No matter how well you prepare as an expert: If your participants do not understand the purpose of the training, have different expectations of you, or simply lack basic knowledge, the success of your training is highly endangered. With our four methods, you can achieve perfect preparation. Each requires a maximum investment of 30 minutes for motivated participants and sustainable training success!

Why Preparation is So Important

As a trainer or coach, you have probably experienced this: Participants come to your seminar or coaching and have no idea what to expect. Instead of diving straight into the content, you need to motivate skeptical participants, clarify basic questions, and compensate for missing prior knowledge. Such a start disrupts your content and time plan.

It is particularly dangerous when participants do not see any added value in the training at the beginning: They do not engage, retain little new knowledge, or do not apply it in their daily work. Thus, the sustainability of your training suffers even before you begin with the content.

Prerequisites for an Ideal Start

A good start with motivated participants looks as follows:

• Your participants know why they are here and have individual clear goals.

• You know the goals of your participants and can address them directly.

• Your participants have content-related questions or examples from their everyday life prepared.

• You know the level of knowledge your participants have.

If these four points are met, a truly great seminar or coaching is possible. Your participants are motivated, have a clear goal in mind, and focus on the important content. Ideally, they have already engaged with the topics beforehand and have exciting content-related questions that also help their co-learners.

Do you also want motivated participants and an effectively utilized seminar time? Good preparation makes that possible! We show you four very simple methods for great training preparation and how you can implement them without much effort. The catch: You can implement each method in 30 minutes!

4 Methods to Prepare Your Training

The following four methods have been tested by numerous trainers and are already widely used. All methods are so fundamental that they fit nearly any training or coaching. You can choose one of them or ideally use all.

By the way, the methods are part of our rocket pack: a collection of 40 methods for seminars and coaching. Inspiration, expert tips, and guidance in one!

1. Preparation Method: "What is Important to You?"

“What is important to you?” Asking participants about their expectations helps you clarify questions and specifically address desires during training.

Why? Often, your participants come with different expectations at the beginning of the training. If you get an overview of their expectations, you can address them in your training.

How? Your participants will receive several questions from you before the first live session. These questions should be answered briefly. Open questions are well-suited, for example:

• “What effect do you hope to achieve from the seminar?”

• “What behavior change do you desire?”

• “In which situations do you want to react differently/better?”

You evaluate the answers before the seminar or coaching. This way, you can prepare for specific wishes and expectations.

2. Preparation Method: "What is Your Level?"

“What is your level?” Questions about the current level of knowledge help not only you but also the participants recognize knowledge gaps and prepare for the upcoming topics.

Why? Your participants assess their own knowledge of the seminar topic before the training and can prepare better for the in-person session. If knowledge gaps are identified and eliminated before the in-person session, you can be sure that your content will be understood.

How? Think about which topics will be addressed in the in-person session and write down two good questions for each topic. The questions should encourage participants to self-reflect and not ask for specific content yet. Good questions could be:

• “How well do you assess your knowledge on (your topic)?”

• “Which 3 terms do you associate with (your topic)?”

Participants should also have enough time before the in-person event to answer the questions and prepare for your topics.

3. Preparation Method: "Start Well Prepared!"

“Start well prepared”: With preparatory tasks, you can collect examples from your participants' everyday lives while also sensitizing them to your topic.

Why? Examples and observations from participants about their everyday work provide a good basis for your in-person session. Additionally, participants engage with the topic during preparation and sensitize themselves to it.

How? Assign your participants the task of paying attention to something specific at their workplace well ahead of the actual training. Provide them with guidance, such as a checklist with important questions.

This task can look different and depends on the topic of your training. For a seminar on “communication,” it could be as follows:

• Task: “Pay attention to when communication problems arise when communicating with colleagues.”

• Checklist: 1. “What was it generally about?” - 2. “How was it communicated (in person, via email, telephone)?” - 3. “What was the problem?”

One or two weeks before the seminar is a good timeframe depending on the task's scope. Consider whether you want to evaluate the results before the in-person session or have the participants bring them directly to the seminar.

4. Preparation Method: “Look Forward to...”

“Look forward to...”: Clearly communicating the process and topics gives your participants security and builds a positive expectation.

Why? Knowing exactly how your in-person session will proceed helps your participants prepare well for the topics. Clear communication creates a positive expectation and encourages them to express concrete questions and wishes.

How? Summarize the process and topics of your seminar briefly. For this, you should ask yourself a few questions to clarify participants' questions.

For example:

• “What will happen on that day?”

• “How can my participant prepare? What should he or she bring?”

• “What is particularly exciting that day?”

Keep it short! It’s best to also include a call-to-action for them to share wishes, comments, or particularly important aspects. A personal video in which you explain the process and motivate participants to take action is particularly well-suited for this preparation method.

Practical Tips for the 4 Methods

1. “What is Important to You?”

Value: You learn about the participants' expectations through open questions and can adjust to their wishes.

Practical Tip: Relaxed formats with open answer options are very well suited for this. An interactive online accompaniment with quizzes or surveys can be set up quickly and adds great value to your training. Bonus point for you: You can easily collect and evaluate the answers.

2. “What is Your Level?”

Value: Your participants recognize and close knowledge gaps before the in-person session. And you can prepare accordingly based on their level of knowledge.

Practical Tip: Asking participants for a personal assessment (“How well do you assess your knowledge on the topic?”) encourages self-reflection without putting pressure on them.

3. “Start Well Prepared”

Value: Participants observe situations in their everyday life – you use these as examples in training to enable good learning transfer.

Practical Tip: If you use an online platform, offer helpful material directly for download. For example, a checklist as a PDF. This way, no distributed paper can get lost, and participants are flexible in how they incorporate the tasks into their everyday life: printed, on a PC, or smartphone?

4. “Look Forward to...”

Value: You provide participants with specific information about the process and topics of the training, pique their curiosity, and ensure a relaxed start.

Practical Tip: A video where you personally address the participants and discuss the most exciting topics is best suited for this. This way, you can start building a personal bond before the first session. You can make the video available online to all participants. You need very little equipment for high-quality self-produced videos!

Achieve Success with 40 Online Methods

If you want to redesign your training, consider online support! Not only preparation methods can be implemented quickly and easily on an online platform (see “Practical Tips” above). Support between multiple in-person sessions or guidance after the actual training is also possible.

Online support provides various opportunities to integrate new methods into your training. The preparation methods are just four examples from our rocket pack: Our card set includes a total of 40 methods for blending in-person and online learning! This makes it easy for you to create a so-called “blended learning.”

Do you want to accompany your participants flexibly, cost-effectively, and sustainably? Are you curious about the 36 other great training methods? Then secure the rocket pack with tested methods, many practical examples for implementation, and additional online resources with step-by-step instructions!