11 August 2009
Paul Smith

It's been said that prior planning, preparation and practice prevent poor performance. These are the "Seven Ps" (you may know a version with eight!) and they are especially relevant to training. The idea is to do your worrying in advance and not on the day of the course. It's a cliché, but it's true: to fail to prepare is to prepare to fail.

Audience first

In preparing, think about the subject matter and also the audience. Both are vital, but you are more likely to succeed if you think about the audience first and the subject second. What is their starting point? What do you want them to take away from the session? What will they expect from it? How can you connect it with things that matter to them?

In the past, we have laboured the fact that individuals can be prosecuted for failing to comply with health and safety law, but does that really change people's behaviour? That said, if you do start talking about the impact of safety on their lives, you will probably start to connect, because most people do want to go home safe to their partners and families; they do want to pursue their sport or hobby; and they do want to be around to see their children graduate, marry or have their own children. 

Repetition and retention

A good way of thinking about planning your material and key messages is to split them into knowledge, skills and behaviour.

Most safety training will be about conveying knowledge (what you need to know about the new site emergency procedure, for example), skills (how to risk assess or interview the witness to an incident) or attitudes/behaviours (being motivated to go out and adopt safe behaviour). Often it will be a combination of all three. An engineering colleague showed me a drawing of a component the other day and said "if you can't draw it, you can't make it". It's the same with training: if we don't know what we want to achieve, we can't possibly achieve it. So have a plan.

The next thing is to build in some variety. Research shows that most people lose interest after about 20 minutes of doing the same thing. So if your course is going to be longer than a short toolbox talk, plan ways of building in a change of activity. Use a quiz. Show a video. Get trainees to do some group work. It doesn't really matter as long as it (a) is different and (b) ties in with your key messages (you do know what they are, don't you?!).

Two things that help understanding and retention (remembering the material) are structure and repetition. It helps people if they see where you are going. So tell them what you're going to talk about, talk about it, and then recap. That way you have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the key message has been stated three times.

Style matters

Bear in mind that people vary in how they prefer to learn and so we need to think about "learning styles".

Three common learning styles are theorist, pragmatist and reflector. Theorists like to have a conceptual framework and a logical rationale for doing things. So if you cover the three reasons why we want to manage health and safety effectively, or the management model in HSG 65, that will go down well with the theorists. Pragmatists tend to be realistic and down to earth, and they respond well to a practical situation, so real examples - case studies that involve problem solving and group activities where you have to get up and do something - have a good chance of success. Reflectors like to ponder things, so a course that gives plenty of opportunity to think about a particular point should go down well with them.

Remember that these are preferences, not absolutes; no one adopts one
learning style all the time or to the exclusion of the others.

Mental space

How you convey information is important, and the best trainers will use different pathways (verbal, visual, practical) in combination.

People tend to forget a lot of what they hear. If they see information as well as hearing it, they remember more; and if they have to apply the material, later they can recall still more. But the maximum is retained where all three techniques are applied together.

Sometimes trainers do not prepare properly because they want to be as spontaneous as possible on the day. They see preparation as a straightjacket - a rigid script that will make the actual training presentation wooden rather than living.

Wanting to make it come alive on the day is a great aim, but preparing fully is actually the way to achieve it. Total confidence in all of your preparation - not only preparation of the material, but also preparation of the training room and equipment - gives you the mental space to be spontaneous on the day, responding to the actual needs of the group as you should be doing. So preparation is not the enemy of spontaneity; it is the enabler of it.

Positive visualisation

If you're worried that your training may not be well received, or that there will be difficult people on the course who you'll struggle to deal with, preparation is one of the best ways of building your confidence.

You won't lie awake worrying about it the night before because you know you've given it your best shot: you've prepared everything that can possibly be prepared and you've got things to show them that are absolutely going to blow their socks off!

There is a technique much used by athletes and other sports people that can also be applied to safety training: positive visualisation. Imagine you are driving a car through a narrow opening. If you look ahead at where you want to go, you'll sail through the narrow gap. But focus too much on the obstacles and you'll probably hit them.

Similarly, with training, if you picture things going badly, they probably will. Whereas if you picture yourself presenting confidently to an appreciative and motivated audience, who hang on your every word... Well, I can't guarantee it will happen just like that, but at least you're setting yourself up to succeed rather than to fail. Which is what preparation is all about.

Next month we will look at getting the venue right. 
 
Paul Smith is a chartered fellow of IOSH and has more than 25 years' training experience. He is head of safety, health and environment at the E.ON Engineering Academy. Click here to send him an email.

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