Skip to main content

Calling yourself a Communication Trainer doesn't make you one.




Beware! Here comes a rant…

Last week I attended a seminar and got introduced to a Team Manager from a big bank. When he asked me about my profession, I told him about my work as a Communication Trainer. He scoffed and said he was a Communication Trainer too. He recently started running workshops with his team members to improve soft skills.  

This will be interesting, I thought. So I asked him what his background was with Communication Training and Workshop Design. 

"None" he replied.

"None?..." I replied in shock and horror.

"No." he said "Anyone can be a Communication Trainer, right?" 

Needless to say I died a little bit inside...

It seems like everyone is a trainer these days. 
Except that, they're not. 


What it means to be a Communication Trainer

I am not a Communication Trainer just because I say I am. 
And just because you ran a few communication workshops doesn’t mean you are trainer. It just means you lived through an experience, which is valid but doesn’t make you a trainer.

Being a Communication Trainer means you've studied your field. That you’ve spent thousands of hours mastering your craft before even calling yourself a trainer. It means you’ve done the work.

A Communication Trainer is an expert in the ways of transferring knowledge to others. A professional who knows how to make people apply those new communication skills in the workplace.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Team Leader can not help his team communicate better. I just wish that he would be more careful how he positioned himself. 
Maybe he should stop calling himself a Trainer and start seeing himself as a Student.

Now I know that there are many firms out there that use their front line people to ‘train’ their staff in communication skills. But when you are not an experienced, skilled trainer it is natural to make some dangerous mistakes. 

For example: 

There are no learning objectives in place so the workshop is not designed around achieving those objectives. Without them, it's like trying to hit a bull's eye blindfolded. 

or another common mistake:  

Packing the students with as much information as possible in as little time as possible. In other words, give a lecture, show power point slides and challenge participants to talk and think.  

I like to call this the information dump. Sort of like drinking from a high power sprinkler while lying on your back in the neighbour’s yard. 

 There is a lot of water flying around, but how much do you get to drink?
  
A trainer understands how to relay facts and figures about Communication in such a way that the audience will listen, learn and most importantly: apply. 

 They know how to entertain, engage and translate facts into relatable stories and impact full learning experiences.

So next time you call yourself a trainer... Please, think again.

Rant over. ;)


Labels:

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Benefits of making role play part of training

Role-play long has been a common training method among military branches, emergency response groups, and companies where quick decision-making is highly valued. So why not in the world of business training? Over the last few years, it seems role-play has been incorporated more often in business training curricula, and for good reason. For example, sales teams that continually engage in role-playing are more likely to outperform their non-role-playing competitors. And managers that get to experience authentic role play sessions turn out to be stronger and more confident leaders.  Benefits of Role-Play Here are just a few of the benefits of making role-play a part of your business training:
1. It builds confidence: When your team role-plays, you can throw any number of situations at them. Role-playing provides a safe environment to encounter these scenarios for the first time, which builds confidence in team members that can help them in their day-to-day roles.2. It develops great listenin…
Post a comment
Read more

5 Reasons NOT to use Fellow Students in Roleplay Simulations

Perhaps you've heard this before: Global spending on training tops $350 billion annually. 

Estimated is that more than 15% of this goes towards 'Soft Skills' development with the vast majority focused on Communication Skills, Coaching, Feedback, Conflict Management and Self Awareness. 

That's A LOT of money spent on trying to improve people's interpersonal skills, leading to a growing demand for a high return on investment. The logical next question is, what training method is most successful when it comes to implementing the newly acquired knowledge into day-to-day workplace interactions? 

Research consistently shows that one of the most effective ways to achieve success and a high return on investment is to simulate a real experience by incorporating Role Play into the training programs. 

Roleplay gives workshop participants those “in-the-moment” experiences and it allows them to experiment with the new behaviours in a safe-to-fail setting. Sadly, many trainers and w…
Post a comment
Read more

The Secret of Great Roleplayers

Recently I recruited for a new corporate actor for our growing team. 
During one of my interviews, I asked the actor sitting in front of me what he thought to be the most challenging part of corporate acting. His answer: 
“Challenging? If you know your lines you should be ok, right?”
Wrong.
The art of corporate acting is a lot more than just learning the lines of a role-play scenario. 
Corporate actors are expert improvisers and can create believable characters and in-the-moment performances. You know that feeling when you watch actors on stage or film, and you are transported to places that seem real and believable. Well, the same applies when actors take on corporate roleplay. The person they are interacting with quickly forgets they are with an actor, as the situation comes to life.
At InterACT we only work with first-class role-play actors.Our actors are trained to create those ‘real’ situations in imaginary circumstances so that participants can practice interactions as if they are re…
Post a comment
Read more