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In A Moment ….

But Not Just Yet

How come, as trainers, we are taught how to stand, how to speak, how to give feedback but we are never taught how to give instructions? And it’s something we do many times during a training workshop.

The way most trainers give instructions goes something like:
“I’d like you to partner up with someone not in your team and …..”

It’s not necessary for me to give you the rest of the instruction here because this is all your learners hear – hence all the questions they have once they find their partner.

Why?

Because as soon as you say, “I’d like you to partner up with someone not in your team” everyone starts eagerly looking around to see who they do and don’t want to work with and getting ready to quickly partner with their choice before someone else gets there or their chosen partner finds someone else. So you then spend the next few minutes re-explaining what you want them to do and there is mild confusion as not everyone is listening etc.

Here’s a simple but very useful phrase to put in front of any instruction:

“In A Moment, But Not Just Yet”

What this simple phrase does is:

• Lets learners know that something is going to change and they will be expected to do something.
• Focuses your learners attention on what you are going to say – after all, they don’t want to be left behind.
• Lets learners know that they should listen to what you are going to say **without doing anything yet**.

Here it is in practice

“In a moment, but not just yet, I’d like you to partner up with someone not in your team and list 6 practical ways that you could start to implement this legislation into your everyday work. You have 4-minutes starting now.”

Here your learners will have sat and heard all the instruction simply because you said “not just yet”. In other words, they hear, you will do this later so there is no need to do anything at present except listen to the instruction.

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