Getting on the Same Page: How You Can Open the Minds of Others into Accepting MS Excel Training

If we all lived in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any worry regarding the rejection of new information. Sadly, it is something that has been known to happen. This is particularly true in the classroom environment. Learning doesn’t exactly end once you’ve earned your diploma. When you’re out holding down a job, you can come across a situation wherein learning something new is highly critical.

Of course, in this context, we’re referring to having to train people for MS Excel. We’re not denying that this piece of software is highly intimidating at first glance. Actually, even 10 glances later it can still be pretty anxiety-inducing. So if you’re taking on the task of training people and teaching them how to learn this software, we’ve got a few tips for you.

Explain the Need

While it would be ideal for people to just be open to the idea of learning, this isn’t something that happens all the time so it would be important to be prepared. What we do is at the start of it all, we explain why this training is necessary.

Getting people on the same page in terms of understanding what there is to gain from this is important. Make the learners feel that this is not something that is just going to benefit the business (if in a work environment). This is going to be something that they will be able to use in their personal lives.

Have a Clear Syllabus or Learning Plan

People like to see what they are about to go through. In a learning environment, this means that if you’re planning on teaching them MS Excel, you better break up your lessons into stages starting with the basics.

At least then, your learners will be able to use that as a guide to determine what they will be learning.

Give them Free Exploration Time

People need to navigate through new technology on their own in order to really understand how it works or see what they need further work on. Having free exploration time as a part of your learning plan or class, would highly benefit your learners.

Not only will they get to practice what they’ve learned so far but be able to retain it better because they’re doing a trial and error.

Points to Remember

Do not let your frustration affect your interactions—especially with the people who you are hoping to open up to the idea of learning something that they’ve written off. In an ideal world, everyone would be willing and eager to learn more but that is not the case a lot of the time. We simply need to be able to adjust your training method and carry on.

Have you come across individuals who weren’t as open to learning something new? How did it work out for you?