Trainer-Tested, Learner-Approved: Best Practices from the Field

I can’t believe we’re wrapping up 2025 already! My professional highlight by far was gathering in person with our certified community in Houston, Boston, Orange County, Seattle, and Jersey City for Crucial Learning Live. We built on 2024’s Trainer Tour to create a longer lunch-and-learn format that opened the floor to our attendees during the second half of the event, asking for their input on best practices. I loved learning from our certified trainers and certified facilitators—they shared so many helpful insights and actionable ideas!

There were too many ideas to list everything, but here are the highlights—some of our favorite tips gathered from across the country. To see the full list of ideas, along with photos from the events, check out the Amazon Photos album.

We’re actively planning next year’s Crucial Learning Live tour—stay tuned for announcements coming soon!

Pre-Course Preparation: Setting the Stage for Why the Skills Matter

There’s power in understanding purpose—and that’s at the heart of most of the tips surrounding pre-course preparation. Long before learners step into your classroom, you can lay groundwork on what to expect and how it matters to their lives. Tips included “send engaging welcome emails” and “prior to the first lesson, set the stage/purpose of why this is relevant.”

Each Certification Zone course page includes a Market Your Course section that’s filled with resources you can leverage for preparing learners, including:

Course miniseries
Course commercial video
What to expect video
Manager discussion guide

By sharing these videos in your meeting invitation and/or welcome email, you help learners experience what’s ahead. The manager discussion guide also helps to bring learners’ leaders into the loop so they can help reinforce learning and work it into that employee’s goals.

Post-Course Follow-up: Keeping Learning Alive Beyond the Classroom

Another hot topic that comes up often is extending the learning journey. Once your course wraps up, how can you help make the skills sticky so your graduates use them instead of the course being a one-and-done experience? Here are some ideas our attendees shared:

Create a community of practice where course graduates discuss what’s been working for them and what’s been challenging.
Send a survey in a follow-up email (note: we have a course evaluation available in Certification Zone under Learner Materials for each course)—you can also use comments from the surveys (with permission) to promote the course!
Remind graduates to follow up with accountability partners.
Host lunch-and-learn refresher sessions for continuous learning.
Create a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel for graduates with further resources, podcasts, YouTube, audiobooks, etc.
Host a book club for people who want to do a deep dive into the book that accompanies the course (e.g., Crucial Conversations for the Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue course).
Sustain learning by using the after-training resources email series for discussions
Share Crucial Learning’s monthly webinars that teach crucial skills based on new research and current trends.
Encourage people to subscribe to the Crucial Skills newsletter with weekly Q&A tips.
Hold coaching office hours for course graduates.
Use resources like the conversation planner in Mastering Dialogue or Weekly Review checklist for GTD to recap the main skills of the course.

Market Your Course

How do you share the course within your organization? Some ideas to make it special include:

Word of mouth—championing of the course from graduates and influencers.
Extend personal invitations like “You’ve been selected.”
Use Crucial Learning’s video content (e.g., YouTube channel or course miniseries) to preview the experience and skills.
Add a Crucial Skills blurb to your company newsletter, training bulletin, etc. to build awareness.
Add one of the marketing teasers to your email signature to keep the course top of mind (found in Certification Zone course pages under Market Your Course).
Include Crucial Conversations in the leadership development program so it trickles down from the top of the company.

Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue

At Crucial Learning Live, we had posters soliciting ideas for facilitating each of our Crucial Learning courses. Since most of our trainers are certified in Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, it’s no surprise that course got the most ideas!

Here’s a handful of the dozens of ideas we gathered:

Find a current change, issue, or scenario people are dealing with to discuss applying the skills (e.g., return to office).
Prep relevant personal stories to drive home the content—be a good storyteller.
Hang posters with the skills around the room for reminders and visibility (note: we have model posters for most posters available within Certification Zone course pages under Trainer Materials).
Send a post-module synopsis email with related blogposts, YouTube videos, and corresponding chapter from the book.
Tailor the slides to the group’s needs and goals to yield better group discussions (note: the VIP User Guide walks through how to do that).
Connect the material to organization’s practices and as a group, identify where tweaks may be needed.
Start each workshop with a confidentiality reminder by telling participants, “What’s shared here stays here; what’s learned here leaves here.”

Looking for More Ideas?

If you’re interested in seeing what ideas came up for our other solutions, check out the Amazon Photos album and scroll to the posters labeled with the course or assessment of your choice.