Disruptive People During Training

Greetings all,

I deliver different types of training to different audiences (from direct technician all the way to C-level in large organizations). I find from time to time that I will have a person in the sessions that is disruptive. By disruptive I mean talking with other people, responding to questions in a condescending and patronizing manner, refusing to participate in class activities, general unprofessionalism, etc...

I usually handle this very directly. I will stop whatever is happening and say directly to the person something like this:

One of us might be in the wrong place. Your tendency to [insert offending activity here] is distracting and disruptive. It doesn't bring out the best in me, and is likely to prevent others from getting what they deserve out of this session. Here's how this is going work. I'm going to allow you to stay here and continue your behavior as long as it suits my needs. When I find no more value in using your behavior as an example of what not to do, and in support of what we're doing in class, I'm going to declare success and have you ejected. You can make a choice now; leave now, stay and be a negative example for as long as I allow you to, or behave professionally and become a productive member of this class.

Many professional educators will disagree with my approach as it singles out the bad actor. However, I don't believe in dancing around problems, especially this type of problem as it can quickly become viral in a classroom setting. Part of what people get when they hire me is a direct approach, and I do clarify the ground rules before I ever accept the work.

Last week I was at a customer site delivering a high-level, conceptual training class about a specific type of architecture. One person in the class was behaving inappropriately (talking outside of class activities, responding patronizingly and condescendingly, refusing to participate in class activities, etc..). It was really bad...in fact, one of the worst I've seen. I tend to find that in higher-level, conceptual things like SOA, ITIL, and SixSigma there is more of this than in direct technical classes.

Usually I get to do my thing, mentioned above, first. In this case, one of the other students in the class beat me to the punch, and pointed out the offending behavior and asked the person to either stop or leave. I chose to step back and let the class handle it in this case. During breaks I was escalating to my customer and keeping them informed about the behavior and what was happening...

From the perspective of a facilitator, this is the best possible scenario, as the group has now enforced its own norms, and I haven't put myself at risk of being in a me vs them situation.

I'm wondering, from a perspective of those of you that have attended training, what have you seen in terms of bad student behavior and what have you seen that worked and didn't work to correct it and keep the class productive?

Also, from a perspective of the few here that deliver training, what have you seen and how do you handle these types of situations?

Thanks for the responses,

MS

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Comments

dynamik

I don't understand that at all. Is the training mandatory? I have limited experience with classroom training, but everyone has always wanted to learn and been respectful of the instructor and others.

jryantech

Looks like your doing these training at a High School...

If it is a college or a professional setting and someone is misbehaving that is pathetic.

undomiel

I've seen that happen in a few of the training sessions I've been in. Most of the instructors coddled the problem makers because they were usually near the top of the class. I have seen an approach similar to yours used though and it was fairly effective. Unfortunately once that person started acting up again management wouldn't back up the instructor and she couldn't eject the guy. So it was downhill from there.

JDMurray

It depends on how much authority you are given to handle disruptive situations. In more professional teaching environments, there are policies for handling such disruptive events, and even role playing during the "train the trainer" classes to prep for these situations. There are potential legal liabilities to consider for the educational organization, so you much always act within the policies.

Usually, direct reasoning is the preferred first step. If the person has an agenda or is a head-case, I think that I'd try and discover the motive for the behavior and make then unconformable/dissatisfied to the point where s/he voluntarily leaves. But I've never been in that situation, so I'm just supposing.

zen master

I've been a part of SEVERAL courses and I've never experienced anyone being disruptive. Individuals may be inattentive (some people, myself included, sometimes prefer to do the work on their own in peace and quiet for certain topics), but I've never seen an individual engage in behaviour that prevented others from learning. Classes are just too expensive for that.

eMeS

jryantech wrote:

Looks like your doing these training at a High School...

If it is a college or a professional setting and someone is misbehaving that is pathetic.

I've seen better behavior at high schools! I can't give any specific details about this customer, but it is supposedly a "professional setting"...let's just say that they're in an industry where the end customers don't really have a choice about whether or not to use their services.....

This doesn't happen that often in a professional setting....as was mentioned, it costs too much. Many of the people in this customer's organization unfortunately don't think in terms of costs...(another hint???).

Before I do anything like this, I have as part of the agreement that I can eject participants if their behavior negatively impacts the class. In fact, I believe that the customer should expect this from a facilitator. In this case, I had the full backing of the customer to remove this person as I saw fit.

In this particular case it was much more fun to leave the person in the class and let this person's peers enforce the behavior they expected. Aside from what I mentioned, there were at least two other examples of other students directly asking that this person's behavior stop. It just happened that leaving this person in the class proved my point about why 90% of this particular type of project fails....

I let the offender stay in the whole time despite the continual efforts to derail me and the class. By the end of the class this person was so beat down and marginalized that it was worth it. The evaluation that this person gave of me at the end was priceless!

MS

LarryDaMan

As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. I think you handled it well.

I enjoy presenting and training, maybe one day I will get to do more of it. In my limited experience, classes tend to regulate themselves if the students paid to attend or if they are very interested in learning the material. If an instructor is too strict or rigid, the class may not participate fully... so it is a delicate balance sometimes.

eMeS

Also I wanted to respond to what JD said about role-playing this type of situation in "train-the-trainer" sessions....

Many years ago, I took a "train-the-trainer" class relevant to a specific type of technology. In that class, the instructor didn't give us a "here's the best approach" to handling disruptive students. Instead, the instructor said that what we should do is think about it, and then think about how we would respond.

Once we did that, we roleplayed and tried our different responses. Some worked, some didn't, but the value was that we got to see many many different approaches.

What I took out of that class was to basically go into any training with a "risk management plan" for disruptive students. Thus, for this particular customer, my risk plan is a bit different because the group is all from the same organization. In a public training my plan and response might be slightly different.

If my proposed response in my initial post sounded scripted, it's because it was.

For those of you that are, or will one day become facilitators and trainers, this is something that I highly recommend that you think about prior to each class, and come up with your own scripted approach. Not having this ready to go in your back pocket can be the difference between retaining and losing control.

Thanks for the responses everyone (Hope to hear more)....I'm always willing to incorporate new things into my approach to these types of things.

MS

sprkymrk

eMeS I have attended a lot of professional level training classes and once in a while I have seen what you describe. The best way Ive seen this handled is that the instructor will tolerate it as best as he can for the first day, and try to ignore the disruptive student by pausing just long enough for him to make his snide/condescending/know-it-all comment and then say something like "moving right along" with a well practiced "roll the eyes" to jokingly let the offending student and class know what he thinks of such behavior. If, by the end of the day, the offending student still didn't "get the hint" then the instuctor will take him aside privily and politley but firmly let the student know he is being disruptive and that he should either desist in such behavior or risk being ejected from the class. Except in hard cases, this is usually enough to control the bad behavior to a decent extent.

In some cases where the instructor didn't seem to know how to handle the student, I have approaced the instructor during break time and suggested that if his hands were tied for some reason in properly dealing with the student, then could I lodge a complaint with the training sponsor (Symantec or whoever) in order to have something done. It seems that as soon as a formal complaint is made by a student, the instructor has a lot more leeway or power to deal with bad behavior than otherwise is the case.

Honestly, in most cases the behavior that bothers me the most is when 1 student just doesn't "get it", you know they don't have the level of expertise to be in the class. They tend to monopolize the instructors time as if the instructor were their personal consultant for their site, rather than a general course on the product/technology.

learningtofly22

As a technical instructor in the US Navy for 3 years, I can sympathize with you, eMes. Although one would think that recruits fresh out of boot camp would be obedient and respective to the nines, the softening of boot camp over recent years has reduced the quality of today's recruit. In addition, I had the pleasure of teaching "fleet returnees", personnel that were near the same rank (or above) as me, oftentimes "knowing it all". It is well known in the military that the instructor is the highest ranking individual in the classroom, regardless of what's on everyone's sleeve. Having this blend of personnel in my classrooms did give me a lot of opportunities to flex my instructor muscle, so to speak. Judging by your description of events, I'd have done it the exact same way. Calling people out is sometimes necessary, unfortunately. Gone are the old days of waiting until a break, then pulling the student aside and having a talk with him/her privately. Today's classroom has a lot more information being delivered in a shorter amount of time, and obstructions to learning have to be addressed ASAP.

eMeS

learningtofly22 wrote:

Gone are the old days of waiting until a break, then pulling the student aside and having a talk with him/her privately.

I purposefully didn't mention the gender of the person involved in this incident. Your point that I quoted above makes a lot of sense in this context. The bad actor in my story was a woman.

There was no way in hell that I was going to be alone somewhere with her without a witness that I know and trust.

MS

Vogon Poet

I would suggest a quick blurb at the beginning of the class like "please be respectful of your fellow students who are here to learn, so please ask questions or make comments that are relative to the subject matter." (...or something that is worded a little better than that)
That way you are starting class by suggesting a helpful behavior. However, for your diehard troublemakers, I'm sure this will not deter them, but at least you made the effort early on.

"People ... they're the worst!"
-Jerry Seinfeld

JJArms

eMeS wrote:

Greetings all,

I deliver different types of training to different audiences (from direct technician all the way to C-level in large organizations). I find from time to time that I will have a person in the sessions that is disruptive. By disruptive I mean talking with other people, responding to questions in a condescending and patronizing manner, refusing to participate in class activities, general unprofessionalism, etc...

I usually handle this very directly. I will stop whatever is happening and say directly to the person something like this:

One of us might be in the wrong place. Your tendency to [insert offending activity here] is distracting and disruptive. It doesn't bring out the best in me, and is likely to prevent others from getting what they deserve out of this session. Here's how this is going work. I'm going to allow you to stay here and continue your behavior as long as it suits my needs. When I find no more value in using your behavior as an example of what not to do, and in support of what we're doing in class, I'm going to declare success and have you ejected. You can make a choice now; leave now, stay and be a negative example for as long as I allow you to, or behave professionally and become a productive member of this class.

Many professional educators will disagree with my approach as it singles out the bad actor. However, I don't believe in dancing around problems, especially this type of problem as it can quickly become viral in a classroom setting. Part of what people get when they hire me is a direct approach, and I do clarify the ground rules before I ever accept the work.

Last week I was at a customer site delivering a high-level, conceptual training class about a specific type of architecture. One person in the class was behaving inappropriately (talking outside of class activities, responding patronizingly and condescendingly, refusing to participate in class activities, etc..). It was really bad...in fact, one of the worst I've seen. I tend to find that in higher-level, conceptual things like SOA, ITIL, and SixSigma there is more of this than in direct technical classes.

Usually I get to do my thing, mentioned above, first. In this case, one of the other students in the class beat me to the punch, and pointed out the offending behavior and asked the person to either stop or leave. I chose to step back and let the class handle it in this case. During breaks I was escalating to my customer and keeping them informed about the behavior and what was happening...

From the perspective of a facilitator, this is the best possible scenario, as the group has now enforced its own norms, and I haven't put myself at risk of being in a me vs them situation.

I'm wondering, from a perspective of those of you that have attended training, what have you seen in terms of bad student behavior and what have you seen that worked and didn't work to correct it and keep the class productive?

Also, from a perspective of the few here that deliver training, what have you seen and how do you handle these types of situations?

Thanks for the responses,

MS

Here is a simple suggestion -- the next time a person starts to get really out-of-hand, grab the nearest digital camera or cell phone and ask the disruptive person if you can take their picture.

If the person is slow and asks "Why?" tell him/her that you always liked to take a picture of the most disruptive person in the class.

And if the person still does not fall in line, take the picture, and then use the picture in your post-lecture meetings.

A little evil but it does work; the person wanted the spot light so give it to him/her.

Regards,

JJArms

Kaminsky

Your initial response to such behaviour does seem to me to be overly hostile and puts you immediately into direct confrontation with the offending student. Surely that is just empowering them. Before you said that, they were just being disruptive because maybe they HAD to attend the class and thought it either was irrelevant to them or they knew the material already or something else was bugging them. Now you have gone into direct confrontation with them and embarrassed them in front of their peers, they will either walk out in a huff or stay and become even more of an annoyance throughout the rest of the course whilst making sure, now they are clued up, they have innocent deniability to their manager when it all goes horribly wrong...

Either way, you are chopping your own legs off by such direct initial confrontation and you are also making the rest of the class uncomfortable with this sudden atmosphere and you might end up switching off several other members.

One of the best ways I have seen the trainer deal with this "negative" disruption is with little things like stopping what they are saying and presuming the student was saying something to them but they didn't hear it and innocently asking them to repeat it. It's not a direct attack. The student will either realise they were being disruptive to the rest of the class and hush up OR repeat their frustrations. Now you are in the position of an innocent trainer just their to deliver training and you can advise that they should deal with their grievenses elsewhere as you are not part of the staff. [ it's important to be professional and friendly to them whilst doing this - it's simply nothing you have the power to fix for them] This will keep the rest of the class on your side and develop more of a bond between you and those there that want to learn without any hostility.

One thing that hacks me off though is "positive" disruption, as sprkymrk wrote of, those students that are so far behind in course entry level knowledge that they monopolise the trainer with basic questions and the rest of the class very quickly grows bored and end up losing a valuable opportunity to have an expert in to learn from. The other form of this is when a student wants to know too much nitty gritty and ends up monopolising the trainer with questions that are either too advanced or of little relevance. I have to put my hand up here and admit to being prone to doing this myself without actually realising it.

At the end of the day, you're not an employee but are there to impart your knowledge. If students have work issues that are causing them to be disruptive, they should be professional and realise the classroom is not the correct forum for it and they should be advised to deal with elsewhere.

It's certainly not something you should take personally even when they are trying to get a rise out of you to cause even more disruption so they get what they want. It's just another training gig to you but the rest of the class will report back on your professionalism.

vsmith3rd

sprkymrk wrote:

Honestly, in most cases the behavior that bothers me the most is when 1 student just doesn't "get it", you know they don't have the level of expertise to be in the class. They tend to monopolize the instructors time as if the instructor were their personal consultant for their site, rather than a general course on the product/technology.

Oh man, you hit the nail right on the head. There is nothing more frustrating. It seems to grind the experience to a halt, and kills any continuity.

LarryDaMan

vsmith3rd wrote:

sprkymrk wrote:

Honestly, in most cases the behavior that bothers me the most is when 1 student just doesn't "get it", you know they don't have the level of expertise to be in the class. They tend to monopolize the instructors time as if the instructor were their personal consultant for their site, rather than a general course on the product/technology.

Oh man, you hit the nail right on the head. There is nothing more frustrating. It seems to grind the experience to a halt, and kills any continuity.

I agree. Another annoying thing is when people ask questions that are only designed to show off how smart they are. Idiots ask questions that are designed "catch" the instructor off guard or questions that are beyond the scope of the class. You can hear the class being derailed and screeching to a halt when this happens...

vsmith3rd

LarryDaMan wrote:

vsmith3rd wrote:

sprkymrk wrote:

Honestly, in most cases the behavior that bothers me the most is when 1 student just doesn't "get it", you know they don't have the level of expertise to be in the class. They tend to monopolize the instructors time as if the instructor were their personal consultant for their site, rather than a general course on the product/technology.

Oh man, you hit the nail right on the head. There is nothing more frustrating. It seems to grind the experience to a halt, and kills any continuity.

I agree. Another annoying thing is when people ask questions that are only designed to show off how smart they are. Idiots ask questions that are designed "catch" the instructor off guard or questions that are beyond the scope of the class. You can hear the class being derailed and screeching to a halt when this happens...

OMG. That's so true. That ranks as an all time classic. I've seen that more than I care to remember.