When I entered the training profession, I wanted people to participate.
I had spent years in classrooms where teachers spoke and students listened. I knew how easily people could sit through a lesson without truly entering it. So when I discovered active learning, I was excited. I studied games, participatory methods, simulations, and the work of trainers such as Mel Silberman and Thiagi. I learned how to make people stand, talk, compete, solve problems, and learn from one another.
The difference was easy to see. Instead of staring at slides, participants became involved. They laughed, moved around the room, shared ideas, and produced outputs. The trainer no longer carried the entire session.
It felt like a breakthrough.
Then I began noticing something uncomfortable. Some sessions were highly active but still created no meaningful change. People played games, joined discussions, completed group challenges, and gave the facilitator excellent ratings. When they returned to work, however, they continued doing what they had always done.
The room had moved. The behaviour had not.
The Moment the Trainer Let Pass
I once watched a session on accountability.
The trainer asked participants, “What is one thing you will stop doing after this program?”
At first, the answers were safe. One person said he would stop arriving late for meetings. Another promised to follow up more consistently. The trainer nodded, thanked each person, and prepared to move to the next slide.
Then someone at the back of the room said, “I’ll stop saying, ‘I got it,’ when I don’t.”
The room changed.
People laughed, but it was not the loud laughter that follows a joke. It was the nervous laughter of recognition. Almost everyone had done it. A boss gives instructions. The employee nods. The meeting moves on. Later, the employee discovers that the task was not as clear as it sounded.
Some people say “I got it” because they do not want to look slow. Others fear that asking again will irritate the boss. Sometimes the manager speaks so quickly that pretending to understand feels easier than interrupting.
The participant had uncovered a real behaviour behind many mistakes, delayed outputs, and disappointing handoffs.
The trainer had found the shift.
But instead of staying with the moment, asking where it happened, and helping participants try a different response, the trainer said, “Thank you for sharing. Let’s move to the next slide.”
The session remained active. People had participated. A meaningful insight had surfaced.
But no one practised the new move.
Activity Is Not the Destination
Active training is commonly built around group discussions, role plays, games, scenarios, and hands-on exercises. These methods are valuable because they invite people to do more than listen.
But an activity is only a container. What matters is what we place inside it.
A group discussion can reveal new thinking, or it can allow participants to repeat familiar opinions. A role play can develop a difficult skill, or it can become amateur theatre that entertains the room. A game can expose a costly behaviour, or it can fill twenty minutes before lunch.
Participation tells us that people joined the activity. It does not tell us that they gained a move they can use under pressure.
This is the limit many trainers eventually reach. They escape the lecture but remain trapped inside the event. They ask, “How can I make this engaging?” when the more demanding question is, “What must participants become able to do?”
The aim is not simply to make training active. The aim is to make practice possible.
Humour Opens the Door, but It Cannot Finish the Work
Many trainers try to be funny. I understand why.
Laughter creates connection. It lowers resistance and helps people relax. A trainer who can tell a good story or laugh at himself often makes the room feel more human. Games also create energy, especially when participants arrive tired, distracted, or convinced that another seminar will waste their time.
There is nothing wrong with humour. There is nothing wrong with fun.
The mistake is treating laughter as evidence that learning happened.
When participants laugh, we know they found something funny. When they compete enthusiastically, we know the challenge caught their attention. When they post photographs of the activity, we know the experience looked worth sharing.
We still do not know what they can do differently.
Humour should help participants see something they have been avoiding. A game should place them inside a choice, reveal a pattern, or prepare them for a better attempt. Energy can open the door, but practice must walk people through it.
A trainer should not ask only, “Did the activity work?” The sharper question is, “What did the activity make possible?”
Turn the Insight Into a Shift
Return to the participant who said, “I’ll stop saying, ‘I got it,’ when I don’t.”
The trainer could have used that moment to create a complete shift.
The Mirror was already there. Participants had recognized the old behaviour: pretending to understand because asking for clarity feels uncomfortable.
The trainer could then introduce the Shift. Clear communication is not proven by how well the manager explained. It is proven when both people can describe the same expected result. The employee does not need to say, “I don’t understand anything.” A more useful response might be, “Let me explain what I heard so we can check whether I understood correctly.”
Next comes the Win. Participants could practise that response immediately. One person gives an unclear instruction. The other uses the new line, explains what they heard, and asks a clarifying question. The first attempt may feel awkward, so they receive one correction and try again.
Finally comes the Act. Within forty-eight hours, each participant uses the response during one real assignment, handoff, or meeting. They record what happened, what became clearer, and what they would improve in the next attempt.
This is the movement I use in Shift Experience Design: Mirror, Shift, Win, Act. The session reveals the present behaviour, introduces a more useful play, produces an early success inside the room, and carries that move into real work.
The activity now has a job. It no longer exists merely to make people participate. It helps them cross from recognition to practice.
Build a Minimum Lovable Play
Trainers often make practice too large.
We try to teach the whole competency. If the topic is communication, we include listening, questioning, body language, empathy, feedback, presentation, conflict, and several communication styles. The program becomes complete, but the participant returns to work carrying too much.
A Minimum Lovable Play is smaller. It is one useful response for one recurring workplace moment. It is minimum because it includes only the moves needed to create progress. It is lovable because it is useful enough that people want to use it again.
Consider a supervisor assigning unfamiliar work. The common problem is not that the supervisor has never heard of clear communication. The problem appears when the supervisor explains the task, asks, “Okay?” and accepts the employee’s nod as proof of understanding.
The Minimum Lovable Play may be called Clarity Check. The supervisor states the result, shows the standard, and asks the employee to explain the assignment back in their own words.
Those three moves do not teach everything about communication. They improve one moment where confusion often begins.
That is enough for practice.
Participants can run the play several times in fifteen minutes. They can receive feedback, adjust the wording, and leave with something simple enough to remember when Monday becomes busy.
A good play does not ask people to admire the framework. It helps them act better when the familiar problem returns.
Role Play Is Not Automatically Practice
Trainers often assume that adding a role play solves the application problem.
It does not.
A role play can still be broad, artificial, and unfocused. One participant becomes an angry customer. Another plays the employee. They exaggerate, the room laughs, and the facilitator asks everyone what they learned.
That may create discussion, but practice needs more precision.
Practice identifies the moment, the move, and the standard. It gives participants another attempt after feedback.
Instead of acting out an entire ten-minute performance conversation, let managers practise only the opening thirty seconds. The manager names the observed behaviour, explains its effect, and asks for the employee’s view. A partner responds. The manager receives one useful correction and repeats the opening.
The second attempt is where capability begins to grow.
People do not become skilful because they heard the right idea once. They improve through a tighter loop: attempt, feedback, adjustment, and another attempt. When that loop continues into real work, training begins to produce proof rather than hope.
What Trainers Must Design First
A trainer should not begin with an activity menu.
Do not start by asking which energizer, game, video, or role play would make the session interesting. Begin with the workplace moment.
What keeps happening that produces the wrong result? What do people currently do in that moment? What move would create a better outcome? How can participants practise it before leaving the room?
Only then should you choose the activity.
This does not make training less creative. It gives creativity a purpose. The right design may use a game, a story, a simulation, a scenario, or a challenging question. It may also use silence, a short rehearsal, or one real decision participants have avoided.
The standard is not how exciting the method looks. The standard is whether it prepares people to run a better play.
What HR Should Look For
HR should continue caring about engagement. A room full of distracted participants is unlikely to produce much learning.
But engagement cannot be the final measure.
Before approving a design, HR can ask the trainer to complete one sentence: “When this situation happens at work, participants will do this instead of that.”
That sentence forces clarity. It identifies the moment, the old response, and the new move. It also gives managers something specific to reinforce after the program.
After the session, HR can follow one simple trail. Did people use the play? What happened when they tried it? What made the move easier or harder? What support or system change is needed for the practice to continue?
This is far more useful than asking only whether the trainer was entertaining.
What CEOs Should Demand
CEOs do not need to choose between funny training and boring training. They need to demand useful training.
Before funding another program, ask what people will practise that the business needs them to do more reliably. “Leadership,” “communication,” and “teamwork” are not enough. The answer should name a visible move.
Will supervisors clarify ownership before ending a meeting? Will managers respond to repeating errors while they are still small? Will employees raise a risk before the customer is affected? Will team leaders check understanding before unfamiliar work begins?
These moves may appear small, but execution is built from small moves repeated at the right moments.
That is why practical leadership training must do more than keep people involved. It should find where execution breaks, give leaders a useful play, allow them to practise it, and follow the evidence into the workplace.
From Movement to Practice
The trainer in the accountability session did not need another joke or game when the participant said, “I got it,” even when he did not.
The room was already awake. People had recognized themselves. The behaviour that needed to change was sitting in front of everyone.
What they needed next was a new play, a chance to try it, feedback that improved the second attempt, and a real workplace moment where they could use it again.
That is the difference between active training and training that creates shifts. Active training gets people involved in the room. Practice equips them to move when the trainer is no longer there.
About Jef Menguin
Jef Menguin is a leadership development consultant and motivational speaker. He created The Leader’s Game and Supervisor Factor, practical leadership-development systems that help organizations turn priorities into everyday leadership behavior.
Explore his work in leadership training, discover his motivational speaking programs, or connect with him on LinkedIn.