YOU GET WHAT YOU REINFORCE
Early in my career as a trainer I used to end each training day with a round of appreciation. I would invite participants to share what they had found most valuable, and I would nod, affirm, and celebrate every contribution equally: the insight that had clearly cost someone real effort and the one t
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YOU GET WHAT YOU REINFORCE
Early in my career as a trainer I used to end each training day with a round of appreciation. I would invite participants to share what they had found most valuable, and I would nod, affirm, and celebrate every contribution equally: the insight that had clearly cost someone real effort and the one that had been offered mostly to fill the silence. I thought I was creating a safe and generous learning environment. I was proud of it, actually. Then one of my participants, a sharp and unusually honest woman, stayed behind at the end of Day Two and said something I have not been able to unhear. "You respond the same way to everything," she said. "So how do I know when I've actually got it?"
I did not have a good answer for her. And that question has quietly reorganised how I think about what it means to train.
Here is what she was really pointing to: the most powerful message in any training room is not what the trainer says. It is what the trainer responds to and how.
