Well, okay, he is. At what he does he’s one of the best. So when he writes that

True professionals don’t fear amateurs

we’re going to shut up, sit down, and read.

He’s right, of course.  The better you are at whatever you do, the more comfortable you are (and the more you enjoy) working with gifted and talented amateurs in the same area. They’re no threat, business-wise, and it’s a lot of fun bringing on someone who is enthusiastic.

But here’s the rub. Sometimes an amateur, no matter how well intentioned, is dangerous. You’d not want an amateur heart surgeon, I’m guessing. And how about the brakes on your car – done by a professional?  Probably.

Training is similar. Amateur trainers aren’t neutral, they’re potentially, positively dangerous. It’s something I’ve ranted about before – both in passing on this very blog (Training checklists) and over on our presentation skills blog (presentation bullshit) as well as in a couple of guest blogs in various places.

The difference about when amateurs are to be encouraged or looked at with a raised eyebrow lies, it seems to me, in when third parties are involved. A talented amateur cook will probably only poison his or her own family, I’d guess. A talented amateur trainer can screw up an awful lot of people’s working lives at a time.

The thing is, being a talented amateur is great whenever things aren’t going wrong – that is, if the person you’re training learns needs things doing in the same way as you… but what happens if it doesn’t work. You’r stuck.

Worse, so is your client.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

If you’re a giften amateur, chances are that you’re damned good with that hammer. Good for you – and I’ll willingly, happily help you all I can. But if it needs a screwdriver and all you’ve got is a hammer I can’t let you anywhere near my clients.

Training people is easy. Training people well is hard.

Let’s face it, it’s hard to know one training company from another, just by looking at their website. None of them is going to say “We’re not very good at this”.  Everyone is going to claim to be the best there is at what they do.

(As an aside, I can’t prove we’re the best there is any more than anyone else can, but we’ve got the evidence that we’re pretty darn good! 🙂 )

The thing is, there are some things which are probably at least as important as the quality of the training company and the training they deliver – but which doesn’t get a look-in during a lot of decisions about which company to use…

… fit.

What’s fit?

Fit is the interaction between you and the training company. They might be absolutely brilliant trainers but (like in anything) different training companies do the same thing in different ways – or do things which look at sound the same but are subtly different in ways that are profound enough to change your experience of their training.

Now, obviously it’s in no one’s interest to hire us if they aren’t going to like us…  so with that in mind, enjoy the show! 🙂

Victoria Penbleton

Back in the summer (remember that?) Britain was a very cool place to be. Not only were we hosting the Olympics but we were hosting them very well.

On top of that, we were doing well in the competition elements too – and no where more so than in cycling.  So what was it that made our cycling team so very successful?

It’s been widely reported (here, for example) that there was no one simple, single ‘magic bullet’ but instead the success was the result of the accumulation of a lot of little things – of what was called ‘Marginal Gains’.  A lot of them were simple common-sense things but they all added together, incrementally to mean we had a very high-performing team.

Wheels which give a two percent increase give a two percent increase: but wheels which give a two percent increase on another two percent increase from (say) a different saddle give a much, much bigger margin of improvement – obviously!

So it is with the soft skills of things like presentations training, time management, stress management and client relationship training. They’re not killer blows that flatten your opposition – instead they’re part of a subtle, incremental approach. Put together, they’ll make you better at what you do – and better than the other guys, too! 🙂

Let’s say you’re about neck-and-neck with another job candidate in terms of, say, how well you write your computer code… but you can talk about it and explain what you’re doing a little bit better than him/her… or perhaps your time management is fractionally better so you’re 5% more productive… you get the picture.

And to shift scale from the individual to the organisation, the same thing applies. If you’re customer service team is five percent better than the opposition’s and your staff are five percent happier (and therefor more productive) and there are fewer off with stress because you’ve provided training in how to cope with pressure… well… you get the idea, I’m sure.

In other words – just because soft skills are subtle (and it’s very hard to measure their impact directly) it doesn’t mean they’re not the thing that turns you from an Olympic finalist to and Olympic medalist, so to speak.

… and visa versa!

I’m sitting here, waiting for a client in a venue in the middle of town (or toon as the native  Geordies say it) in one of the nicest meeting rooms I’ve ever seen.  For a start there’s free tea and coffee and (impressively!) a very large supply of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the table.

It’s clean and warm and the reception staff were very helpful and friendly.

But despite all these wonderful things my heart sank as I walked in. Why? Because it’s a wonderful meeting room – and I’m here to do training.

What’s the difference, in terms of room layout and facilities?  Well facility-wise not much, I suppose. Fast wifi would be appreciated for both activities, decent soundproofing too… along with reasonably comfortable heating and air conditioning!

But in a training room, at least the kind of training I need to use today, there’s a fundamental problem.

In a meeting room everyone needs to be able to see everyone else. In a training room, everyone needs to be able to see the trainer (as well as everyone else!).

In a typical meeting room the layout might be, say, a dozen chairs around an oval table, which is exactly what I’ve got here. Putting a flipchart of a screen at one end immediately means that three people at one end have to turn their necks 180 degrees. Preferably they should move, so that they’re not blocking anyone else’s view.

Adding to that is the lack of space around the table. Even if the three head-turners move, where are they going to move to? The table was full already. What’s more, the next two or three people down the table may very well find that they’re unpleasantly, uncomfortably close to the trainer and his or her material, be that flip charts or slides etc.  The problem is compounded, of course, for the approximately 50% of the population who are Introverts!

If people aren’t comfortable in their learning environment, they don’t learn as well – it’s as simple as that!

So what things should a training room have that a simple meeting room needn’t?

• Space – space for people to get far enough away from the screen or whatever, so that they’re not overwhelmed by it. A lot of venues simply put a laptop on the end of a boardroom table, point it at a white bit of wall and call it a training room!
• Individual lighting control – no one wants to sit in the dark for an hour at a time and yet all too often that’s the only way to be able to see slides! The whole room is dark or the whole room is light. Training rooms need to be able to dim the lights near the screen only.
• Screen – speaking of screen, training rooms need somewhere to show slides (you may not want to use them – I often don’t – but the option needs to be there). Taking pictures off the wall to create a blank space doesn’t qualify, sorry!
• Speakers – let’s face it, if the trainer is going to show video (and why shouldn’t they?!) you’re going to need to play the audio. Speakers built into laptops and/or data projectors just don’t cut it. Sorry guys – you need a proper system.
• Flipchart – (or a whiteboard at least) There are times when a bit of interactivity is what’s needed and flipcharts are ideal for this. Whiteboards are fine, but with a flipchart you can keep the stuff you scribble and refer back to it at any part later in your work. Speaking of which, some way of displaying flipchart sheets is nice – my favorite way is a thin corkboard around the room about six feet off the ground so that I can pin the tops of sheets of flipchart paper to it around the room
• Chairs – chairs are designed ‘by the hour’. That is, manufacturers recognise the trade-off between the cost of the chair and how long you can sit in it, comfortably. Meeting rooms tend to be equipped (sensibly) with two-hour chairs or (possibly) even one-hour chairs. Meetings don’t often run longer than this… but training does. Three or six hour training sessions (with breaks, obviously!) aren’t uncommon and a one-hour char in a three our session is just asking for trouble.

So there you go – I’m sure we’ve missed things on this list… these are just the things that occurred to us immediately. And don’t get us started on the meeting room which masqueraded as a training room but then made the situation worse by the host saying “I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of a flood over the weekend – the smell should go by lunchtime – but I’m afraid the electricity supply won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Sigh…..