Training Articles
Training Exercises and Resources

Suppose you want to run an exercise in your course and want to divide your class into groups of 4. That is rather straight forward to do for small groups. Now, suppose you want to run another exercise and you want to mix up the groups. Is there a way to do this efficiently and systematically? We have developed a tool called Clock Buddies Random Group Generator to facilitate this process. The tool makes a series of personalised handouts (in the shape of discs) and students can use them to look up who they need to go with quickly.

In addition to the handouts given to the students, as a trainer or teacher, you can also use the same tool to generate all possible unique group combinations and have it as a reference. This helps you have an overall view of group configurations and when to switch from one combination to another. We call this the Group Layout View. To create them, you can use the “Generate Group Layouts” feature in the group generator tool. Let’s go through some examples to illustrate what the tool can do for you.

You have just finished delivering a course. Most trainers tend to be relieved that it is now out of the way, that there were no major technical issues, and, hopefully, most learners liked the course. They then tend to archive the material, move on to something else and forget about the course until they have to deliver it again the next time.

What have they missed doing?

Many trainers are always in search of the next best exercise for their courses. On this site alone we have hundreds of exercises that you could choose from. You may even decide to design your own; but a primary question is what makes an exercise effective.

Today, you can browse the net to find inspiration for your own design or use exercise “recipes”. New websites seem to be popping up all the time offering ever more corporate training exercises. The problem is that, more often than not, most of these exercises are terrible! Sometimes, you wonder if the author has ever ran the exercise once before offering it to the general public.  

A great way to learn how to choose or design good exercises is to know what makes a bad or ineffective exercise.  

In this article, four exercises are examined where each represents a class of similar poor exercises. Each exercise is then analysed so you can see the problems and how to address them.

You are a subject expert. You are in the process of designing a face-to-face interactive course and wonder how to offer it to the market. A primary question you may ask yourself is how to decide the timing:

• How long should be the course?
• When should you run the course?
• How should you plan the breaks?
• When should you start or finish the course?

We know that answering such questions can depend on the domain, the target market and the local customs. In any case, getting to know what the training community thinks about such areas can be thought provoking, at least to know if your intuition about an answer is correct.

To find out what the training community thinks, we sent a survey and collected replies from our subscribers. In this article, we will present the data, followed by analysis of what this data suggests along with our own observations when running courses.

We sent a questionnaire to the training community on the use of icebreakers and energiser. We asked questions such as, “Are they useful?”, “How do they help?”, “How long should they be?”, and so on. We have now got the results back and would like to share them with you.

There was a total of 103 respondents from around the world. As always, the results are fascinating and educational. They are then followed by what the training community thinks of them in their own words and how these tools are best used.

The results are presented first using graphs and our analysis is then followed.

Just to be clear to all readers, here is a brief intro to each training tool:

In the 21^st century world, we often need to be creative when solving problems especially with the constant need to stand out in today’s crowded markets. Being creative is therefore a very useful skill.

Much like any other skill, creativity is something you can get better at by following a proven structured approach and by practicing. The more systematic the method, the easier it is to practice and master it.

In the past few decades, there has been much progress on creative thinking. The researches on this topic has led to some great insights. It is now well known that resting the brain after intense periods of thinking and problem solving can significantly boost creativity. Many thinkers and experts such as Edison, Einstein and Salvador Dali have utilised this technique to great benefit. The question is how you should go about this to maximise the benefits.

The idea of resting the brain is about silencing your conscious thought (CT) in order to unleash the power of your unconscious thought (UT). That conscious thought, however, must get engaged enough at some point for this whole thing to work.

If you are a trainer or are in a position of teaching any subject, you will inevitably be giving your learners some problems to solve. Problem solving often requires creative thinking. You and your learners can use the 6-Step Problem Solving Technique described here to strengthen your creative thinking. It is designed to help our minds work at peak performance.

One of the primary reasons behind lack of motivation is regretting the past. When you are down, it is easy to question your past decisions and how they have let you down. Sounds kind of logical to look back and examine the past, right? May be somehow there is a clue there that would help. It is a tempting approach, except that this backward looking action can be quite damaging to current life.

This article offers insights on how to eliminate strong feelings created by regret, while exploring some significant findings over the past three decades. This is followed by a very effective exercise that consists of five primary actions helping to systematically manage the strong emotion of regret.

Examining regret is rather personal and this exercise is designed to be carried out in private. Hence, as a trainer, you don’t need to run this exercise in a group or during a course. To run as an exercise, do the following:

• First, brief the delegates about regret and how it can be handled. Let them know about the research presented here and lead them to question assumptions.
• Walk through the systematic 5-Action exercise and help delegates see what they need to do during each step. They can then complete the exercise in private to achieve best results.

This 5-Action exercise on regret is ideal for courses on emotional intelligence, motivating people, stress management, performance management and appraisal.

Here is a simple yet powerful exercise to make you feel happy. It is a weekly diary where each day you get to follow specific instructions and write down your thoughts. It is well-known that journaling can do wonders for motivation. This exercise makes journaling systematic based on established research. It really delivers.

Research shows that if you follow this routine, you will quickly feel the difference it brings in your mood and happiness (Seligman et al. 2005).

The exercise also relies on research that writing down your thoughts can be more powerful in boosting your happiness than sharing them with friends or family. The process of writing down is more structured and systematic than talking which is why the diary technique is so much more effective.

The routine is suggested by Prof. Richard Wiseman and a variation of this is provided here (Wiseman 2009).

Have you ever attended a miserable and boring training course? Have you heard your colleague’s tale of boring training course? People love exceptionally good training courses and talk about them a lot, but if they experience a bad one, they feel just as equally compelled to let the world know.

If you are a trainer or in a position of teaching, you can appreciate delegates’ feedbacks. You can learn enormously from what works and what doesn’t. You can somewhat guess from the feedback what went wrong. However, while delivering a course, a particular course of action that sounds quite rational may actually be a bad idea.

Hence, exploring such feedback can be very educational. In this article, we have listed a series of feedbacks received from hypothetical learners who have attended a bunch of boring courses. We have designed these based on general patterns of feedback observed over the years. The aim is to see why these courses have been unsatisfying and what can be done to avoid such a fate.

In today's specialised world, many people are working hard to become an expert in something. Spending extensive time on any topic will turn a person into an expert in that subject just by sheer accumulation of knowledge. Sooner or later, some of such experts would find themselves in a position of teaching, training others to learn their techniques.

The problem is that most subject-matter experts would simply assume they know how to teach. Their main focus is on being a “content expert” as opposed to being a capable trainer. What keeps these trainers up at night is the worry of not having all the answers. What if they want to explain something and they suddenly forget what they wanted to say? What if they look like a fool? What if people are not convinced that they are indeed an expert on the topic?

What’s fascinating, and rather sad, is that few worry about appearing as a poor trainer or not knowing how to teach. It is a curious thing to know where this confidence in teaching ability comes from.