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What people want and what people think they want

I was talking to a colleague the other day who develops in-house training. She had a new, specialist function to train a small group to operate. Out of interest, in her pre-training questionnaire she asked what type of training would they like and in what format. Universally they came back with 'classroom style, chalk and talk', rather than any form of participatory workshop or interactive training.

Fundamentally what the participants were saying was they didn't want to put in any work or effort but be magically trained sitting in a room doing nothing.

But, what we know from feedback, evaluations, de-briefing and ultimately performance, is that delegates in general prefer participatory training. Evaluations usually show higher levels of boredom and dissatisfaction from classroom style training. So people don't always know what's best for them in advance... but know what was best for them, after the event.
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