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I travel quite a lot these days, delivering courses up and down the country and increasingly around the world. When I find out where I am going or where the interest is from, I do what I think many people do and immediately form an opinion of what it will be like in that particular destination.
Recently I have been on business trips to Beirut and Milan. When I told friends and family members about these two trips you will not be surprised to hear that most displayed envy and interest about my trip to the fashion capital that is Milan and a good degree of sympathy, shock and, for some horror, that I would be visiting Beirut. Of the two, my first reaction was that Milan would be great opportunity to train a positive group of fast track graduates keen to learn and a chance to spend a few hours, at least, wandering around the Duomo, around San Babila and spending a few Euros on myself and my family. Beirut on the other hand is a city that I had grown up hearing about on the news for all the wrong reasons. Political upheaval, kidnappings, civil war and cross border shelling, have been reported from Lebanon for years. A business trip to Beirut in my head was at best a long shot. I consider myself to be an optimistic person and having met our business partner from Beirut, back in August, was keen to see what Beirut was really like. However, if I am honest, my expectations were not quite as high as they were for my trip to Milan. 
After travelling to the two destinations, I can now report that Milan was pretty much as I expected. Decent hotel near the airport, great group of course participants who were all keen to learn and I had a chance to get into the fabulous city that is Milan, even if it was just for a couple of hours after the first day of the course.
Beirut however was not at all what I had expected. It is an amazing city and it was an amazing experience! It surpassed my cautious expectation. We had four exciting business meetings with positive, optimistic HR teams all displaying an eagerness to learn and develop their staff. The city itself is reborn after years of civil war and general repression. Shopping malls, hotels, apartment blocks, beach clubs, marinas, restaurants and roof top bars are all emerging literally from the ruins of the old downtown area, creating a vibrant atmosphere and the back drop to a hugely enjoyable four days.
What struck me after this trip was is the link between this & the levels of expectation that surround training courses and providers. At Phoenix Training and Development we hand out post course evaluation forms and ask the question “to what extend did the course meet your expectations/requirements”. Participants often fill this section in by responding – “far better than what I was expecting”, or “way better than I thought it would be”. I am now disappointed if I read “it met my expectations fully”. This is the bare minimum we should be hearing. Do participants attend a course with very low expectations and therefore any half decent course will exceed those low expectations. I think that this was possibly the case five or ten years ago. I think that courses used to be rather uninspiring at best and so anything that had anything about it would surpass expectations. Nowadays the general level of training on the market is better than that but clearly there are many out there who still think that training is going to be a dull, boring and frankly fairly poor use of their time.
What it says to me is that we, as deliverers of training courses and programmes, have to recreate what Beirut did to me. It can’t change its image immediately, but it must try hard to do so. We have to create lively environments, create challenges by testing the participants but not making it bland and obvious, maintain high levels of enthusiasm and positivity, make sure that every participant gets what he or she requires in order that they view the training as an experience and not just a day out of the office. I have a group at the end of the week that, from what I have heard pre course, are not expecting too much! My role is to make sure that they leave the course blown away by the experience and with the fact that their expectations were totally wrong.
To see more pictures of our trip to Lebanon visit our Facebook page.
