I’m all about creating a sumptuous banquet of learning opportunities that participants can’t help themselves but dive into.  One way to do that is to do things differently.

Doing things differently gets our brain’s attention.  “Hey you gray matter – pay attention – something unusual is happening.” Synapses fire, eyes sparkle and our participant’s attention is in the bag.

Here’s one way to do things differently as a corporate trainer – put your learning on a map or a graph.

How would you diagram the line between power and compensation?  Try this.

What about how creative destruction can be fun or awful?  See this graph.

All graphs are from This is indexed – originally “a little project that allows Jessica Hagy, the author, to make fun of some things and sense of others without resorting to doing actual math.” You can even buy a book of postcards with the graphs and venn diagrams.

Apparently doing things differently gets attention as the site’s not so little anymore.

What can you do differently in your training?

As a trainer you’re likely passionate about your content matter (if you’re not, uh, maybe you shouldn’t be teaching it).  You probably have tried and true methods that you’re confident in and killer hip pocket activities that you have at the ready.

Great!  Really. These are good signs of being assertive, on track and stubborn (in a good way).

As a trainer you likely also have things that you’re hanging onto … well … because.  Things that you’re stubborn about in not a good way.  Things you’re unwilling to try, people you don’t like to work with, activities you shy away from.

Some of them likely have good reason.

The trick is telling which are good to hang onto and which, as a good trainer who is constantly growing and developing, which you should let drop.

Here’s the same thing, told from a baboon’s point of view.  Hanging onto the seeds got him captured (not so good).  Hanging onto the seeds led the bushman to water (very good thing).  Stubborn?  You bet!  Should he have dropped the seeds?

You be the judge.  What are your training seeds?  Things that you could let go of to avoid an imagined negative consequence?

Attention: if you are a monk, currently in a sensory deprivation chamber or on a deserted island there’s no need to read this post.  Really.  Please go back to what you were doing.

If none of the above apply to you please read on.

Our brains aren’t sponges they’re sieves.

Unless you fall into one of the three categories above, you are constantly bombarded with things vying for your attention.  So many things that it’s a sheer impossibility to pay attention to it all.   From ads, emails, tweets, congested traffic, meetings, music, background conversations … our brains are constantly filtering out what isn’t important or urgent.

As a result we pay attention to what we think is important, relevant or urgent.

This is helpful.  It focuses us.  It saves us from the insanity of trying to read, know, be, do and have everything.

Alas our sieve can get ripped and let important things through.  And then, unless we’re on top of it, we’ll only find what we’re looking for.  And that’s dangerous.

One of my first jobs was working retail.  We went through a lot of managers.  All types from the guy who got so angry he pulled his phone out of its socket and threw it across to the room, to the guy who seemed to think it was funny coming onto a young girl.

Then there was ‘Mr. Chart’.  In his wisdom he had a large chart drawn up, with all of the employee’s names across the bottom and increments of moola along the other axis.  Our task?  As employees we were to watch our fellow employees for mistakes they made.  Then we were to calculate how much money we’d saved the store by pointing out the error and that sum would go on our chart, by our name.

It was a race to the bottom.  Everyone got busy backstabbing and spying.  General mayhem ensued.

The result?  We only found what we were looking for.  Mistakes.  Errors.  Gaffes.

We missed all the opportunities to find out what was working, the examples of great customer services, employee suggestions for new ways of doing things that would add to the company’s development.

Nope, none of that.  We were focused on what we were looking for.

What are you looking for?  As a trainer what do you look for – in your participants, in your content, in learning opportunities?  And in the process, what’s escaping your sieve?

Recently I wrote a post about two scenarios:

1. social media as a halloween grab bag, where you reach out into the dark and don’t know what you’re going to bump up against or

2. social media as a place to meet, connect and build relationships, like meeting in a gorgeous field of flowers.

Regarding the latter I’ve made a wonderful connection with a woman named Sam who, after I’d asked her what she’s about and she responded, she asked me of the same.

Here’s your reply Sam.

I am more than the sum of my parts.

I am the crossroads, where family, friends, travels, education, authors and even strangers have brushed their influences upon me.

• I’m as comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt working with people in poverty as I am in a suit in the C-suite (no heels, come on I’m 5’10”)

• I work with professional comedians, because I believe humour is a gateway to powerful learning

• I was born to teach and train, it’s in my blood.  I enjoy nothing more than setting a smorgasbord of diverse learning opportunities that’s so sumptuous that participants can’t help but help themselves

• I once lived in a house that had a jail cell

• I went to school on a ship that sailed around the world

• I’ve worked with the former President of Mozambique, the Honourable Joaquim Chissano, the United Nations, and the Olympics

• When I was young I worked with people who were autistic, people in a psychiatric boarding home, sex offenders, severely physically challenged folk, and French kids in a daycare (no better language teachers).

• I’ve always been fascinated with all faces of diversity which, decades ago now, convinced me that becoming a fashion designer wasn’t the route I should take (though I was accepted into fashion design school).

• I was an entrepreneur at 13 when I started selling boxwood to clients

• I know what the term Lusophone means

• I have been inside the ring of a camel wrestling competition

• I have been a single married mama

• I lost 30 pounds more than 2 years ago and along the way learned much about the process of change & how to affect change

• I am delightfully public and intensely private

That’s me.

And you?  Who are you?

While much of the planet is now accessible via social media it still feels like a Halloween grab bag.  You remember the kind when you were a kid?  You’d reach into a dark space, touch something (usually spaghetti masquerading as brains) and you’d have to figure out what it was.

That’s what social media can be.  Reaching out into the dark, not sure what you’re going to bump up against.  Endless forays with little, no or questionable ‘return’.

That’s one scenario.

If you are strategic however social media can be an entirely different scenario, like the field that ancient philosopher Rumi (1207 to 1273) speaks of:

Beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Here is an example of how to take the Halloween grab bag and make it into Rumi’s field, where you can connect, listen and build relationships.

I recently sent out an e-newsletter with a contest, saying the 10th person to sign up to receive my blog would win a gift certificate (Amazon or ITunes, their choice).

I saw that the 10th person was someone named Sam who I emailed to say they’d won.  I wanted to announce who’d won in the next newsletter.  No response.  I emailed again, saying I’d need to move onto the next person if I didn’t hear back, which would have been a shame.  To my delight Sam emailed back, which started a lovely connection.

I asked her – “And you?  What do you do, what are you about?”

To which she replied –

“Who is Sam?  Grew up in the 60s and am in my 60s.  Highlights of Sam’s past, include exec and producer in Hollywood, child violinist, opera student, actress, show girl, countess, multi lingual world traveler, mother of a beautifully realized, happily married and creative daughter.

Have long been an activist for social justice and the environment.  My writing has been published in local papers, and have done pr, marketing and business writing.  Currently, and despite being technologically challenged, I have a wee blog that’s targeting older women; a drop in place for crones/seekers in search of making a difference through choices made with life supporting values.  It needs work.  Up til now, my posts have drifted in too many directions.

It’s been a long road, sometimes uphill, sometimes the wind’s been at my back!  I remain ever hopeful, sometimes foolish..”

She also said “When you have time, it’s your turn to tell me who Lee-Anne is!”

That’s for the next post.

In the meantime, thank you Sam, thank you for connecting, for sharing and for turning a Halloween grab bag into a field of lovely wildflowers.  I’ll meet you there.

P.S. All info about Sam shared with her permission.

The saying, curiousity killed the cat, means if you’re too curious harm may come to you.  That’s true.  In some circles curiousity causes problems (say if you’re a bank teller trying to figure out how to steal money) but in the case of corporate training curiousity is worth its weight in gold.

Curiousity opens the gate to learning, it primes participants for wanting to slough off indifference and dive into learning.

Our brains are built to not only be curious but to satisfy that curiousity.  It’s called the knowledge gap (read more about it in Dan & Chip Heath’s Made to Stick book). The knowledge gap is what keeps us awake late at night when we know we should go to bed, watching the end of a particularly bad TV show …. simply because we want to find out what happens – who killed the guy, who won the race etc.

A great example of creating curiousity is from the Fast Company article ‘How to Make Corporate Training Rock’.  In it, the trainer creates videos, similar to The Office to, get this,  help ‘redesign the company’s ethics-and-compliance training program’.  Compliance?  Snore!  Yawn!  Yet through the use of humour and pop culture (in this case video clips similar to The Office) they created a knowledge gap that employees were ridiculously keen to fill, vying to be the first one to see the next video installment.

How did it affect compliance?  Unfortunately the article didn’t say, however my guess is that with that kind of priming, that kind of curiousity, the cats were sitting fat and pretty.

How can you create more curiousity with your training?

What’s the number one things that drives all human beings?  And what then is the number one motivator trainers need to know about when designing and delivering learning?

This thing is simple.

Create it in your training group and learning will happen much more easily.

Dismiss it as unimportant and you’re working against human evolution, making the brain work waaaaaay harder than it has to, taking precious energy away from learning (at least the kind of learning that you had planned).

Befriend it and you’re much more likely to create a smorgasbord of rich learning opportunities.

Ignore it and the smorgasbord of learning opportunities turns into something as appealing as dry bread and stale water.

“It” is belonging.  Yep, it’s the number one motivator according to Jeremy Rifkin and the compelling, animated video below.  The drive to belong creates ‘homo-empathicus’ where to ‘empathize is to civilize.’

What does belonging have to do with training?  Create a sense of belonging in your ‘classroom’ (no matter whether your classroom is a boardroom, a lecture hall or a plenary session at a conference) and your participants can relax into learning.

Important caveat: ‘belonging’ does not mean we all hug and kiss each other.  Belonging simply means that participants feel welcome.  It means issues of access and inclusion are considered.

The post included a short assessment for examining where your creative strengths lie and where you may be falling short.

The good news?  Creativity can be taught, so whether you need to dig deep into your DNA to find it or whether it’s riding in your veins skin deep take a look at the collated results of the 6 question assessment.  (And if you haven’t yet taken the assessment simply click the link above and you’ll be taken there).

Each question on the assessment related to an element of the E.S.C.A.P.E. model, I co-developed with the great Dolly Hopkins.

e = evoke

s = shades of gray

c = cobble

a = assumptions

p = praise and celebrate

e = engage

Here are the results in order.

More than 1/2 of the respondents had no clue or only a little clue about how to evoke their creativity.  If you know how to call it out of hiding when you need it kudos, shake those pom poms.  If you don’t know how to evoke your creativity, spend some time thinking about what sets the stage for your creativity to show its head.  For example do you need a quiet environment, free of distractions or is a noisy, cacophonic environment more your taste?

More than 75% of repsondents shone at Shades of Gray or being able to look at things other than in a yes/no, black/white, either/or kind of way.  This is huge for ramping up creativity.  Not being able to look at things in shades of gray is the biggest killer of idea generation, as in: that’ll never work, we’ve tried that before, that’s too expensive.  If you need to work on finding your shades of gray then shoo the critic who’s whispering in your ear from your shoulder and let anything go for now, knowing that you’ll be back later to weigh the pros and cons.

More than 75% of respondents were able to Cobble or be able to put disparate things together to come up with something new.  An example is using the idea of a ball point pen to invent roll on deodorant.  Who needs to invent the wheel – put things that have already been created together in a new way.  If you need to work on your cobbling skills practice picking random words and creating a story for how they’re related e.g. what does a dessert hare have to do with a tape measure?

Respondents go against research findings which say that when something’s not working, we tend to simply repeat whatever we’ve been doing the same way, over and over (knocking our head against the wall in the vain hope that the wall will somehow move). In other words we can identify our assumptions and move on.

A critical skill here is recognizing when we’re making assumptions because assumptions will block our ability to ramp up our creativity.  An example is a company, who in trying to reduce drinking and driving, asked themselves how can they could increase (yes increase) drinking and driving.

They turned the assumption on its head for a moment (that increasing drinking and driving would be a bad thing).  This led to the invention of a machine that would simulate what your vision would be like after 1, 2, 3, etc drinks.  The machines, installed in bars, were a hit.

More than a third of respondents didn’t have a way to praise and celebrate their creative accomplishments.  Too busy moving onto the next goal me thinks.  If we create a plan ahead of time though that’s a big motivating factor.  Hint: it has to specifically celebrate creativity, not just completing the project, landing the account etc.

Almost 60% of respondents go about a creative project haphazardly, which leads to the last principle which is engage.  When it’s time for the petal to hit the metal research shows a plan is a good thing, it’s a launching pad for boosted creativity.  So get a plan, any plan and go forth.

Are you an experienced trainer, wannabe trainer or have just started dipping your toes into the world of training?  Either way you need to know if you’re a Terrier trainer or a Labrador puppy trainer.  Here’s how to tell:

1. If something’s not working in a training do you look at it as an opportunity to learn something new, dig in and explore (acknowledging your fears about doing so but pushing through)?

2. If something’s not working in a training do you focus on getting through it as soon as possible perhaps by being cute and charming?

3. Are you tenacious when it comes to training, hanging in and hanging on  and pushing through all the ups and downs in order to create an environment for great learning?

4. Does your yearning to be liked sometimes get in the way of creating optimal learning situations?

5. Do you take leaps of imagination and try new things in your training, being prepared to fail and possibly meet resistance from your clients and participants?

6. In your training do you do what is likely to be most popular and liked, sometimes taking the easy way out?

If you replied yes to mostly odd-numbered questions you’ve self-assessed as a Terrier.

Terrier trainers have an instinct for digging deep, they are confident and most of all tenacious.  Nothing gets in the way of creating a great training, they’ll do almost anything to make a training magical so that it pops, is relevant and able to be put to use.

If you replied yes to mostly even-numbered questions you’ve self-assessed as a Labrador puppy.

Labrador puppy trainers need to be liked and as a result sometimes take the easy way out, not pushing the boundaries or exploring barriers.  For example they may let inappropriate comments that a participant makes slide because it would be too uncomfortable or risky to bring it up.  Cute, even adorable they look for opportunities to get scratched behind the ears and wag their tails.

What kind of trainer are you?  More importantly does it match the kind of trainer you want to be?

Food for thought.  Bones to chew on.

Footnote: the idea for this post came from a conversation with my social media mentor Julie Szabo from Capulet Communications when she was talking about needing to have a Terrier instinct for social media.