ABSTRACT
It may seem a little strange to see a Snapshot about managing the behaviour of participants; after all, adults know how to behave, right?! Surprisingly, based on our experiences of training adults and mentoring other trainers, this is not necessarily the case. There may be times when you encounter adult behaviours that you normally associate with those exhibited by children, e.g. shouting, arguing, sighing, doodling and sleeping! Good trainers do not assume that all participants will behave appropriately in their training (although the vast majority of them will), so it is good practice to have a wealth of practical strategies to hand so that the behaviour of certain individuals does not interfere with the learning which takes place during your training. We advocate the use of the ‘Be Clear’ approach (Brownhill in Shelton and Brownhill, 2008: 40) as this offers three simple steps to help professionals effectively address behavioural difficulties:
Be clear about what you see – do you know what behaviour you are observing? Can you define it?
Be clear about what is causing it – what factors are influencing this behaviour?
Be clear about what you are going to do about it – what strategies do you intend to put in place to manage the behaviour observed? Why have you selected these strategies?
