A Call to Arms

I'm watching a YouTube video of Donald Clark delivering his keynote speech at the ALT conference this year (It's an hour long). I want to pick a fight with Donald as I want to show him that there are some L&Ders out there who aren't as bad as he makes out. Unfortunately in the main he's right.

So I have to take issue and blog hoping a message gets delivered.

All you trainers out there - YOU ARE IN AN AGE OF CONSTANT LEARNING - THAT INCLUDES YOU.

What am I talking about here? The trainers who are sticking to their stock and trade and acting like the expert. Get off your high horse, pretentious, misguided sense of expertise and learn how to deal with human beings. There's an excellent post I read last night (written by Joe Gerstandt and courtesy of the HRD) about how Diversity and Inclusivity professionals are still trying to deal with employees as resources and forgetting that we have learned so much about the human condition that we can engage with people in so many different ways, but we're just not getting there.

The tone of this post is angry, and it's 'cos I am! Dammit I try so hard to raise the image of L&D and what the profession is capable of that I don't want stock and traders to be ignorant to what they should be capable of helping organisations achieve.

So this is what it comes to. If you're an L&Der and are either on the road to turning this into your profession, or indeed are claiming this is your profession, take a long hard look at your style of delivery. Are you facilitating? Truly are you? I would bet that I could observe any training session and within the first 5 minutes tell you whether or not the trainer will be a good facilitator. Arrogance? Damn straight it is. I have stupidly high expectations of what excellent training looks like and I will not stand for anything else, least of all from myself.

Want to step up to the mark? Make sure you get involved with the likes of Roffey Park or Ashridge Business School. Those are the Oxbridge of L&D professionals. To be truly excellent in our profession, any L&Der who is worth their salt should attend a workshop or training session or learning event with either of those companies.

Sorry but I don't buy Reed Learning or Hemsley Fraser as being that good. They're good for certain things, but they will not cater for a holistic approach to L&D development.

I won't go into what a facilitator should be doing within a training session, but if you have doubts of what I'm talking about, or don't agree with my assertion then I'll also bet that you're not being as effective a facilitator as you think you are. As an example though, when I deliver sessions, about 50% of what I talk about is the actual content of the session, the other 50% is normally me connecting and forming relationships that enable change.

This is a call to arms. Calling all L&Ders. Forget your own sense of importance and step up to the mark. Show the businesses and organisations you work with or for what excellent training looks like. Make sure you are constantly learning. Make sure you get critical and direct feedback about your delivery style. Make sure you leave your delegates with no doubt that you have given them the tools to be successful. Make sure you provide world class learning solutions that are engaging and evocative.

I'll lead from the front. Any of you I ever come into contact with from this point forward, if I'm not upholding this call to arms, then shoot me down.

Ask the right question for evaluation

Following a tweet today from Stella Collins about a course she delivered, I want to address with the L&D world the contentious issue of evaluation forms and feedback from training. Specifically though with behavioural training. To be clear, behavioural training is all forms of training that isn't technical or a core skill.

I'm not talking about the ROI of training, I've talked about that before. This is about evaluating the training itself.

Why is this question important though? What information does it yield which is so sought after? Is there a Holy Grail in an evaluation form that we're all missing?

Well let's first be clear about what questions get asked in a traditional evaluation form:
- Was the training useful?
- Were the facilities to your requirement?
- How effective was the trainer?
- Was the content relevant?

And you'll no doubt be reminded of others that come into this mix. Well here's the thing. Those questions are useless. They have absolutely no use whatsoever. As a trainer, there is nothing you enter onto that information which I will act on. Ever.

But why?

Because I'm making an assumption that the training I've just tried to provide for you is useful, is beneficial, and will be relevant to you. I'm only looking for answers on the evaluation form to either confirm or validate my opinion of the training course. Even if you were to give me bad feedback, and be descriptive about the specific elements that need to be changed - I wouldn't. Because it's only one person's opinion. There's not enough supportive comments for me to make widespread change to the training.

So what needs to be done?

Personally, I don't bother with evaluation forms. For the very reasons I have mentioned, they produce no information that will produce any change of behaviour on my part at all at any point in the future. And that's what an evaluation form is meant to provide. Meaningful information for the trainer.

Surely they must give an indication of something though?

NO. While delivering training for Ford Motor Co., the training company I was with had to meet a requirement that the average score from each training session did not fall below 3.75 on a 1-5 scale. If it did, the trainer was questioned about their effectiveness, a plan needed to be drafted about the actions that would be taken to rectify the 'problem' and an improvement in the score expected.

The fundamental problem here is the trainer isn't then assessed on how effective a trainer they are, but a variety of factors that either could or not be controlled by the trainer. Of course a trainer is meant to control for things such as training environment, content, delivery style and time management - but if on one day the trainer has a chesty cough, has been moved room at the last minute, the equipment in the room isn't appropriate for the training and the trainer has no other aids to support his delivery style, he's basically fucked (pardon the profanity).

There are formal models of training effectiveness which many trainers will attest to the need for evaluation forms. But I don't believe in them, nor use them.

Evaluation forms may provide a useful foundation from which to prompt questions about the effectiveness of the training. But any good L&Der will know that actually, any change required in training comes from the discussions you actively seek out with course delegates, or from fellow L&Ders who are there to provide you with feedback.

However, if you do want to seek out formal feedback from your participants, make sure you ask the right questions. To my mind, these should be something like the following:
- What new information did you learn from this training session?
- How will you apply this learning back into your daily routine?
- What will you do to ensure you don't fall back into bad habits?
- Did the trainer address your specific need for attending this training?
- Were you presented with information that confirmed or validated the way you are currently behaving?
- Were you given the opportunity to question and probe any areas of uncertainty?
- Were instructions form the trainer clear?
- Did the trainer create an inclusive and open training atmosphere?

Crucially, none of those questions should have a scoring mechanism against any of them. It is in the comments people make, that insight is derived. Obviously the wording may need to be changed for some to allow better comments, but you get the idea what questions are the important ones.

Thank God It's Monday

That Monday feeling. An interesting phenomenon that is ingrained in all of us. Oh shit it's Monday and we have to be at work. Oh shit it's the start of the week and I've got so much to do. Oh shit...

Well as miserable as I'm feeling today all you have to do is read the daily's to see how damned lucky every single one of us is right here, right now. I have the luxury and the freedom to be at work, earning my keep, with the capacity to grumble about having a job, living a full life and with resources at hand such as a computer and the internet.

A couple were freed from pirates at the weekend. Remembrance Sunday was yesterday. A birth happened. Someone died. A fire broke out in France. A 5 car pile up happened 10 minutes before I left with the family for my return journey home.

We get so wound up over day to day stuff we honestly forget that we have so much to be thankful for. Every day events prevent these things from being realised too. Billboards, TV, the internet, work, family, news, they all add to our perceived notion of 'pressure' and 'stress'. I wrote a short post on Friday about how I provoked an issue at work. I'm really anxious about it, but you know what? Thank Fcuk I did. It's shaken me up. It's forced me to consider what I do at work and how I do it. I've found a drive to kick some fucking ass.

There's no moral to today's post. End.

Sometimes being collegiate isn't worth it

I provoked an issue today. I saw something happen and I wasn't happy about it. Normally I'm all about collaboration, effective feedback and generally being collegiate. I threw that book out the window.

It's not often I get this wound up about something, but there's certain things I don't like to see, and today was a prime example. I have no idea how this will pan out. I was careful not to attack the person I provoked. At least I hope I didn't attack them. I was certainly harsh and even rude. I didn't swear or anything like that, but I equally was not kind in my message.

I'm anxious about the outcome. I won't apologise for what I provoked as else I wouldn't have provoked it. Equally though I am hoping that this is a good platform for open discussion.