Monday, April 20 2009
Training the Trainer
Will there be a test on Monday?
I had an interesting experience last week. I had to take a training course on a field outside my normal one (specialising in explaining consumer-produced wine can only be considered 'normal' only for a given value of normal, one supposes) and for once, instead of being the guy with the books, lectures and tests I was the guy with the pencil, paper, and question.
It was a firearms training course, so while I have past experience with the subject, I'm no expert, and had to rely on my instructor for almost all of the correct technical information regarding the technology and construction of firearms, the correct and safe use of them, and the way they must be used under law.
Not necessarily the desired outcome of my course.
There are a lot of parallels here to the consumer produced wine industry: when I'm training new folks many of them have some experience with wine in a general sense, and many may have already made their own wine before, but rarely have they been exposed to the horse's mouth and gotten the real deal on the technology behind wine kits, and as such they have to rely on me to pass on the correct information so that they can use them.
The parallels stretch even further: in the Wine on Premise industry in British Columbia and Ontario there are specific laws regarding how the wines must be made for the process to be legal, and in US On Premise/Boutique wineries there are even more laws and rules.
As these things go, my trainer was pretty good: he had decent pacing and while he had to pitch the course at several different levels (there were two people in the class who had never seen a real live firearm in the flesh before, much less held or used one, and I've been using them since I was a little boy) he managed to keep everyone interested and alert. The process was pretty recursive, going back over and over again to cover a dozen important points from several different angles, making sure the students understood the implications of the information and the how it applied to different situations.
And that's where I learned something: in the past I've been critical of my own style of teaching, circling around and back to a topic several times, worrying that I'm merely repeating myself and boring my students. On the other side of the fence, however, I started to appreciate it as a teaching technique. I did get a little impatient at spots, but questions came up from the other students showing that he was doing the right thing to ensure that they got all the points and understood them, and I got into the act, realising I'd misinterpreted something he said early on, and was glad to have it clarified (and re-clarified) for me–it appeared on the final exam.
The other thing I learned, to my dismay, is that he was probably a better trainer than I am. I like working with smart people, and that definition happens to skew heavily towards 'people who understand what I mean the first time I say it, no matter how poorly I stated it'. If you're already clever, I'm a great trainer (in all humility) but any dope can teach smart, motivated students. It takes a good teacher to reach everyone, regardless of their level or motivation.
It takes me back to some of the best teachers I've had in the past: Mr. Dahle, Herr Professor Bugler, Herr Obeck, Kamazuka-Sensei, all of whom had the same thing in common, in that every one of their students was affected by them (I would have said 'loved them', but effectiveness and lovability aren't' necessarily congruent) and learned in their class, despite any learning shortcomings those students had.
It looks like once in a while it would be a good idea for the mechanic to get his car serviced by someone else, or the doctor to be a patient, if nothing else to teach them a bit of patience and humility.
Busy week coming up: I'm just filing this from the Air Canada lounge in Toronto, right before I hop on my plane back to BC. Then I'm off to Ohio to see my pals from LD Carlson and their network of retailers. No rest for the wicked, but I never knew I'd been this bad.
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