How to Run Seminars and Workshops, 4th Edition

Chapter 5The Pace RaceHow to Train Groups with Diverse Needs

One of the most emotional areas that often affects a presenter's performance involves training pace. It is a potentially emotional issue because of the impact that right or wrong decisions can have on a seminar.

When conducting your training, you may feel your product knowledge is sound and your command of the logistics of the curriculum is good. Your next task is determining the knowledge level of your audience. This information will better allow you to adapt to a speed tailored to that knowledge. Now, in a perfect world, you will know the experience of your group ahead of time, and members will all be at roughly the same level. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and training rarely cooperates so reasonably.

The good news is that finding out the pace you may need to communicate is usually not much of a problem. Depending on the size of the seminar, you should run an icebreaker exercise designed to give you the information you need regarding the background and experience level of your audience. Even with larger crowds or in shorter training time frames when the background of your audience is still necessary, there is still hope. All you need to do is poll your audience as to their experiences with your chosen topic. The bad news is that sometimes you may not like what you find out in your poll.

How to Pace a Course for a Large Group with Wildly Diverse Needs

Years ago I was giving a pilot workshop for the ...