What's In It For Me?

The first thing that adults in training ask themselves is, "what's in it for me?", or WIIFM.

When designing or presenting courses for your employees, always keep this in mind.  Whether they're actually verbalizing it or thinking it subconsciously, it's still on their mind.  It's the main motivator for most of the things we do.  It helps us to translate an external need into an internal one.  The WIIFM for training could be anything from becoming a better employee, getting a raise or promotion, or . . . just getting done and completing the test.

For the most part, we like the familiar and are uncomfortable with change.  But our brains like novelty, not memorization.  We resist meaningless stimuli.  So any time that we can integrate the information we're gathering into something useful, we're getting that WIIFM.

As adults, we have many experiences to fall back on.  Use that to your advantage when facilitating your employee classes.  Set the tone early.  You don't have to actually state (and I would recommend not) that "the WIIFM for the class is".  But instead of letting them use the get done and test reason, take a couple of minutes to state the objectives/reason for the class and discuss the positive outcomes of attending. Motivated adults seek out learning because they have a use for it.  Get them thinking about why they're REALLY there.