A Rendezvous with Training

In the last one year since I started working I had the opportunity or should I use the phrase a forced opportunity to attend a dozen training programs. The company I work in organized quite a few of them and other ones which I attended where out of my own pocket. Two weeks back I attended a two day workshop on COBIT 4.0. COBIT stands for Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology. It is mainly used in streamlining the IT controls within an organization and is being widely used in the industry especially in US for the Sarbanes Oxley Compliance. Well this article would definitely not get into the nitty-gritties of the COBIT but would throw some lights on the commonly seen uncommon scenes across all training programs.

Whether the participants are highly attentive and have spent a huge sum to attend the program, they shall and will yawn within the first 10-15 min of the start of the program. Coming to the classification of the participants, there are close to five types which I have come across. There may be more over which the people may have their varied opinions.
The first group “FRONT BENCHERS” represents themselves as the active, enthusiastic, intelligent and highly inquisitive group. The sole motive of this group is to
1. Raise questions every few minutes
2. Ask about the things which are going to come next in the session beforehand itself
3. Sit in the session and act as if they already know everything about the training program already and its only that they have come for some kind of time pass
4. Test the trainer’s abilities in delivering the content and
5. Ensure that they keep on discussing amongst themselves all the time

On the extreme end there is a group “DREAMWORLD” which is totally cut off from the training program itself and is in their own world altogether. This is a set of people who came to the training program because they were forced to do so. They have absolutely no interest in what is happening in the session and are busy in gossiping about the hotel, the food which was served, the HI-TEA which is going to come next and duration of every session. These people will normally sit together that too at the last seats only. Occasionally (refers to once in the entire session) one person would get up and ask a question which will not have any relevance to the topic under discussion. As Ram puts it for these people (You do not disturb me, I will not disturb you) is correctly applicable for these people.

Then we have a set of people “HARDWORKERS” who are totally new to the topic of the training and are trying hard not to doze off and learn something out of the program. They are hardworking, dedicated and question once in a while. They usually neither challenge the participants nor do they try to be too smart with the trainer. But the people in this set are really serious and once they understand the session or the training program well, they can give nightmares to the original trainers.

Afterwards, there is another set of people “QUINTESSENTIALS”. These people do not belong to any of these categories but are more oriented towards asking lot of questions which are highly relevant to the topic under discussion. These people actually take notes seriously, give presentations if required, complete the exercises given on time and religiously follow every part of the training. These people believe in getting the best out of the training. This set of people usually does not doze off and are always fresh and charged up during the entire course of the session. Usually this will be the lowest percentage set amongst the entire batch.

In the end there is this last set of people “DOCUMENTATION Group”. This is the most unique set among the above mentioned ones. These people irrespective of the session are most interested in the course material of the session, the handouts, the pamphlets, feedback forms and the courseware in the form of printouts. To be on the dot, these people are interested in what we call as the HARDCOPY part of the session. These people usually get restless if the notes are not provided or the printouts are in bad shape or the glasses kept on the table are not clean. They also are the time keepers of the session and keep on showing symbols whenever possible to ensure that schedule does not slip. All in all, this set is one who does a typical admin person’s job in a training session.

Well this was a brief description of the kind of people one can find in a training session. If you have any other option, do let me know. Hope you enjoy reading the stuff.