Training Room Etiquette

At school, the classroom may have been an uncontrolled learning environment, a room where classes are held, a collaborative environment, a blended learning for skills acquisition. Whatever your learning domain and the behaviour that was accepted, in the business world etiquette is of utmost importance, so please allow me to help you to gain the acceptable knowledge in what you need to know for those days of Training:

Housekeeping:

Always arrive slightly early. If your training starts at 8.30am, plan to arrive by 8.20am, there might be coffee and muffins waiting for you and also you can usually find yourself the best seat in the training room. For me, sitting at the back of a room I feel disengaged and I have trouble seeing the small writing that some trainers put on their slides, so sitting at the back all day is a waste of time and money on me. By arriving early, you’re ensuring you’re not running late and being flustered and if you are running late, you’ve given yourself a small buffer. There’s nothing worse than starting your day on the wrong foot.

Mobile phones should be left off, or on silent, if you’re expecting an urgent phone call or email, please pre-warn the trainer, so they can excuse you should you need to.

There will be questions that come up to the training and also questions that are irrelevant or simply not relating to the training, ‘car park’ these questions/topics for someone to follow up with or learn about after the precious training room time.

Brainstorming/Think-Tank Rules:

It has always been and will always be the rule that when you are in a Thank-Tank or Brainstorming session ‘all ideas are great ideas’, regardless of what you think of the idea, it was generated (ideation) from a person who has a great idea. All ideas make it onto the ideas board (flip chart), whether they go anywhere is another question, but all ideas start from somewhere.

Present:

The best sessions for the facilitator and participants is an interactive one. If called upon to share ideas and experiences, then do share your ideas and experiences. Of course, we all understand that there are different people in our world, those who will sing their answers with a catchy soft shoe shuffle and then there’s those who couldn’t think of anything worse then speaking out loud having every pair of eyes in the place stare at them. Any half decent facilitator will always make you feel comfortable in talking whether you’re the singer or not. Your ideas are probably the best in the room, so please do share.

Have fun:

It’s almost an unwritten rule that you must have fun. Studies show that any learning that is fun will be more successful in the long term than the opposite. However, having fun is very different to making fun of. Please be mindful that your company is paying good money to bring this person in to train you so make the most of it, don’t waste everyone’s time and the company money.

Set yourself goals:

Don’t just attend the training, be involved in it. Set yourself mini goals relating to what you want to gain from the training, then how you will relate this to your day to day roles and responsibilities. By doing this, you can show your manager at your appraisal time and prove that it was beneficial to you. Never Stop Learning! This will help your manager continue to spend money on your learning.

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