If you had to prioritise the most important element of a training session, what would you elevate to the top slot?
If you cast your mind back to all the episodes of training that you have enjoyed and endured, I’m sure there will be some that you would never want to repeat, whilst others really worked for you. So, what was it that made that experience so important that it remains a source of positivity, even as you look back today?
I have been in the personal development and training arena for over 20 years and have witnessed heaps of training models. I am always keen to learn and grow in my constant quest to find better ways. For me the things that make a training experience have that something extra is when it’s a values-led course, and that’s one of the things I love about the Training 4 Influence methodology.
Why Training 4 Influence Resonates with Me
The methodology is values led and when I was asked recently why I am so passionate about it, my answer was because it sits perfectly with my own values, it is because every aspect is ‘right,’ it does all the things that I have developed over last two decades but is has systematically finessed the interventions and rationale to such a high level that it just does them better.
Values are what is important to those who are affected by the training experience. It is the reason that everyone does what they do, and values led training is the explicit identification and expression of those unifying themes. The purpose of the training session transcends the core information and instead becomes about connecting the event with the underlying purpose that everyone is driven by, so that meaning is restored to the work of the practitioners.
Collaboration and Empowerment
Values led training has to be consciously built into the session. Even before the session, organisations are contacted to identify how best to tailor the session to express organisational core values alongside also the organisation’s current needs, so that as the delegates arrive they feel that the facilitator is informed of their actual circumstances. The sessions are collaborations; this means that the power dynamic that is often present in some training dissolves. Instead the skills and knowledge of the delegates are promoted and valued throughout the session, so they all feel validated, valued and are reconnected with their own passions.
Values led training sessions feel different because the trainer expresses and models their own values from the moment someone enters the room; delegates witness passion, a clear identification and valuing of the organisations needs and those of the service users, and most evidently, revitalising the values of the delegates.
Reconnecting with Your Why
A theme in values led training is reconnecting with your why. Delegates are asked to express why they do their job, what brought them into this profession and what motivates them. The sessions are constructed to promote best practise by nurturing the pride that each delegate has in their work.
Delegates are overtly reminded that they are experts, that they came into this field out of passion and that that passion is the vehicle for them to grow through the session. The delegates are also guided to express the learning from the session in their work to nurture the strengths and unique qualities of each person they will work with. Sessions are vibrant, warm, rich, fun and also wilfully purposeful, with each element of the session having a rationale which is also connected to an expression of both the values of the facilitator but of the delegates as well. Values of excellence, dignity, trust, honesty are continuous themes that overtly and covertly evidenced leading to incredible intense and often profound personal development episodes. Values led training is therefore delivered from a trauma informed perspective that underscores the expectation that service user dignity is restored and any judgementalism is discarded.
This creates an organic, dynamic feel to all the session where structures can be adapted to meet the evolving needs of the delegates.
By using authenticity and values as the golden thread to bind the sessions together, open and honest discussions are able to take place organically. Learners feel secure enough to express authentic self-directed vulnerability, so that the learners are able to see how it feels to be a service user and how to better address service users’ needs. Delegates will readily share the things that they want to authentically progress in.
The Golden Thread
Values led training creates a vitality and authenticity to training that is far beyond ‘good training.’ It inspires positive role modelling, nurturing, authenticity in the space, as well as risk-taking to foster personal and professional growth alongside bonding at a level that magnifies team cohesion.
It is not only in the training arena that values led work leaves a lasting impact. As staff become more and more fluent in recognising and expressing their values in their work, they become more and more motivated and creative in how they can deliver the services.
The impact on service delivery is profound, the service user gets a much better experience because those who are trained through values develop the most positive attitudes and can see the bigger picture. This perspective allows the staff to transcend their roles and allow the role to become an expression of their values. Staff evolve into role models of authenticity, compassion, integrity and ongoing high expectations of everyone that they interact with.
Services that are focused on change are acutely aware that motivation from external sources is usually short-lived. It is intrinsic motivation that is sustainable and vital when dealing with the many ongoing challenges we face as professionals. Knowing your why, which stems from knowing your values, allows you to access that intrinsic motivation unique to you. This is why values are critical to staff motivation and also to staff resilience.
Despite the immense rewards, working with vulnerable people can be incredibly frustrating, personally challenging and physically draining. Without knowing your values, it can be very easy for professionals to lose sight of the bigger picture. Values led training creates enhanced resilience for ourselves and our teams by bringing that bigger picture into focus.
Knowing why you do what you do, automatically makes you more resilient because it restore meaning to your work. Change-work often is a space of conflict, resistance and emotional outbursts that can all lead to burnout. By integrating values, it equips teams to step away from personalising these challenges and re-contextualise them as evidence that they are doing a meaningful piece of work.
Values led training builds resilience because it builds certainty in the delegates, even when they make mistakes. Staff no longer berate themselves as they accept that their underlying rationale for their work was built on a wilful good intent.
Attitudes, like emotions are contagious, and so as values trained team-members return to the workspace and live by their values, the service as whole becomes more and more resilient and the mission because easier and easier to deliver by the actions and mindset of every colleague.
A training session that is built on values and incorporates the values of everyone at its heart, delivers much more than a functional training experience, it is evolves into a living, breathing, connection between everyone in the professional care ecosystem.
