Monthly Archives: August 2019

On our Train the Trainer courses we talk about the 5 pillars of instruction all the time.  They are the pillars that highly effective training is all about.  In many organisations, these pillars are used as a process for measuring the competence of trainers.  Accompanied by effective trainer development, focus on these areas significantly improves training. When you have poor training, little thought is put on these pillars and inevitably training collapses.  Reading PowerPoint is a classic example where poor training has been adopted.  Focus on the 5 pillars will help to elleviate this.

So what are these 5 pillars?

Questioning Technique – the single most important aspect of training delivery is the ability to engage with highly effective questions.  Trainers should be able to use a variety of methods including open, rhetorical and reasoning questions.  Additionally, trainers should be aware of dealing with answers when they are correct or when they are incorrect.

Personal

There is no doubt that getting promoted from worker to supervisor or manager can be very stressful for an individual. This can be particularly stressful if you get promoted and still work in the area you were before.  I have spoken to many people who find this very stressful, and I know it can be daunting. So what areas can we focus on when faced with this challenge:

Be Yourself - don’t try to be something that you’re not.  You may have already worked with the same people who already know you so you don’t have to prove who you are.  Remember, the promotion does not change who you are, it changes what you do, your title and your workload.

You’re Still Part of a Team - you now may be a supervisor but remember your still part of a team and it’s a team to get a job done.  Dysfunctional teams are not very effective and can be quite destructive.  There are 5 key dysfunctions of a team that can be amplified by poor management:

Encourage Communication - it might take some time for individuals

Our highly acclaimed Foundation Management Development Programme (FMDP) makes a comeback as an open course next year.  The course is perfect for individuals who are new to management or have been in management for a while and need to develop their management skills.

The ILM accredited programme has a number of key areas delivered in several modules over a 4-month period and it is aimed at first-line managers and supervisors. This course will introduce vital skills to individuals and motivate them to be highly effective. Key areas of the course include:

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – managers need to be aware of personalities within a team but before they can understand others, they need to understand themselves first.
• Delegation – essential for managers to understand how to delegate and key elements required including communication and feedback.
• Time Management – understanding what is happening with our time is essential for effective management. Identifying ‘Time Bandits’ and

Coaching is a fantastic process for individuals to improve in any area of their life, both professionally and personally. I have found since mastering my coaching skills; staying silent can be an incredible experience. I genuinely love to see the change in individuals by asking the miracle question.

When you coach and watch the coachee, you start to feel what it is like sitting in their shoes. You genuinely must watch and notice and listen. If you listen with the intent to fully understand rather than the intent to reply to your next question, you will see so much more. This silence will direct you to your next open question, only if you allow it to happen. Remember, as a coach, you should question to guide the coachee, not to offer a solution. To begin to understand this process, you need to gain experience; it is not done overnight; this skill takes time.

Silence is golden and incredibly hard to sit with, especially if you have the extraverted preference. It is a discipline that needs

“That was rubbish, I’m not as good at this as I thought” was my first realisation that I needed to work hard to become an excellent trainer.  I was quite sure of myself you see; having worked as a trainer for years at a training school, the way we delivered the training wasn’t massively challenging in my opinion.  Looking back now, I realised that I needed knocking down a peg or two and was the best thing that could have happened as it helped make me the Trainer I am today.

So how exactly did I come to this realisation?  Well, I was well qualified in the system that was used to grade us as trainers, but I had just subscribed onto a one-year University Post Compulsory Education and Training (Old Cert Ed).  Our Tutor was called Bob, and he had been in the teaching profession for 40+ years so you can imagine he’d seen it all!  The course involved many lectures but also assessments in the workplace looking at our training delivery and in particular how we engaged in aiding the learning

Many individuals get promoted at work because they are good at their job.  What can then follow is a real struggle to get to terms with their new role, not because they struggle with the job, but that they struggle with their role as a manager.

Being an excellent manager requires many skills, including the ability to motivate, delegate and deal with difficult people.  These skills, of course, are not necessarily natural to individuals and many need to be learnt.  Just because we are good at our job does not mean we naturally have these skills.

Sometimes we learn the hard way, of course, where we learn from our mistakes.  This can be an effective method of learning, although the damage left behind can last a lifetime both for the organisation or individual concerned.

I believe that training can help here; effective training can help us with the necessary skills.  Moreover, if conducted correctly, training can aid the delegate to reflect on their current practice and what needs

Making mistakes is such a massive part of life, and I believe they are not dealt with correctly from an early age. This then can create a fear of making mistakes; sadly, this then continues through life. Mistakes can form negative thoughts and beliefs that will play out in peoples personal and professional lives.

Making mistakes can cause self-esteem and confidence problems. The word ‘confidence’ is such a huge word, and when you ask coachees to talk about the word ‘confidence’ in their own words, it can create such sadness in their faces and words.

There are many ways to deal with this as a coach. I sometimes suggest the change of a word and one I have used is to change the word from ‘confidence’ to ‘courage’. This then creates a different approach or idea in a coachee and sometimes can create such a different mindset. The word ‘confidence’ can create such negativity.

Sadly, making mistakes can hold coachees back in both personal and professional lives.  When someone has a superb idea,

Have you ever thought about the best Trainer you have ever seen and what made them so successful?  I often think about those trainers that influenced me and the reasons why I wanted to try and train like them.  I’ve been so lucky to have worked with some fantastic Trainers, and I’ve managed to figure out why they are so good - they use magic powers!  So, what are these mystical ‘magic powers’ and how can you get them?

Firstly, I want you to think about all of the resources that make for good training like pens and handouts and aids etc.  A lot of them you can carry about in your trainer bag, but there’s one particular resource that definitely won’t fit in your bag, and that’s the people in your audience.  They are one of the most precious resources you can have to make the training successful, and if you can tap into their ‘power’, this will be the thing that makes the ‘magic’ happen.  Here is how you too can get the magic powers working for you:

Engage – Telling people lots

We deliver many courses where issues relating to meetings take centre stage.  On average, I believe that 80% of individuals, particular managers, say they have problems with meetings, they think they would save a massive amount of time if they weren’t invited.  Moreover, many say that attending the meeting is a waste of time because nothing happens anyway.  What happens is that we participate in meetings for meeting's sake.  In our Time Management course, we talk about this as being a massive time bandit; in other words, it is stealing your time.

Of course, when meetings are conducted correctly, they can be a significant benefit to the organisation. However, some simple rules need to be adhered to, so they are useful: 

Only invite those who need to be there – What is the point of asking someone to be at a meeting and for them to spend the whole time looking at the window, utterly pointless.

Have an agenda – If you don’t have a plan, there is a good chance that the meeting