A key decision-maker for the corporation’s training said they didn’t care about visuals.

Interesting.

We need to do a better job of educating our leadership about what makes effective training. Since corporate America spent $1 BILLION on training in 2022 — and that cool billion is budgeted to solve problems — leadership should be deeply concerned about its effectiveness.

Let’s get into it.

Effective visuals make it quicker and easier for learners to understand concepts. Do highly effective visuals take more time to create? Yes, they do. It requires more thought to determine what the visual should be and more time to develop.

“We don’t have time for that, we have too much training to create.”

This reminds me of an old all-you-can-eat commercial parody, “It’s not very good, but boyyyyyy you sure do get a LOT!”

If you don’t have time to use your corporate funds wisely, feel free to stop reading; I won’t take it personally. Thanks for coming. Have a day.

It Depends

Should you use a photo? A schematic? Create a graphic? A flow chart? There’s no wrong answer, but there are fundamental considerations to help guide you. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

The Whiteboard

Ask yourself, “If I wanted to make this point easier to understand, what would I draw on the whiteboard?” Don’t worry about how this visual will fit into the training, focus on what you would draw and what you would say as you’re drawing it.

Lead Me On

Great training is strategic storytelling at its finest; it leads the learner through an increasingly complex layering of ideas. It builds. Great visuals do that, too.

When evolving relevant visuals, much less explanation is needed; learners are absorbed in the details unfolding before them. We’re telling a story. Strategically.

Charts

The instructor’s next slide contained a chart, “You can see …”.

Actually, they can’t; it’s too small.

And because they’re trying to understand what they’re seeing, they’re not listening either. Strike two.

The chart should be the only thing on the screen. Reveal the components of the chart as you go, this allows learners to relax and focus on the brilliant point you’re making.

“I don’t know how to reveal layers of a chart.”

Create boxes the same color as the background, then cover each chart component. Fade out each box when it’s time to explain it. There are fancier ways to do this, but it’ll do. Build your story to the “aha!” moment.

“What if the chart doesn’t have an ‘aha!’ moment?”

Leave it out. Give yourself permission to be informative, fascinating, and then gone. Dare to give the people what they came for and release them back into the wild. If you “think” a chart “might” add something — that’s ‘filler’. We don’t use filler. Ever. Filler magically funnels your corporation’s training spend from their bank account to ::poof:: nowhere. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Photos

Careful. Does it illuminate the point you’re making or does it just fill space? Resist the urge.

Need a picture, but don’t have it? Go get it. If it’s valuable to the concept, go get it. Any part of a photo can be highlighted, faded out, snipped apart, etc., all in service of layering the story.

Video

Listen, I YouTube all the time, too, but YouTubers are incentivized to make you happy. They work hard to be succinct, useful, and fascinating. Is that how you would describe your corporate training? And while you’re watching YouTube – you can knit that cat potholder or change your car’s oil. With corporate training, we’re talking tons of detail and multiple concepts.

Can video snippets be helpful? Absolutely. But don’t make them your content. If teaching with video was effective, I’d say plunk them in front of a screen and have them watch all day, but that doesn’t work. It’s too passive of a medium.

Modern-up

Without relevant visuals you’ve created a booklet. A handout. A flyer. We need to do a much better job of educating our leadership on the topic of effective training so they can intelligently lead.

Corporate training has been designed and delivered the same way for decades. ADDIE, anyone? Embrace a different method. It’s time to modern-up by designing for the problem, telling a story, and nailing the visuals. It’s how we change. Everything.

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~gail sexton is the author of this article and owner of Engaage, LLC. Scroll down to sign up for emails, where she’ll share more concepts and practical steps for creating engaging and effective training.