One of my professional roles is that of a corporate trainer. I train IT people in a classroom setting, and there are a few things I have learned along that way that has helped me develop as a better trainer than when I started out. I am going to share a couple of tools that are most useful, and they are result-bound. These tools are:
Relate training aspects to life activities: Make any training interesting by relating it back to the trainees, something that they can relate to on a day-to-day basis. Suppose you want to teach a topic on listening, start with a real-life illustration, say employees communicating with their girlfriends and boyfriends and how various conflicts arise out of not listening to one another before responding. At this point, you will know that you have connected with your trainees from the number of nodding heads agreeing with what you mentioned, and this is a sign that you have struck a chord. At this point, bring the focus back to office work, and map it to the activities they perform. Say, for example, customer complaints arising out of not understanding their problems. Voila, you have successfully mapped a topic on communication directly to work activities, and trust me, the understanding of the topic has been effective as well.
Indulge in role play: Another tool that you can employ during the training is role play. Develop a few roles that employees can enact in front of others, the roles staying relevant to the topic. Through role play, you are showing rather than saying it out loud. Prompt where necessary to drive the role play in the intended direction and to get the most out of it. Role play can be considered as result-oriented as the live everyday examples.