Key competences

Many people think that conducting trainings is very easy. You just need to stand up and convey the content to the audience. Against all appearances it is not that easy. Bringing and keeping awareness and recipient's interest requires good preparation and using proper techniques. Can anyone conduct trainings with the same success

Couch or a trainer should distinguish himself/herself with proper features. The most important ones are of course those of training subject area. Good substantive preparation is crucial - without it it would be difficult to convey knowledge to others. You don't have to be an expert - unless the training is on professional level. However, you should have the issue taped in order to know what you are talking about.

A good couch not only knows what he is saying but also the way he is saying it. Therefore it's important to:

• speak clearly,
• have a good diction,
• have good language competences, correct articulation, avoiding language mistakes,
• to match the words to the situation,
• to keep the right pace of the speech,
• to keep the eye contact with the audience,
• to have the ability to catch their interest.

As you can see, good preparation for a training is not only about getting familiar with the subject area, but also caring about the presence. All of these factors will impact the involvement of the audience and will determine whether the presentation will be successful. The good news is that majority of these competences can be achieved by self-taught and self training.

Charisma or preparation?

Training is the time when the instructor presents to the audience the knowledge on a given topic. It may seem that the essence is to be prepared substantively and to know the topic very well. On the other hand, even the presentation prepared in the best substantive way may not be a success if the presenter will not be able to catch the interest of the audience. Therefore the answer to the question whether what's more important - charisma or preparation, is not that unambiguous.

Charisma is a complex of feautres which make a person stand out from the crowd. Thanks to charisma, such person catches the attention of others and is able to make others follow him/her. He/she also can interest the recipient in the story told. When wondering about the essence of charisma in trainings, it's important to know that an expert in a given topic, besides the knowledge, is not always able to convey it respectively. Also, stress can appear - a lot of people are scared of public appearances, even if it takes place on an online training platform.

On the other hand, when preparing training, one should also care about planning the speech in such way that it catches attention of the audience. For that, charisma is not needed, because a lot of things can be learned. The rules of conducting good presentations contain:

• maintaining open body posture,
• maintaining eye contact with the audience,
• engaging the audience for example by asking questions,
• keeping the audience's attention by, for example, telling stories connected with the presented topic, jokes,
• caring about calm but not monotonous tone of voice,
• indicating the stage of the presentation to the listeners, marking the moment of proceeding to another point of the program.

It is not important whether it is studying online, an online platform or presenting before real audience at a lecture hall. It is important to remember to always catch the listener's attention and to convey the knowledge in the most accessible way.

Plan of action

The key to success is not only conveying the knowledge in an interesting way, but also to cover correctly the presentation plan. Chaos will not help the presenter nor the listeners. How to make a good plan then?

First and foremost we should remember that a good, logic and consistent plan not only helps the presenter but also supports the learning process. When every issue come from another, it's easier to acquire the message, which increases the participants' motivation and encourage them to active participation. In case of chaotic program, in which the issues will repeat and which lacks consistence, the training will not be effective. Even the best speaker will not be able to engage the recipients fully.

Creating the program should be started with establishing the goal of the training. Therefore, we should answer the questions:

• how the training should help the listeners,
• what tasks performed by the listener should be brought to perfection,

Another step is the analysis of training needs, therefore to wonder what problems of the recipient should be solved by the training and also what is the listerner's challenge. Having these factors in regard, we can match the training's substantive content to the real needs of the listeners.

Once the problem is established, it's time to think about how to solve it. Here starts the researching phase, which includes looking for information in various sources. This phase should never be ignored even if one is an expert in the given topis, because it's easy to fall in the knowledge trap and ignore important topic of a person who knows less about it, although it may seem less important for someone more experienced.

How to sort out the information gathered during the research? There are many methods. One of the easiest ones is writing down the issues on self-adhesive labels and then sort the topics in order. On this stage it is easy to throw out unnecessary topics as well as to move the order of the program points. That's how the complete plan is done. You just need to rewrite it.

Am I not boring?

The training should be started with an introduction and saying a couple things about oneself. It is not about bragging or telling the story of one's life, but about ensuring the participants that the training is being done by the right and competent person.

It's also important to point out the audience's worries. They may wonder what they will get from this training. This way the presenter shows that he is open for the participants and respects their knowledge and experience.

The important thing at the beginning of every performance is to determine the goal of the training and to present its program. It is not only about reading the points from the plan. You can make it more interesting in order to intrigue the audience. You can reach out for a fun fact from given topic.

How to check if the audience is interested in the lecture? The best is to check non-verbal communication. There are many signals that indicate the change in paying attention, such as;

• yawning,
• propping one's head,
• no eye contact,
• no activity - no questions or discussions,
• looking through the window,
• drawing on a piece of paper, toying the strands, playing with fingers.

To break the boredom of the participants, you should make something that will break their routine, something they are not expecting. Given topic can be viewed from other perspective than usual, one can help himself/herself with some unknown facts, atypical illustrations and even role playing, if the topic allows. A good idea is to use analogies and appeal to the reality known very well to the audience. One should also pay attention to the language matter. In order to keep audience's interest, it's better to avoid long sentences and passive voice. Instead one should use energetic vowels. Complicated words and expressions, frothing - such as "at this moment" instead of "now" won't work as well.

Have everyone understood?

At the end it's worth to verify whether the participants got something for themselves out of it. Of course it's important to encourage the participants to ask questions. It is also good to ask the audience what was the most interesting for them and what did they like the best during the training. If the training is done on an online platform, it's good to send an evaluation survey where the participants can answer questions about the quality of the training and whether it was valuable for them and what did they learn.

Conducting a training may seem easy, hovewer it is not only about reading the presentation from a piece of paper of from slides. The trick is to catch the audience's interest and preparing the presentation in a way that its content will help the recipients to solve their problems. The good news is that conducting a training can be learnt and each presentation will get better and better.