Self Paid and Company Paid Training

I recently attended a 2 days self-improvement training course together with 7 other participants provided by the company.

Overall, the training was okay. But I feel that some things are missing, which I think I will just skipped them. What I want to highlight is the goal of attending a training.

On the recent 2 days sales-related training, we did it in the company training room. The training was started on time for the first day morning. However, it experienced slight delay for the following tea and lunch break. The training ended on time for the first day.

On the second day, the delay is getting worse. It delayed 15 minutes for the starting for both tea breaks, and the lunch break is delayed for 30 minutes. Most of the participants are either came late or took their sweet time doing their works at their desks or smoking out there. And somehow the training is still end on time.

The first day training is quite interesting indeed. I feel like the trainer skipped a lot of details on the second days and left the training not so meaningful. I also feel that the participants are very bad on time management. Some says it has to be hosted at the hotel to avoid this, some says it should penalize for those who are late. But that's not the point, if the person really want to learn something out of it, he or she won't allow the delay to happen and they want to make use of the instructor's time isn't it?

On the other hand, I attended a 2 days NLP training in a hotel at neighbour country's capital back in Aug 2013, which has about 80 participants in total. I paid the entire training myself.

The training period is from 9am to 5pm. I reached there about 8.30am Out of my surprise, all participants are waiting there before 8.50am. Yes, all of them. And all of them returned from the tea and lunch break on time. The training also extended for 2 hours to 7pm and only few are leaving early for 2 consecutive days.

By comparing the 2 different trainings, the later one is fantastic, isn't it?

The 80 participants are mostly self-paid as company normally don't spend money to send their staffs to go for this kind of training. And apparently all of them want to learn NLP and apply in their life. They want to learn something out of the course.

I think with a clear goal in mind, the training outcome will be more fruitful and more worth for the course spending.