Top 10 Reasons Team Members HATE Training! (Part 2 of 2)

I get asked this ALL the time… “Why do our team members HATE training?”

In part 1 of this 2 part post I shared the first 5 reasons why team members hate training… if you missed it please check it out here LINK.

Here’s a reminder of the first 5...

10 - Wrong time of day

9 - Too much PPT

8 - Lecture, Lecture and more Lecture

7 - Not relevant

6 - 10 lbs of stuff in 5 lb sock

Here we go the Top 5 reasons team members HATE training…

5 - Seen as punishment

In the olden days a dog would chase the newspaper delivery person…

Why did they do that?

Because they didn’t like the newspaper? Because they didn’t like the deliver person?

The answer is simple…

The dog’s owner would roll up the newspaper and smack the dog on the nose when it made a mistake.

So the dog sees the newspaper as bad or punishment...

Many team members see training as punishment.

In the past they were told that if they didn’t do something or they made a mistake they would need to go to “training”.

It was held over team members head as a stick to be used if they didn’t perform at the correct level or in the best way.

The bad part about this is it will take a serious investment in time, energy, marketing and money to change this.

It’s like creating a new habit or changing a culture, it’s a slow process that takes consistent effort. 

The belief that training is a punishment didn’t happen overnight and correcting it won’t happen overnight either.

4 - No WIIFM

As we get further into the list the items are more and more important.

Back on number 6 putting too much stuff into the training creates a negative feeling or belief but not giving team members WIIFM just undermines the efforts.

Before you comment saying team members should “know” WIIFM or why this is important to them… they should, but they don’t.

To reduce the resistance and hatred you want to make WIIFM clear.

Ooops - WIIFM - What’s In It For Me

Team members need to know clearly what is in it for them to learn the material and change.

Please don’t go old school on me and say…”What’s in it for them… their job, that’s what!”

I understand people should do things out of pride and personal satisfaction but that is not the way the world is today.

You want to make it very clear as early as you can how this training benefits them personally!

Think about it…

Does it reduce stress?

Help them make more $$$?

Get promoted???

These are what the team members care about and you want to focus on how it specifically helps them.

3 - Not participant centered & engaging

Please look back at number 8 & 9 before you read this… CLICK HERE

Powerpoint and lecture our antithetical to participant centered and engaging!

Lecture is about the “teacher, trainer, lecturer”... participant centered it about the “team member, learner, participant”.

The more the team member experiences, says and does the more they learn.

The other part of this that is so valuable is that the more team members do the more they ‘enjoy” the learning. When they are active in the learning process they enjoy it more and hate it less.

Think about all the things that team members could say or do during a training session that the facilitator doesn’t really need to?

Socrates said everyone knows everything all we need to do is ask the right questions.

In our Train the Trainer sessions this is where we spend the vast majority of our time.

It’s always fun and enlightening when you see facilitators make the shift from “old school telling” to “asking and engaging”!

You can actually feel the difference in the room.

2 - It’s BORING!

Down to the final 2…

Think for a moment… you’re sitting in a movie and you think… this is so boring.

Why did you have that thought?

What caused you to, in your head, leave the movie and go to real life and say...This is boring?

The short answer is you were not engaged.

The movie didn’t provide enough engagement to keep your attention and interest.

6 Things that create boring in training…

Lecture

Death By Powerpoint

Not knowing why this matters to me

High level of repetition

Spending 30 min on a 5 min topic

Long periods of inactivity

Go back and look at your training. How long are team members sitting and inactive? If it’s over 10 min you need to shuffle things around and add some movement to keep them focused and learning.

1 - Fool me once…

We have an amazing dog her name is Rindi and we think she is the smartest dog in the world and smarter than some people I’ve met. ;)

Almost exactly 1 year ago we moved into our new home!

On day 2 of the move we were bringing boxes and furniture into the house through the garage and Rindi came over on that trip.

As she jumped out of the car and ran into the house the door into the house closed on her. (Not hard just closed…)

To this day when she comes to that door you can sense her trepidation. She’ll either sit back from it and run through when it’s open or walk up slowly with her tail down. 

She learned her lesson that the door is NOT her friend and it inflicts pain!

This is the number 1 reason team members hate training… either when they were in school, at previous employers or maybe even at your company they were “forced” to go to a training and it was painful.

Please understand they could have been promised that the training was valuable and maybe even fun but after 10 minutes they wanted to chew off their arm and run out.

It really is that simple… when training breaks a real or implied promise about what to expect they are setting all training up for failure.

I ended part one with this...If people walk out of training wanting more you’re winning the battle of “hating” training!  (It’s still true here!)

Please know that I’ll always to encourage you to take action at the end of our posts.

Pick 1 and only 1…

Strip 1 item from a training that is bloated and overloaded.

Pick 1 of your trainings and scrap it and start over so it makes team members look forward to training so they want to grow and improve.

Pluck the boring out! Take one of your trainings and identify 3-5 areas that are BORING. Yes you can look at the 6 common areas from above. Remove some of the boring and get started moving training in the right direction.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention. It goes without saying that it means the absolute world to me. I hope this piece helped you in even the slightest bit and if it did, please share it with a friend that could also benefit from this.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. What do you think? Please comment below...the more discussion the more learning happens!