Anybody can be a Trainer

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This a rant about training and probably of absolutely no interest to most of you. Have a glance over it but feel free to ignore it and wait for a better post. I wont be offended.

Almost everyone is capable at some level of teaching a complete novice how to do something new or to perform some task that the teacher is experienced at and hopefully enthusiastic about. Why?

It's complex but mainly it's because we like to show off. We love telling people how good we are at what we do and we don't mind passing on a little bit of that knowledge. Hopefully if it's something we know nothing about we either back off or we look for reassurance from others who we feel are experts. So teaching people should be easy provided you know what your talking about or, if you're winging it, you have someone to hand publicly or privately who can keep you right. Someone told me that the secret of teaching guitar is just to make sure that you are always always one page ahead of your student.

Utter shite. I am sooo sick of people who think training is just about knowing your subject well and being able to talk out loud.

Sorry to be blunt but nothing could be further from the truth. Think about it. There are few less scary things on earth than a husband, wife or parent teaching their partner or child how to drive without first seeking professional assistance. Are they saying the wrong things? Nope. Is it that they don't fully understand it themselves? Possible but that's not the main thing.

There's a lot of complex things going on when we try to teach. All of these things contribute to the very reason why most people shouldn't even attempt it. Here's some bullets. You don't have to agree but consider them before you discount them.

-The teacher wants to look clever
-The pupil does not want to look stupid
-The teacher does not want to look stupid
-The pupil wants to look clever
-The teacher wants to teach the pupil all of their experience and knowledge (shortcuts and workarounds so their pupil can shine)
-The pupil wants all that experience and knowledge. (so they can shine)
-Neither teacher or pupil have considered 'What is the minimum required to do the thing that you are trying to do?'. Nobody sets out with the aim of just getting by.
-Everyone has a vested interest in turning the pupil into an expert and that is where the training always falls apart.

A good driving instructor has a plan before he or she meets the pupil. The plan involves taking simple, logical steps to progress a pupil from ignorance to competence in, hopefully, as short a period of time as possible. They have no plan to create an expert. If it happens well that's just great but it's not in the plan. In certain circumstances a fast learner can actually create problems down the line.

What the instructor has done is break the task down into a number of basic competences: get moving, gears, left turns, right turns,maneuvers, hill starts etc. The instructor may even lie to the pupil. For about a year and a half after I learned to drive I always dropped to second to go round a roundabout because it was the only way I knew. Some that I now use every day can be negotiated in forth but to this day, when I don't know where I'm going, I take roundabouts in second. Imagine that. All that money and my instructor never even showed me how to cut ten minutes off my morning commute by rehearsing every turn of a route, driving aggressively and practicing how to barge through roundabouts. He never even showed me what roads you'd get way with doing 40 on though the speed limits 30.

Andragogy! Never heard of it? Don't know what it means? Not even sure how to pronounce it? That's just me and I practice it for a living.

Andragogy (Greek for 'man leading' apparently) as opposed to pedagogy (child leading)is all about what motivates adults to learn. The reason you don't hear about it every day is because people generally don't care. (Even some of the ones that think they do). Often the reason why an adult learns is because they either want to do something(hobby or interest) or have to do something(job or need). For that reason (need or want)most people invest very little time in thinking about: What will it be like to learn? Is there any way that this could be more engaging or interesting, or broken into bite sized chunks or quicker or just easier? Nope. When people design training (design implies more planning than most deserve credit for)they are often far too busy concentrating on what knowledge they must impart to consider whether anyone will want to listen to them or whether what they say will make any sense.

Think about your favorite teacher at school. (Yep that's pedagogy but stick with me) What did they do differently? What made them more interesting? Were they more enthusiastic? Did you feel that they were telling you about something they cared about or just teaching a subject? Did they make you go away and find out stuff yourself? Did they appreciate the work you did? (I once had an English teacher who used an opening line from one of my short stories in all his classes to show pupils how to grab the readers attention. Can't remember what that opening line was now but god did it make me feel clever. It made me want to do something else, something even better).

So why the sermon? No point having an anonymous blog if you can't use it to rant from time to time. I am sick fed up with people thinking that they can train because they know their subject or, even more scary because they are good with PowerPoint. How many newbies have I watched fall for that trap and wonder why they lose the room whilst they work through some 100 slide PowerPoint karaoke. They should be tied to a chair and made to listen to themselves. I wont even allow an expert in the room when I deliver training. The distance between them and a novice can only upset both expert and learner.

Then there's those that think I do nothing when I'm not delivering training. 'Now that you don't smoke you must be struggling for something to do when you're not delivering'. When the hell do they think I learn about all the systems I train? Do they think that I actually am an engineer, a labourer, an accountant, a salesman, a life coach and all round customer service guru? Where do they think all those user guides, web pages, e-learning courses, system simulations and, I'll admit it, PowerPoints come from? Those team building exercises, ice-breakers and quizzes, do they think that's just stuff I make up on the spot? And how do they think I get the confidence to walk in to a room full of directors, take charge and keep them entertained?

I would recommend training as a career to anyone. But only if they could understand why not everyone can be a trainer.

I feel better for that. Hope I haven't made you feel worse.

Cheers

T