When I speak with Training Delivery Managers about instructor readiness, one of the main topics of discussion is helping their team deal with challenging participants. This is a funny topic for me because I believe that one instructor’s challenging participant is another instructor’s helpful participant!

I’ll say two things. It’s not about you and it’s all about you. It sounds like I just contradicted myself so let me explain. Let’s start with the first statement. “It’s not about you”, it’s about the participant’s own issues. Participants that demonstrate “challenging” behaviors do so mainly for selfish reasons. They want to call attention to themselves. Like it or not, we all seek to be appreciated in one way or another and to varying degrees. However, like they say in the media, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”. Whether the publicity is positive or negative, they still get noticed. Like publicity, we seek attention in both positive and negative ways. Whether it’s the class clown or the know-it-all, they are seeking attention from you and the other participants in the class. I’m saying that their behaviors have nothing to do with you. You just happen to be the one in the front of the room at that moment in time. With that in mind, you can’t take it personally.

The key word here is ...