The Curmudgeonly Trainer

I was just reflecting on the different views on regulation, and looking at a number of websites related to coaching, and its regulation.

It seems to me like the two “camps” are characterized by completely different backgrounds, and thus, different values and visions of the coaching field. The camps are so different it’s hard to imagine the twain ever meeting, and it’s easy to imagine that the issue of
regulation can only be handled through the political process.

We can divide the camps into two: First, those that come into the field from other disciplines that have professional education components; law, teaching, psychology, and so on. On the other side we have people entering the field from fields or who have backgrounds in areas that do not have professional education components.

Since professional education has always involved the communication of professional ethics and conduct and professional practice guidelines, it’s not surprising that people coming in that way bring those values to the table.

If you browse some of the coaching websites, the value differences jump out. Many if not most of the coaching websites are marketing oriented, and the clear tacit goal is to SELL a product or service, to consumers, or to other prospective coaches. The sites are replete with what could be described as ad copy. If you look at the bios of those site owner/coaches what you find is they almost never bring to to the table education that is related to what they are doing.

Check out http://www.b-coach.com/ as an example. Without passing any judgement on that particular style, it gets pretty clear what values are operating here. One can’t expect that the values and vision of someone like Mike Jay (who’s education is in Animal Science) or Doug Constant (who in 1997 was involved in the multi-level marketing industry) to have the same values as someone who comes in with a social work degree, or degrees in psychology. I’m not saying that background necessarily determines coaching effectiveness, here. Only that background does affect values.

Different values give rise to different visions for the field. I think on one hand, the people who are concerned about the health of the field, and will at least recognize the current problems, envision coaching as a PROFESSION, just like social work, teaching, psychology, law, and accounting. They want to be associated with a field that is guided by a set of values derived from these professions. They want to share a designation that is EARNED through hard work, competency and commitment.

On the other hand, I think the other camp, if you will, sees coaching as a business, a point I made last week. That is, they envision the field as marketing and sales based, and primarily entered into for the purposes of making money. Or, at least, if you look at a lot of coaching websites that’s what comes through. Note I’m not denigrating making money here.

Where one camp seeks professional dignity, the other seeks to sell as many services or products through marketing ad copy as possible.

While one camp believes that professional services should be presented to consumers in a calm, measured and non-hyperbolic way, the other does not. As an aside I think you can tell a great deal about people from their promises.

Right now the commercial coaching establishment, of which Mike Jay is a part, is dominated by those who are pursuing their business interests, and, that coupled with different values and vision, is going to make it impossible for the twain to meet. Because quite simply, the more coaching is regulated, the less they will be able to make money from the field.

I can fully understand why people like Mike Jay are passionate about keeping coaching unregulated. I think a major part of it involves business reasons. But there are probably other values that differ. My bet is that if you scratch the surface of those opposing regulation, you’ll find they are the “self-made men and women” who value independence more than they value adherence to a code of professional practice. I’m sure there must be other huge value differences.

My personal position on this certainly is affected by my background in regulated professions, psychology and education. I think it’s possible to have regulation AND run a business within the field, but there has to be a balancing of the different values involved. And that balance is not there. So long as coaches coaching using a marketing/sales based and money driven model, continue to do what they are doing, the need for regulation is going to continue.

Finally, for what it’s worth. I came across a document on the web that had an extensive list of things that coaches could do to prevent the regulation movement from succeeding. Which I thought was kind of cool. Until I realized that ALL of the suggestions had to do, not with the substance of coaching, but with the WORDS used to describe coaching. So, as an example, they advised removing all words that might be construed as relating to psychology or therapy.

What they didn’t do was make suggestions for how coaches should change WHAT THEY DO. They didn’t say: “OK, make sure that what you do with your clients is clearly not therapy in substance”. What they suggested was “Do the same things, but call it something else”.

I have to wonder at suggestions that are in essence, based on deception. Ok. Do this, but don’ t call it this, call it that. It’s the marketing mentality gone berserk.

Bottom line. The values, backgrounds and visions are so different that no internal solution is going to be complete enough to satisfy those who wield power that the coaching industry will police itself.

When I lived in Toronto, I played in a baseball league for several years. On my team, and the pitching staff, was a fellow named Rick, who had a pretty good fastball, and a serviceable curveball.

Rick was open about his background, and his present. He’d been in jail a number of times for burglary, and break and entering, even though he was only in his twenties. As he got to know the rest of the team, he (and I do believe he really did mean well) offered to “share” his bounty. I remember him offering around VCR’s for 30 dollars, in an era when they were very expensive. “Fell off the truck” he said.

As far as I know, none of the rest of the team took him up on his offer, but I wouldn’t really know for sure. But as far as baseball went, since he was a good pitcher, he got to pitch, and we welcomed him at the bar for a post-game beer. In fact, he was darned colorful, and interesting.

But there was one thing. While Rick was welcome on the field, and socially in the sports bar, for some very odd reason he was never invited to team functions hosted by a team member at own home.

That despite the fact that Rick had excitedly told us that “Well, I wouldn’t break in to a team-mates house”.

Now, nobody actually told RIck that outright. He just wasn’t invited, or told about these gatherings, and I’m sure Rick continued to think of himself as a hale fellow well met, a great team-mate, and someone loved and respected by all.

I have no doubt that Rick ended up spending a lot of his time in prison, probably for more serious things, but since he wasn’t someone one would view as a true friend (by anyone on the team), it’s hard to tell.

There are probably a lot of morals to the story. I think the one that comes to my mind is: “When you share what belongs to you, you build real bridges and earn respect. When you share (steal, really) what belongs to others, people may take advantage of the opportunities you offer, but aren’t going to tell you that you aren’t quite welcome in their homes, hearts and minds.

…and, no matter how “useful” Rick was, or how well intentioned he was in his “sharing”, or how he might have justified his liberation of VCR’s) that didn’t change the essential fact that he was simply not welcome to get too close, and that nobody would tell him that.

It’s scary. Just plain scary. A person who’s identity I have removed - a an HR person/trainers said about employee rankings and ratings:

On 11 May 2004 at 21:23, edllarena wrote:

The use “words” or “numbers” (or both) in evaluating or “rating a performance” is very common. Some people find “words” to be more accurate in describing performance than “numbers”. However, when a system uses a more complex system in appraisal, the use of “numbers” tend to be more accurate because one can draw “averages” from the scores. The essence of a good “rating tool” is in its capability to objectively (versus subjectivity) describe the “overall performance of the ratee”.

I’m really sorry, but the above is just plain wrong, and destructive. Numbers don’t mean accurate and they don’t mean objective.

Is a football player with a number 99 on his back 99 times better than one with a 1 on his back?

On feedback upwards, appraisals to supervisors and supervisors:

I think we need to separate two different functions - one is judging (my manager does this or that well or badly), and providing critical information or feedback to help the manager do his or her job, and support the employee in getting their jobs done.

If we are talking about judging, then I suspect David is correct. If we are talking about getting information from employee to manager about how the manager can be more useful, then it’s a different story.

One of the major complaints I hear from managers is that their employees won’t talk to them or keep them in the loop. Some of that is a result of managerial behavior that does not invite such comments, but some of it is because is usually no forum for providing those comments for most employees.

So, like any appraisal, filling out a form for upward “judging” is probably pointless, except in a few work units the fulfil some preconditions (mature, stable, high trust).

On the other hand, I counsel managers that performance management should be BI-DIRECTIONAL, since the bottom line is that both parties need information from the other for the purpose of maximizing performance and satisfaction. So, part of performance planning, goal setting, and performance reviews SHOULD involve managers soliciting information about how they can be more helpful to each employee.

Harrison Snow wrote:

> Hey Guys,
> Just a reminder that we are talking about an
> “indicator” around “preferences”…..
> MBTI is not the voice of Destiny and the mother-
> daughter team Myers and Briggs along with Carl Jung
> never claimed that it should be used with that kind of authority. It
> is always up to the individual to validate his or her own preferences
> keeping in mind this is not about strengths or skills or abilities but
> only about how a person prefers to do things.

That’s the theory…the stock line if you will. The question that might be of interest is whether it’s actually true in how people really give, take, and interpret the results.

And whether the instrument can provide results that seem accurate but are not, despite the possiblity that people may “validate them”.

After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people who validate the accuracy of horoscopes every single day. That doesnt’ mean the horoscopes are scientific, valid, or anything accept they sound reasonable.

In fact there are some psychological factors that tend to influence people to accept the results of such instruments at a level way above what the results warrant.

There are often demand characteristics going on in the environment, and the implicit effects of something that purports to be scientific. Both of these factors are well recognized and researched in psychology as possible contaminants of people’s reactions.

There are other issues also why self-validation may be misleading, and actually result in buying into a set of descriptions which may not be accurate at all.

Honestly, I don’t get why trainers continue to make the following idiot statement to explain the difference between training and education.

Would you rather have your 13-year old go to a sex education class or a sex  training class?

When I see a trainer say this kind of thing, i immediately want to make sure he or she has no contact with real live human beings, due to implicit thought deficits.

This is another one of those common cited things that makes sense until you start to think about it, and consider what it really means.

The reason, of course, why most people choose the education option is they don’t want their young teen having sex, so they assume that if they aren’t “trained” to do it well, they’ll kind of throw up their hands and not engage in it.

The assumption is that the more we can keep them in ignorance the less likely they will engage in the act.

Odd, really.

Change it a bit to another topic area and the distinction isn’t so clear.

Would you rather have your 13 year old go to firearms education class, or gun safety training?

(Assuming let’s say that you were an inveterate hunter and routinely brought you child on hunting trips).

To add, understanding how a firearm works is part of knowing how to be safe around them. Many things, in fact most things involve both “education” and “training”.

I’m not downgrading what you are suggesting, but I don’t want my surgeon to have “learned ONLY by doing”

Go figure. Here’s another exchange between myself and John Howe about the relationships between training and learning.
John Howe wrote:

> “Learning” is (solely) an activity of learners. It does not require
> “training” for it to occur. In fact, there is likely a less than positive
> correlation between “training” and desired “learning.” Trainers in my
> experience almost invariably get in the way of learning.

I think that it’s necessary to make the distinction between good, effective training, and poor training, and it doesn’t sound to me like you are doing so. Clearly, bad training is bad training, and if that’s all you are familiar with, then it’s easy to conclude (falsely and sadly, illogically) that all training is ineffective.
>
> “Training” on the other hand is something done by “trainers.” As you can
> see from my claim above there is no necessary relationship between
> “training” and “learning.” At least in the sense of “desired, predictable
> learning.” The things learned in many training sessions are likely not
> related to the objectives the trainers are claiming to achieve.

Again, when training design and delivery is lousy, the results will reflect that.
>
> The usual reason for making this distinction is that it has implications for
> instructional design.
>
> By far most instructional designs are “trainer-centered,” that is they
> devote most of their attention to what the instructors will be doing while
> learning is ostensibly occurring, but little about what the purported
> learners will be doing (accept sitting as passive listeners or recipients of
> knowledge).

Then it’s bad instructional design that is done incompetently and by people who don’t know what they are doing. Effective instructional designs are BASED on an understanding of how people learn, and involve specifying learning and training activites to reflect that.

Again, if someone doesn’t know much about instructional design, it may appear that it is as you describe. Good design and delivery works. Bad doesn’t.

>
> If you did a frequency distribution on the concerns most visible on trdev
> you would find that the first letter of its acrynym is well-earned. There
> is little interest here in “learner-centered” instructional design.

Depends what you mean. For many learner-centered means a lot of things that are simply not consistent with how people really learn. It’s become an “ideology” much like a religion. The result is that a
good number of training and learning approaches get thrown out in knee-jerk reactions, despite the fact that they are all around us, have decades or more of successful use, but simply don’t fit a
laissez-faire “learner knows best” religious belief.

>
> But it is possible to “arrange for learning to occur” without engaging in
> much “training.” It is very possible to build experiential sequences that
> simulate the feature(s) of the job it is desirable for the learner to learn
> and then ask the learners to use them in interative practice and critique
> modes until they can perform as desired.

By themselves (if these are the only learning experiences provided) they make learning extremely inefficient. We currently live in a society that believes that expertise is unimportant, and that everyone can learn anything on their own.

I keep thinking about who I’d want to do open heart surgery on me — someone who has been taught through a systematic disciplined process by people who have huge experience and expertise (yes, even if that involves sitting in lectures), OR do I want people who ONLY learned through what you call experiential experiences.

I’m not downgrading what you are suggesting, but I don’t want my surgeon to have “learned ONLY by doing”. I value expertise, book learning, theory, and a lot of things that simply aren’t part of “experiential learning”.

What is the difference between “measuring” something like EQ, and something like your weight?

If you answer that question with diligence and in depth, you’ll go a long way to understanding measurement, psychometrics, epistemology, the dangers of reification, concepts, and a raft of other mental “stuff”.

In response to a question about the value of doing free (pro bono) work to market a consulting or training business, Robert responds:

I agree that some feel pro bono work is a poor way to generate business, but I’m hesitant to discourage people from giving it a shot. Generally, I’ve found that pro bono speaking (or dirt cheap) doesn’t increase business, but there are exceptions. Some of it is blind luck. Some of it has to do with what you present and how you do it.

Late last year, I did a freebie for the local HR association — as much to contribute to the local HR community as anything else.  Out of that I got a paid speaking arrangement, and then another more lucrative one from that one.

I don’t think that ONE exposure is going to make much business difference but if you keep in mind you are marketing, and consider free things as a small part of that, it’s more effective.

I CAN tell people that I see people who take active part in Chambers and associations, hugely benefiting business wise. That means being on the exec., that kind of thing.

Gary Lear posts an excellent message on the issue of literacy and literacy training which we unfortunately can’t reproduce in its entirety, but here’s my commentary.:

> I also want to thank you and Gail for doing such a superb job of
> demonstrating for me what I was trying to explain to Bill earlier about
> why this issue is so hard to deal with and why we’ve made very little
> progress over the past decade or so. It is quite typical to have a
> group of people who have no idea what they are talking about go around
> quoting other people who have no idea what they are talking about,
> making up things as they go, using their own definitions for terms,

Just a comment on the latter. It’s struck me Gary, that you are usingdefinitions that are from a particular perspective, while Gail and Don areusing definitions (particularly Don) that are more lay person. It’s like
the difference between the man or woman in the street talking about intelligence, and a psychometrist talking about intelligence.

It’s hard for a layperson and a psychometrist to discuss meaningfully when neither makes the effort to see the merit in the other’s perspective.

In this discussion, it’s interesting that I find the omission of writing from the definition of literacy to be quite counter-intuitive. Perhaps there’s a rational reasons for this to be the case, but my “lay” perception is that I don’t quite understand it.

But also keep in mind that those with the
> lowest literacy skills tend to hold less skilled jobs and live in a
> lower socio-economic level than most of the participants on this list.

Just an observation and that is that even for those with lowest literacy skills in less skilled jobs, their performance can be impacted and limited. I recall talking to a director of physical plant, and it was interesting that he felt there were real issues regarding the ability of some staff to properly handle the differentcleansers and formulas and to apply the correct one to the correctproblem. Because, simply, they didn’t always have the skills to read the directions, and this was particularly the case when something “changes”.

Literacy played a huge part in the project, as they
> realized that before you can develop higher tech skills you need to have
> the basic skills in place.

An addition - anything that limits the earning power of a populationsegment does not only affect that segment, but if the segment is largeenough, the whole economy is affected through a wide range of issues fromlimited tax base, increased taxes, etc.

That is a major reason why literacy is a NATIONAL issue.