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Are You a Credible Trainer?

Photo credit: davide ragusa, published under CC.

If you have ever had participants questioning your credibility as a trainer then you’re not alone. I was once criticized for my awful handwriting on the blackboard (yeah, this was twenty years ago, when I was an assistant at university) – my students assumed that I was not skillful in other areas either.

And here’s an example from Joel Graff, an engineer and veteran trainer: “I once had to ‘train’ guys with 10-25 years experience (largely for paperwork reasons). Word got back to me before class that a lot of them were pretty negative about it.”

How he solved the situation? He told them:

“Rather than stand up here and bore you with several hours of lecture, we’re going to do it a bit differently. You guys are going to teach me. We’re going to talk about all the usual stuff, but I want to get your perspective on what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just plain stupid. What you say matters. This is how policies are developed and how they get changed. So, I really need your participation.”

In other words, he gave the floor to the in-house SMEs (subject matter experts). Here are a few more strategies to cope with (potential) credibility issues.

Strategies to Cope with Credibility Issues

• Get accreditation. This may help you get a foot in the door, but no guarantees that veteran employees will take you seriously.
  

  Photo credit: Colton Brown, published under CC.

• Try to involve participants as early as possible, asking them: “What do you expect from the training? What skills would you like to master?”
• Move away from fields you’re not actually experienced in if you believe that only people with hands on experience should be trainers.
• Acknowledge that you don’t know everything. Park difficult questions by writing them on the blackboard and promise to get back get to them. Or pass these questions on to the SMEs (Subject Matter Expert). In the words of Claudine Hawthorne-Lindo: “Thank God for e-mail and Communicator where immediate contact can be made with SMEs to provide prompt feedback (during the session) to participants! Participants have left the sessions feeling very satisfied with the materials covered, thanked me for the excellent delivery, provided very good/excellent feedback to surveys and are better able to perform the tasks required as a result of the training.”
• Enlist the help of SME (Subject Matter Experts) who are held in high esteem within the organization.
• You know all about training, so train the trainer. Create part-time trainers out of SMEs. Ceferino Jr. Dulay provides an excellent example: “An approach I took was to train SMEs and hit two birds with one stone- develop an organized thinking framework and ability to lead and communicate by designing and delivering training courses for the rest of the workforce. It worked quite well and in only a short time, we had a large group of part-time technical trainers and an equal number of technical courses covering every part of the operations of the business units. And these trainers also became coaches in the workplace. I got the same result when I conducted a similar technical trainers training with a large plant operation after my retirement. Absolutely no question of credibility here.”
• Create an environment where continuous learning and training is taking place. Facilitate mentoring roles for SMEs. Have participants exchange best practices, even after the training (through a wiki, an LMS, or an online training platform).

Photo credit: Martin Wessely, published under CC.

The conclusion here is that trainers don’t necessarily have to know everything, or even have relevant experience in the field. If you can orchestrate the acquisition of knowledge and skills to further the goals of the company, then your credibility is established by measuring and reporting the progress employees are making – with your help.

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