Whether you are bringing together thousands of people from all around the world for a hybrid all-employee conference or hosting 20 team members for a half-day off-site training course, there’s a big difference between learning events that are good enough and those that are truly memorable.
Based on our experience designing, developing, and delivering learning experiences for clients around the world, there are five steps you should take to create better training events.
#1 Determine Your Why
Planning is a central component of every learning event, but what you do before you plan the intricacies of an event can make or break your results. Every good event has clear objectives, scopes, timelines, and budgets. But the most important element to align on in the beginning is why. Why do you want to produce this experience?
As I was thinking about how to communicate the importance of why questions, my brother introduced me to an old TEDx talk by Simon Sinek titled “Start with why,” which sums up the concept beautifully. When you understand the why, you can establish discipline in your decision-making. It creates a space to explore, be creative, and have productive discussions—and it also creates a guide every individual supporting the event can keep top of mind in any decision or action they take throughout the event process.
The why planning phase will set your team up for success as a whole and as individuals. Failing to prepare at this stage is not only preparing you for failure (as the expression says) but setting up your team for failure. Without proper goals, scope, and parameters, how can they deliver a winning event? Good planning gives clear direction, enables people to work more efficiently and effectively, and aligns the team toward clear, shared goals.
#2 Carefully Choose Project Managers and Sponsors
Once you have tackled your why and know what you will be working toward in the coming weeks or months, it’s time to structure your team. Organizations often start this phase by defaulting to a formal hierarchy, placing executives or managers in charge. But that’s not always the right approach for hosting a great learning event.
Instead, take a step back and build your team around the scope of your event. Who are the right people to ensure all the actions, tasks, and communications will happen as planned? Once you determine who that is, you can start your project planning. Set clear deadlines and put processes in place before you begin the day-to-day work; these keep your aim true. At this stage, you need an experienced project or program manager.
It is critical that your project manager does not allow the project timeline to slip. You put those deadlines in place for a reason and must hold to the schedule as much as possible. Recruiting an executive sponsor can help to set expectations about how the team will work and reaffirm alignment on the why. At first, this may seem like a recipe for conflict, but in our experience, it has built surprisingly strong partnerships and relationships across the organization.
#3 Create a Risk Mitigation Plan
After identifying your why and choosing your project leads, you need to develop your risk planning and mitigating strategies. In the risk planning phase, you should consider everything that could go wrong. What could cause your deadlines to slip? Could there be a delay in reviews or approvals, and if so, how would you mitigate that?
Challenges always arise when planning training events—people get sick, they have car trouble, they lose internet access—but don’t let that stop you! Ensure your team members know it’s all right when something unexpected happens. Your plan includes processes for this very reason. If you lay the groundwork upfront, it will be easier to stay on track.
Even after all your planning, you may still be surprised when something does not go quite to plan. Encourage your team to lean into the discomfort—something better than you planned may come from solving problems that pop up. If this happens, your team can forge stronger relationships and partnerships based on the shared experience of solving a challenge, and it will be satisfying to recognize those innovative solutions when the experience is over. Being part of these situations can also be invaluable to junior colleagues, imparting problem-identifying, problem-solving, and collaboration skills that will help them weather the inevitable storms in their careers.
#4 Identify Event Support and Staffing
Whether your event is fully virtual, hybrid, or in-person, it needs to be adequately staffed with team members who are collaborative, flexible, calm, proactive, and understand the why of the event. The event support staff will interact with people who, whether taking part by choice or by requirement, value their time and want to ensure that what they are doing is meaningful.
When determining how much support staff is necessary, think of the participants’ experience from the beginning of the event:
- What will it feel like when they arrive at the building or join your online event?
- How will they know where to go to?
- Who will greet them?
- Where do they get their itinerary?
- Will they know where to go if they have a unique issue and need help?
Ensure your learning event support staff includes enough people. We often encounter sponsors who imagine they can run a good event with just a couple of people. But our general rule is to bring in at least one more team member than your intuition tells you. Unforeseen issues will arise, and you will need that additional help.
Your team’s ability to adapt to evolving circumstances is what will make your event successful. Regardless of all the planning you have done, the event will fall short if your team does not respond correctly in the moment. This means your event staff should be considered early on and should not just be a group you pull together at the last minute.
#5 Select an Event App for Data-Driven Insights
We often recommend the use of event applications (apps). There are several event apps on the market, each with distinct features to enhance an event and help organizers achieve their goals.
Integrating an event app brings events into the digital world, adding to the comprehensive experience for participants. We also live in a tech-driven society, and we know participants will be on their devices during the event. Rather than struggle against technology, embrace event apps by using them to:
- Give attendees critical information, like itineraries and important locations.
- Create opportunities to make connections and build engagement.
- Send updates and other communications to participants.
- Capture attendee reactions in real-time, whether they are joining online or physically.
As the organizer, you can also generate reports before, during, and after your event to identify where you are and are not aligned with your why. For example, you can discover the participants who drive the most engagement (while also learning who may not be as invested) and send surveys, the results from which can inform what you do in your next program.
Making Training Events Meaningful and Effective: Embracing the Why
Learning events that make an impact embrace the why before, during, and after the event. These events are the ones where—from the first communication the participant receives to the questionnaire they take at the end—they feel that the experience was catered to them. And that is how your learners should feel.
At all stages of your event—from the design, development, and delivery of your learning event—remember that the why should drive every action your team takes.
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