NLP and Accelerated Learning for Business Results
Tom, a senior manager in the print and media industry has had some amazing results since attending my NLP Practitioner Course last autumn. He told me that he has taken a week long training course and brought it down to just a single day…and then tested this on the worse case scenario to make sure it all works. Below is a text book version of how to design and deliver technical training for business results.
NLP Business Results
Before looking through how Tom has achieved this great result consider the implications in terms of business results. Tom has taken a five day course and reduced it to one day whilst also increasing the quality of the course and the motivation of delegates. If you could do that for your business what impact would it have?
Integrating NLP and Accelerated Learning into Business
Note that Tom is not a trainer; he has not got a background in training design and methodology. All Tom has had is a good NLP Practitioner Course and The Understanding of Music Seminar which is a great model for Accelerated Learning.
I expect graduates from my practitioner trainings to do great things, but even I was astounded at the result Tom achieved. So I have asked him to write it down for me.
Below are Tom’s brief notes on what he set out to do and how he went about it. I was amazed when I read this through because there are so many Accelerated Learning ideas, NLP techniques and just great training concepts in the notes below.
I was originally going to go through Tom’s notes, adding comments describing the NLP Techniques and explaining the Accelerated Learning Principles . But the trainers will already spot the training design principles, the Accelerated Learning Specialists will spot all the Accelerated Learning Principles and the NLPers will see all the NLP Techniques anyway. So, raw and unedited…here is the Why, What and How of taking a week long course and turning it into one day.
Please remember Tom is not a trainer, he has just been on a good NLP Practitioner Course.
NLP Business Case Study
I kept getting told that page layout was a very complicated process which would take a week of intensive training to learn, and then months to master. I set myself the challenge of teaching the skill in a DAY, and to a master level too!
As my subject I chose a nervy self confessed technophobe who nearly collapsed with fear when I said I wanted him to learn this skill.
Just one day (in fact, six hours) later he had not only mastered the skill but approached me the next week asking when I was going to let him loose to apply his new skills in the real world.
Here’s a few things I did:
1. Find out what DOESN’T need to be taught? Scrap it. This was a major step. Yes, in an ideal world there is a lot of advanced stuff, but the brief was to learn the skill and master it, not to be the Picasso of page design.
2. Once you know all the basics, categorise them. Try to get it into seven categories max.
3. In each category, what are the steps one by one? Even basic ones like turn the computer on!
4. Present them in colour with boxes rather than as a dry list.
5. Don’t make these steps the bible. Learn as you go on and don’t be afraid to adjust your notes as you find them insufficient. Let them know that you messed up and this is your mistake. Watch how they never make the mistake you made!!
6. Ensure that the person sticks to the notes at first.
7. Don’t put them under any pressure to learn. Tell them this is your responsibility and the step by step notes will always be there.
8. Make it sound like they’ve got far more on in the hour ahead and then watch their faces light up as they rip through it.
9. Bamboozle them, then simplify. For example, “there are 568 ways of doing this page (technically there are), but I’m going to teach you this in five seconds with two special rules, it’s my secret!”
10. Give funny catchy phrases to the problems which arise. For example, I used the phrase “phantom lines” and heard him mumbling “I’ll get that phantom line”. I’m not sure what the technical term is, and I don’t care, he solved the problem.
11. What in the program is just jargon? For example colours in the page layout program are called “swatches” (why???). When I learned the program, it was just assumed by the teacher that we knew this and I spent so long looking for the bloody colours panel. Drill the jargon and its real language translation, and do it away from the computer in a relaxed environment.
12. Do the toughest things first then let them know they’ve just completed the hardest bit and it’s downhill from here.
13. Tell them every hour how much they’ve progressed. “You’ve now done two days worth of academic training, and it’s only 11am!”
14. Tell them they will be surprised at how easy it is to learn. (the assumption here is that they’ll learn it anyway).
15. Tell them to take their time, up to the point of slow motion when they struggle.
16. Tell them that you WANT to see them make a mistake and shout “WELL DONE” when they mess things up spectacularly.
17. Give them a sense of achievement at the end. A certificate or simply a warm handshake.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
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