What's the most important time of any training?

Before you arrive...?

First day?

The 'breakout exercises'?

Nope.

The most important time is after the training is over!

That's right.

After you've left the training room.

Or completed your audio or video training course.

Why?

I'll get to that in a moment, but first I need to explain an important distinction to hold about learning.

It's worth writing this down:

Learning = behavioural change

If you attend a training and don't come away doing anything differently, then you haven't learnt what was being taught.

(There are many reasons why this may be the case including that the training was never designed with the idea of teaching a specific set of skills in mind. More on that in a future post).

One of the functions of training is to entrain new skills or behaviours.

And new skills require...

Repetition!

Over the years, I've spoken with and heard from thousands of NLPers from all around the globe.

I've discovered that the idea many people hold about what training is about... is dead wrong.

Many people mistakenly think that they go to be "trained" at training.

But the label is not the thing it represents.

For the most part, when you attend training what is actually occurring is you are being EXPOSED to a set of ideas and processes.

If the trainer is highly skilled and versed in training design processes they will be working to specific behavioural outcomes.

However even with the best trainers and training designs in the world; if you want to own a skill or set of skills... practice is a must.

That's why attending a practitioner course or any training for that matter is not enough for you to become really skilled.

Post-training practise is a must.

A single exposure (in most contexts) is not enough to get a skill on board.

[That's why in a really good training the trainer will create multiple exposures or instantiations of a given skill for a student to learn, often they will be outside the student's conscious awareness.]

And when it comes to practice, how you practice matters.

But that's for another day.

For now; keep this front of mind:

Repetition leads to recognition.

The more I practise, the better I become.

What's one skill you will consciously practise today?

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