10 Ways to deal with Challenging Participants during Training

What a day Adelaide! I’m sure I used almost every technique I have ever learnt over the past 20 years in dealing with difficult learners.

So as I let the day wash over me I take the opportunity to debrief and focus on another learning experience.

Here are 10 of the many techniques I used today to help manage the challenging learners and still provide a positive learning experience.

1. Ignore the behaviour and hope it goes away on its own
2. Give it air time, let the person vent, then don’t revisit
3. Redirect the response to another learner in the group
4. Help the group set ground rules – included show respect to the person who is talking by listening and to the customer
5. Changing learning activities – group work, small group work, pairs, music, storytelling, brain games
6. Using humour to diffuse an uncomfortable situation
7. Calling the behaviour out – eg. Please wait your turn.
8. Calling the behaviour out – that comment could be offensive, best not to use it
9. Lets have a break
10. Moving people around

Well at least it wasn’t boring and the feedback was surprisingly very good.

So at the end of the day, the training was successful and achieved all outcomes. My goal was to not let a few bad eggs spoil the whole group and that is exactly what happened.

I’m interested to know more about what strategies other people use when dealing with challenging behaviours in training.

Do you have any tips on dealing with challenging learners?