A trainer must try to make the training session interesting and fun at all times when communicating.

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The importance of communication skills in any area cannot be denied, but when it comes to training others, they become indispensable. Using communication skills, you can lend variety to your training session by making it fun, personal, interesting, and dynamic whenever you need to. For a trainer, this ability can mean the difference between a well-liked training session and an average training session.

Planning – How Much to Plan

When speaking to trainees, you do not want everything to be scripted and planned because it has the danger of seeming contrived. On the other hand, if you do not plan at all, you may forget certain important things that you need to discuss. You may seem nervous, or even unprofessional. Therefore, you need to strike a balance between planning and impromptu.

You may create a structure for your training session and note down all the points that you need to discuss in a training session. You may also, if necessary, create simple diagrams or charts to help you remember things and keep yourself on track. You may mark out activities and breaks, and also write down the amount of time you will give to each topic, activity, introduction, breaks, and so on. You should not write down every sentence that you will speak in the training class, as it may seem like you are reading a speech. Being spontaneous will be the best approach here.

Your Non-Verbal Skills Are Important

In a study by Albert Mehrabian that has become popular around the world, he notes that words account for 7% of our communication, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language accounts for 55% of our communication. According to this study, more than half of our communication is through our body language.

When training, your stance, posture, facial expressions, and movements are as important as what you are saying. In other words, the way you say it affects the meaning as much as what you say. Through your body language, you need to exhibit confidence and warmth. You can build rapport with your trainees, using body language, by:

• Mirroring their behaviour, such as laughing when they laugh
• Making eye contact with them
• Smiling
• Nodding and making encouraging gestures when listening to a trainee
• Being genuinely caring and concerned (it will show in your tone of voice and your facial expressions)

To improve your body language, watch popular presenters and try to find out why people like them. Do they smile a lot? How do they show without using words that they are genuinely interested in the other person? At what pitch do they speak? How do they carry themselves? Do they have a personal style? By answering these and many such questions, you will be able to find out the traits of verbal and nonverbal communication that make presenters, public speakers and trainers the best in their profession. You may then try to adopt those characteristics to your personality and your training to have outstanding training sessions.

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