Trainers Warehouse

Sheila B. Robinson devised the RELATE™ Framework to help facilitators think more deeply and strategically about participants' experience in training. She wants to be sure that every activity has purpose and is placed at just the right moment for optimal learning and engagement. She shared her framework during a Trainers Warehouse Show & Share event. During the session, as Ms. Robinson shared the model, participants shared some of their favorite tools and reflections, which I've tried to capture here. Match the Activity with your Purpose Each of the initials in the RELATE™ Framework, matches with an important workshop purpose R. Retaining - for reinforcement and memory, introduce activities that allow participants to practice retrieving information E. Energizing - choose an energizer when you need to replenish the group's waning energy L. Learning - content-based activities rest at the core of the learning process A. Applying - allow participants to engage in activities that let them apply what they've learned. T, Team Building - when team development is paramount, either to build community or enable higher-functioning teams, select a team-building exercise. E. Enlivening - use openers, icebreakers, or ice-melters to create an environment conducive to learning. The RELATE Framework mnemonic is easy to recall and helps us focus on our purpose --on why an activity is included at any given spot on a workshop or course agenda.  I can also imagine overlaying the RELATE Framework with Sharon Bowman's 6 Brain-Science Principles:  Movement tops sitting Images tops works Talking tops listening  Writing tops reading Shorter tops longer Different tops same The point is, during every stage of the learning process, we should employ purposeful exercises.  Pair the Process and Purpose After identifying the reason for your activity, the trick is to pair that with a process. It could entail any combination of these: Think, Write, Draw, Walk, Talk, Sort, Create, etc. Sheila shared a grid for session planning, and participants shared some of their favorite resources, as well. Enliven Ask a "Magical Question," which is one that everyone is equally excited about sharing their answer and hearing everyone else's (drawn from Priya Parker's work) Have participants write on notecards things they have in common with their table group. They fold the notecards and try to make the tallest tower.  3 things: Write on an index card three things: 1) something you think you share with many in the room; 2) something you share with just a handful of folks in the room; 3) something that might be unique to just you. Pick a few cards and do a stand-up/sit-down activity. Throughout the session, when you need a pick-me-up, do a few more. Find more energizers here. Learn Worksheets are great!!! Explore Angela Agresto's Brain Building Blueprints for more tools! Agresto uses the 4Cs construct (Connection; Concepts; Concrete Practice; Conclusion), but the spirit of her work is similar. Retain Try Post-it notes identifying behaviors you want to Stop,  Start, Continue, or Change Explore favorites such as: Dry-erase Answer Board quizzes, Koosh ball tosses, and Jeopardy-style Games More Debrief and Review Tools Bonus Resources In addition to this amazing framework, we learned of a few other resources! PowerPoint Effects - explore the "Morph Transition" in PowerPoint's Animations and Transitions Echo Rivera is another wonderful resource for PowerPoint tips Rick Altman is also worth following for presentation tips! Request the full guide from Sheila B. Robinson:  https://www.sheilabrobinson.com/relateframeworkguide/

At our recent Show & Share, Matthew Ames shared his insight on becoming a runner to address a growing health concern, later becoming a marathoner. He translated the lessons he learned about preparation, community, goal-setting, endurance, and resilience into meaningful perspective on corporate training and professional development. Getting Started Trying something for the first time is a messy process, whether it's a personal "new" or a professional opportunity. Matt admits that his first few runs were really walk-runs, filled with stumbles and tripping over his dog. To be clear, he didn't start his fitness journey with the expectation of running a marathon. His initial goal was simply to be able to run around the block without getting out of breath.  Speaking of Goals Setting goals can be complicated. Sometimes you need to adjust them over time, and they look different for everyone. For most marathoners, the goal isn't winning — it's finishing, often within a certain time, measured anywhere from minutes to hours to days. Matt found, too, that framing success in terms of A, B, and C levels of accomplishment was incredibly instrumental. A - What's the best I can hope for? B - What can I realistically achieve given the current challenges and circumstances? C - What's the minimum I'll accept as a "win," if everything goes wrong? Looking at success through this lens turns it from a pass-fail assessment (I did it or I didn't do it) into something more nuanced. This model works well for both instructional design and within the training room. Making it up "Heartbreak Hill" Marathoners sometimes break down the 26.2 miles this way: the first 9 miles are run with your head, the second 9 with your legs, and the last miles with your heart. In the Boston Marathon, "Heartbreak Hill" is a long climb up Commonwealth Avenue in Newton, at a point late in the race, when fatigue has set in for all the runners. Pouring their heart and soul into the task is the only way to get to the finish line! Helping them through these last few miles are swarms of neighbors, Boston College students, and fans, cheering at the top of their lungs and calling out names and numbers as runners pass. The energy and encouragement of the crowd help these athletes make it to the finish line. Three Tools Matt developed three Learning Endurance Tools to help trainers prepare learners for success marathon-style. These are a great resource for trainers working toward their own performance goals or coaching managers and teams on strategies to achieve growth goals. He breaks it into before (a preparation tool), during (a way to track progress as you go), and after (a reflection of how you've done). BEFORE: Race Preparation Consider these five questions to ready yourself for your next growth challenge: GOAL: Know your goal, but also understand WHY it matters to you. MOTIVATION: Consider how you'll stay motivated and energized AID STATIONS: Identify the people, practices, or resources that will nourish you along the way. Know that you might need to ask for help — don't shy away from it. SUCCESS: Give yourself some leeway with A, B, and C levels of success. HEARTBREAK HILL: Imagine the worst situation and consider how you might manage your way through it. DURING: Mile Markers Set out intermediary milestones and check-in points. Keep track of your, or your teams, accomplishments along the way, including: What may have changed since you began Boosts or Challenges you might have faced along the way How you're tracking towards your goal in terms of your A-B-C levels of success Any adjustments you might want to make, including changing your goal? AFTER - Reflection Give yourself time at the end of a challenge to reflect and celebrate. Ask questions such as: What tested your endurance? How did you need to alter expectations along the way? What kept you going? What did you learn? What will you carry forward? What and how will you celebrate? Additional Tools for Goals & Growth Matt Ames' session on endurance and resilience got me thinking about a few other tools that can help trainers and learners achieve big goals. Road to There The Road to There Facilitation Toolkit walks individuals and teams through the process of visualizing the future and creating a clear roadmap that identifies objectives, potential obstacles, and the distance between where you currently are and how far you need to go to get THERE.  Developing Resilience Thumball Ten skills are typically associated with resilience: patience, optimism, gratitude, acceptance, kindness, purpose, forgiveness, connection, composure, and listening. These overlay nicely with the Endurance Training Model shared by Matt Ames. The Developing Resilience Thumball allows participants to consider, discuss, and strengthen these skills. Growth Mindset Kudos Notes The Kudos for Growth Notepads allow trainers and participants to consider their own strengths and aspirations, as well as their colleagues'.  These provide an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate not only accomplishments, but also effort, risk, trial, and error. The Last Leg of the Race Whether you're training for a marathon or leading a team through a stretch goal, the throughline is the same: growth is rarely a straight line. It takes preparation, a realistic sense of what success looks like, people who show up for you at mile 20, and the willingness to keep going when it gets hard. Matt Ames' Learning Endurance Tools — paired with resources like Road to There, the Developing Resilience Thumball, and Kudos for Growth Notepads — give trainers a practical way to build that same endurance into their own programs, one mile marker at a time.

You've seen it happen. The session goes great — heads nodding, good discussion, people scribbling the occasional note. Everyone leaves energized. Yet two weeks later, almost none of it has stuck. That gap between "great session" and "changed behavior" is one of the biggest challenges in our field. And we can close it with one of the simplest tools around: a plain sheet of paper. Instructional Origami — a technique championed by L&D consultant and Learning That Lasts author Katrina Kennedy — asks learners to fold a sheet of paper into a simple shape, write their own reflections onto its faces and flaps, and carry it out the door. No app, no template, no license. If you're familiar with Sharon Bowman's 6 Brain-Science Principles, some of what follows may sound familiar. Why does something this low-tech work so well? Four reasons — and a folded sheet of paper delivers all of them at once. 1. Reflection: We remember only what we take time to think about “Memory is the residue of thought.”  ~ Daniel Willingham When you ask a learner to stop and answer "What surprised me? What will I do differently?" you trigger what cognitive scientists call the generation effect: we retain information far better when we produce it ourselves than when we simply receive it. Pulling an idea back out of your own head — retrieval practice — is one of the most reliably proven ways to move a memory from fragile to durable. Reflection is also where raw information becomes personal, making it a lot stickier. 2. The fold: making it physical anchors it When you physically make something with your hands, you engage the sensorimotor system and give the memory a distinctive episodic anchor. Years later, people remember "the paper airplane exercise" long after they've forgotten slide 14. The fold does something a screen can't: it adds movement and novelty. The more areas of the brain a training engages, the more memorable it becomes. The physical experience — plus the focus and attention the task demands — improves retention. Folding also fights habituation, the brain's tendency to stop noticing whatever has become routine. A handout is routine. Folding a cootie catcher is not. Folding paper isn't a gimmick; it's a pathway to new neurological triggers. 3. Handwriting: the slow path encodes deeper Beyond being physical and visual at once, writing by hand forces us to consider, synthesize, and compress ideas into memorable bites. You can't write as fast as you can type or talk, so your brain has to decide what actually matters and put it in your own words. That act of condensing is the learning. The messy, handwritten "aha" tends to outlast the perfectly typed one — precisely because of the work it took to make it. 4. The take-away: an ongoing, timeless reminder Often, learning is forgotten not because it was badly taught, but because it was never revisited. This is where the folded object quietly does its best work. That little paper airplane or envelope sitting on someone's desk is an external retrieval cue. Every time they glance at it, it pulls the lesson back up — unprompted, spaced out over days, which is exactly the rhythm memory needs. If you've asked learners to write a specific commitment on it ("Something I'll try in the next week"), it becomes an implementation intention: tying an intention to a concrete when and where is one of the most effective ways to turn it into actual behavior. The paper holds the promise for them. (Bowman calls the physical version of this a "metaphor memento" — origami just makes the reminder out of the reflection itself.) A few folds to start with The shape matters less than the reflection you attach to it. A few favorites: Quarter-Fold or Tri-Fold Start with one of the easiest folds — just two creases. A quarter-folds (fold in half, then half again) or a tri-fold gives you at least 10 fill-in-the-space options, including these favorites: 3 Ds: What will you DO? What will you DELEGATE? What will you DROP?  3 Whats: What? So What? Now What? WOW. HOW. NOW.: Wow – key takeaway; How – remaining question; Now – action item Circle. Square. Triangle. Circle: What’s still going around in your head? What do you still not understand?; Square: What’s squared away? What do you really understand? Triangle: What three things could you use in your life, work, or studies? WHOA! AHA! HMM! Keeping “TABBs”:  could add four additional corner folds. Takeaway from the event; Action you'll take; Barriers that may hinder your progress; Benefits of overcoming those barriers and applying the learning. ABC-O: Action — what new or different action will you take? Benefits — what will you gain when you take it? Challenges — what will you face in implementing it? Overcome — how will you overcome them? Personal Shield of Honor (four quadrants): (1) Skills and abilities you bring to the workplace; (2) Skills and abilities you need to improve; (3) A frustration with your current situation; (4) A source of pride at work Swap in whatever framework fits your content. The pattern is always the same: think it, write it by hand, fold it, take it with you. The Envelope Have learners write a note to their future self — what they commit to doing in the next 30 days — then seal and address it. Mail them back later, or have people open their own at a follow-up. The What / Who / When framework fits nicely: What to do; Who can help; When should it happen? The Airplane In this playful activity, everyone writes their name on one wing and a prompt answer on the other, then flies them across the room. Pick up whichever plane lands near you (or do a room scramble and pick up any airplane), read it aloud, and answer or discuss. It turns reflection into energy — and gets people out of their chairs. The PROMPT can be anything from "something you still wonder about," to "a key idea you'd like to 'fly' with your team." If your group is intimidated by airplanes, do the same "snowballs" — just scrunch the paper into a ball and toss it across the room. Idea Capture (the fortune teller) The old "cootie catcher" fold makes a perfect self-quiz. As a reinforcement game, write four or eight key questions and answers under the flaps. Once the idea catchers are created, invite learners work through them in pairs. The playfulness lowers the stakes, and the flaps force a full pass back through the material. Why something this simple lasts It's tempting to assume the more sophisticated the tool, the deeper the learning. Instructional origami is a useful reminder that the opposite is often true. A sheet of paper asks the learner to do all the work — generate the idea, write it down, build the object, carry the reminder — and it's precisely that work that makes the learning stick. Next time you're about to close with "Any questions?", hand out paper instead. MORE Watch Katrina Kennedy's Show & Share on Instructional Origami