Most training is designed for the trainer

Most training, be it at work or at college, is supposed to be designed for the trainee/student, but is actually designed for the trainer/teacher.

If it seems otherwise, it’s because we are evaluating how well-designed the training is through an academic lens: is the content comprehensive, is it accurate, does it cover all the relevant theory, etc. But attendees, especially if workers, evaluate how well-designed training differently: they ask themselves, is it teaching me something useful or interesting, and is it using as little of my time as possible?

Of course, this is not fully true. There are a few attendees who are interested in theory and comprehensiveness, but they are a minority. Instead, the majority cares about whether the training addresses the top problems on their minds and does so clearly, usefully, and without wasting time. If you’ve ever attended some corporate training, that was likely what you cared about, too.

The problem is that trainers tend to organize training around how they understand the topic: they begin with definitions, frameworks, theory, and categories; they cover everything there is to know, with little prioritization; and they separate theory and practice, whereas trainees would prefer knowing how to apply what they just learned before jumping to the next piece of theory.

So, what would training designed to be useful and efficient for the attendee look like?

I identified seven guiding principles:

1. Bad training is theory-first; good training is problem-first. It begins with a concrete and specific problem that’s relevant to the audience, then it jumps into solving it, and only afterwards explains the theory of why the solution worked. The point is not to remove theory, but to make it serve practice.
2. Bad training begins by saying it will be useful; good training jumps straight into demonstrating it will be useful. It does so by beginning with one of the audience’s most relevant problems and immediately saying something useful about it. Once attendees have seen that the trainer is in touch with their problems, they are much more willing to keep paying attention.
3. Bad training is adversarial; good training is collaborative. Bad training basically tells attendees: you were doing this wrong, and you should do it less the way you used to and more the way I do. Good training says instead: you have this problem, which is affecting your time, energy, mood, effectiveness, and/or job satisfaction in this way, and it’s my problem too, because employees without time, energy, good mood, and effectiveness make my job worse; let’s solve it together.
4. Bad training doesn’t mention doubts and worries; good training proactively surfaces and addresses the audience’s doubts and worries. As people listen, they are often already thinking: this would never work with my manager, or this works in theory but not when things get busy, or I tried something similar before, and it failed. Good training brings these doubts up before the attendees have to, normalizes them by saying that most people in that situation would have them, and addresses them directly.
5. Bad training assumes that failures are part of the learning process; good training pre-empts the failures that are likely to sap motivation. Not every failure is bad, and some can be useful for learning; but failure is also likely to make the attendee conclude that spending time doing the new thing well is a waste of effort. So, good trainers pre-empt failure using pre-mortems, roleplays, and hypotheticals.
6. Bad training has a parallel curriculum; good training has a serial one. A parallel curriculum goes, for example: first, all the problems we will cover today; second, all the solutions; third, how to roll out all these solutions, etc. A serial curriculum instead goes: first, this problem, its solution, and how to roll it out; second, this other problem, its solution, and how to roll it out, etc. The second structure is less neat from the trainer’s point of view, but much closer to how the attendee will actually use the material.
7. Bad training has parallel follow-up; good training has serial follow-up. Bad training goes: today, this training on these three new things; next week, you do these three new things; the following week, we follow up on these three new things. Good training goes instead: this week, training → execution → follow-up on this new thing; next week, training → execution → follow-up on this other new thing. This gives each change enough attention to have a chance of surviving contact with real work.

The point is that trainer-centered training tends to optimize for covering the material, whereas trainee-centered training optimizes for whether attendees can actually do something useful differently afterwards.

My favorite tip for designing good training is to start not from the question of “What do I need to teach?” but rather, “What problem does the attendee need to become better at solving?”