# Training Needs Survey — Facilitator Guide

> Folder: `training-needs-survey` · Category: feedback forms · any group · 15 min · offline + online · print props · tool pack
> License: CC BY 4.0

Most courses are built on what the trainer assumes the room needs. A training-needs survey moves the evidence up front: before you design a single slide, you ask the people who will sit there what they can do now, what they need to do, and where the gap hurts. This pack is the pre-course questionnaire that finds that gap.

## Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will have:

1. Stated, in their own words, the honest starting line (can do now), the real target (need to do), and the consequence of the gap (where it costs them).
2. Set the course agenda by cluster size — not by the trainer's hunch or the loudest voice in the list.
3. Been promised, and later received, one line back before the course starts: "here is what we built because of your answers."

## When to use this activity

- Before you design a course for a specific audience — while the answers can still change the plan.
- A mixed-level enrollment list where "beginner / intermediate / advanced" says nothing about what people need to do on Monday.
- Someone is paying for the training and asks how you knew it was needed — this questionnaire is the evidence.

## Before you design, not after

Send it before enrollment closes, not after the agenda is fixed. The point is to change the plan, not to decorate it. If the design is already locked, you are collecting opinions you are obliged to ignore.

## The three signals a TNA must produce

- **Can do now** — the honest starting line, not the job title.
- **Need to do** — the task that is actually waiting for the skill.
- **Gap that hurts** — the consequence, in their words. That consequence is your opening slide.

A survey that produces satisfaction ratings instead of these three has asked the wrong question.

## Setup

**Space:** the survey runs before the room exists — by email or pre-course form; if there's no pre-course window, on cards at a discovery session.

**Materials per person:** the six prompt cards on the table (answers go on the card backs or the blanks) and a pen; in the online variant, the six items pasted into a form.

**Materials for the room:** nothing live — the output is a sorted stack you read before designing the first slide.

**Grouping:** the whole incoming cohort; every answer counts the same, cluster size beats volume.

**Roles:** respondents answer honestly under the promise that the agenda moves; you keep the items non-leading, keep the control card, and build from the largest cluster.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 0–2 | Frame | Say the honest promise: the answers set the agenda, so vague answers get a vague course. |
| 2–12 | Answer | Six items — starting line, target, cost, urgency, support format, plus one control. Keep it short; a needs survey longer than ten minutes gets abandoned. |
| 12–15 | Sort | Cluster the gap answers. The largest cluster is your session; the outliers are your optional track. |

## The card

Use the faces from `training-needs-survey-prop-cards.pdf`: a master card, six prompt cards — what you can do today, what you need to be able to do, where not being able to do it costs you, how soon you need it, what would actually help (demo / template / practice), and the control card asking what they enjoyed about the last training they took — a watch-out card, branded backs and blanks. The control face is not filler: it keeps the survey from reading like an interrogation and flags what the room already trusts.

## Failure modes

- **Leading items.** If every question assumes they need your course, they will say they need it. Keep the control card.
- **Designing to the loudest voice.** One confident complainer is not a cohort. Go by cluster size, not volume.
- **Collecting and locking.** A needs survey whose results cannot move the agenda teaches people that honest pre-work is pointless.

## Variations

- **Pre-course form:** paste the six items into an online form (the folder's FormLM block) and send it the moment enrollment opens; the sorting pass stays the same.
- **First-session version:** no pre-course window — run the cards in the opening 15 minutes and re-cut the afternoon around what comes back.
- **Client variant:** when a manager commissions training for a team, send the six items to the team and to the manager separately; the difference between the two stacks is the conversation to have first.
- **Program level:** keep the same six items across intakes; the migration of the clusters is your curriculum roadmap.

## Facilitation notes

- Every item must allow the answer "I don't need this" — if it doesn't, you are not collecting need, you are collecting compliance.
- Cluster, count, then design: the biggest theme becomes the spine; outliers become the optional track, not the syllabus.
- Report one line back before the course: what you built because of the answers. The next cohort will hear that the survey is real.

## Put it on the wall

Print `training-needs-survey-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) to put the run of show, the six items and the three signals on one wall while you sort the answers.

## Props in this folder

- `training-needs-survey-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): master card, six prompt cards including one control, a watch-out card, branded backs and blanks
- `training-needs-survey-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks (`-Letter.pdf` is US Letter)
- `training-needs-survey-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole survey on one A3 wall sheet
- `training-needs-survey-guide.md` · `-debrief.md` · `-start-here.md` — the facilitator guide, the sorting guide, the one-page start here
- `training-needs-survey-license.md` — what you may do
- `SKILL.md` · `training-needs-survey.zip` — the machine-readable manifest, and the whole folder in one download

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the prompt deck, the sorting guide and this run sheet with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`), or lift the six items into a pre-course form. Run it before the agenda is fixed; that is the whole value.