Return to Home Page Education iconTHE RELUCTANT TRAINER

B Y  N A N C Y   H I L D E B R A N D T
Silicon Valley Chapter

  This column is dedicated to members who count technical training as part or all of their job responsibilities. The reluctant trainer focuses on the best way to improve performance and considers instructor-led training only one of a number of alternatives.
What is a reluctant trainer? What does it mean to be a reluctant trainer? In too many companies, instructor-led training is the solution adopted to correct perceived performance gaps in the company. It often ends up leading to little or no performance improvement.
Experiences of a reluctant trainer Why am I a reluctant trainer? Well have you experienced any of these situations?
Too much of a good thing You know your learners are coming out of your intensive training sessions exhausted and will retain only a small percentage of the information, but they have to be intensive for reasons other than learning (participants travel to attend, or the room is easier to set up for one long session). 
Way too much of a good thing The demand for instructor-led training is greater than your department's ability to supply it. 
You can lead a horse to water There are participants with an attitude; their managers made them come. 
Reinventing the wheel You are preparing extensive training materials even though there is documentation on the same topics 
If at first you don't succeed, wait until the next cycle Your new-hires have to wait until the next training day, so in the meantime they have to learn the ropes by taking up their coworkers' time. 
Papa is a rolling stone Your product changes so quickly that much of your effort is spent updating your training materials. 
Engineers until the bitter end Even though your subject-matter experts are bored conveying information by PowerPoint slides, it's hard to get them to function as group facilitators to help build knowledge. 
Information overload Your instructor says, "This is the most important part of the day but we're running out of time so I'll just zip through this quickly," and since the learners are almost dead by PowerPoint they're agreeable to anything. 
Get with the program Your subject-matter experts are telling you that a lot of your training information could be published to an Intranet or your company's web site. 
Save your neck Your department has gotten the order to cut costs, or you want to move before the ax drops by finding a way to cut training costs and improve performance at the same time. 

I am not saying that instructor-led training is never the right solution. However, it is often overused, or it is used to convey information rather than to build knowledge and skills that will directly lead to performance improvement.

It is often argued that other alternatives are either too time-consuming or too costly. Yet this need not be so.

Questions I will address In this column I will explore answers to the following questions:
  • Which medium of presentation results in the greatest performance improvement?

  • Which medium of presentation best handles the needs and logistics of:
    • Distance learners
    • Just-in-time learning
    • Learners interacting with a human facilitator
    • Acquiring standard information to pass certification
    • Producing a solution within an extremely limited budget?

  • What tools are available to help me build Web-based training, CBT, or performance support systems?

  • How can single-source documentation help with training options?

  • If I choose instructor-led training, how can I make it the most effective? How can I work synergistically with the documentation available?

  • How can I reduce preparation time and the cost of producing training materials?
    •
My approach These are ambitious questions, and there is no shortage of information from other sources that deal with these issues. I will explore the answers in small ways, with short articles, concrete examples, and case studies, presented in a format that helps you extract the information quickly.

I will also be looking for input from you.

Return to Home Page Nancy Hildebrandt is Documentation and Training Specialist at Aveo Inc., a software company in Santa Clara, California. She has also worked as an independent training consultant, taught at colleges in Japan, and done research at Harvard Medical School on how people process written information. You can reach her at nhild@ibm.net.

Summer 1999
Volume 2, # 3