Directions for Training of Trainers

Look at the statements in the list below. Think whether you agree with them or not. Do this before you read the text below.

• Everyone can be a good trainer.
• Training should be fun.
• Trainer should help the participants come to conclusions the trainer wishes to lead them to.
• Personal development of the participants is the basis of every training.
• Trainer should leave his/her personal values at home.
• Skills and methods are the essence of every training.
• Results of training should be measurable.
• You learn best through practice.
• Objective of training is passing on knowledge.
• During training the participants should be given advice.

In every textbook for trainers it says that the role of a trainer is complex and demanding. Every experienced trainer will probably confirm this. How do we prepare for it then? No training, regardless of how good it may be, offers a magic recipe for this. Most often, it opens windows, and the rest greatly depends on personal decisions and discoveries.

Training of trainers means much more than dealing with methods for teaching adults. It touches the roles that in professional (and private) life are performed by people of various professions. Hence, they are discovered by people who do not plan to devote their lives exclusively to training. Let us mention only some segments of the training of trainers to illustrate this.

Training as an interaction

The key to the Training of trainers is to discover the principles and the characteristics of teaching adults. The ever mentioned interactive methods are best learned when we ourselves participate in a training that consists of maximum participation and practice of what we learn.
It is well known that adults learn best through the things they experience and discover using all their senses to the maximum. Using not just our brains, but our heart and arms as well, as some people say. How – this is an unavoidable segment of every training of trainers – on methods for teaching adults.

Training as public performance

Every kind of working as a trainer with groups of participants is a sort of public performance. Fear of public performance is now confirmed not only through numerous experiences but also through research results. Furthermore, its intensity varies with different people. One of the roles of a trainer is to present content in front of groups of participants. They are different and often completely unknown to us. However, there are more ways of controlling this fear. Practice is one of them – especially in a safe environment with participants of training for trainers, who then will, together with the trainer, offer feedback with good intentions. There are not many other occasions for this, are they?

Training as common learning

There are no two identical trainings with the same topic. The groups are different in many respects for example, according to their professional profile. A biologist and an economist can be in one group and can bring completely new contents to the training. While the participants are discovering the secrets of the training skills, the trainers have the opportunity to discover not only the secrets of various professions, but also to find new ideas for the training design and performance for some future group. A well-led group will produce a plethora of such possibilities without imposing one and only right way. This is where the skill of a trainer as a facilitator lies in, a skill that forms an important part of the training of trainers.

Training as a process of communication

Every learning process is interactive, as well as communication. Each of its segments is important – whether it is a trainer’s presentation or a discussion, during which we usually get the best feedback. No matter how different among themselves, all the participants in training have at least one common trait – they are equal with other participants and with the trainer. It is a group of adults with abundant experience and well-formed opinions. In that respect, the opinion of some cannot be more important than the opinion of others – especially not the trainer’s opinion in relation to the participant’s opinion.

The skills of successful communication with a group cannot be learned solely during a Training of trainers, but certain principles and rules that we master in it prove to be very efficient in training practice. Their application can prevent many potential tensions in groups of participants and help us involve those hardest ones, who initially show open resistance or indifference.

Training as team work

Each group of participants makes a kind of a team, which is born, has a life of its own, its dynamics and achievements during the training. It often happens that, within one team, smaller teams, a form of work groups, are formed during the training. Among participants from the same organization a dynamics they have not experienced before develops– because they may have never formed a team before. From such experience many new chances for networking and exchange arise, but the story on teams in the context of Training of trainers does not end here. Teamwork exists in the relation between the trainers and the co-trainers – colleagues in preparations, performance and evaluation of training.

Since it is very complex and specific, the work of trainers demands special attention to the rules and characteristics of inter-trainer co-operation, for the benefit of all the participants and the trainers themselves. Training of trainers is a field for discovering various styles and skills of co-training.

Training as learning about yourself

It is said that we learn best in new and difficult situations. The situation of being in a new group and experiencing new things is already difficult. How many times have you experienced aha moment and concluded that you have had the same experience as the colleague from the group you are listening to, but you have not articulated it in that way? As trainers we share with the participants the experience of adult role. Learning about the characteristics of their learning and participating in their skill exercises, we actually learn about ourselves. Each feedback on types of effects the training has produced on a group in different segments – is a valuable source for learning. Not only about the trainer’s skills, but also about what should be improved in training design in the future. Thus, evaluation and self-assessment are on the agenda in each comprehensive Training of trainers.

We have shared with you some of the moments of multiple trainer’s roles, which usually includes much more than training for a single role. Now you may return to the list of attitudes at the beginning and think once again if you would agree with or disagree with any of them in the same way? Surely, there is still a dilemma in certain cases. Training of trainers may be the right place for the discussion on them.