World-class learning programs don’t happen by accident.

Regardless of the format/duration of your learning program, this article highlights 10 questions you must ask yourself before you begin the design phase.  Answering these questions in advance will save you time in the end and lead to much better results for your learners and your organization.

These questions fall into 3 primary categories (learning objectives, learner background, and learning resources). If you are familiar with ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation), a framework used by instructional designers and training developers, these 10 questions are part of the “analysis” phase:

Category A: Learning objectives:

1. What organizational challenges or objectives will this learning program address? 

2. What will have to happen for the program to be viewed as a success (both for learners and for the organization)? 

3. What’s in it for learners to participate in this program? 

4. What follow-up will occur after this program to continue the development of your learners? 

5. How many learners will be going through this program, and will participants be “prisoners,” “vacationers,” “explorers,” or “customers?” In other words, are participants being forced to attend (prisoners), rewarded with time away from work/school for attending (vacationers), attending voluntarily for their own benefit (explorers), or are they actually paying to attend the program (customers)?  Note: Credit goes to Hank Boyle for the prisoner-vacationer-explorer analogy.  I added “customers” to reference people who pay to go through a learning program. Keep in mind that initial motivation for attending/participating in your program generally increases as you move from prisoner to vacationer to explorer to customer.

Category B: Learner background:

6. What do the learners already know, and what do they need to learn? (You don’t want the material to be redundant, too easy, or too hard. The purpose of learning is to fill in gaps in order to improve performance.)

7. What is the background of the learners (i.e. ages, abilities, educational levels, experience levels, etc.), and is there anything unique about your learners (positive, negative, or humorous)?  (This information helps you tailor your program accordingly.) 

8. What conscious or subconscious objections might learners have about this learning program or about the presenter(s)? (During the implementation of your learning program, your learners need to be open-minded and ready for learning.  This is especially important with “learning prisoners.” By identifying potential objections in advance and by overcoming them early in the implementation of your program, your learners will be much more engaged.  In Telling Aint Training, the authors refer to this as “removing the lid.”

Category C: Learning Resources

9. What resources (i.e. time, money, knowledge, technology, staff, etc.) are currently available (or needed) for designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating your program?  (While you may determine that you need additional resources once you start designing your program, it’s wise to try to identify existing/missing resources in advance, during the analysis phase.) 

10. What do you already know, and what else do you need to learn in order to execute this project? 

Author Bio:

Pete Leibman is the Author of “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Career After College” (published by The American Management Association). His work has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he has been invited to speak at some of the world’s best colleges including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

After failing my first major exam as a college student (note: it’s not wise to begin studying for an 8 am exam at midnight the night before), I decided to create a “studying process.” By using this process during the rest of my collegiate career, I survived college and graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a 3.74 GPA.

While I definitely worked hard in college, my GPA was not the result of spending 50 hours a week in the library. Instead, it was the result of a very strategic approach to learning and development that you can use to become an expert on anything in record time.

Professional development will take your career to the next level and help you add massive value to your employer. Follow these 4 steps and you can dominate any field or industry quickly:

Step 1: Study. Your first step to expertise is to identify the world’s 3 top experts on a topic/skill, and to read one book by each expert. (You could also participate in their online courses, live seminars, or training programs.) Just make sure you learn from the right people. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can self-publish a book or create an online course and call themselves an “expert” on any topic. Learning from unqualified sources will actually stunt your development. Make sure you learn from the world’s best.

Step 2: Apply. While you will definitely benefit just from absorbing the wisdom of thought leaders, you can’t become a true expert on a topic/skill until you apply your new knowledge. For example, you can’t become an expert on public speaking just by reading about public speaking; you have to speak in public. You can’t become an expert on project management just by reading about project management; you have to manage projects. You can’t become an expert on LinkedIn just by reading books about LinkedIn; you have to use LinkedIn firsthand. By applying what you learn through your initial study, you’ll deepen your understanding of the material and fill in some of the inevitable gaps found even in the world’s best books or training programs.

Step 3: Summarize. Before any exam in college, part of my studying process was to go through my textbook and class notes and create a concise review sheet of the major ideas and concepts. This step forced me to identify the key points and to translate the ideas from the authors and my professors into my own words. In addition, my summary was much easier to review before the exam than a 500-page textbook. So, after you read your 3 books (or take a course, attend a seminar, etc.) and after you apply what you have learned, you should create a brief summary of your new knowledge. This will deepen your learning even further and leave you with a very concise, valuable resource to refer to for years to come.

Step 4: Teach. After studying, applying, and summarizing what you have learned, you can strengthen your mastery by teaching your findings to others. You can “teach” your topic by writing articles about what you have learned, by delivering presentations about what you have learned, or simply by sharing your ideas informally with friends, family, or colleagues.

According to a study by a publishing firm called The Jenkins Group, 42% of adults never even read one book after graduating college! If you read 3 books on a topic, apply what you have learned, summarize your findings, and teach your new knowledge to others (by writing or speaking), you will know more about that topic than more than 99% of the population, classifying you as a true expert. The payoff in personal satisfaction, professional recognition, and financial compensation will be well worth the effort.

Author Bio:

Pete Leibman is the Author of “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Career After College” (published by The American Management Association). His work has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he has been invited to speak at some of the world’s best colleges including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

Note: Content from this article was initially published on The Personal Branding Blog by Dan Schawbel.

For true learning and transformation to take place, your learners need to remember what you teach them. Here are 5 secrets for increasing the retention of your learners:

1. Analogies: I went through a sales training program a while back with a trainer named Greg Bennett. Greg had us imagine a situation where we went to a doctor for help with an injury. However, instead of telling us how to fix our injury, the doctor asked us what we needed. Greg then compared this scenario to a salesperson asking a customer what they need. More than 5 years later, I still remember this analogy. Kudos to Greg. As Chip and Dan Heath wrote in their New York Times Best-Selling book, Made To Stick, great analogies also also “generative.” In other words, they also teach your learners how to act in future situations. Greg’s salesperson/doctor analogy is an example.

2. Stories: There is perhaps no greater way to engage an audience and increase their retention than through powerful, relevant stories.  As discussed here, this is why The Biggest Loser is so popular.

3. Concise, counterintuitive catch-phrases. Several years ago, I attended a presentation by a speaker who said “common sense is a superpower.” What are the chances this line would have stayed in my head if he had said that “common sense will help you be much more productive and much more successful throughout your life and career.” You can also make your catch-phrase even more memorable by making it rhyme. This is one reason why many cliches (i.e. “blast from the past” or “finders keepers, losers weepers”) become popular.  Note: Rhymezone.com is a great resource for finding words that rhyme with each other.

4. Acronyms: The typical short-term memory of most learners only allows for 4-5 “chunks” of information at a time. However, acronyms allow you to pack an exponentially greater amount of material into each chunk. For example, consider the acronyms for “SWOT” analysis or “SPIN” selling. These 4-letter acronyms (which only take up one “chunk”) can help learners remember the key ideas behind an extensive volume of content.  Note: To help you remember the ideas in this article, the 5 ways to increase the retention of your learners form the acronym “ASCAP.”

5. Powerful pictures. Clip art does not count! For an image to be truly memorable, it must elicit emotion. For example, one of my friends recently posted a picture on Facebook (see below) of her cuddled on the couch, resting peacefully with her newborn baby. It was an absolutely beautiful picture that truly captured the essence of “what life is all about” as she posted on her page. However, what are the chances I would have remembered her Facebook post if she had simply written “Life is all about family” and not attached the photo? A powerful picture is not just worth 1,000 words. It’s something people can remember forever.

Author Bio:

Pete Leibman is the Author of “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Career After College” (published by The American Management Association). His work has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he has been invited to speak at some of the world’s best colleges including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a student leadership conference hosted by one of the world’s largest honor societies. While it’s fun and a privilege to speak to any group of young people, let’s be honest… this was an easy audience for a presenter.

Not only would the crowd be full of ambitious high-achievers, these student leaders would also be investing their own time and money to attend the conference. Unlike many students who are forced or bribed to attend professional development programs, these students would truly be there by choice.

Pretty easy group to connect with, right?  

Before my presentation, I attended a program for the students by a staff member from the honor society. While she clearly meant well, her program was the typical “death by PowerPoint” presentation. Despite being seated in the 2nd row of the crowd, I could barely read most of her slides, which were full of convoluted charts, cheesy clip art graphics, and long lists. Even worse, she stood behind a lectern and read from her slides instead of having a conversation with her audience.

Despite her positive intentions, and despite the makeup of the crowd, anyone would have observed that the students were completely uninterested in what she was saying. She noticed as well, although she did not realize that her presentation style was the cause of their lack of interest. Afterwards, she came up to me, and said, “Pete, I don’t have any idea how you speak to students. Today’s students have such short attention spans!” 

Best-Selling Author, Arnold Sanow, once told me about a brilliant strategy, “the 5-minute rule,” that he follows religiously when designing/delivering his presentations. He never goes more than 5 minutes in front of a crowd without an interactive element. 

While no one likes to be lectured, Generation Y takes its need for interaction to a whole new level.  It’s not because we (I’m part of Generation Y) think we have all the answers. It’s because we grew up in a world that told us that our opinions matter. In today’s world, you’re always just a click away from broadcasting your thoughts on any topic via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, and so on.

Want to turn off Generation Y? Take away their voice and lecture them.

During a recent webinar for 300+ higher ed leaders, I was asked whether you should tell students before a presentation to put away their cell phones.

My answer? No. It’s your job as the presenter to make your program so interactive and to be so engaging that your audience does not want to be texting or playing on their cell phones.  

Here are 5 easy ways to make any learning situation (i.e. live, online, synchronous, asynchronous, video, audio, written, etc.) more interactive:

• Tell stories of your own personal experiences or of people that your audience will be able to relate to. When you tell a story in an engaging manner, your audience will feel like they are experiencing the story firsthand.
• Use analogies that your audience will be able to relate to. Like a great story, the audience also gets to “participate” when you share a well-constructed analogy.
• Ask your audience for their opinion on a subject before you provide your opinion. 
• Let your audience ask questions. You can then allow other members of your audience to chime in with their thoughts and/or you can answer the question yourself.
• Play 1-2 minute video clips to illustrate your points, to introduce new topics, to share stories, to emphasize analogies, etc.

Author Bio:

Pete Leibman is the Author of “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Career After College” (published by The American Management Association). His work has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he has been invited to speak at some of the world’s best colleges including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

In Telling Ain’t Training, the learning and development bible written by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps, the authors share the following analogy to illustrate how people learn:

“Imagine the following scene.  In one hand I have a pitcher filled with water.  In the other I have a glass with a lid.  What happens when I try to pour water into the glass?  Obviously it spills over the glass and my hand because the inside is closed off.” 

The authors then explain that this physical example is analogous to trying to pour your ideas into the closed minds of your learners. In other words, your audience shows up for any learning situation with a “lid” as well. Their “lid” includes their self-limiting beliefs, their objections, their fears, their past/current challenges, and so on.  

Your first goal during any training initiative (regardless of the format) must be to “remove the lid.”  If you don’t, your content will never make its way into the minds of those you want to influence.

So, the obvious next question is: “How do you remove the lid?”  Let me give you an analogy to illustrate one of the best ways.

One of the most popular TV shows in the U.S. over the last decade is The Biggest Loser on NBC.  The show features obese contestants who compete in grueling competitions to see who can lose the most weight the fastest.

Before we discuss why the show is so popular, consider this stat: over 70% of the U.S. is overweight or obese.

Clearly, most Americans are not pumped up to learn about fitness and nutrition, even though they should be (just like your audience might not be excited to learn about whatever you want to teach them).  Nonetheless, The Biggest Loser is one of the most popular TV shows in the U.S. over the last decade.

Why do so many people tune in to watch this show?

People watch because of the inspiring success stories.  The Biggest Loser features real people who are battling a challenge most Americans can relate to.  If you are watching the show, and you see someone even more overweight than you who is dropping major pounds, it’s motivating.  It gets you to believe, “Hey, if that person can do it, so can I.”

The Biggest Loser is engaging and effective because it “removes the lid” for people who previously didn’t think they could change their bodies.  On the other hand, how engaging/effective do you think The Biggest Loser would be if the show just featured fitness and nutrition advice from muscle-bound personal trainers who gave you tip after tip after tip?

No one would watch!  Or, viewers would think, “Well, thanks for all the tips, but that won’t work for me.”

If you want to motivate your audience, you need to “remove the lid” before you try to teach any subject, regardless of the format for your training (i.e. live, online, synchronous, asynchronous, written, audio, video, and so on). Always ask yourself this question, “What false, self-limiting beliefs does my audience have about this topic, and what success stories can I use as evidence to help them change these false beliefs?”

P.S. Always make sure that your stories are relevant to your audience.  If you are dealing with an extremely confident audience and/or an audience that is very talented/experienced, it would not make sense to share stories of people with low confidence, limited ability, or little experience.  For example, the success stories from The Biggest Loser would not be effective for motivating a group of elite athletes since these athletes would not be able to relate to the weight loss struggles of typical Americans.  

Author Bio:

Pete Leibman is the Author of “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Career After College” (published by The American Management Association). His work has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he has been invited to speak at some of the world’s best colleges including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.