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Power Tactics that Make Training Exciting with Nancy Giere

Every training designer wants to banish boredom from the courses they create. But boredom can creep in. How and why does that happen? According to top training designer Nancy Giere, it happens when training designers are so concerned with including every idea and concept that they overload their courses. “They put in too much content,” she told Even Hackel in this Training Unleashed Podcast.

How does that happen, and how can you prevent it from affecting your training? Here are some highlights of what Nancy told Evan in her terrific Training Unleashed Podcast, which you will not want to miss.

Remember What Slides Are For

“I think slides with pictures and graphics can be very powerful tools,” Nancy told Evan. “But the purpose of slides is not to help presenters organize their thoughts. They should support the audience, not help the presenter remember what to say next!”

On Different Kinds of Training

“There are different types of training,” Nancy explained. “There’s the `check the box training’ that everybody has to do – things like sexual harassment training, safety compliance training, and other topics that are required. And you can easily lose people in those courses because it’s like everybody has to do them.

“So what I’m finding is people are trying to take some of these topics and lighten them to keep people engaged. There are other types of programs, where you’re trying to improve people’s knowledge and skill level. To keep training interesting there, you have to make it clear how the training is going to affect each trainee’s job.

“It’s a matter of including the `What’s in it for me?’ but you want to add, `And why should I care , , , How is this going to improve my situation , , , Am I going to be able to be more effective in my job?` And more importantly, the most important thing is not what happens in the training, but after the training,

“People think, `I learned this great new stuff, and then when I go back to my desk, is it going to be supported? Or is it flavor of the month?’”

How to Use Stories to Create Powerful Training

“The really important element is what happens at the beginning of training” Nancy explained, “which is have a great hook where people go. A lot of people will start by posing a question of the audience. An even more powerful way is to bring them in with a story that’s relatable, where they think, `Oh, yeah, that’s me. . . you get their attention quickly, because they make a decision early on whether or not they’re going to pay attention.

“So that’s the first part. The next is to have a good structure. Give people a roadmap. Tell them, `This is the journey I’m going to take you on today , , , These are the three key ideas that I have for you.’

“The close is also just as important as the opening. And what’s really important is for the audience to be able to say, `I did this. These were the key skills that I had to embody to be able to do this. And you then get to whatever the improvement is, whatever that key idea is, or the place you want to take people.

“You want them to say, `I did it!. Look at me. And so can you!”

What Makes for a Great Story?

She told Evan that first of all, the stories you use have to be real.

“I know people make up stories,” Nancy said, “And when they do, they come off as made up. I think people can tell the story is real or not, but what are the keys?

“I remember watching someone at a Toastmasters competition. She was the test speaker and she told a story about how she was a scuba diver and something happened where her tanks weren’t completely full of air. And she went under and ran out of air and had to get to the surface. And then when she got to the surface, there was a lot of wave action, and she told the story kind of like I am telling it to you now. And then this happened and this happened . . .

“It wasn’t her story! I was evaluating it and I realized her story didn’t move me in any way. There was no drama, there was no emotion, she didn’t take me with her, right? I didn’t feel the panic.

“So you want to make sure that the emotions match the words. Also, you want to look at the characters. Can you make the characters come to life for us? Who did you encounter?

“For a lot of people, it’s very daunting to do storytelling and for that matter, to do interactive activities. Because, you know, they haven’t done those things before.

“Now, you might think your life’s boring, but when you really dig in, it isn’t. And if you’re speaking about something you are personally passionate about, there’s got to be a reason why you’re personally passionate about it. And if there’s a reason why there must be a story, yes, and that will speak to other people.”

An Offer for the Training Unleashed Community from Nancy Giere

Nancy invites you to download and use a complimentary copy of her eReport Eight Easy Steps to Create Training that Sells!

About Our Guest

After a lifetime in the corporate training world, Nancy knows how businesses operate and she isn’t afraid to shake things up. Her unique perspective combined with 25+ years of experience has empowered her with fresh insight and the industry’s best-kept secrets that she’s ready to share with you. On a lifelong campaign against boring training, she uses the power of storytelling and light-hearted humor to create an engaging, fun, and interactive environment. Masterfully intertwining comedic humor with life lessons, her stories make learning stick! Nancy has worked with the biggest names in corporate America like Johnson Controls, Harley Davidson, and Northwestern Mutual.

How to become a great listener with Theresa Campbell

In a recent Training Unleased podcast, Evan Hackel and his guest Theresa Campbell discussed highly unusual, revolutionary techniques for becoming not just a good listener, but a great listener.

You will hear practical guidance on listening in this podcast – insights that you will not find anywhere else. You will want to spend some quality time watching it. Here are some highlights of their talk.

Theresa Describes How Most of Us Think about Listening

“I like to remind people that being a master of anything happens when the master knows that they’re forever the student,” Theresa told Evan. “So there’s the initial pressure of, `Oh, I’ve got to make sure I remember what he said or what she said.` But no, no, no, you’re a student and you’re just continuing to evolve and deepen your listening and your ability to connect with yourself and others. The thought to have is `I’m a student like everybody else.’ And that helps you relax into it.”

On Using all Five Senses to Listen

“Listening is not just what we hear,” Theresa told Evan. “I like people to remember that listening is a five-senses experience . . . what are you seeing as this person says something to you? What are you feeling? What do you smell? What does that message taste like?”

Theresa – and this is unusual – believes that great listening also means focusing on your own reactions to what is being said.

“So not just what are you hearing,” she explained, “but what do you feel? What are you sensing? So when I teach people how to listen, if we can segue to that, there’s an acronym that I love that was taught to me by my first listening teacher. It’s SIER.”

Understanding Theresa’s SIER Structure

Here is what that acronym means . . .

S stands for sense, meaning what are you sensing, using all five senses
I stands for interpret, meaning that you interpret what you are taking in.
E stands for evaluate, meaning that you think about what you are taking in.
R stands for respond, meaning that you respond or react to what has been said to you.

How to Introduce Intuition into Great Listening

Theresa believes that great listening happens when people connect to much more than the words that are being said, Great listeners go on to connect with how they feel about what they are hearing, how they receive it, and how their bodies accept it.

“It’s the sixth sense,” Theresa told Evan. “You know, the sixth sense . . . What’s your intuition . . . what is that feeling . . . what is your body telling you? Because a lot of times, we’re not necessarily encouraged to listen to our feelings, right? That’s not professional! We want to keep the emotion out of it. And what I’m saying is you can become so proficient in hearing that you can have a visceral experience and trust that, even if everything somebody is saying sounds true, but something in you says, no, you can trust that. You can create a relationship with yourself and your capacity to listen to yourself.”

Theresa’s Offer to Members of the Training Unleashed Community

Theresa invites you to investigate the complimentary listening sessions that she offers through Her Life, Her Legacy.

“Oftentimes people don’t feel listened to,” she told Evan. “So I invite them to come into a space where they know someone’s going to listen to them. No judgment! I’d love to have a listening session with your listeners, and we can do that!”

Using Deep Listening in Training

Evan believes that Theresa’s ultra-effective listening approaches can help take training to higher levels. When you use them to connect more deeply with trainees, the entire training process can be optimized!

About Our Guest Theresa Campbell

Theresa Campbell is the founder and CEO of Her Life, Her Legacy, a leadership development organization dedicated to the power of deep listening. As a leadership coach, author, and life-long learner, she helps you find and listen to what matters, most.

Theresa, lovingly known by her clients as Coach T, serves humbly with an unwavering focus on service. She has over a decade’s worth of experience in the business and corporate world and has led multi-million dollar sales and marketing initiatives with a Fortune 500 organization (Ford). Her work has been featured in the likes of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Ford Motor Company, Women’s Executive Exchange of Central Florida and Journey by Afrotainment.

As a self-proclaimed, life-long learner, Theresa is committed to mastery. She’s a graduate of Michigan State University (Go Green!), received her MBA from Rollins College and is proudly coached by the world’s top leadership experts. Theresa believes that to be the best, one gets to learn from the best. It’s this attitude of growth, faith, and possibility that drives her mission in life.

She’s the proud author of three books. Her most recent work, Just Listen: Creating Confidence in Yourself, Others & God, is set to be released in the fall 2021.