The importance of the awkward squad

When I started out as a trainer, my biggest fear was of difficult participants. You know the ones I mean - the ones that would disagree with what I was teaching them, the ones that would ask awkward questions, the ones that would challenge my material. Over the years, I came to realize that I was viewing training as a competitive activity and that in order to be successful, I had to win.

Now, competition is great and drives lots of wonderful innovations and achievements. But competition between a trainer and their participants is a very bad thing - particularly for the trainer because it’s a competition they’re never going to win. Trainers are leaders and in the training room, as in so many other areas of life, we lead only by consent. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: the more you try to force people to do and accept what you say, the more they will resist you.

Think about it this way. If there is a large boulder rolling down a mountainside towards your village, what’s the best way to save your home? You don’t stand in front of the boulder and try to stop it in its tracks: you get alongside it, match its speed and start to nudge it onto a different path.

It’s the same with people on a training course. They’re adults, with their own views and opinions. As a trainer you have at least try to understand those views; even if you can’t understand them you absolutely have to respect them. Your “difficult” participants are quite likely the ones who are engaging with your material the most because in order to disagree with it they first have to think about it. And if your knowledge of the material - or the material itself - is so weak that it won’t stand up to a little questioning, perhaps you have deeper problems than a few awkward people in the room.

So welcome your difficult participants. Welcome the people who disagree, who challenge, who see it differently. Use them as a springboard for a discussion; use their objections as a way of opening up the material you’re teaching; encourage them to think, to argue, to take the contrary position. You’ll be a better trainer for it and the group will gain far more than if they just sat silently, nodding in agreement with everything you say.