Learn more abput our internal workshop
At Tooploox we come up with many ideas to learn new skills and improve the quality of our work. A good example of this was the recent “Train the Trainers” program, which included cyclical workshops aimed at gaining critical training skills. It turned out to be a compelling experience! Interested in how it works? Learn more about one of our bigger internal coaching program below.
The goals and structure of the project
The goal of ‘Train the Trainers’ was to develop professional competencies in the areas of self-organization, communication and teamwork. Our company is growing at lightning speed, so we are creating bigger teams and dealing with different challenges. Sharing our knowledge and improving the quality of our work fosters team spirit. This, in turn, makes us feel more comfortable participating in external events as speakers – training skills are more than useful. We’re always open to some new experiences!
Łukasz Krupa and Paweł Słowikowski were driving this initiative from the beginning. They were also playing important role as co-trainers in every workshop. They picked up the main goals of the program:
- Development of employees’ soft skills,
- Sharing experiences and promoting good learning tactics,
- Effective teaching of newcomers.
The program was dedicated to all the employees who were eager to get involved and develop their skills in the course of workshop. We had 13 participants who were supposed to run their own workshop at the end of the program. What was the result? 8 of us successfully finished the program by going through the whole course and completing their own project 🙂
Hot topics
Workshops were held on a regular basis – we attended one complex meeting each month. Every single meeting took almost all day of work to study the topic at length and practice a lot. We have never get bored 🙂 The workshops covered the following topics:
- Building a relationship with the participants,
- The issue of running presentations and giving feedback,
- Effective training sessions,
- Development methods,
- Training tools.
Łukasz and Paweł prepared a wide range of topics to share as much knowledge as possible. Now it’s time to share more details about one of the above – check out how it works in practice.
Workshop examples
Each workshop had its own theme. Before we started, we discussed what could be interesting for the participants and bring useful knowledge as a result. Firstly, we wanted to build a relationship with the participants to make them feel more comfortable during the tasks. It was also a good time to present some tactics to create good atmosphere and focus on what’s important when running a workshop or presentation. This particular training class was based on some group tasks like the following:
- Creating a collage together about building a relationship,
- Analyzing a case study of audience needs,
- Creating a questionnaire to check the audience needs.
Finally we could get down to brass tacks. The goal of the second workshop was to improve presentation skills, feel more comfortable when giving feedback and deal with stage fright. Stress before public speaking is one of the most frightening experiences for the beginners. How to overcome the stress? It’s all about practice, but gaining knowledge about some effective tactics could also be useful. In fact, the more self-confident you are, the more comfortable you feel when you’re speaking.
That’s why beginners should focus on boosting self-confidence. Practice helps – it’s advised to record yourself during the speech and make some improvements accordingly. Also, the workshop should be held in smaller groups at first. The attitude is as important – one of the methods to put yourself at ease is write down all the positive aspects of your audience before the speech. It helps to create more positive feelings and forget about the negative ones. Finally, don’t forget about relaxation exercises!
The outcome of running “Train the Trainers” program
As you can see, we delved deeper into various aspects of running a workshop and all issues related with it. With its own structure and diverse techniques and methods, each workshop was a unique learning experience.
Without a doubt, “Train the Trainers” program provided a wide range of benefits for the participants. We gained new skills which can be used in the future to organize workshop and implement better communication. The main goal was to practice the theory and we’re glad that most of the participants decided to run a quality workshop! And last, but not least, we enjoyed this time together a lot and fostered team spirit, which will pay off in everyday office life.
