Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is a highly beneficial trait in learning environments. And even better: it is a skill that can be taught. Empathy and learning are two things that need to be present in your virtual trainings, from new employee onboarding to team training and more. We learn more when we are emotionally engaged, so empathy becomes a vital tool in the training arsenal.
Here are some tips for empathy and learning during virtual training sessions.
Empathy Inspires Confidence
Instructors and trainers who are using empathy and learning in training sessions can inspire confidence in the learners. This confidence allows each participant to truly “buy in” to the experience, rather than sit back and watch the training as a video.
The introduction of real elements and emotions into a virtual training environment fosters attention and importance. If you have the technology in place for interactions, why not inject the emotional significance to keep things engaging?
Empathy Communicates Value
Just like in any classroom dynamic, students respond better in environments where they know they can engage without fear of embarrassment.
Training sessions must be created to foster contribution. To do that, instructors need to offer plenty of opportunities for participation and also respond to comments and ideas put forth by participants.
When you give helpful and supportive feedback more readily, your learners’ confidence grows and they contribute even more.
Foster Enjoyment
We’ve all heard some version of the phrase, “sometimes you have to do things you don’t like.” But that doesn’t mean you have to make mandatory training boring on principle. Adding elements of fun and excitement to training can help engage your learners.
Empathy can be used here as well. Everyone can remember not retaining a single concept after a boring training session. But they can also remember a time when they expected to be bored during training and were, instead, pleasantly surprised.
Empathy Can Convey Importance
You can bolster emotional engagement by helping trainees recognize the importance of the content they’re being taught.
Underlining the importance lends weight to the training. Participants can understand and expand on the reason why they needed to be trained on the presented concepts and processes.
Empathy and Learning Can Forge a Community
When instructors create an environment of empathy and engagement, this can also foster connections between participants themselves.
This should be the goal of all training, but especially ones where professional and collaborative teams have to train together. When you foster empathy, it creates a sort of butterfly effect that creates more opportunities and desire in your team to build on each other’s insights and education.
MMITC: For Empathy, Education, Events, and Collaboration
To have empathy and learning present in your future training sessions, you need to be confident in the tools you are relying on to convey that training from instructor to each and every employee being trained. For targeted and customizable training for employees of all skill levels, take a look at our many training and education solutions.
And for tech and planning support for all future training events, check out our event assist services.
Have questions? Contact us today!
