I’ve spent a lot of time this week curled up by the fireplace, reading a gripping, suspenseful, page-turner of a book entitled Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Artform, written by Will Thalheimer.
Be on the lookout for a full book review once I’ve finished it. For today, however, I want to explore one specific area of the book that Will talks about early on: the difference between awareness training and performance training.
What is Awareness Training?
Will describes awareness training as conveying “information to learners but doesn’t provide sufficient support for remembering or on-the-job application.”
What is Performance Training?
Performance training “provides remembering and application support – and aims to improve on-the-job performance.”
As I reflect on the past several years, I’ve certainly been frustrated by how often I’ve intended to design performance training that demonstrates some sort of measurable return on the training investment, only to see the end result more of an awareness training that exposed people to concepts that they never ended up applying on the job.
Needs Analysis Conversations
Recently I’ve begun to ask several questions when someone comes to me and asks for help designing training for their team or for a specific audience. Continue reading →