How to Survive as a Trainer

Abstract

Being effective is more than just having good ideas. You've got to be able to put those ideas into practice and, more important, those ideas must be relevant to the needs of the organisation. In this company, the previous approach to training was highly programmed. Courses were scheduled in a number of topic areas, nomination forms sent out, participants registered and trainers booked. It was so highly programmed you could tell which participant was doing what particular session on which course at any given moment. This was a successful approach but times have changed. We now need trainers to become more actively involved in helping and supporting line managers. In trying to put across this view, I came across some resistance, particularly from my immediate boss. I recognised that I had to start playing the politics game. I was able to set up an informal relationship with the chairman, who although not supporting my approach in writing, took every available opportunity to support it verbally. But this was not until I had demonstrated the relevance of my approach by talking in the language of the business, for example, costing out training activities and showing that they could be cost‐effective. My aim was actively to convince managers about the real value of training by demonstrating actual situations where training would have saved the organisation money. For example, I have collected statistics about the cost involved when company engineers lost time due to inadequate knowledge of new products when servicing equipment. It's taken me several years to convince people that the approach is relevant to the situation we are now facing, but I think I have got there.

Citation

Bennett, R. (1985), "How to Survive as a Trainer", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 9 No. 6, pp. 4-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb060357