View Training in a Positive Light

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On one hand, the prospect of training is a very positive thought. Learning new skills is often both interesting and adds value to an employee’s resume and talents. Yet, there are training sessions, presented either by internal company staff or outside contract personnel, that leave much to be desired. Employees, who have had this experience on one or more occasions, often adopt a negative attitude toward training sessions or classes.

The sad reality is that employees who have developed this distaste for training have done so for good reasons. Training sessions that are designed to merely reinforce what the majority of attendees already knows will quickly bore the trainees. New ideas, procedures, and/or policies, if not delivered in a comprehensive and clear fashion, will invariably just confuse the attendees. Q and A sessions with a leader who is unable to provide concise answers to the group's questions are also most unsatisfying.

Much as time-wasting meetings generate negativity (How many times have you heard – or said – “Not another meeting. I have work to do.”), training sessions that are anything but, also create an aura of negativity with employees, which can spill over to the real work to be done. Productivity and performance can suffer a decline.

Tips for Employees to Put Training in a Positive Light

Effective training is immensely valuable to employees and companies alike. Bad training can have the opposite reaction and result. While employees don’t usually have overwhelming influence on either the topics or methods of training, there are things they can do to get the most out of good or not so good education sessions. Here are a few suggestions to help training time to be positive time.

• Treat training time as an investment in your future. Face it: training sessions – even good ones – aren’t always exciting. They’re not supposed to be pure entertainment, you know. However, even at the most uninspiring training meetings, employees often learn something. Everything you learn adds to your knowledge base. Eventually, the larger your knowledge base, the higher your earnings and position.
• Take an inventory of your skills and determine where you need to improve. Everyone can use additional skills to perform better. By listing and rating your current skills, you’ll develop a ‘picture’ of where you rank with your company and with your career. You will also develop a sense of the skills or abilities needing some improvement. Take advantage of training sessions that may add to your skill set. Attend these meetings with a positive commitment to get the most benefit from the information.
• Develop a ‘learning attitude’ and take it with you to training classes. If you’ve played sports or read any positive thinking material, you know that, often, attitude is everything. Becoming or continuing to be negative about training sessions erects a large barrier to learning. You’ll find yourself ‘tuning out’ the trainer, taking shoddy notes, or unconsciously rejecting some good new information. With the right attitude, however, you’ll find yourself taking away valuable information from formerly boring training classes.
• Establish a connection to your job or your career at every training session. There will be training topics that you at first might feel have little connection to your current duties. People tend to tune out the dispenser of what they believe is useless information. But, you risk missing some valuable knowledge. Listen to the trainer and find a connection to your current or potential future position. Mentally establishing this connection will allow your mind to look at the training information in a very different – and positive – manner. Try it, it works!

As you can see, turning a negative attitude into a positive outlook toward training is really not difficult. It is almost totally a choice – yours. Approaching formerly dreaded training sessions with this new attitude gives you the opportunity to learn more, improve your current skills, and acquire new information and ability. You’ll probably find that these sessions, which formerly seemed to drag on for hours, now fly by. You may even want them to last longer so you could learn more.

Try adopting one or more of these attitudes. The worst case result is that some training classes are still uninspiring. The best case, however, may indeed prevail. You will develop better skills to improve your position at your current job. Additionally, you’ll be able to translate these new abilities to new opportunities, further advancing your career.

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