Being asked for input makes a person feel valued.
And being able to see the results of the input contributes tremendously to that feeling.
When I was in Secondary 2, one of my seniors was writing an article for a magazine targeted at teenagers.
He was tasked to visit and write a review about an unusual restaurant that served fried scorpions, ants, and the like. As I understood it, the concept was grounded in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Because he was coming up with questions to ask the owner, he asked if I might be able to come up with one.
I gave him the first question that came to my mind - "Where did the supplies of scorpions and other exotic ingredients come from?"
He said that it was a good question and, if I recall correctly, I saw the question and answer in the published article a couple of months later.
It wasn't some huge accomplishment on my part, but I felt that I had contributed in some small way, and I felt valued because my senior could easily have left it out or not bothered to ask me to begin with.
In part because of this, I frequently ask my students for their thoughts on how to improve their learning experience. If I can, I implement it as soon as possible, so that they can see that their suggestions do make a difference.
I Successfully Conducted my First Online Workshop on Conducting Workshops
On 16 July 2021, I successfully conducted a mini-workshop online.
This was for a group of individuals, all experts in their own fields, who wanted to learn how they can conduct their own workshops.
As they weren’t educators themselves, they weren’t sure about how to go about it “properly” - where to start, what to say, what to do.
And I quickly assured them that there wasn’t one “proper” way to do it. It all depends on where they are starting from and what they are trying to accomplish.
Because they already have valuable experience and knowledge, getting them to come up with something to run a workshop on wasn’t difficult.
Once we got the topic and sub-topics settled, I taught them the 3 most important parts of running a workshop:
1) Preparation
2) Opening
3) Closing
I firmly believe that the best way to alleviate anxiety and feel confident is to be as prepared as possible, making the correct types of preparation.
To help the participants of the mini-workshop, I prepared a set of templates and scripts for them for each of the 3 parts.
We briefly talked about the Delivery of the content, during which I told them that they don’t need to feel like they have to speak like a world-class speaker because:
a) They are not giving a speech.
b) In teaching, well-prepared content is way more important than delivery skills.
We rounded off the session with Questions, and they asked some really interesting ones, like “How do I engage a bored participant?” and “How should I structure a workshop to sell my services?”
We took about 30 minutes to go through all the questions before we ended.
Based on their feedback, they learned a lot of useful tips and were particularly grateful for the templates and scripts.
I intend to run at least one more round of this mini-workshop - I just need to set a date and get it going!
I Had An Epiphany. But It Was So Counter-Culture, I Initially Kept It To Myself.
Some months ago, after some conversations I had, I had an epiphany.
It could explain, at least in part, some of the nagging doubts I’ve been having throughout this year.
This is what I realised about myself, and I wrote it down in these words:
I DON'T want to touch as many lives as possible.
Before you frown any deeper, there is a second part:
I want to deeply impact a very few.
For so many years, I keep hearing advice about increasing my reach so I can impact as many lives as possible.
For example, I hear of music stars who record a single song and, because it reaches so many of their fans so quickly through so many channels, they earn a tidy income from the exposure. Their fans convert the people around them into more fans, advertisers can’t wait to sign them up for endorsement deals, and they get invited to exclusive events and perform on ever-larger stages.
It’s all about gaining leverage and using it to get yourself out of exchanging time for money. In the music star’s case, the recording of the song required spending time once. After that, it constantly ‘works for’ the star.
It sounded logical. And it was.
And I kept hearing this, especially from well-meaning fellow educators and trainers, especially those I knew from networking events and meetups.
Yet, there was always something about it that didn’t sit quite right with me. I didn’t know what it was, until recently.
It was the ‘volume’ of people that I was being told I had to reach that was bothering me. But why? What could have brought this on?
As I dug a little deeper, I was reminded of the times when I just started being a trainer and got affected by less-than-stellar feedback. Though these incidents didn’t happen often, every time they did, I felt bad.
Eventually, I learned to remove my focus on the negative feedback because they were the tiny minority. Most of my feedback was good. Some were great!
Why should I have to feel low if I had already tried multiple times to engage the student who ended up deciding that he/she didn’t want to be there in the first place and was adamant about keeping a bad attitude about it?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on those who were eager to learn and apply themselves?
And these were the memories that made me realise that I had known all along that what I wanted to do was to focus - very sharply - on the very few upon whom I know I can have the greatest impact because we were compatible and we found each other at the right place at the right time. Sounds almost like a love story, doesn’t it?
I was then reminded of three students that I taught. Two of them went on to pursue education paths in the subject matter that I taught them, one locally and one overseas. In recent conversation, they expressed their gratitude for my being part of their decisions to learn more.
Another one became my colleague - a fellow trainer - teaching the same types of courses that I do even today.
Out of the thousands of students I’ve had, of whom I still keep in touch with a few, these were three that pointedly remind me about why I do what I do.
This is what I want to keep doing - to find the very few for whom I can deliver the deepest impact and help them effect the greatest change.
Doubtlessly, it will entail a certain amount of ‘outreach’, but this recent realisation has sharpened my focus and it will feature strongly in my goals for the upcoming year.
Celebrating Teachers' Day at the 132nd APTS Meeting
On 31st Aug 2017, I presented The Trainer's Toolbox at the 132nd APTS Meeting.
Though it was targeted at newer trainers, the veteran trainers affirmed that they learned something as well. Now, before you think that they were just 'being nice', allow me to explain how the meeting went.
As a new initiative suggested by the committee of APTS, member speakers will give a presentation that will be subject to evaluation. Feedback will be given at the end of the presentation so that the speaker can be alerted to any possible blind spots and areas of improvement. This was all explained beforehand so the member speakers will know what they are getting themselves into.
I started my presentation by expounding on apples as fruit associated with knowledge. With that information in mind, I had a small gift for each trainer present. As they, too, are teachers, I gave each of them apple-flavoured candy. I had considered actual apples but I found candy to be more portable and less perishable.
The presentation proper continued, as I covered points on how to make any training session impactful by utilising specific techniques and taking certain actions.
Though my presentation went slightly overtime, it was well-received and I was applauded for keeping a consistent, polished delivery.
This was deemed worthy of comment as most of my fellow trainers agreed that, should they have known that they were being evaluated, they would have been more than a little distracted.
In turn, I assured them that it wasn't anything close to natural talent but a result of constant, dedicated practice over many years and that they, too, can achieve similar results.
The areas of improvement mainly revolved around the content I was using - how certain areas could be clarified further, certain parts could be more concise and other parts could be expanded.
There was also a very useful bit of feedback on providing more audience-related examples. As the audience that evening would be trainers, the examples and stories to be presented could be more related to training and improving oneself as a trainer.
All in all, it was a fruitful (pardon the pun) evening and I am glad that many of the trainers took something useful back with them. If possible, I'd love to give another presentation.
After all, one can never get too much practice.
