They were shady characters. Maybe 20 years old. The way they kept walking through the cafe, waiting out front, then walking back through again, gave us the feeling something suss was going down.
In fact, something wasn’t right in this town. It felt lawless, as though there were no guidelines about appropriate behaviour.
I mean, if I wanted to get high, I was offered the opportunity to do so 4 times in half an hour. And so it goes in Nimbin NSW, utopia to hippies in the 70’s but now, a generation later, it’s as though bad karma has caught up and the younger folks are not so much into peace loving and tree hugging.
I felt like a bit of a school teacher, but I really wanted to teach them a lesson.
Now, your participants aren’t going to get high in your training, but they do need some training guidelines about how to conduct themselves or you could have a mutiny on your hands.
What Training Guidelines Do Other Trainers Use
If you’ve ever had times in your training when things have gone off track and you’ve lost some control of the group, the list I’ve found here can make a difference. I recently followed a thread on one of my Linked-In groups that asked the question about setting guidelines for training and the responses were many and varied.
So I figured I would condense them here for easy consumption.
- Respect for the views of others
- Give everyone space and time to express their opinion/make a contribution
- Observe punctuality
- All questions are valid
- Challenge the idea, not the person
- Keep confidentiality
- Clarify all jargon and acronyms
- Appropriate language free of bias
- No assumptions
- Use a ‘Parking Lot’
You’ll get a few random ideas outside of that list, but for your purposes, this is a good list.
When is the right time for training guidelines
Trick is when to do it. I’m of the belief that first thing, or soon after starting is too soon. Here’s why. You have a brief window to establish rapport and build trust with your group.
“If you roll this activity out too soon– filling in a guidelines Flip chart – you will trigger old school memories or ‘rules and regulations”
So try leave it for just before morning break, then you will have established the rapport, had some introduction to people; they’re just more warmed up.
Whaddya reckon? What sort of guidelines process do you do, how do you get everyone involved and agreeing to this sort of protocol?
