Quick! Count the number of ways you teach. Are you a ‘one-trick’ pony, or do you vary your teaching methods and strategies often?

The picture is from the last Instructor Development Workshop I just taught. My awesome attendees posted what they thought were the most valuable teaching strategies they got from the session. Wow–they won’t be boring presenters now!

Are you stuck in one method?

We all have a favorite method to teach. Why? Because it’s our behavioral ‘style’. Many of us in the real estate industry like to lecture. Admittedly, it’s the easiest. We can control the audience–we think! We are the whole show. We don’t want input. After all, we must know more than the students, right? We are experts. We want to provide lots of information, and we don’t have much time to do it. So, we talk–and talk–and talk.

The problem with the presenter being the whole show…..

Unfortunately, though, the attendees get real tired of hearing us in about 10-15 minutes. Oh, I know. A very few lecturers can be entertainng for longer than that. But, learning studies show that learning drops way off in a short period of time when the students are not involved.

How much do you want your students to learn–and retain?

You would think, that, the more we talk, the faster we talk, and the more information we provide, the more the students grasp and remember. But, as you can see from the study below, that’s not the case. If we’re just talking, the student retains only 20%. But, if we’re using various other training methods, the student retention goes WAY UP.

The REAL Reason We Rely on Lecture

OK. I’m going to throw back the covers on a dirty little secret: We lecture because we aren’t trained in other methods of teaching. In addition, the courses we are given to teach are not even courses–they’re little books, or ‘streams of consciousness’. So we grab them and talk.

The other big problem with relying on lecture

When I teach Instructor Development, the attendees always want to know how to deal with the ‘chatty Cathys’ or the ‘disruptive Dans’. So, let’s look at how those challenges occur. They occur when we rely on lecture. It’s easy to lose control when someone wants to take over and teach the class to us, or argue, or comment with a war story! And, that only occurs when you lecture or hold a discussion.

Divide and conquer

What if you could develop alternative methods to deliver your content? What if you could divide them in various ways so those chatty Cathys and disruptive Dans couldn’t run their schticks? What if you could control your audience with grace? What if you could help your attendees learn more and retain better? What if your attendees could find your training fun, exhilarating, exciting, and engaging? It’s possible if you learn and use other methods of teaching. That’s what we explore and practice in my Instructor Development Workshop, and my distance learning version, Train the Trainer.