You stick to your trade

This week I've been made to think about the value an L&Der has to offer and what a good L&Der should be able to do. This first came from a post I read by Donald Clark where he talked about his experience of Fox's Glacier Mints. This is rather amusing and rather cutting of his experience of an over enthusiastic trainer who was trying to train a group of people in being Creative. My second thing was from a training day I attended at my company delivered by an external trainer on the topics of Decision Making and Creative Thinking. And my third was from a company initiative I'm trying to push through.

What they all have in common is the value attached to an L&Der. I've spoken previously about what an effective L&Der needs to be able to do. What I'm concerned about at the moment is the sea of people out there in the world of work who call themselves trainers, and may fool themselves into thinking they are really good at training, but really have as much success as I do at Fantasy Football.

I'm sure that Bob is highly effective at delivering training on how to use MS PowerPoint 2010 but that doesn't mean he's equally able to deliver training on presentation skills. I can use PowerPoint, have used it for 7 years and probably will continue to use it into the future. That doesn't mean I should deliver training in it though.

Similarly, if a trainer is building their one-person consultancy into a successful brand - and let's be honest they tend to be one or two people - they should stick to what they know well and do that. Don't pretend you know enough about a topic you have a passing interest in that you can deliver training on the topic. Just because I have an enthusiasm for tennis doesn't qualify me to be a professional tennis coach.

I'm confident enough in my ability as an L&Der to recognise when a skillset is beyond my realm and I either need training in that skillset so I can learn how to do it, do it, then once I've bagged enough experience deliver training in it, or I seek out a current SME who can deliver it, and work with them to co-create the content and leave them to deliver it.

So what's my message here? If you trust a trainer to deliver training in Wiring a Plug, then make sure they do that well. If they suggest they can deliver training in Developing Leaders of Tomorrow, either laugh in their face, or politely suggest you'll go talk to Reed Learning instead.