Standards - How well do trainers train others?

Why is the trainer such an important part of training?

I am passionate about training in that I believe that the way a trainer delivers their training material is of the highest importance and can have far reaching effects. 

I believe that a trainer is one of the most responsible jobs. If you take a doctor and how important their work is, what are the consequences of them not doing a first class job? They could be life threatening. But who trained that doctor, were they passionate about their own training standards, were they aware that there were better ways of delivering that training so it was more effective, easier to remember and more enjoyable for both the learner and trainer? 

If training is not delivered properly it will be less effective. If it is delivered badly it could have even worse consequences by perhaps producing negativity and disinterest. I believe in there being only one standard to deliver to and that is the best you know how. Provide the best and get the best, it works a treat.

How we communicate with each other and how using skills such as these can make or break the learning environment. If you are a subject matter expert, the font of all knowledge in your field and you need to transfer that skill or that knowledge .... how will you do it? You need skills! 

In fact you need people skills, training skills and management skills which as we all know are not always found naturally in people. Why management skills? You must know how to manage the learning environment, know how to effectively transfer skill and knowledge to those who learn in different ways, and be able to assess people as they learn without them being aware you are doing so. You need a variety of skills and techniques which I often refer to as the tools in a trainer’s tool box.

One of my key interests in life is "people". I enjoy training others and especially other trainers because trainers are the most difficult people on the planet to teach.  Why ..... well just like driving we all believe that we do it fine already. If you are a true training professional, you will always be open to suggestion, willing to listen and be aware that you may be unaware of what you could be doing to improve what you do. Unaware - how? Let's think about that for a moment.

It is most likely that you can drive. It is very possible that like me you do not know a great deal about how a car works and all that stuff under the bonnet. Have a read of the next passage which is something I often discuss with groups of learning professionals to get a point across; the questions are the same and the answers are the answers I always seem to get.

Firstly think about that well known saying "if it isn't broke don't fix it". But what if you didn't know it was broken?

Q - What do you do when your car is not working properly or is making an unusual noise?

A - Take it to a garage.

Q - Why?

A - To get fixed.

Q - How did you know that there was something wrong with the car?

A - It was making a noise, or doing something out of the ordinary, or not doing what it should.

Q - Do you ever take your car to a garage to be looked at when there seems to be nothing wrong with it?

A - Yes.

Q - Why?

A - To have it serviced.

Q - What is the purpose of having it serviced?

A - To check that it working well and there is not something wrong which is not obvious.

Q - So if we thought that the car was working fine, how come they phone us to tell us that it needs work?

A - Because they find something which needs doing before it gets worse and causes worse consequences.

Q - But why didn't we notice that there was something wrong before we took it in?

A - Because there were no outward signs warning us of things going wrong.

Q - What could be the consequences be of never having it serviced?

A - Breakdown or accident.

Let's now compare this with the training function

Q - If a trainer is delivering training, how do you know that they are doing a good job?

A - The training manager or lead/senior trainer does that by assessing.

Q - But what if the trainer and the assessor don't know that there is a better way of delivering training?

A - It will never be discovered.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with the training that you or your trainers are delivering or which you are responsible for. However what I am saying is that by being open minded enough to appreciate that there may be something out there that will make it even better is not just a good idea, but the responsibility of anyone involved in training. In this financial climate we must ensure our training is both effective and efficient.

The privilege of having a group of people in front of you and being asked to train them really is a privilege. You are being given the responsibility of training them to perform a task, to then use those new skills and knowledge to possibly affect other people on a daily basis. If a trainer does not do their job properly they are letting down those who employ them to do the job, the people they train, the people that those people then deal with in their working day and of course themselves too.

I believe that training is the key ingredient in any company, if you have poor training you get poor results, but if you have excellent training you will get excellent results.

The key question now is ..... are you certain that your training is as good as it could be?

Organisations and especially people worry about change so please remember these two lines...

“If we don’t take change by the hand, it will one day seize us by the throat.” - Winston Churchill

"Worry fades as faith appears" - Mac Macdonald