This morning I was teaching a forklift class to some municipal employees. One person in particular started out pretty… “unenthusiastic” about the day. He had just been casually instructed to scramble to find/print the operators instructions for our session just before class. This is just part of the back story.
So, we started the day with him, and acknowledging the elephant in the room. Disengagement. Disengagement is just a symptom though. It present itself when deeper issues are at play.
It turned out that he had taken this training 2 years ago. He didn’t see a need to learn something he already “knew”. He has a 4 year old kid at home, and Christmas is around the corner. There’s a lot on his mind. It also turns out that when we engage as a regular person, people appreciate it.
He was 100% invovled and joking around with the rest of us for the entire day. We had guys playing with the toy forklift. Telling jokes. Finding connections between stability on a forklift, and other areas in life where similar factors come into play.
By the end of the session, this guy was among the most respectful people, and the first to go out of their way to shake my hand and say thank you for the session. The best part… I barely taught anything. They all already knew this stuff. I just had to keep them entertained while they went on a forced learning journey 😂