Paper Airplane Takeaway Strategy

This is a great solution to ensure that participants get some effective follow-up after a day of training, and have a blast doing it.

Setup:

1. At the end of the seminar, have each participant get a clean piece of notepaper and write down their work contact information (cell number, work number with extension, and/or email address) and the date exactly two weeks from your day of training.
2. Next, have them write down three things they learned in today's seminar that will truly help them do their job better in the future.
3. Next, have them make a paper airplane that will fly at least five feet. If they do not know how to make a plane, have someone from their group or table coach them (this allows for a little clever peer-to-peer mentoring!)
4. Have everyone stand in a circle (or if it is a large group, circles of 20 or so) and on the count of "three," fly their planes across the circle.
5. Make sure no one gets their own plane and announce that everyone is now responsible for calling or e-mailing the plane's owner on the date on the paper and ask them what they are doing to integrate what they learned in training into everyday practice. They must also ask what the person remembers most from the training that they can continue to use.

Purpose:

This closing exercise allows for an original way to get everyone to follow-up with fellow participants about what was most effective about training. It helps reinforce the takeaway strategies that are critical for training retention. And finally, it inspires creativity to build a plane and allows for coaching if someone needs help building a paper airplane themselves.

For tips to effectively train your people and streamline your organization, and for other solutions to your staffing challenges, visit www.traininginabox.com. Sign up for our free newsletter at www.quicktrainingsolutions.com to make your HR training and development life easier. Corey Nielsen designs and delivers innovative and effective training solutions for businesses through NTG, his business development and training company.

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