ (so to speak). But it’s clear to me that if I can start to calculate the predictive ROI then I can pitch higher/bigger training projects.

He said that numbers are important but good salesmanship is still the key to winning more work. The checklist in my notes:

• Good salesmanship
• Rapid response
• Testimonials/references
• Anecdotes/emotion
• Understanding needs (pain)

And he concluded by asking, “is learning considered valuable by the top executive?” That is a great question. The higher the value, the better chance of success.

Then it was a session on interactive story telling by Thiagi. This is much more my comfort zone. But it’s also a harder sell. Training storytelling is not as practical as training say, better conflict resolution techniques.

I’ve got a lot of notes on the session. Here’s one: “tell me a positive story re: ‘_________’. Then look at all the stories and identify themes.”

This was part of a larger ‘appreciative inquire’ segment about identifying positive movement in the company as a way of setting goals instead of identifying gaps and things that don’t work.

We did an exercise where everyone told stories in pairs. During the debrief afterwards the group found that there was tremendous value in making the room safe for discussion and for honoring individual perspective (or story).

I’m conscious about this ‘blog’ going on too long, so I’ll try to wrap it up with a couple of other notes in book.

Use the picture puzzles as a coming back activity at the end of a break…and it illustrates that a team is more competent than any individual and creative problem solving and diversity.

A Thiagi Frame game:

• Everyone gets a piece of paper
• Write down the three words that represent the top themes of the meeting
• Switch papers
• Who wants to predict what the most popular answer is?
• Have someone predict
• Raise your hand if you have it written on the paper you have.
• Give points to each similar answer
• Others predict
• Collect them as a report out/feedback loop.

As I drove the two and a half hours back to San Francisco that evening I was filled with excitement. New games, new techniques and a room full of other trainers who also found value in interactive training techniques.

Was the workshop valuable? You bet it was….I was able to use the frame game above in a session that weekend.

-William Hall-

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