Wouldn’t it be great if all our participants, in all workshops, within 5 minutes of arriving, irrespective of their state before hand, made a choice to “stay and play”.

What do I mean by this:

Stay = fully present
Go = head is not in the room
Play = engaged and participating
Delay = uninterested and disengaged

Here’s a way of thinking about the combinations of these:

The optimal thing to do is move people into the Stay and Play box as soon as possible.

3 ways you can do this:

1. Introduce your topic with a story that is universal in nature and illustrates the benefits (move towards) of your training topic, or the pitfalls that can be avoided by knowing about your training topic (move away from).
2. Be authentically interested in the topic yourself.  Make no mistake, trainers are more often than not sales people.  You are in the business of selling your topic and negotiating with the group the extent that they take it up.
3. Start with a relevant icebreaker.  Make sure the principles of your icebreaker are same, or very close to the principles of your training.  That way your icebreaker can act as a “why frame” for the topic.