Presenters buy a menu of canned courses, millions of text power point slides, buy reams of books with ideas on icebreakers, stress ball bollocks, quizzes and games, read a lot of slides, play a few games and job done for maybe a £150-£1000 a day. Easy money.

Corporations buy ‘Presenter’ training off the menu just to show they are ‘providing their employees with the very “best of training” and can hand on heart say, we ‘train all our employees’. Doesn’t matter what the end result is as what they have learnt is not as important as the corporate bottom line.

The Presenters validate their session by the number of smiley faces on the course ‘evaluation’ sheet, bin the bad ones and send in the great ones. Then sell some more of the same. Send in a padded glossy CV, pay a 100 or so and get a professional association logo. That’s the ticket.

The infuriating bit is that most people who attend presenter courses are usually happy and say, ‘we really enjoyed it’ and go back saying the training was great. Maybe it was, so why knock it. Maybe they did learn something but we will probably never find out what the result was.

Where so we go from here! People are coin operated, so make as much money as you can in the short time you are here. Try to do it right where you can but its too late to change things. There are huge franchise companies out there selling canned courses.

By forming proper relationships with a business customer, maybe then you can fine tune your operations for effective learning. In the meantime, we can academically discuss this crap until the cows come home.

Also, there is a false expectation that a trainer is all things; instructional designer, instructor, etc. Especially with today’s technology, there has been an industrialization of education, notably characterized by distinct roles in the education delivery process. You can read more about this concept from researchers such as Otto Peters.

There is just too much here to go into much more detail, but to capstone this discussion, a trainer is a type of educator, and requires formal preparation in many areas in order to be considered a true professional. Acting professional is often confused with being a true knowledge based professional, as evidenced by the acquisition of knowledge. No one would use the services of many professionals without some type of license or certification. You would not even hire a plumber if they were not licensed. But yet, in training, anyone can unilaterally declare he/she is a training professional/expert.

The list is endless…
First of all lets not place at the centre of any discussion.
My thought:
Thousand of years of history is witness to tha fact that we have great trainers from every walk of life. I call them 1st generation trainers.
They are dead now.
We are today witnessing the birth of 2nd generation.

Let’s all learn from the 1st generation trainers & subsiquently contribute to make 2nd generation even better.

Regards,
Anand

Is there something in the organizational context that “rewards” managers for thinking that the answer is training?

Gosh, it seems to me sometimes that people do come from the womb this way. My background is more in technical/equipment training. A manager will look at equipment down-time and, after looking at all of the mechanical, electronic, and process issues finally conclude the fault lies with someone not doing the right thing and the gut response seems to be: Send the guy to training. Bring in the vendor to conduct training. Etc. Why?

Because managers have no training or background in human performance. They don’t cover this in an MBA program. After years of going to school and college, after training in the military and elsewhere, it is assumed by people in the workplace that training is the solution. No matter that Tom Gilbert wrote Human Competence back in 1978 and Mager/Pipe wrote about performance analysis in 1983. (And others after them.) It still has not proliferated beyond a few “trainers.”

I liken your question about “people” and “they” with respect to human performance to medical doctors with respect to sickness and wellness. Why do they automatically think that drugs or surgery is the answer? They don’t spring from the womb this way. Where did they get this attitude?

But trainers feed this, by not saying no.

But still it remains that we seem to think about people who go to training like some strange form of large form factored child that has to be entertained, coddled, put into groups, debriefed, and, in a pinch, napped.

I personally would not hire most trainers unless they demonstrated a commitment to LEARNING content.

Trainers need education, training and coaching to be professional in their field.

That said, there are a lot of great trainers who have to deliver poorly designed training.

And, finally, there are many training classes delivered to fix a problem that training can’t fix. Training is a substitute for real management, handling tough problems and even terminating people who won’t/can’t do the job.

I’ll be interested to hear other comments on this question.

1. Trainers think ‘me-centric’, ‘my content-centric’. Moast, if not all, training events are such a miniscule slice of an individual’s professional development picture. Yet, as trainers, we neglect the real opportunities to make a difference and we focus on the event. The event doesn’t matter in the big picture.

2. Training seize mentorship opportunities, focus on relevance, and reveal secrets early. Most training events don’t do that.