GRENADE
COACHING
GRENADE
COACHING

Catégorie : transactional analysis

  • Public speaking: what if you learned to speak like a politician… but actually had something to say?

    Public speaking: what if you learned to speak like a politician… but actually had something to say?

    You know those people who stand up and speak in front of an entire room, a microphone or a camera?

    Yes, yes. Those politicians who can spend ten minutes developing an idea that could sometimes have fit into three sentences.

    And yet, we listen to them.

    The sentence is perfectly constructed. The pace is controlled. The pauses land in exactly the right places. Their gaze sweeps across the room. Their voice drops when a statement needs weight and rises when they need to carry the audience with them.

    In short: even when the substance fails to convince us, the form of public speaking can be remarkably well mastered.

    What if this skill were not reserved for politicians, keynote speakers and those other mysterious creatures who somehow enjoy finding themselves in front of 800 people?

    Because before dreaming of giving a TED Talk, learning to speak with confidence can be useful in far more ordinary situations.

    Presenting an idea in a meeting. Defending a project. Going to a job interview. Asking for a raise. Explaining to a client why you disagree with them. Or diplomatically telling your boss that their wonderful idea may be sending everyone straight into a wall.

    Public speaking is about being convincing, but it is also about learning to defend your place and your ideas.

    What exactly is public speaking?

    It is easy to picture a lectern, a stage and a crowd.

    But public speaking more broadly means speaking to an audience. In its oratorical sense, a speech is a developed statement delivered before a group of people; public speaking involves structured and intentional communication designed, among other things, to inform or persuade. Le Robert

    And that “audience” can perfectly well consist of eight colleagues around a table.

    As soon as you need to organise your thoughts, capture attention, convey information and perhaps persuade several people, you are already using some of the skills involved in public speaking.

    The good news is that these skills can be learned.

    Speaking well in public is not just about finding the right words

    We place enormous importance on words, or more precisely on the script.

    We think we need to prepare it, write it, rewrite it… that we need to create a magnificent 47-slide presentation that we will then inflict on innocent people.

    And we forget the fundamental thing:

    a speech is not made of words alone. It is, and should be, embodied.

    Take a perfectly ordinary sentence:

    “I think we should reconsider this decision.”

    Say it quickly, looking down, shoulders hunched and voice hesitant.

    Then say exactly the same sentence while looking at the other person, slowing your pace slightly and leaving a second of silence after “decision”.

    Same sentence.

    Not the same speech.

    Your voice, rhythm, pauses, breathing, eye contact and posture all shape the way your message is received.

    Eloquence is not a gift reserved for a lucky few

    Some people seem naturally comfortable when they have to speak in public.

    That does not mean they were born holding a microphone.

    A large part of speaking with ease comes from skills that can be developed: structuring an idea, articulating your reasoning, using your voice, managing your pace, looking at your audience, mastering your posture and, above all, learning to tolerate that particularly delightful sensation of having twenty pairs of eyes fixed on you.

    Because behind difficulty speaking up, there is often something else:

    fear of judgement.

    “What if I stumble over my words?”

    “What if my mind goes blank?”

    “What if someone contradicts me?”

    “What if my question is stupid?”

    “What if I am not legitimate enough to speak?”

    Self-confidence in public speaking does not necessarily mean eliminating stage fright.

    It is more about developing enough inner security to speak despite it.

    Speaking up in meetings: public speaking in miniature

    This is probably one of the situations where the skill becomes most concrete.

    Picture the scene: you are in a meeting. A decision is about to be made. And you sincerely believe it is a bad one.

    You now have several options.

    • Stay silent and complain magnificently by the coffee machine an hour later.
    • Blurt out:

    “Honestly, this is never going to work.”

    • Or learn to express disagreement clearly, diplomatically and convincingly.

    For example, by structuring your intervention:

    here is what I observe → here is the risk I see → here is why → here is the alternative I propose.

    That way, you are no longer merely expressing an opinion. You are building an argument. That is already rhetoric.

    And knowing how to speak up in meetings can considerably change the way your skills and ideas are perceived professionally.

    Defending your interests without turning into a pushy salesperson

    Public speaking is not only useful for presenting projects.

    It also helps you defend your interests.

    Take the wonderful human experience of asking for a raise.

    Walking into your manager’s office with:

    “Er… I’ve been here for quite a while now and I was thinking maybe we could perhaps talk about my salary…”

    does not have the same effect as calmly presenting:

    what you have achieved, the responsibilities you carry, the value you bring and the precise request you are making.

    Asking for a raise is also an exercise in public speaking and argumentation.

    It is neither about attacking nor begging.

    It is about building a message clear enough for the other person to know exactly what you are asking for and why.

    A successful job interview is also about knowing how to tell a story

    The same mechanism applies in a job interview.

    We often imagine that answering the questions correctly is enough.

    But a recruiter only has a few dozen minutes to understand who you are professionally.

    Your ability to present your career path, explain your choices, tell the story of an experience, give a concrete example and respond calmly to an objection therefore becomes essential.

    Saying:

    “I know how to handle difficult situations”

    is a claim.

    Telling, in forty seconds, the story of a difficult situation, what you did and what happened next is a demonstration.

    And our brains like stories.

    Knowing how to speak in public therefore also means learning to turn a succession of information into an intelligible story.

    How do you make a presentation interesting without delivering a pompous TED Talk?

    Ah, the famous TED Talk.

    The black stage. The red circle. The little personal anecdote. The dramatic pause. And sometimes that strange feeling that someone is about to reveal the secret of the universe using three sticky notes and an experience they once had in an airport (I’m barely exaggerating…).

    Still, the format reminds us of something useful:

    a good presentation is not an accumulation of information.

    It has a direction.

    To prepare an interesting oral presentation, start with an extremely simple question:

    What do I want the people in the room to understand, feel or do after listening to me?

    One main idea.

    Then build around it.

    An opening that makes people want to listen.

    A clearly stated problem.

    A few arguments or examples.

    A progression.

    And a conclusion that genuinely answers the question you started with.

    You have just created a mini TED Talk.

    Without necessarily pacing slowly across a stage while explaining how meeting a Peruvian llama transformed your understanding of leadership.

    Posture matters… but it should not become theatre

    “Stand up straight.”

    “Look at your audience.”

    “Use your hands when you speak.”

    All of this advice can be useful.

    Until you spend so much time controlling your body that you start to look like a mime in the middle of an experimental workshop.

    The goal is not to manufacture an artificial posture of confidence.

    It is rather to remove what interferes with your message.

    Breathe enough.

    Do not speak at breakneck speed.

    Accept pauses.

    Actually look at the people you are speaking to.

    Take up your space instead of trying to disappear.

    Good posture supports the speech; it does not perform the speech for you.

    What if I freeze when I have to speak in public?

    Stage fright before speaking in public is not a sign that you lack competence in your field, only that public speaking itself may be a skill you still need to develop.

    The main challenge is to prevent the emotion from taking complete control of your attention.

    And one of the most effective methods remains spectacularly unglamorous:

    prepare and rehearse. (yes, with a Coach, it’s even better…)

    Not memorise every sentence word for word.

    Know your structure well enough to know where you are going even if a particular phrase escapes you.

    Prepare especially:

    your opening sentence, your three main ideas, your transitions, and your final sentence.

    Then you no longer need to retrieve a script from memory.

    You simply find your way again.

    Persuasion is not manipulation

    This is a distinction that matters to me.

    Developing eloquence and persuasive ability does not mean learning how to manipulate other people.

    An argument can perfectly well respect the freedom of the person listening.

    You set out your reasoning. You make your idea understandable. You explain why you defend it. You give the other person reasons to follow you.

    And they remain perfectly entitled to answer:

    “No.”

    Learning to persuade should therefore also mean learning to listen, respond to objections and accept disagreement.

    Otherwise, it is not really an exchange anymore.

    It is a monologue with a witness.

    Can public speaking be learned?

    Yes.

    And above all, you do not need to dream of becoming a professional speaker.

    You can work on your public speaking simply so that you can say clearly what you think when it matters.

    Speak up more often in meetings.

    Present your work without apologising for existing.

    Defend an idea in front of your team.

    Go into job interviews with greater confidence.

    Ask for a raise without wanting to disappear under the table.

    Set a boundary.

    Respond to an objection.

    Present a project.

    Or simply manage to say:

    “I disagree, and here is why.”

    Perhaps that is ultimately the interesting skill behind public speaking.

    Not becoming someone who can talk for twenty minutes without saying anything.

    But becoming someone capable of saying something when their voice matters.

    Public speaking is also about learning to defend your place and your ideas.

    Working on public speaking through coaching

    Public speaking is particularly interesting territory for coaching because it combines several dimensions: self-confidence, communication, stress management, posture, argumentation, the ability to defend your interests and your relationship with other people’s judgement.

    So we can work very concretely.

    Prepare a presentation. Simulate an interview. Rehearse asking for a raise. Work through a difficult intervention in a meeting. Test several formulations. Observe what a different posture changes. Learn how to respond when someone interrupts or contradicts you.

    Because between intellectually understanding how good public speaking works and actually doing it in front of someone, there is a particularly interesting little space:

    practice.

    And that is precisely where we can start playing — and you know how much I love to play…

  • Understanding your problem is not enough: how to move from awareness to change

    Understanding your problem is not enough: how to move from awareness to change

    There is a particularly satisfying moment in personal development.

    The moment when everything suddenly makes sense.

    “Aaaaah… so THAT’S why I do that!”

    At last, we understand why we procrastinate.

    Why we systematically avoid conflict.

    Why certain situations send us into a tailspin.

    Why we keep repeating the same relationship pattern.

    Why we lack confidence in certain situations.

    Why we can never say no.

    Why we react the way we do.

    And that realisation can bring enormous relief.

    Finally, something makes sense.

    The problem?

    Understanding why the tap is leaking still does not fix the tap.

    Understanding your behaviour is not the same as knowing how to change it

    Understanding matters.

    Sometimes it is even essential.

    If you are trying to solve the wrong problem, you may indeed apply the wrong solution.

    But there is a fundamental difference between:

    identify → understand → know what to do → manage to do it → manage to do it again in real life.

    And we often squash all those stages into one.

    “Now that I understand, I should be fine.”

    Then three days later, the situation happens again.

    Someone says exactly the one sentence they should not have said.

    And…

    BAM.

    Same reaction.

    But you understood it.

    Yes.

    You just had not learned it yet.

    “That’s just how I am”: when an explanation becomes a justification

    Today we have an extraordinary number of frameworks that can help us understand ourselves better: personality tests. Medical diagnoses. Karpman’s Drama Triangle. Typologies. Neurodivergence. Attachment styles. Human Design. High sensitivity. Trauma. Atypical functioning. Family systems. Behavioural profiles. [etc.]

    And these tools obviously do not have the same nature or the same level of scientific validation.

    But they can share one thing in the way we use them.

    We can move from:

    “This helps me understand why this situation is difficult for me”

    to:

    “That’s just how I am, so there is nothing I can do about it.”

    And then the tool that was supposed to increase our understanding paradoxically begins to reduce our room for action.

    An explanation becomes an identity. Then an identity becomes fate.

    A diagnosis can explain a difficulty without condemning you to helplessness

    I can use my own example.

    I am autistic.

    So figurative language and second-degree humour can sometimes be difficult for me.

    That information helps me understand why certain communication situations may require more effort.

    It does not mean:

    “I am autistic, therefore I can never learn to recognise irony or sarcasm.”

    I can learn clues.

    Observe contexts.

    Ask questions.

    Develop strategies.

    Practise.

    I may never process those signals in exactly the same way as someone for whom they are intuitive.

    But understanding why something is difficult does not mean giving up on learning how to deal with it.

    And of course, this is my own experience. It is not a universal description of autistic people.

    Be suspicious of the word “therefore”

    There is a tiny word that often deserves close attention in our explanations.

    Therefore.

    “I am introverted, therefore I cannot speak in public.”

    “I am afraid of conflict, therefore I cannot set boundaries.”

    “I lack confidence, therefore I cannot ask for a raise.”

    “I have always functioned like this, therefore I cannot change.”

    Sometimes the conclusion is reasonable.

    And sometimes the therefore contains an enormous logical leap.

    The first part may explain a difficulty.

    The second turns that difficulty into an impossibility.

    So one useful question is:

    “Does what comes after ‘therefore’ necessarily follow from what comes before it?”

    From “why?” to “how?”

    “Why?” is a fascinating question.

    Why do I do this?

    Why do I react like that?

    Why does this situation affect me so much?

    But after a while, another question becomes necessary:

    “How does this actually happen?”

    When?

    With whom?

    After what?

    In what emotional state?

    What happens in my body?

    What thought appears?

    What do I do immediately afterwards?

    What do I gain in the short term?

    What does it cost me later?

    For example:

    “I don’t know how to set boundaries.”

    is still very broad.

    But:

    “When I think a boundary may disappoint someone whose approval I am seeking, I tend to reverse my decision.”

    is much more workable.

    We have moved from an identity to an observable mechanism.

    Knowing is not a skill

    You can know exactly how an argument should be structured and still freeze when you have to speak in front of twenty people.

    You can understand assertiveness perfectly and still say yes when you wanted to say no.

    You can know all the principles of conflict management and still lose your temper when someone presses exactly the right button.

    Because knowledge and skill are not the same thing.

    A skill is developed through practice, feedback, adjustment and repetition.

    That is true of public speaking, communication, negotiation, setting boundaries and many other relational abilities.

    Understanding gives you a map.

    Practice teaches you how to drive.

    Observe → Understand → Test → Adjust

    This is probably the simplest way I can describe the process I like to use.

    1. Observe

    Describe what happens as precisely as possible.

    Not:

    “I always sabotage myself.”

    But:

    “In what situation? With whom? What did I do? What happened just before?”

    What actually happened?

    2. Understand

    Look for possible mechanisms.

    Emotions, needs, habits, environment, beliefs, missing skills, relational context…

    3. Test

    Choose one concrete change.

    Not:

    “I am going to become more assertive.”

    But:

    “At my next meeting, when I disagree, I will ask a question first before explaining my objection.”

    4. Adjust

    What happened?

    What worked?

    What did not work?

    What does this experience teach us?

    Then repeat.

    Change becomes an experiment rather than a judgement about yourself.

    And sometimes the problem is not psychological

    Another reason why method matters.

    If I procrastinate because my task is badly defined, spending three weeks exploring my childhood may not be the most efficient strategy.

    If I cannot speak up because I do not know how to structure an argument, I may need a skill, not an existential revelation.

    If I am exhausted because my workload is objectively absurd, working only on my “inner resistance” may even become frankly counterproductive.

    Not every problem is a wound.

    Sometimes what is missing is: a method, information, a skill, organisation, a boundary, a conversation, or a decision.

    And identifying the nature of the problem prevents us from spending a great deal of time repairing the wrong pipe.

    Why coaching can help move from understanding to action

    That is precisely where I see the value of coaching.

    Not in:

    “I am going to reveal who you are.”

    You are already fairly well placed to participate in that investigation.

    A coach’s role can be to help turn something vague into something observable.

    Move from:

    “That’s just how I am.”

    to:

    “I do this in these circumstances.”

    Then:

    “This seems to be what triggers the behaviour.”

    Then:

    “This is what I would like to be able to do instead.”

    Then:

    “What experiment can we build to try it?”

    And afterwards, come back and look at what actually happened.

    It is less spectacular than a mystical revelation.

    It is also much more usable.

    Understanding is not useless. It is the beginning.

    I absolutely do not want to fall into the opposite extreme.

    Awareness matters.

    Putting a name to a difficulty can be enormously liberating.

    Receiving a diagnosis can help make sense of years of difficulties that previously seemed incomprehensible.

    Identifying a relationship pattern can completely change how we read a situation.

    Understanding how we function can help us stop judging ourselves and start looking for strategies that are genuinely suited to us.

    But then comes the question:

    “Now that I know, what am I going to do with it?”

    And perhaps that is ultimately the whole difference between knowing yourself and learning how to act with what you know about yourself.

    An explanation can make your story more intelligible.

    A method can help you write what comes next.

    As the saying goes:

    The past is a chapter. Not the whole story.

  • Saviour syndrome: helping others without taking control of their lives

    Saviour syndrome: helping others without taking control of their lives

    Sometimes, everything goes off the rails.

    A breakup. A professional crisis. A family conflict. A period of doubt. A loss of direction. A problem that seems impossible to solve.

    And at times like these, we sometimes dream that someone will finally arrive with THE solution.

    The providential man. Or the providential woman.

    The person who will save the day.

    Someone who would immediately understand what is happening, know exactly what to do and finally rid us of the problem.

    The expression is particularly familiar in politics: the “providential man” is the saviour figure who emerges in times of crisis and onto whom people project the ability to resolve a difficult collective situation. Historian Jean Garrigues has notably studied the persistence of this figure in the French political imagination.

    But we also create our own providential men and women in our relationships.

    A partner who will fix us.

    A manager who will solve every problem in the team.

    A friend who always knows what to do.

    A therapist who will heal us.

    A coach who will finally tell us how to live.

    And sometimes, someone is quite happy to take the job.

    Welcome to the wonderful world of saviour syndrome.

    What is saviour syndrome?

    Let’s start with one clarification: saviour syndrome is not an official medical or psychiatric diagnosis.

    The term instead describes a relational pattern in which someone feels a particularly strong need to help, fix, advise, protect or take responsibility for other people’s problems.

    Helping is obviously not a problem.

    Thankfully.

    The problem begins when:

    “I want to help you”

    gradually becomes:

    “I have to save you.”

    And sometimes:

    “I know better than you what is good for you.”

    The saviour may then feel responsible for the other person’s happiness, decisions or even personal development. They give enormously. Anticipate needs. Offer solutions before anyone has asked for them. Step in. Take over.

    And they may end up completely exhausted, wondering why nobody seems to appreciate everything they do for others.

    This is beginning to smell slightly like a trap.

    “I always want to save other people”: why?

    Because being the saviour can feel rewarding.

    And that is precisely what makes it subtle.

    Being the one who helps can make us feel useful, competent, indispensable, generous or needed.

    “Good thing I was there.”

    “Without me, he would never have managed.”

    “She needs me.”

    “If I don’t deal with it, nobody will.”

    It can also help us avoid something much more uncomfortable: accepting our powerlessness.

    Because loving someone unfortunately does not give us the power to solve all their problems.

    Sometimes the other person will make a choice we think is wrong.

    Sometimes they will ignore our absolutely brilliant advice.

    Sometimes they will suffer and we will not be able to remove their pain.

    Helping also means accepting that the other person remains the owner of their own life.

    Karpman’s Drama Triangle: Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor

    This is where Transactional Analysis becomes particularly interesting.

    Psychiatrist Stephen Karpman described in the late 1960s what is aptly known as the Drama Triangle, with three relational positions: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.

    These are not three categories of people.

    They are positions we can enter and move between during the same interaction.

    Imagine:

    “Leave it, I’ll do it for you.”

    Rescuer position.

    The person refuses your help.

    You insist.

    They get annoyed.

    And after spending a huge amount of time on someone who may never have asked for anything, you end up thinking:

    “After everything I’ve done for you!”

    The Rescuer can then become the Victim.

    Or the Persecutor:

    “You never make any effort!”

    And that is how a relationship that began with a perfectly generous intention ends in an argument worthy of a Christmas dinner that got a little too boozy by 11:47 p.m.

    The problem with the saviour: helping can become infantilising

    This is probably the point that interests me most.

    To save someone, you implicitly have to believe that they need to be saved.

    And this is where help can paradoxically become infantilising.

    If I systematically do things for you, I also deprive you of the chance to discover that you are capable of doing them yourself.

    If I make every decision whenever you doubt yourself, you never learn how to decide when I am not there.

    If I systematically answer for you, I gradually occupy the space where your own voice could emerge.

    The intention may be wonderful.

    The result, much less so.

    Doing something for someone is not always the same as helping them.

    Sometimes helping means precisely not taking the wheel.

    But what if I actually want someone to save me?

    That is the other half of the problem, and we talk about it less.

    Because the dynamic does not survive on the saviour alone.

    When we are exhausted, lost or overwhelmed, handing our power over to someone else can be extraordinarily tempting.

    “Just tell me what I should do.”

    I often hear this from clients, and I completely understand the desire because… deciding takes energy, and so does living with uncertainty. But I have never been a fan of “ready-made” coaching.

    So when we are going through a difficult period, meeting someone who seems to have all the answers can feel terribly reassuring.

    That is precisely why we need to remain cautious around the providential man or woman who claims to know exactly what we need.

    Coaching should instead provide perspective, knowledge, tools, hypotheses and sometimes a healthy dose of contradiction.

    Ideally, it should gradually increase your ability to act without the coach.

    A good practitioner is not “the person who will save the day”

    You have probably gathered by now that I do not want to be your providential woman.

    For one thing, it is not even flattering to me, actually. More importantly, it would mean delegating far too much responsibility to me.

    Because a coach’s role is not to create someone who comes back asking:

    “Martine, what should I do now?” at every crossroads in their life.

    Quite the opposite.

    The aim is for you to develop your powers of observation, discernment, understanding of your own patterns, relational skills and confidence in your decisions to the point where you need an outside person less and less to decide for you.

    There is a fundamental difference between:

    giving someone a solution

    and

    helping someone develop the ability to build one.

    The famous dilemma of giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish, although I am not going to let you “starve to death” either. (To understand that part, you’ll have to work with me.)

    Helping without saving: the difference between support and taking control

    You can help enormously without becoming a saviour.

    Helping can mean listening.

    Asking a question.

    Providing information.

    Offering another way of looking at the situation.

    Sharing a skill.

    Giving an opinion when it is requested.

    Being there while someone is going through a difficult time.

    Or simply asking:

    “Do you want me to listen, help you think it through, or suggest solutions?”

    That little question can prevent an absolutely phenomenal number of conflicts.

    Because sometimes someone genuinely wants our help.

    And sometimes they just want to be able to say:

    “My colleague is an arsehole.”

    Without immediately receiving a seven-step strategic plan to restructure their department.

    Saviour syndrome at work: when helping becomes exhausting

    The same mechanism obviously exists in the workplace.

    You may know this person.

    They pick up overdue files.

    Correct other people’s work.

    Solve every problem.

    Reply to messages while on holiday.

    Spontaneously train everyone.

    Take on emergencies.

    And regularly utter this fateful sentence:

    “Forget it, I’ll do it.”

    In the short term, this person can become incredibly valuable.

    In the long term, they may become exhausted, frustrated and convinced that their colleagues are incapable of functioning without them.

    And their colleagues may indeed end up taking less initiative.

    The system perpetuates itself.

    And I know what I am talking about because I have been that person, and I learned from my mistakes.

    That is why this is particularly interesting in management: an effective manager is not necessarily the person who solves every problem for their team.

    They may be the person who gradually builds a team capable of solving those problems themselves.

    Leadership: do we really need a providential man or woman?

    In an organisation, just as in an individual relationship, we may be tempted to look for the person who knows.

    The boss. The expert. The charismatic leader. The person who will take charge and solve the problem.

    The expression providential man historically belongs to political vocabulary and refers precisely to this figure who appears in a critical situation as someone capable of resolving it. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française

    But leadership built entirely around one indispensable person has a rather spectacular flaw:

    it depends on one indispensable person.

    Another model is to build autonomy, responsibility and competence around you.

    This is precisely one of the ideas I explore in my Leader Instinct podcast, particularly through relational positions and the way we exercise leadership.

    Listen to this episode of Leader Instinct

    How do you get out of saviour syndrome?

    Perhaps by gradually replacing one question.

    Instead of:

    “How can I solve their problem?”

    try:

    “What does this person actually need from me?”

    Those are not the same thing at all.

    And a few questions can quickly reveal a tendency to rescue:

    • Did this person ask me to help them?
    • Am I helping them, or deciding for them?
    • Do I feel responsible for the outcome?
    • Can I accept that they may reject my advice?
    • Am I expecting recognition in return for my help?
    • Do I regularly exhaust myself solving other people’s problems?
    • If this person became completely autonomous tomorrow, would I be happy… or would I suddenly feel useless?

    That last one is fairly reflective and may bruise your ego, but it is necessary.

    And if it stings, that is probably a good sign.

    Perhaps the purpose of helping is to become unnecessary

    I do not believe the quality of support should be measured by the dependency it creates.

    Quite the opposite.

    Successful support should gradually give the person more power over their own life.

    That does not rule out help, support or advice.

    It simply means:

    I can walk beside you without claiming to know better than you where your life should go.

    And ultimately, whether we are talking about a parent, a partner, a manager, a coach or that famous providential woman everyone is waiting for to fix the situation, the principle remains surprisingly similar:

    helping someone does not mean becoming their power.

    It means helping them reclaim their own.

     

  • Bespoke professional training: learn, experiment… and even have fun

    Bespoke professional training: learn, experiment… and even have fun

    I have probably never felt quite as at home as I do in a training room.

    Give me a small group, a table I can sit on while talking with participants, a few markers, a whiteboard, some Post-it notes and a topic, with enough freedom to build a learning experience… and there is a very good chance I will turn it into something fascinating because…

    Training is where I feel at home.

    Because what I love about professional training is not so much passing on information.

    Information is everywhere.

    What I love is seeing the moment when it becomes understanding.

    That little:

    “Aaaaah… yes, of course!”

    The moment when someone understands something about themselves, about other people, about their work or about a situation they have been dealing with for years.

    When someone leaves with a better understanding of what surrounds them and, above all, able to use what they have just learned, I get that delicious feeling of:

    “job done.”

    Training should not be about swallowing information

    I am probably going to make a few “friends” in the industry with this one.

    You know that training course.

    9:03 a.m.

    PowerPoint.

    Slide no. 1.

    The trainer reads the slide.

    Slide no. 2.

    The trainer reads that one too.

    By 10:17 a.m., your soul has left your body, but your physical presence remains compulsory until 5 p.m.

    I have been there too.

    Even when I was younger, I had very little patience for being asked simply to absorb information and then reproduce it.

    Because learning is not just memorising. It is understanding. Questioning. Connecting new information to what we already know. Experiencing it. Testing it. Sometimes even challenging it.

    Good training should call on participants’ judgement, critical thinking and ability to reflect.

    Otherwise, you might as well send the PDF. Attending will be about as productive as skimming it.

    Active learning: making learners active participants in their training

    That is why I particularly enjoy active learning approaches and participatory training.

    I can introduce a concept, of course. Explain it. Put it into context. Provide the knowledge needed to understand it. But then I want us to do something with it. An exercise. An experiment. A game. A discussion, perhaps even a debate. A case study. A problem to solve. A role-play. Small-group work.

    A deliberately exaggerated situation in which people can test a behaviour without facing the consequences it might have in real life.

    Because there is an enormous difference between:

    “I know intellectually how to manage a conflict.”

    and:

    “I have just tried to manage a conflict.” (and it went well…)

    It is in that space between knowledge and experience that training becomes truly interesting.

    Role-play: experimenting without risking breaking the machine

    Take conflict management in the workplace, for example. (One of the training topics I often work on with clients. I wonder why.)

    We could quite easily spend two hours explaining the mechanics of conflict, perception biases, possible reactions and communication techniques.

    All of that can be useful.

    But it is still theory. So I like to introduce role-play and practical scenarios.

    Sometimes deliberately extreme ones. Or spaces where people can practise making mistakes.

    By exaggerating a behaviour, playing a role or deliberately pushing a situation towards the absurd, we can experiment. Try. Fail. Start again. Observe what happens. Try something more daring or more personal. And laugh. Laughter does not prevent learning. Quite the opposite.

    Laughter can create a space in which we dare to try more, make mistakes and step outside our usual patterns.

    We can work seriously without taking ourselves seriously all the time.

    Learning workshops that also create connection

    That is another thing I love about training.

    A training room is not simply a collection of individuals who have come to acquire a skill.

    For a while, it is also a group.

    And that group can become a learning resource for its members.

    A well-designed icebreaker is not just a way of making fifteen people say their name and favourite animal.

    It can immediately create a dynamic.

    Reveal differences.

    Allow participants to discover their colleagues in a different way.

    Encourage cooperation.

    Create enough psychological safety for someone to dare to say:

    “I didn’t understand.”

    or:

    “I disagree.”

    From a learning perspective, those two sentences are worth their weight in gold.

    Because a training session where nobody ever questions anything is not necessarily a training session everyone has perfectly understood. It may simply be a room that is far too polite.

    Designing bespoke training instead of applying a ready-made formula

    I also design bespoke training programmes and learning workshops.

    And “bespoke” does not mean changing the logo on the first slide.

    It means starting by understanding:

    Who are the participants?

    What do they already know?

    What do they actually need to learn?

    In what situations will they need to use this knowledge?

    What are the learning objectives?

    What difficulties are they encountering?

    What skills do we want to develop?

    How much time is available?

    What is likely to bore them?

    What, on the contrary, might put them in difficulty?

    How will we know, at the end, whether something has actually been learned?

    This is instructional design at a very practical level: starting with the need and building the learning experience around it, rather than starting with a nice set of slides and hoping very hard that something happens.

    Already have a training programme? Perfect. We can strengthen it too.

    And this is a part of my work that I particularly enjoy.

    You may already have what you believe is an excellent training programme.

    The content is relevant. The expertise is there. But…

    it is a little flat. Lots of slides. Lots of theory. Lots of time spent listening. And after an hour and a half, you notice that very particular look on the participants’ faces. The one that tells you their bodies are still in the room, but their brains have gone out to buy bread.

    That is precisely where I can step in.

    Not necessarily to rebuild your entire training programme, don’t worry.

    But to design learning activities that strengthen existing content.

    Turn twenty minutes of theory into an inspiring workshop. Create a practical scenario. Imagine a game that lets people experience a concept. Build a case study. Add an individual reflection exercise. Get participants working together. Create a sequence that checks what has actually been understood.

    In short:

    put some movement into the content.

    What about online training?

    Same problem.

    Changing the medium does not magically transform a lecture into a learning experience.

    Online training can be excellent, but it still demands motivation to listen and participate. And those little practical exercises people are asked to complete can sometimes feel more paralysing than encouraging.

    It can also become:

    video 1, video 2, questionnaire, video 3, quiz, congratulations, you have finished.

    And three weeks later:

    “What was that about again?”

    For e-learning, I can therefore also design intermediate exercises intended to maintain engagement and consolidate learning.

    Reflection questions. Practical cases. Application exercises. Challenges between two modules. Activities that require learners to use a concept in a real situation.

    Tools for assessing learning outcomes. Sequences that revisit previous knowledge.

    Because finishing a video does not necessarily mean you have learned something.

    Consuming content is not the same as learning it.

    Consolidating learning rather than simply “completing the course”

    There is a distinction that seems fundamental to me between:

    having attended a training course

    and

    having acquired a skill.

    A ticked box on an LMS platform tells us that someone reached the end of a module.

    It does not necessarily tell us what they will know how to do on Monday morning.

    So I like working on learning consolidation.

    Bring a concept back.

    Present it from another angle.

    Ask people to use it.

    Introduce a new difficulty.

    Check whether someone can transfer what they have just learned to a different situation.

    And, above all, allow people to make mistakes.

    Because mistakes in training are wonderful.

    They allow us to discover precisely what has not yet been understood before the mistake actually costs something.

    Training in human relationships: an especially rich field

    My favourite field remains, of course, human relationships.

    Communication.

    • Conflict management.
    • Management.
    • Workplace relationships.
    • Professional stance.
    • Understanding individual ways of functioning.
    • Cooperation.
    • Relational intelligence.

    I have also designed and facilitated training around Human Design, including relational workshops that allow participants not only to discover their profile but also to experience what these differences can produce in their interactions.

    And this is where my different activities come together.

    Coaching has taught me how to ask questions.

    Training forces me to structure and communicate.

    My work on relationships allows me to observe what happens between participants, not only what is written in my training programme.

    The best training may be the one where the trainer talks less

    That may sound paradoxical when you sell training.

    But I have no desire to be the person showing off for seven hours.

    My role is also to create the conditions that allow participants to think for themselves.

    I can bring expertise.

    I can create the framework.

    I can challenge an answer.

    Add information.

    Put two ideas into conflict.

    Point out something that has just happened within the group.

    But participants also arrive with their own experiences, skills, disagreements and questions.

    Why waste all that richness by simply asking them to shut up and listen to me?

    Training is not about filling heads. It is about creating the conditions for something to be built inside them.

    And sometimes between them.

    Why do I train people?

    Ultimately, for that moment.

    The one when someone stops.

    Thinks.

    And says:

    “Wait… I’ve just understood something.”

    I love that moment.

    Because a piece of information has just changed status.

    It is no longer simply something I said.

    It now belongs to the person who has understood it.

    And when a workshop has also allowed several people to laugh together, understand each other better, test something they would never have dared to try in their professional environment and leave with a skill they can genuinely use…

    Yes.

    That is when I feel I have done my job.

    Looking for professional training or a bespoke workshop?

    I can work with you in several ways:

    • design and deliver bespoke professional training;
    • create a learning or participatory workshop around a specific issue;
    • contribute to an existing seminar or training programme;
    • design an icebreaker with a genuine purpose rather than simply an entertainment effect;
    • create games, case studies and professional role-play scenarios;
    • enrich an existing training programme with active learning activities;
    • design exercises for online training or e-learning to support attendance, engagement and consolidation of learning;
    • work on communication, management, cooperation, human relationships or conflict management in the workplace.

    Already have the content but it lacks the learning experience? I am interested in that too. Without adding another 50 slides, don’t worry: together, we can absolutely make sure that something happens in the room.