Design and construction professionals are highly particular when it comes to signing up for conferences, training seminars, even webinars. Our time is short, and our wallets are not full enough. So we carefully scrutinize the agenda and the content prior to signing away hours of time and tens of dollars. Sometimes, we discover that sessions were over-promised/sold. Other times, we are pleasantly surprised because we learned what we expected to learn, or even more!
Last week, I attended a five-day Bootcamp related to my professorial teaching at Columbia College. Five days! In this case, it was ‘free’ to adjunct professors. {But remember, my time is my money so every hour spent is an hour where selling/doing opportunity is forgone}. The Bootcamp’s total number of committed hours (including travel time) was 20 hours. 50% of a ‘full’ work week.
Because the facilitator knew me, and knew what I was looking for out of the Bootcamp, she took me aside after the first day to make sure that I was clear that a particular aspect that I was most interested in would be covered only in the most cursory sense on the final day.
Mind you, I was disappointed to hear this news. Because this was an official Bootcamp, I had envisioned an in-depth, more sophisticated approach to using this {Gradebook} tool than in previous sessions that I had attended.
Nonetheless, after further discussion and evaluation with the facilitator, I decided that it was still worth my time to attend the remaining four sessions. In hindsight, I definitely made the right decision. But the experience got me to thinking about best practices for meeting facilitators/trainers.
When you are the facilitator of a training session at a professional conference or elsewhere, it’s your responsibility to make sure the session is correctly marketed/described. (No over-promising! Which I know is often tempting for whomever is actually putting together the session.) Here are two additional suggestions:
1. Within the original description, invite prospective attendee to call and speak with someone in person about what the session’s depth/details. If you are unable to field those calls yourself, then provide someone else (assistant, marketing staff, etc) with the necessary information so that you are under-promising and over-delivering. After all, does it really behoove you to get an attendee signed up/paid when in fact that very same person will be disappointed…and will spread their disappointment like wildfire post-session?
2. Once you are actually standing in front of the group, why not kick off the session with two key questions of each person:
- A. What are you hoping to get out of this session?
- B. What concerns/barriers do you have about this session?
The latter, B, will be a surprise question for many of your attendees. But if they are brave enough (it’s your responsibility as the facilitator to make them feel safe and comfortable), then they will share their thoughts, which could look like these:
- >I’m concerned that the session will focus primarily on the basics…and that by the day’s end, we will rush through the real ‘meat’ of what I came here to learn.
- >I’m worried that we will go slowly through the material, and therefore will not even remotely touch upon the more sophisticated elements.
or the opposite:
- >I’m wondering if this session has such a varied level of attendees that some of us will be held back, and others of us will feel left behind, during the training.
- >etc. You get the idea.
Depending upon the concerns expressed, it’s up to you as the facilitator/trainer/presenter/leader, to adjust your content in order to alleviate those concerns. If adjusting is simply impossible, then it’s up to you to be 100% honest about what they can expect or not. It’s up to you, as well, to work with the individuals towards any alternatives that may make more sense (money back; credit towards another more appropriate session; supplemental discussion post-session to address any outstanding issues; etc).
Frankly, regardless of your role as the facilitator OR as the attendee, it’s up to you to have an open dialogue and full clarity on expectations so that you part ways on a high note.