If the training environment is not conducive to learning, you're going to work twice as hard to make an impact. New employee orientation is its own special kind of training; you're not just there to fill their heads with information, but -- ideally -- to welcome them and make them feel like they belong. You want your new employee to feel successful and part of the culture as soon as possible, and you want to reinforce that they made the right choice in coming to work for your company. (I learned this the hard way in my first day on the job as training coordinator, when my supervisor

If you haven’t already–as a public speaker, you should dedicate yourself to a lifetime study of adult learning principles. And there’s a lifetime of “adult learning stuff” to learn. It’s a proactive approach of making the most out of past learning in order to maximize new learning. It will pay you colossal dividends. Today we’ll look at one such principle; Elaborative Rehearsal.

For wrapping up at the end, you might hand out cards or pieces of paper with one-word concepts on them (I use "fear," "voice," "passion," "rules" and others related to public speaking), and ask participants to share something they've learned or will pursue regarding that concept. Adults will go to great lengths to avoid embarrassing themselves, so it's important to cultivate trust and a safe environment. Depending on the size of your group, and especially when you're conducting a workshop or longer training, you will want to encourage participation from your audience. There are

Tags: Quick Fixes Public Speaking Techniques and Strategies The Business of Speaking Adult Learning Principle Here's one way to instantly please your audience: Title your workshop accurately . When people sign up for your training or your conference session, they have already developed expectations based on the title and description of your presentation. By

Check out " Exercise -- Brain Rule #1 ," (no direct link to the video, but they're all listed on the page) for some thoughts on why the typical classroom and work environments are not conducive to learning or productivity and some fun ideas to turn that around. ...Tags: Tags: Brain Rules Training Public Speaking Techniques and Strategies Adult Learning Principles Resource Following up on last week's post on six ways to improve training , PowerPoint and AutoCAD expert Ellen Finkelstein sent me a link to the videos on the Brain Rules website.

Tags: Public Speaking Techniques and Strategies Public Speaking Anxiety Adult Learning Principle This seems to be the month to talk about difficult audiences. I came across the topic on two other public speaking blogs, so I decided to post a link to my own two cents.

Ask the audience a lot of questions so they can share their knowledge and expertise and contribute to the learning of the group. As adults, we are responsible for our own learning, and we're going to learn better as audience members if we participate in the process rather than being spoon-fed a lecture. Tags: Quick Fixes Public Speaking Techniques and Strategies Public Speaking Anxiety Adult Learning Principle For people who don't like being the center of attention, I've got an easy trick for you: Make the audience do the work. Here are three

Tags: Pet Peeves Training Public Speaking Techniques and Strategies Adult Learning Principles General Comment I haven't talked about this for a while, so forgive me if you remember my post from last year about the same subject. It's worth repeating. A client of mine recently sat on a committee to organize a conference.

Cliff Atkinson's book, Beyond Bullet Points Garr Reynolds' book, Presentation Zen And let me remind you that the best way to help your audience retain information is to serve as many learning styles as you can. The more you can do to reach your audience members in the ways they learn best, the more likely they are to remember your message. Here are some I've heard this several times from clients who've come to me for help with their slide shows: "My boss/conference organizer/client wants me to take all the images out of the PowerPoint. He says they're 'fluff.'" This comment

Dean Shareski says: The more I’m allowed to interact and play with the content the more engaged and ultimately the more learning happens. Learn more about Twitter for business in our “Wednesdays at 1″ webinar series : Twitter for Business 101 February 25, 2009, 1PM EST Advanced Twitter for Business March 11, 2009, 1PM EST Twitter for Business resources: Twitter for Business reading list Follow @touchbase on Twitter for posts and our link blog Subscribe to the TouchBase blog via RSS or email