Who wants to be a trainer anyway?

Tuesday, 07-02-2012

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Posted on 2009-03-23 in Training

Who Wants to be a Trainer Anyway?

Monica explores some of the trainer's worst fears and apprehensions, and the importance of getting the basics right

When I was first asked to write this article, I was ecstatic. I’ve always dreamed of being a writer (secondary to being a trainer of course!). I’m thinking the journalist type of writer, one of those writers who are your main reason for buying the newspaper; whose column you just wouldn’t miss. Anyway, here I am in the luxury of yet another hotel after a long day’s training and I realise that the only problem with being a “writer” is that you have to write something now and again instead of wallowing in the wonderful post-training silence and enjoying re-runs of Fr. Ted.

Night Terrors

It never goes away. I have been delivering training courses now for nearly 6 years and I still wake up in the wee small hours worrying about an array of possible problems that might arise in delivering tomorrow’s training course. These can range from sleeping in (due to a forementioned worrying) to getting less than glowing evaluation forms back after the course. Last night was no different. Today was my first delivery of a new course and there I was, pacing the hotel room floor talking to myself about various concepts in today’s course. I must say I had mixed feelings about hearing the porter knock on the door at 06:30am. Part of me was delighted that breakfast had arrived - a welcome interruption to my swotting, while another part of me was gutted that the time had come to get myself together and get ready to meet my public. So I ate breakfast, (while reflecting on my bad luck at not being one of these people who loses their appetite when nervous or stressed), showered, carefully applied my make-up to hide the dark circles, dressed in a pin-striped navy power suit and was satisfied that it was not obvious that I had only got 3 hours sleep.

Be Cool

Usually, I don’t mind being late. In fact, my friends and family expect it. It’s nothing to do with control or importance; it’s simply to do with being relaxed and not taking life too seriously. However, ask any of my former course participants and they won’t believe that I know what late even means. This morning, as every morning I’m training, I am early, arriving at the venue at 7:15am. Only the security man was there. We exchanged enough pleasantries for me to convince him to let me into the building and into the training room to get my boot-full of equipment set up. I have nightmares about wrestling with wires and flipcharts and floor ports while 10 or 12 impatient participants gawk up at me happy to be absolutely no help whatsoever. They have this look… a kind of a “If you’re so smart, carry your own boxes, sort out your own wires and let’s see how long it takes you to find the air conditioning panel”. Whereas, if you are sitting there, with everything ready to go, when your participants start to trickle in, you are a lot more credible… not to mention cool.

See Through Shirt

The course was due to start at 8am and the first person arrived at 07:50am. Without a doubt, regardless of how important people are (or like to think they are), people love nothing better than to get something for nothing. As people take their seats, their faces light up like children on Christmas morning upon sighting their free company logo pen and ruler. Some will even be brave enough to ask for an extra one or two for the children heading back to school. And we all remember how major it was to have a pen with Daddy’s company name on it while everyone else in our class were stuck with the old reliable blue bic. I find it’s a great way to get people on side at an early stage. By ten past 8, I had a full audience, some sitting up straight and waiting for the knowledge bestowal, others yawning up at me and more pre-occupied with the newspaper. So I decide to get started with introductions, while only half listening to peoples’ life history - not because I’m uninterested, but because I’m fretting about whether I remembered to pull up the zip of my trousers, whether or not they can see through my shirt, and what I’m going to say when the last person finishes introducing themselves.

Training Psychology

It’s interesting how a trainer will try to suss out how a person will behave in their training course based on first impressions. I don’t trust them as much as I used to, primarily because I have been wrong so many times. The grumpiest looking participant ends up being the one to hang back and ask you if you need help at the end of the course, while the sweetest, most smiling participant will challenge everything you say. Don’t get me wrong, I’m with Sony on that. Challenge everything. However, when you are challenging only for the sake of trying to make yourself look more knowledgeable than the trainer, not to mention delaying the schedule by your constant interrupting, then it might be best to avoid it. No freebies for you the next day. The morning flowed along nicely, with me introducing some concepts and then encouraging discussion about it, and participants sporadically volunteering a thought or two. Having said that, encouraging discussion is certainly not as simple as it sounds. In some cases, asking someone for their opinion, first thing in the morning, is akin to asking the them if they would like to stick needles in their eyes at 9am. You may be met with uncomfortable grunts and you won’t get eye-contact for all the tea in China. But thankfully, that is not the case today. I’m in Cork, you see, and the Cork people are nothing if not chatty.

Secret Agenda

At about 10:20pm, the participants begin twitching and shifting in their seats and experience has told me that this is the very clear sign that they need a cup of tea or coffee, a cigarette break, the toilet or a combination of all of these. So we break for what I say will be 15 minutes, but what I know will be 25 minutes so 25 minutes is what I have factored into my “secret agenda” - that is, the agenda that the participants don’t see. Morning break is a weird sort of time. It’s my first chance to talk one-to-one with individual participants and, to the untrained eye, one might think that I am being friendly, chatty and concerned about how the course is progressing for them, however, according to my secret agenda, these tea time chats are important PR exercises engineered to find out who I can rely on to give me a good evaluation and who I need to work harder on during the day.

Respect the Projector

After the morning break, we get back into the course, and I ask the group to get into teams of 3 for a task they must complete within 30 minutes. Some will enthusiastically snuggle up to the person closest to them and start chatting while more will sit there nervously waiting for someone to approach them. I like this part of the course. I dish out the work and guidelines and let them at it. I welcome the break from talking. Of course, I implore them to call on me at any time if they need help; but then I usually turn off the projector, and catch up with any urgent emails.

I’m so embarrassed about this next bit. But it happened in the course yesterday and I’m reluctant to leave it out. I had a look in my inbox and was heartened by the lack of urge work-related mails. I did spy a mail from a colleague who I am friendly with so I double clicked and began indulging in the juicy tales of his weekend. It was during one of my periodic scans of the participants who were supposed to be hard at work when I noticed them smiling up at the overhead screen instead
of having their heads in their work.

Immediately, panic took hold. I usually turn off the projector. Except yesterday, that simple but crucial little task managed to elude my attention. I was gutted. How could I recover from that? A trainer isn’t supposed to have a life. They are perceived to spend their lives learning and de-ciphering complicated material into bite-sized learning nuggets and then passing them on. But now, my cover was blown. My credibility as a serious trainer with no time for laughing or emailing gone forever. Once again, the rare temptation to run out of the training room and emigrate to Greenland took hold. And once again, I managed to suppress it. I simply made a joke of it – (making jokes in training courses is too big of a topic to cover here so we’ll save that for another day) and moved on swiftly, turning the attention to their progress on their task.

No Biscuits??!

In my previous training job, the evaluation forms were designed with a question and a rating of between 1 and 5. 5 being excellent and 1 being poor. It used to frustrate me greatly when some nameless person would mark me in ones and twos with no accompanying comments as to why they though so little of the course. So, over time, I mastered the art of matching up the writing and would later approach the participant asking them (politely of course) to explain themselves. More often than not, they mumbled about the chairs not being comfortable enough or, in one case, the fact that there had been no biscuits with the tea! So you can appreciate why I had little time for this scoring method. I was just not getting a true reflection of the course.

Now, I have control over the design of the evaluation forms, and needless to say, they are a participant’s nightmare. They take 2 minutes as opposed to 10 seconds to fill in and consist of 10 open questions on various aspects of the course from content to delivery, environment and breaks. They require some thought, some reflection and above all, sentences as opposed to numbers. So of course, after yesterday’s little mishap with the projector, I was anxious to see the happy sheets. Although I generally have a good idea of how well or otherwise I have performed, as soon as the last participant left the room, I nearly broke my neck getting to the pile of evaluations to scan the overall feedback. All of the comments were complimentary and the free pens and rulers were mentioned more than once, as was the free lunch. The course material and trainer (that’s me!) were a range of things from “well prepared” to “excellent knowledge of this topic” and not one of them mentioned my little blunder, bless them!

After that, it’s time to pack up and head back to the hotel. And it’s somewhere between when the participants leave and I get to the car that I turn into a very different person. I am tired, hungry and my endless reserve of helpfulness and enthusiasm has disappeared. I can hardly bring myself to return a smile to the friendly staff at the hotel. I go straight to my room, flop onto the bed and hit the remote for some mindless entertainment. I generally opt for room service in case some poor unfortunate attempts to make conversation with me. But tonight, at least, I wrote this article and thereby reminded myself that I am good at my job and must admit, am not ready to turn off my projector yet.

Main lessons to be learned:

1. Know your material inside out

2. Be prepared - be very prepared

3. Dress comfortably and safely

4. Bring freebies

5. Go with second impressions

6. Get participants involved

7. Respect the projector

8. Don’t sweat the evaluations & feedback (and when you have worked out how to do that, let me know