The Scene:

Management Training Class. Sixteen people, consisting of senior management and department heads.

The Situation:

One attendee has been promoted through the ranks and is extremely insecure about being there. He’s an outspoken, middle-age male, who mentioned before class started that he hadn’t sought much training on anything after high school. 

The Problem:

He’s the most junior-ranked manager in the class, but he wants to prove that he’s worthy of being there. He’s constantly challenging the material with questions like, “This is what I do in that kind of situation, isn’t that good enough?”

 These are not just occasional interruptions—they occur several times an hour. It’s obvious the others in class are getting tired of it, but they’re trying to maintain a team spirit. In other words, they’re tolerating him.

 This scenario presents a real danger for a contract trainer. Shut the man down too hard and you alienate the entire class. They’ll view you as attacking ‘one of their own’ and that’s taboo.

 Don’t do anything and they’ll start seeing you as someone who can’t manage the class well. 

What to do?

 I share this scenario because it’s occurred in my classes, and other trainers have told me they’ve experienced it, too. The best way to describe it is someone who’s not there to learn; but seeks only to be validated.

 Keeping in mind that his is a management development class, some actions that may address this kind of distraction include:

 Reiterate that nothing presented in class is etched in stone. Solutions and practices presented may work well for some people and not others. The purpose of covering them in class is to examine them and consider their usefulness. 

Plan B:

If that doesn’t help, I’ll approach the individual on break. The key here is to create a safe place—especially if the individual is insecure, as in the example given above.

 I’ll spend a minute asking about the person’s work and affirming his skills and experience. I’ll then acknowledge that he’s been successful or he wouldn’t have achieved his current position.

 Following that I pivot. I restate the purpose of the class is to consider alternatives to current practices in an effort to get even better results than he’s getting now—and I ask him dig into those discussions with a genuine desire to explore them, emphasizing that he doesn’t have to adopt them if he finds them totally unacceptable.

 The main purpose in this offline conversation is to gain his commitment to participate.

 Usually this approach works for me. In fact, in the situation I was thinking about as I wrote the above scenario, the boisterous middle manager practically became my strongest advocate. 

You may need some help!

However, in the event Plan B fails, Plan C is a bit trickier and somewhat political. Identify another learner who appears to be an advocate—someone who has a fair amount of clout.  Again, on break, ask this person to approach the “openly non-participative” middle manager himself.

 The idea is that if “one of their own” approaches with a request to tone down the confrontations and be more of a learner, it may break through and be heard.

 Does a nuclear option exist? Sure. In fact plenty more options exist. But if you exhaust all your alternatives and the problem persists, it may be necessary to call it out in the open for what it is.

 “Name the game,” as a colleague puts it. Then, once the game has been called, it’s no longer fun to play, and the person stops playing it. 

Your Thoughts?

The comment board is open — if you’ve done training with the type of participant described above, tell us how you handled it. What did you try? What worked? What didn’t work? What might you do different next time? ? ?

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Filed in Training, Management, Workplace, Train the Trainer