Today we are just going to look into a very simple but very critical aspect of training. To begin with, I’ll take you through a short story that will lead us to our discussion.
It happened so; I was at some location in India, training Sales Managers, and Sr. Sales managers from a leading industry background. As usual after a nice fun introduction and an energizer, participation started in full swing. As we all know and understand, these programs need a lot of discussions and experience sharing. One of the client personnel was sitting and observing till tea break. He called me aside and introduced that he is the person responsible for manpower development. And he doesn’t approve the way I was training.” As a first lesson to be a trainer says, you have to be receptive to all kinds of feedback.” I heard and was shocked to hear clear words saying, Humour doesn’t work in training, then training becomes a joke. I was trying to take the full measure of these words. Then I understood from the same gentleman, that if we make them laugh, then the seriousness of the program will not be there and they’ll mock at us. I told him very clearly that each trainer has got different ways of training and they know how to control the crowd. (He accepted that team was well controlled- thanks to the little trainer inside him). His answer was, shout at them they’ll be more controlled and in line. I thought it’s a waste of time to convince and conducted the session as I always do.
Story ends!
So dear friends, we need to first understand what is humour and then we can move to different types of touches of humour you can use in your training sessions.
Humour is a very simple word, is part of speech used to have attention from the audience. For example:
Trainer asks “What is Sales?
Answers by participants
“Selling?
Trainer “very good” “What else”
“Selling your personality”
“Brilliant”
“Sir, when we go to customer and customer buy our product i.e. sales”
“Great, great what else it could be “
“Sir Customer ko bottle me Utarna”
“Veeerryyy Wrooong “(here what affect more is in the same tone and energy of very good, brilliant, great, trainer saying very wrong which is unexpected by everyone and curiosity of participants arouse.)
Humour can be an example to make your participants understand a difficult topic; I generally use the human heart to explain a diesel engine.
It’s one way to connect with your profession.
Another problem, why we need a little sense of humour, which you can test on yourself right now while reading this article, going through words your mind is trying to put you through different thoughts, may be related to a topic or may not be related to a topic at all. Some must be thinking, “How heart can be related to a car engine?” “Let us see what is to eat!” “Oh! Shit, I forgot to do my car service!!!!” so on and on… Cause we all have an attention span of 3 to 5 minutes.
Now my friends, let us go step by step, on how we can add a sense of humour in our session and make our training sessions alive.1.
- Do Like Me.
Are you Mr. 420? No.Then you have to be one. Ohh!! What does 420 mean?? “Shuddha Hindi me, “Chalu”, “Cheater”, “April 20th that is “National Pot Smoking Day” and so on. This means you are bad.
Let’s get worse though. I say I am 420 because according to me it means: “in first 4 statements or first 20 seconds you make anyone smile, with your words and you are sold”
I am always half an hour early in the hall and I just don’t speak to anyone and keep quiet (It’s good to take the full measure of participant’s type). On the set hour when I am starting, I just say Good morning loudly and make people shout and then ask which language they are comfortable English, Hindi, Tamil, and Gujarati. People pick their language and then I say ok will use this as a medium of communication and also (pause) with some mistake a regional language statement e.g. “Mane Gujarati avade che” or “Nan Tamil terikiren” It creates a ripple of laughter also Apna Admi wali baat.
You can have your method of connecting people
- I am the “Laughter Champion”
For a trainer it can be a challenge to make a transition from one topic to another if your team is super excited (It can delay the session). If you feel the topic is well explained and people understood then just keep one- or two-minutes activity ready linked with the next topic (not every topic!).
Another challenge is if you create all laughter by yourself, for all the merry go time, participants will sit tight and wait for another piece of humour. Very simply shake their chairs, let them get up, and do some activity. Try to make where they can use creativity and just make them create fun on their own.
- Yeah! The food was awesome.
With heavy food, loads of sweet dishes, the team may feel sleepy. I hope you are not sleepy… Come on!! Many of us feel the same way as our participants do. And if we don’t build up the energy you are in danger of turning session down. Many suggest that we should do an icebreaker or energizer activity as soon as we finish lunch break and are about to start the session.
What I do is I continue with some music and ask would you like to see some videos (Absolutely ready!! We are bored…!), yes sir will be a general answer I get and then I play few short 1 min to 2 mins max clips and play 4 to 5 in one go. Now the impact is they have had good laugh and now ready for the session and during this time I try to figure out who’s still drowsy, I keep them involved all the time and after half an hour an energizer for 5 mins. It results in one good thing that people are wide awake and wish to participate.
I believe; we have two types of trainer one takes energy from participants and one who gives energy to participants and makes sessions alive. Decide which type of trainer are you?
- I don’t accept you as a trainer
Watch your back. Few are just sitting and observing you and not participating. Dear friends we need to make them speak because you may have a devil’s advocate sitting in the classroom.
Ask them a few discussion questions, and you may or may not get a proper answer if the answer is proper to appreciate them. If not then make sure you have to use Positive. Aggressive humour i.e. teases them a bit, puts them down but at the same time keeps other participants in the loop so that, the one will not be isolated but be in the team.
Many of the situations to discuss but as a trainer you are the best judge. Please share your experience. It may help others to learn or those who seek solutions can have it.