Much as we love designing and delivering training courses (and we do!), our primary interest is in what will happen once participants return to their desks. We work closely with our clients to achieve behavioural change. These are just some of the interventions we have used in conjunction with our clients:
- Providing detailed guidance notes to support each course
- Creating downloadable audio files of a breathing exercise and body scan to support our Mindfulness course
- Working with clients to identify and supervise team business projects for emerging leaders
- Production of an e-learning Resilience course for participants of the face-to-face training
- Issuing video files of individual presentations accompanied by feedback following our Presentation Skills course
- Sending a series of high impact slides to participants in the days following training
- Using recap sessions and quizzes at the beginning of subsequent training courses, when a suite of programmes has been booked
- Providing additional referenced reading material
- Issuing questionnaires for participants to use with team members
21 days to change a habit?
One L&D Manager approached us to help optimise behaviour change by building a range of supporting events to embed the learning from a course. While there is much debate about the time it takes to form a habit, with the client we agreed to support the learning over a period of 21 working days.
First, participants attended a two-hour bespoke “Habits of High Level Effectiveness” course. Then, for the following 21 workings days, working closely with the (brilliant) L&D Manager we designed and issued a series of interventions to embed the learning. Here is a sample of them:
Day 1 – the line manager of each participant was sent a short questionnaire to “debrief” the team member and agree a single action the person would take
Day 2 – we issued our guidance note. (This is a document that accompanies each of our courses, capturing the key learning points.) They were asked to look up information from a particular page and email the response to us to ensure they read it!
Day 3 – participants completed a “time-waster” questionnaire, capturing their key distractions
Day 4 – participants were asked to respond to an email, recording the three best tips they had taken away with them and how they had applied them
Day 5 – we issued one of the high impact slides
Day 6 – The course included an activity involving Smarties and ping-pong balls (we can tell you if you would like to know)! We sent them a ping-pong ball. Later the next week, we sent them a box of Smarties
Day 7 – We had covered the Pomodoro technique in the course so circulated the Pomodoro materials, with a reminder to segment time and take breaks
Anecdotally, not only was memory and retention increased, but improved time management and effectiveness was reported.