In the past few months things have turned upside down, but this is no news to anyone around the globe. In the training business fundamental changes have happened. Previously I wrote my vision on the future of the training business, which included that the virtual sessions will gain a bigger chunk of the people development – for now and maybe going forward as well.

Since then, despite the slight opening up from the lockdowns and isolations face to face sessions haven’t really been re-introduced, at least not at a big scale as far as I can experience and see it around myself.

Virtual trainings are still the winners; however I have also seen from my end a change in the tendencies.

In the first couple of months I was mainly delivering the broadcast type of sessions, with minimal interactions with the participants (who could be even hundreds of people at the same time). Being at the beginning of the changes people were interested in these kinds of programs, looking to the outside world at least through this.

However, as life changed at least somewhat back to kind-of-normal after people being amongst the four walls for a considerate amount of time, they started to crave for interactivity. In real life and in the trainings as well.

I felt that people started to get bored of just staring at the screens and not being able to participate. They wanted interaction, even if it is through the virtual space and webcams.

Having experienced all this, in the past two weeks it was my pleasure to deliver interactive virtual sessions to participants from India. More than twenty people, webcams switched on, trying to make the most of what technology offers.

Just like in my past, again I was facing a completely different culture, that was new for me – plus the technical stuff of virtualising a training, of course.

It was so fantastic to see that all the attendees were happily participating in this interactive version of a virtual session, using their webcams, raising their virtual hands for sharing their thoughts and even playing role play games along the occasion.

In my already mentioned previous article I wrote that I believe that the virtual trainings are not exactly the same as face to face ones.

Based on my current experience, I would still stick this opinion of mine, however, now I can say from my first-hand experience that a training can really be made a very good, interesting, engaging and interactive one virtually as well!