Make something happen as a result of your training

Here’s the last in the series of posts on getting hospitality staff engaged in training.

Involve the group
There’s nothing worse than a chalk and talk ‘lecture’. Get everyone’s involvement as much as possible. Start with an ice breakers to get everyone relaxed, but also ask what they want to get out of the training. Ask for their opinions, run exercises, either in groups, or individually. Add in energiser activities and ‘right brain’ exercises to break up the session. People hate role plays, but make these less intimidating by running in small coaching groups with another delegate acting as observer in each group.

Make full use of the senses. Make use of mental pictures too, ask the group to image the scene when……. And use stories to illustrate your points. We’re all familiar with death by PowerPoint. If you feel compelled to use slides then keep them to a minimum, and use pictures (photos, not clipart) to help to illustrate your points, and limit the words on your slides. Flip charts are more interactive, and great for capturing the delegates ideas. But at the end of the day a visual is just visual, so try and bring in all the senses. Use props and live examples that people can touch, smell and even taste if appropriate. So if for example you are talking about upselling on a dish or on a particular wine, enable the group to taste the dish or wine and say how they would describe it.

What next?
You don’t want people to leave the training session asking “what was all that about then?” Make it clear what you want to happen as a result of the training. Start by checking their understanding of the key points, but then ask for their ideas on how they are going to implement what they have learnt. And involve everyone in this and if appropriate record this and make them accountable. After all you want to see something happen as a result of the training or it’s all been for nothing.