Why timing is everything

When it comes to facilitating training, one of the most common let-downs is when timing is off.

It’s like trying to teach a dog to be toilet trained by showing them the mess on the carpet they made a few hours ago. It’s simply too removed from the event to be able to draw the desired correlation with ease. Rather, you need to catch them in the act so that their brains can rewire and develop a new narrative that says destroying mum’s lovely carpet is something to be avoided.

Whether you’re teaching children, adults or even pets, timing is critical.

Teach something too far in advance and it lacks context, seems too abstract and is more likely to elicit fear and apprehension than anything else. To make matters worse, by the time the learner finally needs to apply this new skill, they’ve likely forgotten most of what was taught and so they end up spending far longer than intended, fumbling around trying to not feel stupid rather than admitting that they don’t remember what they were meant to do.

Similarly, teach something too late and you’ll likely be met with some serious resistance. If something has been rolled out, hyped up and enforced, there’s a very good chance that one of the following will have happened:

1. The student has tried to be proactive, gotten overwhelmed and now wants nothing more than to stick with what they know
2. The student has tried to be proactive, mucked around and developed bad habits that you now need to overcome in addition to teaching them what is desired
3. The student has tried to be proactive, figured out the basics, fallen victim to overconfidence bias and now has no desire to learn anything from you
4. Little has been arranged by those implementing and so the student thinks it won’t actually be enforced and so they ignore the new approach.

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So when should you facilitate training?

Ideally, you want to run the training as close to launch as possible (for company programs, think 2-3 weeks). This is because learning depends on a concept described in behavioural science as salience. If it’s not in front of you at the right time, you simply won’t make the most of it. However, time things well (ie when a learner actually needs to learn) and it’s amazing how much more engaged and invested they’ll be in learning the content.

Typically, if I’m facilitating training for the launch of a new piece of technology or process, my approach is as follows:

Session number	When to hold it	Aim of the session
Session 1	1-2 weeks before launch	Introduce the why, give an overview of key concepts/dates, do a live demo to illustrate the change
Session 2	week of launch/ 1 week post-launch	Now that learners will have independent access, facilitate a practice scenario so learners can engage and ask questions in a safe environment
Session 3	2-4 weeks post launch	Address any learner questions and any new concerns/bad habits that may have developed