PAUL NYAUSARU
Interacting with your trainees by asking or answering questions can make for a very dynamic training and learning environment, where everyone is learning directly or indirectly from your responses to the questions being asked.
It has been noted that trainees will come away from the training session feeling good at being active part of the training process.
Of course, we can say the opposite is also true too.
There will be some in your participants who will leave your training session, feeling frustrated, confused, and/or upset at your response to their particular questions or the lack of, or because you didn’t answer there question the way they wanted to hear it.
Depending on what method of instruction you are conducting, managing and answering questions from your trainees is an integral part of your training setting.
Your trainees will quickly adapt to your style of presentation, if you ask a lot of questions during the training session resulting in them paying attention just a little closer to what you are discussing.
On the other hand, if you develop the habit of asking only a couple of questions or no questions per training session, they also quickly learn that too.
When you make time during your presentation or training for questions and answers, these guidelines may be helpful to use when asking and answering questions from your audience.
Always turn and face directly to the person asking the question, in some cases you may need to repeat the question again. This will enable everyone in the audience to hear it and benefit from the question and your answer.
In a situation where you are not immediately able to respond to the person asking the question do not ignore them. Make every effort possible to acknowledge that person and their question by either a hand signal or with a nod of the head that you heard them.
If you do not know the answer to the question being asked, it is prudent to indicate that you may need to have some time to research on it an provide an answer during the next session.
Trainees will always respect a trainer who acknowledges that he/she still has more to learn. The worst that thing you as a trainer can do, is to respond with off the wall answer.
As trainer, there is need for you to remain in control of the training session and put on the check trainees who are out to disrupt the learning process. It is best to put up mechanism that will assist you screen those trainees coming up with questions that are designed to disrupt the smooth flow of the lesson.
This could be by way of quickly giving an answer to the question and move on the next point or asking the trainee to discuss the question with you after the session. So, it is important to manage properly the way you, as trainer manages the use of questions during your training sessions.
Paul Nyausaru is an HR Practitioner and leadership coach. For all your HR interventions and leadership development training you can get in touch with him on WhatsApp/call +263774062756 or Email pnyausaru@gmail.com
