Trainer Tools

I've never been a big fan of SMART objectives. I accept there is wisdom in the acronym, but I think the process tends to eclipse the most important things about performance objectives: they should provide clarity, challenge and motivation, and when delivered they should add value to the organisation.

I made this point in a previous podcast (The secrets of accelerated learning: what's your objective? with Krystyna Gadd) and was contacted by Garry Platt who disagreed with some of what I said and wanted to mount a defence of SMART.

So that's what this is ... an extra podcast challenging some of the content of the previous one, with a screeching parrot in the background.

Garry Platt is an experienced training consultant with more than 30 years experience in the business. He has worked with a number of international organisations helping them to enhance their approach to training and development. Within the last 12 months he has worked with Deutsche Post DHL, Formica, Siemens, Mercedes AMG F1 Team and was the keynote speaker at the SHE Conference in Blackpool.

Academically qualified to Masters Degree level in Education, Training and Development his work combines current research and study in Human Resource Development with a pragmatic and workable approach.

During the last 10 years an area of specialisation has become the evaluation and return on investment analysis of training delivered in organisations. Drawing from the experience of hundreds of companies and organisations he has drawn together a large range of methods and approaches which many organisations have selected from and introduced into their own.

Garry currently works for EEF and can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or email ([email protected])

A few months ago we chatted with Krystyna Gadd about her Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning, and in this podcast we drill down into the first and most important of those: writing learning objectives that link to the business strategy and the objectives of the learners.

Apologies that it's a bit long, but when you get talking about this sort of thing it can be hard to stop!

Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on accelerated learning and its application in the UK. As an engineer in a former life, it has shaped her thinking towards creating learning that creates measurable performance impact. She has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016.

Krys finds working with trainers an absolute joy and she constantly seeks out ways to enable trainers to cut down on preparation time, improve retention of information and accelerate the learning though their organisations.

Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers.

A few months ago we chatted with Krystyna Gadd about her Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning,

Apologies that it's a bit long, but when you get talking about this sort of thing it can be hard to stop!

In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I welcome back Garry Platt to continue discussions on his specialist subject: Transactional Analysis.

Transactional Analysis, or TA, is a theory of how humans interact with each other - its main application being to help understand human behaviour and communication: each interaction between people being called a "transaction". It was developed by Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne and has been a tool in the trainer and coach toolbox for many years in helping us understand ourselves and our own interpersonal behaviours, but also understand those of others.

In this episode Garry talks about "Transaction", and this builds on the first podcast "Transactional Analysis for trainers (part one): understanding ego states" that you should check out before listening to this.

Garry Platt is an experienced training consultant with more than 30 years experience in the business. He has worked with a number of international organisations helping them to enhance their approach to training and development. Within the last 12 months he has worked with Deutsche Post DHL, Formica, Siemens, Mercedes AMG F1 Team and was the keynote speaker at the SHE Conference in Blackpool.

Academically qualified to Masters Degree level in Education, Training and Development his work combines current research and study in Human Resource Development with a pragmatic and workable approach.

During the last 10 years an area of specialisation has become the evaluation and return on investment analysis of training delivered in organisations. Drawing from the experience of hundreds of companies and organisations he has drawn together a large range of methods and approaches which many organisations have selected from and introduced into their own.

Garry currently works for EEF and can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or email ([email protected])

It's been a while since we did a short episode and I've had this one in the can for a while, so I thought I'd edit it up and put it out.

In this episode, I welcome back Seema Sarawgi who talks about a simple way to split larger groups into smaller sub-groups for activities. There are lots of ways to do this that are more interesting than saying "1, 2, 3" that can be fun and energising, can break down barriers and can lead into content or fit with teambuilding themes.

Seema Sarawgi is a Learning and Development professional with around 8 years of experience of working with both public and private sectors in India and the UK.

She last worked for the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office as a Regional Learning and Development Officer where she designed and delivered formal and informal L&D solutions for staff across South Asia including India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. She has also provided HR advisory and consulting to some of the biggest public sector undertakings in India such as Indian Oil, Indian Railways, Steel Authority of India, Delhi Metro etc.

She is very passionate about L&D and always goes an extra mile to deliver something innovative and sustainable. A particular highlight in her career was when she received an HRD award for “improving quality of working life” for unskilled labourers for an Indian Public company from the President of India at IFTDO, 2013.

Seema has a master’s degree in Organisational Behaviour from London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). She is also an MBA and a certified Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner with a strong sense of business strategy further developed through working with one of the Big 4’s and similar boutique consulting firms.

Click here to visit Seema's profile on LinkedIn

The life of a training facilitator is not as glamorous as it might seem to the casual observer.

There's a lot of travel, but that just means a lot of time in airports or stuck on long and boring motorways. L&D professionals don't typically travel in hot air balloons with personal menservants called Passepartout - the budgets rarely stretch that far.

It's not just the solitude of travel, it's the loneliness of being in a group of learners in a workshop, but needing to keep distant from them. We encourage social learning and network building, but we're the guide on the side not another member of the gang.

It doesn't stop there!

Often we're associated with change, and change is sometimes bad news, at least for some of the people ... and even if not, we're in the business of challenging people, pushing them out of their comfort zones, perhaps even asking difficult questions that make people think. We might even cause all sorts of trouble by demanding manager involvement or by challenging cultural aspects that might be getting in the way of learning.

Claire Simmons is an expert in offering career advice - and not just how to make your CV look nice. Her organisation (NewFuture.me) works with people through the emotional side of career change, redundancy, and picking the right options for the future.

In this podcast she talks through her approach and how we, as L&D professionals, can apply the same techniques to help look after ourselves.

Time is running out and you've got so much more content to squash in to the training course ... what can you do? Easy, just drop the action planning session you have penciled in for the end of the day!

According to Emma Weber, expert in learning transfer and author of two books on the subject, this would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

In this episode - the longest Trainer Tools podcast by a country mile - Emma explains how action planning done well can be the key tool in ensuring knowledge and skill acquired on a training course is transferred into the workplace and drives real life proper performance improvement!

Maybe I should have split this up into two parts, but there didn't seem to be a natural break ... so I didn't. I know it's long, but I think it's worth it!

Emma Weber is the founder of Lever – Transfer of Learning and developer of the Turning Learning into Action™ (TLA) methodology.

Emma’s firm belief, and the platform on which she has built her successful global business, is that the key aim of learning in the workplace is to create tangible business benefits. She established Lever to help organisations and their employees convert learning into effective action back on the job. Under her guidance Lever now delivers TLA programs throughout 20 countries and in 12 languages.

A recognized authority on the transfer of learning, Emma has been a guest speaker on learning effectiveness at conferences in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and the USA. Her book ‘Turning Learning into Action: a proven methodology for effective transfer of learning’ was published in March 2014 by Kogan Page. Emma’s second book, ‘Making Change Work: How to create behavioural change in organizations to drive impact and ROI’, co-authored with Jack and Patti Phillips of the ROI Institute, was published on May 3rd 2016 by Kogan Page.

Fostering entrepreneurship is Emma’s other keen interest, and she has co-facilitated training at the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa.

I am not the world's best at planning, and probably wouldn't rank very highly at following a plan either.

I've often felt that this was a weakness - I know it's also a strength (I am good at thinking on my feet and coping with change), but it's also true that it mightn't be such a bad thing to plan ahead and perhaps stick to a schedule every now and again ... so, when Paul Levy proposed talking about the role of improvisation in training delivery, I was rather excited!

In this podcast he talks through his approach to improvisation, what it means, how we can develop the skills, and his own examples of improvised activities that have worked well, and - because it's in my nature to ask - times when it hasn't worked so well!

Paul Levy is the founder of CATS3000, a change and innovation company that helps people and organisations to realise potential and thrive. He’s worked with individuals and organisations all over the world for the last twenty years to challenge mediocrity, and to open space for change and transformation.

Paul is also a senior researcher at the Centre for Research in Innovation Management at Brighton Business School in the UK. He’s the author of several books, including “Technosophy” and Digital Inferno (based on his acclaimed blog, The Digital Inferno. He is also lead facilitator with the Social Media Leadership Forum.

He’s also a director of Rational Madness Theatre – an award-winning organisational theatre company that uses theatre to inspire and provoke change, transformation and innovation.

He’s a facilitator, trainer, writer, thinker and collusion breaker.

Paul Lives in Brighton in the UK.

Evaluation is the most neglected part of the L&D cycle.

My guess is that this is because most people in L&D prefer to be in training rooms or designing workshops, or creating transformational strategies to allow individuals and organisations to reach their potential ... I'm getting carried away now ... the point is that few of us get excited about the subject of evaluation.

Merle Van Der Voorde was no exception, and wasn't exactly thrilled when asked to deliver an evaluation project for the various learning and development courses, programmes and other activities on offer.

However, like most things, the more you know about them, the more interesting they become and in this podcast Merle shares the strategy and approach she used, and talks through some examples from her organisation.

Merle Van Der Voorde is a Senior Learning Advisor at the Dutch Academy for International Relations. At the Academy she focuses on informal and social learning, evaluation, intercultural exchange and security and defence topics ... read more about Merle here.

Although Merle loves to be in the to-do-mode, she prefers reflection and is passionate about helping others in their efforts to learn through reflection. Merle doesn’t just like engaging in learning with people, but also with dog! Training dogs – or better- training their owners, is one of her favourite pastimes.

Stories are the oldest and best way of passing on information in an engaging and memorable way.

They are a key tool in learning, and a nice break from PowerPoint and flip charts, and they can be used to make things easier to remember, to raise a particular issue for discussion, to challenge the way people think, and to make learning easier to transfer back to the workplace.

We don't need to rely solely on real things that have happened either - although real life stories are really good - we can write our own stories too. Sometimes this might be because we don't know a relevant true story, but often there is value in an obviously fictional account - think how much we call on famous fictional situations as real-life metaphors now: everything from Shakespeare and Star Wars to Monty Python. Fictional stories can be used to illustrate ideas in a meaningful way that everyone understands.

In this podcast I talk to Samantha Mathis about her use of stories and how to write your own stories for training courses and other learning events. She also talks about using storytelling as a powerful teambuilding activity, allowing teams to raise and discuss issues in a fun and engaging way.

Samantha Mathis is Regional Head of Learning & Development for the Americas region for the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

She has more than 15 years experience in leadership and learning and organizational development to realize improvement and change. She has extensive experience developing leadership and management training strategies, coaching and mentoring teams and individuals, and specializes in cultural training, leadership and team development.

A retired Royal Air Force officer, she has worked on projects for the U.S. and U.K. governments, the United States Agency for International Development as well as in the private and education sectors.

Samantha has global experience with multi-cultural teams in the Americas, Caribbean, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. She has a B.A. in European Business Communication and a Masters in French & Business and is currently completing a Doctorate in International Education, specializing in the transfer of learning from leadership programs to the workplace.