What makes a good trainer?

Now days, especially with cutbacks in  training budgets,many people are finding themselves in the role of trainer;  from leaders of direct sales teams to people who have got 500+ followers on twitter!

A skilled workforce is crucial for growth and efficiency, but many organisations are looking for the cheapest, or nearest and not necessarily looking for quality in training.

I am a qualified and experienced trainer and having designed, delivered and assessed training the trainers courses, quality in training  is important to me. But what makes a good trainer?

” your other USP (for me) is that you are very good with people and at talking to them in a way they understand so you make social media less frightening than it might be .” Alison Cahn

I do not consider myself an expert in my field,  but this feedback of my work , by film maker Alison Cahn,  helped me to really clarify that being a trainer involves a clear set of skills.  And that inspired this blog….  Anyone looking to take on a trainer, or anyone asked to deliver training, will hopefully find  the following useful..

We have all had good and bad experiences in training sessions, but have we taken the time to break those experiences down and identify what it was that happened?

I am frequently being approached by people saying  “I went on a twitter/facebook workshop and I came out even more confused than when I went in!”

For me that is frustrating, dis-empowering and a waste of time and money. But  if the training organiser doesn’t know what to look out for, then they won’t know how to prevent poor training delivery.

As a trainer for many years I have made, and will continue to make, many mistakes! but a qualified trainer should have the  following skills…

 *Know why your participants are there. In any class people will be there for different reasons; some have been made to attend, some are even on the wrong course entirely!  But, for example, in adult education many people will be there for social contact, so when I was in a dance class last year  and the teacher told people off  for talking to each other while she changed the music, I realised she had a different agenda to some of her class participants.

*Group work . Noticing  everyone in the group and understanding what is happening for them. I know ‘trainers’ that pick on the quiet ones in an attempt  to ensure they have involved everyone, without understanding how terrifying that can be.

*Learning styles. What is your learning style? If you are not aware of that  you are probably only using one style  and not understanding that people learn in different ways and therefore require different resources. Kolbs learning styles research is still a leader here.

One  of my favourite trainers is Jan Brodbeck, a yoga teacher, in Lancaster, of many years and still going strong. She manages a very mixed group of adults; people with learning difficulties, people with physical disabilities and busy people who  just want to do some yoga!  There are not many people with the skill to cope with that, but she runs her class with such a natural ease and humour that there is a great loyalty  to her sessions.

*Focussed and flexible. Managing your curriculum with the ability to adapt to the group’s needs.   For me one of the main benefits of  group sessions is peer sharing. Some trainers who see themselves as the expert  struggle with that, as it means they lose control of the content. A group learning environment is great for enabling  sharing of experience, which then makes the content more meaningful.

* Know your stuff . When I worked for a large organisation that had a training team, those staff , because they were trainers, were expected to deliver training in most fields. I know that I could probably facilitate (stimulate dialogue and interaction between participants) a group in most subjects, but I can only train in the areas that I fully understand.

Equally being an expert in your field does not make you a good trainer. This great scene is a fun example of this.. The Big Bang Theory – Dr. Sheldon Cooper teaches a class…

*Inspirational Speaker Vs Trainer. If you are lucky enough to be blessed with the skills to be an  inspirational speaker,  does that make you a trainer?  When I deliver  presentations to a large  group of people  I check what they  have taken away from it, but it is a very different dynamic to training.  So if you are a dab hand on  twitter and a great speaker, then tell people about how it has worked for you, but unless you can break the process down into its elements and share that systematically with patience and clarity, you are not being a trainer.

*Of course there’s always one – who mis-read the sign up sheet and was just probably in the wrong workshop! There is little that you can do about that during your session except  damage limitation and make a mental note to ensure the publicity is even clearer next time !

My background is Youth and Community work and I bring that motivation of empowerment to my training. It is said in business that you are only as  good as your customers say you are, equally we are  only  good trainers  if our participants have come out understanding what they have been taught.  How do you check for that?

There are of course many definitions of training,  and skills that I haven’t listed. To be a trainer like Jan may just involve years of practice, but I hope you have found this useful for planning your next training event, and I wish you many happy and productive training sessions!

Please feel free to leave comments below because I’d love to hear your experiences.

Award winning business educator, Phil Jones is coming up to Lancaster on May 1st to run a free event for young people on entrepreneurship and turning an idea or a passion into a way of earning a living.

Phil has agreed to stay on after the session and run a tea time business surgery for local businesses and not- for -profit organisations.

This session will run from 4pm to 6pm on May 1st in Lancaster and Morecambe College’s brand new business centre and is just £20.00!

Come and join Phil for a butty and a brew, bring him your questions, challenges and ideas.  Be warned you will be inspired!

There are just 20 places for this session, so booking is essential. To book your places please contact Sue Keenan on 01524 521508 or email s.keenan@lmc.ac.uk

Filling the Skills Gap – The Alternative.

On May 1st, Phil Jones is coming up to Lancaster to run a FREE event for young people and the unemployed.

Phil  is  an award winning business educator, keen to promote entrepreneurship, and he  is on a mission to work with anyone that wants to turn an idea, a passion or a skill, into an income generation scheme.

 Lancaster and Morecambe College  on Wednesday 1^st May, 1.15 to 3.15pm.

The session is open to schools, youth groups, the unemployed or any individual that would like to make a change to their employment status, or who wants to  work with others within their community to do so.

 Managing your child’s reputation on social media – Part 2

Advice for parents on  Facebook and Your Child, from the real experts – our teenagers!

In February I wrote Managing Your Child’s Reputation Online. This got such great feedback it led to discussions  with young people and then to a session with some older teenagers at Lancaster and Morecambe College Student Union this month with the Lancaster Guardian.

I wanted to talk to them about how they use social media,  have they thought about what their employer might see on their profiles?  and  what tips they have for adults… We do have a habit of talking about young people, rather than too them, when in fact they mostly have a very smart take on things.  These young people were no exception.

The group were fantastic, they fully entered into the debate, reinforcing some of my thinking and totally turning some of my fears on their head.

What became really clear is that these young people had had little or no parental guidance on social media, but having  grown up in the digital age they figured it out between themselves without too many disasters! Some had indeed got into the occasional slanging match on Facebook and realised that it would be better to delete those things and some went away to check what else they should delete, but mostly they knew what they were doing.

However these young people were older teenagers with a bit more life experience than the average 13 year old and so I asked them for their tips for parents of children about to get an account.  Between us we came up with the following top 12 tips….

*Facebook is for over 13s. Be brave enough to enforce that even if “everyone else in my class has Facebook” because small children are not  at all world savvy.  My daughter wasn’t allowed an account until age 13. I made sure that I understood it first and now we have really great discussions about how it’s used and abused.

*Be connected to your child on  Facebook. *One young woman said that she wouldn’t  hesitate to hack her child’s account if needs be. I would say that is pretty drastic, and if you can be Facebook friends that is way better, but if you are seriously worried and your child won’t talk to you, then better safe than sorry.

*But do not abuse that privilege by posting ridiculous adult stuff on their wall, or tagging them into things that embarrass them, or they WILL un-friend you. If you work this well you will have some fun together.

*Talk with your child about how they use Facebook. Talk to them about their experiences of on-line bullying and what is popular etc.

*Check what photos they are being tagged in.. Check google images to ensure there are no inappropriate images of your child in circulation. This is being dealt with on Emmerdale at the moment after images of Belle were circulated by an angry friend and the police became involved. For Emmerdale fans here’s a special treat…

*Guide them on issues of public behaviour… Even if you don’t understand social media, you do understand that ‘effing and blinding or bullying someone for an audience, never looks clever and can get them into big trouble.

A friend of mine who has a teenage girl, doesn’t use Facebook very much himself, but he ‘pops on now and then’ to see what she’s posting and reminds her that, as she’s about to start teacher training college, some of the more colourful language would be better deleted!  That is great guidance.

*Check their privacy setting. Whilst it should be automatic privacy for under 18s, that does fail sometimes. You check privacy settings by clicking on the padlock icon on the blue bar next to Home. It should be set as Friends.

* Talk to them about who they accept as friends , you might be amazed at how many people accept friend requests from people without knowing who they are.

*Manage the hours that they are on  social media. There is a growing problem of young people staying up half the night on social media. Not only is this leaving them very tired, but things can seem so much worse at 2 am when there is no-one else around.

*Understand what the fashion  facebook famous is all about. If your child is getting caught up in this you really need to know.

*The Subscribe button is for over 18s only.  Make sure you enforce that.. More on the subscribe button in a later blog.

*Learn about it for yourself so that you can have these conversations.  The young people from L&M were clear that their parents were not only uneducated about social media, but we’re making the very mistakes that we were trying to warn the young people about ! – posting things that were inappropriate because they didn’t understand the reach and consequences.

 Facebook and other sites really can be a lot of fun, but like all fun stuff, safety first! 

I’d love to get your feedback on this and any other tips or experiences that you have to share, so please feel free to leave comments below.

If you would like me to come and talk to a group of parents about this and other social media safety issues, please get in touch. 

Tips from the Blogging for Beginners workshop.