How to lose your audience

In 3 easy steps

Mar 2

Two hours ago, I was counting the seconds until the end of a one-hour online training. And I was enraged.

I’m in Phnom Penh, Cambodia this week visiting a friend. It’s not a holiday—I’m in fact working more hours. But I’ve been finding time, mostly afternoons and evenings, to explore this city my friend calls home.

When I was invited to this online training, I thought the timing unfortunate. But not attending wasn’t an option. The company I freelance for as a subtitles translator is transitioning to a new software, and this training was to be our first and only introduction to it. Refusing to attend would be unwise.

I thought the one hour allocated to the training was rather long. Maybe it’s a complicated software, I surmised. All the more reason to attend.

So I did. And now I’m fuming.

The cardinal rule of training

I have a background in corporate training. I’ve designed and delivered training on various topics at my old workplaces. I’ve trained managers to be trainers themselves. I’ve conducted in-person workshops and online courses, even hybrid ones. Facilitation is a skill I’ve—if not perfected—then mastered.

Training is both art and science. Most rules can be bent according to the circumstances. But there is one that should be immutable: respect your audience’s time.

The people attending your training have taken time out of their day to listen to you, prioritising you over myriad other tasks or—like me today—precious leisure time. The least you could do is respect their time and deliver your training in the most effective, efficient way possible.

Last November, I attended an online driver’s licence training, the content of which was so devoid of logic that I was inspired to write a newsletter lamenting the state of thinking in Thailand. Like today, the training enraged me. Hours later, I was none the wiser on how to drive safely.

Today’s subtitles software training, however, has made me see that training in a new, more favourable light. Even though its content defied belief, the delivery was effective. The transport officer delivered his content with conviction and accuracy. He was a good trainer. He was respectful of my time, and the time of millions of other unfortunate souls who needed their driver’s licence renewed.

Today’s trainer, in contrast, squandered our time as if the thirty of us in the training had no life outside the hour she deigned to grace us with her presence. She committed sin after sin, crime after crime. The training could easily have taken twenty minutes, but she took her sweet time and made it an hour. I didn’t think it possible, but today’s training left me even more infuriated than the driver’s licence one last November.

One hour of my life that I won’t get back, but some good may come of it still. Here are three things the trainer did that you should never do if you don’t want to lose your audience.

Lose your audience in 3 easy steps

Step 1: Come unprepared

The training was at 11am today, and I only received my first communication from the trainer at 5pm yesterday, the end of most people’s working day. The invitation email also had a careless mistake: the training time was incorrect—the trainer belatedly realised and sent a revised schedule ten minutes later.

Things were off to a bad start, and they didn’t get better. Today’s training—being a software demonstration—involved a lot of screen-sharing. Instead of having all the different tabs open and ready for sharing, the trainer was opening them as she went, sniping at the state of the internet in Thailand when pages didn’t instantly load, needlessly wasting our time.

Worse, it became clear during the Q&A that the trainer didn’t know many of the main features of the software. She only knew the ones she’d used as a QC’er and couldn’t answer basic questions about essential features for other roles like translators (of which I’m one). If you know you’re about to deliver a training to QC’ers and translators, it’s unforgivable to not familiarise yourself with all the features relevant to your audience.

She came unprepared. And it showed.

Step 2: Waffle

Perhaps as a result of feeling unprepared, the trainer didn’t so much deliver a training as waffled her way through. She explained simple processes twice, then a third and fourth time fifteen minutes later for good measure.

While explaining the settings of the software, she spent ten minutes telling us about her preferred settings, demonstrating in detail how they worked much better than the other settings, when she should have just briefly explained what each setting did and let us make our own minds.

She also routinely ventured off topic, spending five minutes here admonishing late project submissions (in no way relevant to the software training), five minutes there asking us what she should have for lunch and lamenting how lonely working from home was.

She was waffling so much that she felt compelled to acknowledge it, saying at the end of the torturous hour, “Thank you for listening to me waffle.”

I hated every second.

Step 3: Say you don’t know what you’re talking about

Perhaps the worst crime of all: barely two minutes into the training, the trainer cheerily announced, “I’m also a newbie at this software. I’m learning with you guys!”

I’m not sure what she intended her admission to accomplish, maybe make us empathise with any mistakes she was about to make. But this, to me, was unacceptable.

She was demanding an hour of our time to listen to her explain how to use this software. She was supposed to be the expert. If she was new at it, then she should have spent time learning the key features (see Step 1) rather than blame her ignorance on inexperience and wasting our time.

If you’re ever asked to deliver a training, a speech, a performance of any kind where you’re not sure if you’re qualified, get yourself up to speed before you say yes. And don’t tell your audience you don’t know what you’re talking about.

What do you think?

Two hours and a satisfying lunch later, I’ve calmed down. I’m no longer fuming as I’m writing this post. I’m feeling almost positive, thinking about how avoiding the trainer’s three crimes could help one of my readers better respect their audience’s time.

What not to do if you want to keep an audience?

Whether you’re a veteran trainer/speaker/performer or a newbie, I want to hear from you. Let’s share tips and better respect our audiences together. Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone whose thought you’d like to hear.