Engaging your trainees: The SE/CE dilemma
We’ve talked in a lot of detail before about the SE/CE curve – the balance between social engagement and corporate experience, and how this affects the risk profile of a business. Today we are looking more closely at how the point on the Social Engagement (SE) continuum makes a big difference to how social media and systems training needs to be handled.
In a nutshell: why would you climb Everest? George Mallory’s answer was ‘because it’s there’. Personally, before investing my time and effort I’d like to establish what I think is a good reason to go! As a socially engaged individual, I will happily play on the latest social sharing fad ‘because it’s there’ and I want to know all about it. It’s my job, after all. But suggest this to older and/or less socially engaged colleagues and the question is “Why? What’s in it for me?”
Training the Unconvinced!
There is a lot of skepticism at the far end of the SE continuum. Where interacting on computers did not come naturally from birth, the thought of taking processes and actions into a less familiar environment can be anathema. The key to accessing this group is to give them a great reason to be there – which may not be YOUR reason for being there.
Dr Stephen Covey defined the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Habit #5 : “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” To put your point across, to ‘sell’ the activity you want your audience to undertake, you have first to understand their point of view, and then couch your offering in their terms. Convincing this group that the solutions you are proposing are right for them is really a sales exercise. You may have ‘sold’ the system to decision makers in the client business, or ‘sold’ the idea that new approaches are essential for an enterprise by pointing out that the customer base is online, but you need to take another step and get under the skin of your audience. You need to listen and learn from the trainees, and identify what motivates them. Once you can speak their language, and empathise with their situation, you can tailor the selling points of the new environment to their situations, and you have a 100% better chance of them leaving the training session ready and willing to engage.
If you are training a diverse group of business owners in the finer points of social media, helping them find their online raison d’être will enhance your reputation as an expert. If you are training a group of users of a system you have produced, you are confirming to the decision makers that they made the right choice and will achieve their organisational goals.
Training the Socially Engaged
Regardless of the software that is the subject of a training session, the socially engaged (SE) group will normally grasp the principles immediately, and compare functionality across the platforms with which they are familiar. “How do I send a message / upload an image / engage with other users / save my stuff?”. The SE group, at the furthest extreme of the continuum, will be early adopters of technology and ready to test the limits and the functionality of what is being presented. They won’t be frightened of ‘breaking’ the system, and pushing at the boundaries of functionality.
Recognising this trait is essential, and there is skill here which a software provider can harness. Need to get some early feedback on a new system? Train some strong SE people in the basics, and make sure they have a mechanism to tell you what they think, how to improve things, and what corner of the system doesn’t work quite as well – because they will find it!
Training across the SE continuum
It can be difficult for a trainer working through a set syllabus to handle a group going off the topic. In particular, if the group is representative of the entire SE continuum, there is a gulf of understanding between the least socially engaged and the fast learners. Simply going through a powerpoint presentation won’t cut it here. Instead, use the resources at your fingertips. Let the strong SE group come up with applications and ideas of how and where they will use what you are teaching, and how it applies to them. The half of the class that goes quiet when those questions are asked will be learning from the answers, identifying common ground, and discovering their reason to take those steps to social engagement. If you can leave a session with the strong SE group excited about a new toy, and the low SE group owning a real reason to engage – now that’s effective!