In a previous life I was the National Training Delivery Manager for a Fortune 500 company. I constantly fought the tendency for the corporation to dump non-performers into my operation. Their thought was “If they can’t perform, maybe they can teach.”
I believe corporate training has evolved a great deal since those days. Yeah!
However, I still see too many organizations placing SME’s and other line personnel into training positions without teaching them how to create learning in the classroom. After all, as a fabulous book by Harold Stolovitch says, “Telling Ain’t Training.”
We have not completely arrived at viewing our trainers as Learning Professionals, a term that represents education, knowledge, experience and business savvy. This term isn’t just about a certification or degree. You can’t “test out” for this professional title. Those elements are just a part of the picture.
Becoming a Learning Professional is earned through a breadth and depth of understanding of how people learn, what organizations want to accomplish and how to close the gaps in organizational performance.
Want to be a Learning Professional? For starters……
1. Get the Education – it may be a degree, series of workshops or self study. You need to learn the principles, lingo and methods of learning.
2. Learn to Facilitate – Learn to guide learners, ask the right questions and point participants to right answers. (It goes without saying that this means you have to learn not to talk all the time.)
3. Learn New Methods – New ways of learning are constantly being invented. Learn how to determine what works well in each situation. You have to stay up with technology and new ideas.
4. Hang Out – With other Learning Professionals, that is. Go to conferences. Attend meetings. Broaden your idea of where you can find new ideas. Try sitting in on a kindergarten class and see what you can learn from their methods.
5. Read – If you aren’t reading to improve your professional skills, then is it really a profession?
Tell me how you think Learning Professionals can qualify for that title. Click on “comments” and add your two cents.
© 2011 Linda M. Farley
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Hi Linda,
Having sat through a “training session” on a new technical system we’re deploying into our organisation today, this blog post – especially the messages that not anyone can be dumped into a training role and that telling ain’t training – resonate perfectly with me!
The person walked in, didn’t ask us three attendees what our roles and technical understanding was. He spent around 40 minutes on the configuration of the system (which none of us needed to know, as this was done by our system administrators and we will never need to touch… indeed, we won’t even have access), hardly stopped for a breath as we hastily scribbled notes and at the end pretty much said “that’s everything I think” and made ready to leave without asking if we felt we’d covered everything.
It also resonates as I still class myself as a novice to this game, and I’ve been doing it for nearly two years! I know I made plenty of mistakes early on, and I think that’s part of the trick in knowing that you’re not a perfect learning professional.