Presentations training – solo or groups?

I recently had a client who wanted to have one-on-one training in making presentations. After a free taster session I decided that this wasn’t the best way forward for him and suggested that he looked at the idea of training as part of a group. We had quite an interesting conversation about the pros and cons of the two approaches…. Let’s start by looking at the obvious stuff first.

Training Cost – training in a group is likely to be cheaper. I charge by my time (like most trainers, I think) and so if my time is shared over half a dozen people, so can the cost be. That’s the obvious advantage of working in a small group.

Training Focus – this is the quid pro quo of the benefits of less cost, I guess, because you’re likely to get get less individual attention from a trainer if he or she is working with six or seven people than with just you. It might mean, for example, that you need more session and that consequently the benefit of a lower cost-per-session is countered by the extra number of sessions you need.

Training Preference – for me this kind of trumps most things… if you feel uncomfortable learning on your own, learn in a group and if you are more comfortable on your own, learn on your own! It’s hardly rocket science…….

So much for the simple stuff.

But there are other things to consider too, such as the fact that too much focus might be counter-productive for your training. Having all the trainer’s attention on you all the time gives you no time to reflect and absorb what you’re learning; sure, you might make spectacularly fast progress during the session but if you’ve not really taking it in, it’ll just leak away when you leave and that progress won’t translate into the ‘real world’. That’s why I make a point, when I’m doing one-on-one training to take time to lighten the load, or perhaps look at different aspects of making presentations. It gives people time to absorb and thereby really learn what we’re working on.

What’s more, my experience is that much of the basics of things like breathing and so on can be learned in general terms at least as well in small groups as individually. People can only learn so fast, so there’s no point in giving them more attention than they need – it’s a sledgehammer to crack a nut.  In short (for the basics at least) you can get the benefit of cheaper training but without the commensurate loss in productivity…

Of course, you can hide a lack of progress in a group more easily than you can on your own, but any half-way decent presentation skills trainer can spot that and stop it easily enough. What’s more, groups mean that you can often feel less inhibited – allowing faster progress than you would on your own.

An example might make things more clear here.

One of the things I work hard on with my clients is often helping them to breathe in a way that makes their voices sound more assure and, because of the way hormones respond to how you breathe, makes them less likely to be overly anxious. Breathing exercises like this are often best done on your back for the first few times. Doing things like this – that feel downright odd if you’re not used to them – can feel intimidating on your own, whereas being part of a group of (say) eight other people help this can be a bit more natural…. although never quite completely natural, I admit! ;)

There’s also the issue of learning from each other.

It’s one thing for an ‘expert’ to tell you something that’ll help your presentation style, perhaps by a considerable amount, but quite another for you to see it demonstrated by watching someone else’s style change for the better in front of you. Seeing it happen makes it more ‘real’ than simply being told it.

I’ve seen it happen time and time again – particularly with sceptics! – that the penny finally drops only when they see it happening for real.

Everything I’ve said so far, of course, has one thing in common – the assumption that you’re training as part of a small group. In my head, small is up to about eight people. After that I find that, even with the best will in the world, I can’t always spot everything I’d want to spot, for all the clients…. I’m constantly surprised and sceptical of trainers who pack out rooms with 150 people and say they’re going to make them great presenters. No they aren’t. What they’re going to make is a lot of money.

A lecture is different from training!

At that point, save your money. Or better yet, use some of it to buy me a beer.