08/02/2020
Managing the expectations of audience:
In my experience as a Corporate Trainer for last two decades, I was fortunate to meet various types of audience at all the client ends.
There were different situations encountered and I learned to manage them hard way by experimenting about the solutions.
Here are my conclusions which may benefit other Trainers.
First of all I have come to the belief that “There is never a dumb audience, but a dumb Trainer.” I mean it! You are there to discuss a few things that they are interested in knowing and you are the Project Manager of the project of your training session.
You are a service provider bound by the contract of delivery and by professionalism of delivering Value.
Let’s focus on the expectations of the audience in this context.
There are two classes of the expectations by the audience.
1. Expectations about the Trainer
2. Expectations about the Session Coverage
Expectations about the Trainer:
First they see you, then they hear you, then they understand you and then, perhaps they learn from you.
I am going to write in detail about this in my next article as a separate topic.
But in short, it is important to take care of how you look and talk and smell how much preparation you have made for the session and how well you have designed the contents matching with the audience needs.
Expectations about the Session Coverage:
Training is a service. The service should deliver value to the customer i.e. the audience.
Mere completion of the coverage may not provide the desired value. Hence, the Trainer needs to understand the value the audience is looking for. Also, the agreement between the audience and the Trainer in this regard is necessary prior to commencing the session.
If the Trainer and /or her session does not meet the audience expectations, the audience is unhappy. Here are some of the reasons of unhappiness of the audience that I have seen.
1. Non-fulfilment of the prerequisites
2. Entrained or Entrenched Thinking
3. Confusion about purpose of training i.e. Skills/Competencies/Knowledge
4. Audience pushed to the session
5. The audience has nothing to learn due to prior knowledge
6. Theory versus Practical Experience
Let’s see the Trainer’s traits in the upcoming articles.
