I was waiting to speak at a full-day training session for a large restaurant chain. I sat in the back observing the room, trying to get a feel for the audience. It didn’t take long to notice how many people were on their phones. Others were standing up, walking slowly to the coffee station, stirring their drinks mindlessly while looking out the window. In other words, they weren’t quite as present as I might have hoped.

Does this sound familiar — and frustrating?

I get it. You’ve built the training program the business was clamoring for. You’ve leveraged leading-edge instructional design and sprinkled individual reflection and interactive exercises throughout. You prepped managers to provide backfill. So, why are learners not paying attention?

It’s because they are struggling with high “thoughtload.” Thoughtload is the invisible tax on our performance, and presence, that comes from a treacherous triad of rising cognitive demands, increasing emotional burdens and declining energy reserves.

High thoughtload causes us to withdraw, default to old answers and rely on habits that have worked for us in the past. Essentially, high thoughtload is kryptonite for reflection, insight and creativity and, therefore, a potent inhibitor of learning.

Unfortunately, there’s no invisible forcefield around the training room protecting learners’ thoughtload from:

• A looming due date they aren’t on track to meet — and their fear of the particularly intimidating person who’s waiting on them
• The weighty decision they have to make that is sure to disappoint colleagues they value
• An inbox with 726 messages and another 53 notifications coming in from a Slack channel
• A sick family member, a flooded basement or a child struggling to fit in at school
• A hilarious meme someone just texted — which is hard to compete with that during mandatory compliance training

With demands like those outlined above weighing on learners, they won’t be able to pay attention, won’t be able to stay calm or feel safe, and likely won’t have the energy to engage for any more than a few minutes.

Designing and Delivering Training With Thoughtload in Mind

Once you understand the impact of high thoughtload, you can design and deliver programs specifically to counteract the problem.

The first challenge is helping learners manage high cognitive demands and focus their attention.

1. Prime in Advance

While many facilitators share a preread before a training program, this alone is insufficient to combat high thoughtload. Instead, you need a primer. What’s the difference between the two? A preread is a document the learner can passively flip through, satisfying themselves that they’ve “done their homework” without processing the information in any depth. A primer includes not only contextual information but also reflection questions, short exercises or descriptions of the questions that will be asked, so that the learner is more likely to be ready to contribute in the room.

2. Acknowledge Distractions

Rather than pretending that the world disappears when participants walk through the door, acknowledge their heavy thoughtload and help them manage it effectively. Create a formal entry into the program to delineate between the demands outside the room and the focus inside. I use an exercise called “Many Hats” to give people an opportunity to share what other demands are sitting in their thoughtload. It’s simple: I ask each person, “What’s one hat that we don’t know you’re wearing this week?” Once they’ve had a chance to acknowledge what’s in their thoughtload, it’s easier for them to compartmentalize until the next break.

Thoughtload is about more than just distracted attention; it’s also about triggered emotions. Your second task is to address the emotional component of the learners’ thoughtload so it doesn’t detract from the safety of the environment.

3. Process Emotions

There are so many reasons training can be an emotional experience: It highlights what’s changing, exposes areas of low self-awareness and creates uncomfortable situations in which learners practice skills they haven’t mastered.

It’s easy to label people’s reactions as resistance and to push forward through the curriculum, but once someone’s brain is interpreting the message as a threat, they will be in self-protection mode, not learning mode. Include sufficient time in your agenda to linger on these reactions, helping people learn to notice, label and reframe their emotional experiences so they can reengage.

4. Manage Emotional Contagion

While you’re helping learners acknowledge and process their own emotional reactions to the material, you need to be equally aware of the tenor of the whole room. Emotional contagion allows one person’s strong reaction to infect the mood of everyone else. Of course, we can all think of a case when one learner’s grateful epiphany created a virtuous spiral of converts. Sadly, those scenarios are probably harder to conjure from memory than times when one skeptical participant soured the tone for everyone.

When a participant begins to share their emotional experience — whether through their negative comments or their body language — it’s risky to ignore it. Instead, ask questions that will not only help the individual process their reaction but also spark curiosity in others and prevent them from subconsciously mirroring the negative emotion. Once you’ve validated the emotional experience and halted the spread of negativity, use open body language, positive reinforcement or even uplifting music to get the room resonating on a more positive frequency.

The third and final component of managing thoughtload is to restore people’s depleted energy reserves. Long days in growth mode are exhausting, particularly when spent in rooms with poor lighting or, worse, staring at a screen during virtual training.

5. Build With Momentum in Mind

Some of your participants might walk into the room ready to learn and grow; others will drag themselves across the start line. Your job is to build momentum and manage it so that energy becomes a renewable, rather than a finite, resource.

The first thing to do is start on a downhill. Use short, staccato exercises with immediate feedback and gratification to create quick wins. Then you can build toward more complex and meaningful insights where the reward is more intrinsic. Then lock in the progress with time for reflection and action planning before taking a sizable break. And don’t fall into the trap of shortening breaks to cram in more content. Managing energy is essential to keeping thoughtload out of the red zone.

6. Make Room for Individual Differences

One final strategy to keep energy up and thoughtload down is to provide different options for activities that are tailored to four different energy profiles: physical activity, social connection, intellectual stimulation and orderly process. Where possible, have different versions of exercises — or different break activities — that allow learners to tap into what energizes them most

Thoughtload Is a Tax You Can’t Ignore

Your learners are already carrying a heavy thoughtload, and your training can easily feel like just another demand on their attention — another source of anxiety or another drain on already limited energy. Designing and delivering training with that thoughtload in mind makes it more likely you’ll cut through the noise, foster awareness and insight, and drive lasting behavior change.