The document outlines the essential skills and roles of resourceful trainers in enhancing learning experiences, emphasizing their adaptability in various situations and with different types of trainees. It discusses the importance of recognizing different roles, managing difficult trainees, and using effective learning techniques like accelerated learning. Additionally, it highlights the underlying factors that affect learning and the empowering beliefs that trainers should adopt to foster a positive learning environment.

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The Resourceful Trainer
Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Resourceful Trainer
TRAINING SKILLS

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The Resourceful Trainer
Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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The Resourceful Trainer
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MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Resourceful Trainer
Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Trainers, and managers who perform training roles, are
often given no more than Cinderella status in organisations.
Their tasks are seen as nice add-ons but not essentials. In
resourceful organisations with resourceful trainers, the
value of these tasks is never under-stated. Their trainers are
like gold-dust. For, if you can increase the value of your
costliest resource, not only will you reap the business
rewards in effectiveness and productivity, but you will have
given yourself a vastly-increased capital asset as well.

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The Resourceful Trainer
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MTL Course Topics
THE RESOURCEFUL TRAINER
Resourceful trainers offer more ways for people to learn and
thus increase the likelihood of learning sticking.
A trainer can become more resourceful by:
1. slipping into different roles, both orthodox and
unorthodox
2. seeing things from more than one point of view
3. operating on the "4 Planes of Awareness"
4. increasing their choices of how they present
information
5. managing difficult trainees and their barriers
6. being aware of surface and sub-surface learning
7. using techniques such as Accelerated Learning to
increase trainees' experiences.
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The
superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
(William Ward)

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THE UNORTHODOX ROLES
Trainers find themselves cast in a variety of roles throughout
the training process. Some of these are forced onto them by
the expectations and demands of others; some they choose
to play by themselves.
Amongst the unorthodox roles are:
1. nanny; punch-bag; diplomat
2. adviser; counsellor; Master of Ceremonies
3. people manager; confidant; cheer-leader
4. examiner; group leader; role model
5. organiser; motivator; entertainer
6. diagnostician; problem-solver; decision-taker
7. administrator; subject expert; technician.
The most effective trainer is thus the person who is able to
move effortlessly into whatever role is required by the
needs of the learning and the needs of the trainees.

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The Resourceful Trainer
Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE ORTHODOX ROLES
The resourceful trainer has a range of skills which enable
him or her to move into the most appropriate role for a
particular situation. The orthodox roles vary according to
the stage of learning.
Prior to a training event:
• marketing manager
• consultant
• influencer and negotiator
During a training event:
• presenter
• instructor
• coach
• mentor
• facilitator
After a training event:
• administrator
• evaluator and assessor.

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MTL Course Topics
TRIPLE VISION
Triple vision is the ability of the trainer to move effortlessly
into any one of three positions when working with trainees:
Position 1: your position. For example, if you are asked a
simple question, you say what you think.
Position 2: their position. In the second position, you step
into their shoes and try to understand the question from
their point of view: why they want an answer; what they are
trying to find out; what difficulty they are having; and so on.
Position 3: neutral. The neutral position is the objective
observer. When, for example, you have answered a trainee's
question, you can step outside the relationship and observe
the reaction.

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PLANES OF AWARENESS
The resourceful trainer is at ease on all planes of human
awareness: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
1. The Physical. There are four physical blocks to learning:
tiredness, the need for natural breaks, hunger and
discomfort.
2. The Mental. The mental plane includes all thinking
processes. A good course stimulates people and
introduces new ideas.
3. The Emotional. The learning process is blocked when
people feel bad about themselves, and aided when they
feel worthy, wanted, valued, special, important, safe,
happy and strong.
4. The Spiritual. Interaction and learning reach a new
dimension when the trainer lets go of the need to
control the learning process and allows for the
development of a team spirit in the learning group.

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CHOICES
The resourceful trainer is open to different ways forward
when he is stuck or a trainee is stuck. Instead of digging the
hole deeper, he or she finds a new hole to dig.
For example, if a trainee fails to understand the difference
between assertive and aggressive styles of managing others,
the resourceful trainer might have the choice to:
1. demonstrate
2. ask others to demonstrate
3. model the behaviours
4. use a case study known to the group
5. show a video
6. speak to the person aggressively then assertively and
compare the two styles
7. ask the trainee to explain herself further
8. sit quietly and see what happens.

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CHOICES IN STYLE
Just as a resourceful trainer has choices in the manner of
training, so he or she has choices in how to put over a
learning point. One choice is to make a simple point more
interesting by turning it into a story, a metaphor, an analogy, a
parable, a quote, an anecdote and so on.
This is what Vincent Nolan does in his book "Teamwork"
when he describes the concept of leadership by analogy with
a particular bacterial mould:
" A slime mould organism called "dictylostelium discoideum"
consists of amoebae. When food is scarce, the cells cluster
into a blob which forms a nipple called a grex. This grex allows
the organism to topple over like a slug and find food: the
nipple leads the way. This is what team leadership is like.“
Another analogy. When asked to explain in layman’s terms his
Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied like this: “Well, if
you sit with a beautiful woman, 2 hours seems like 2 minutes.
But if you sit on a hot stove, 2 minutes seems like 2 hours.”

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MTL Course Topics
PROBLEM TRAINEES
A trainer's resourcefulness is tested most when dealing with
difficult trainees. Difficult trainees can be defined as those
who are "separate from the aims and processes of the
training.“
There are nine typical types of difficult trainee:
1. the over-critical who either overtly condemns what's
going on or stews in silence
2. those who over-identify with you and not their own
needs
3. those over-concerned with how they come across
4. the deliberately awkward
5. those who want to talk and not do
6. those who have other agendas from yours
7. the superficial, jokey and light-hearted
8. the antagonists who want to argue with you
9. those who don't want to be there.

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MTL Course Topics
IGNORANCE TO AWKWARDNESS
For learning to occur, a person must admit that they are in
one of the following 3 states or conditions: ignorance, error
or awkwardness. In other words they are unable to do
something smoothly.
Most people see these as undesirable states. The first act of
successful learning, therefore, is to foster a climate where
these states are acceptable and desirable.
“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to
suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young
children, before they are aware of their own self-
importance, learn so easily; and why older persons,
especially if vain or self-important, cannot learn at all. Pride
and vanity can thus be greater obstacles to learning than
stupidity.” (Thomas Stasz)

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MTL Course Topics
BARRIERS TO LEARNING
Most problem trainees have some kind of
blockage to the learning process. Here are 15
examples of learning blocks.
1. Declaring Ignorance: “I am unwilling to admit
I don’t know something.”
2. Hostility To Teachers: “I cannot recognize that
someone else may know what I don’t.”
3. Permission: “I do not give others permission
or authority to teach me.”
4. View of learning: “I trivialize the learning
process.”
5. Development Block: “I already know this.”
6. Arrogance: “I cannot unlearn what I already
know.”
7. Impatience: “I want it now.”
8. Neglecting emotions: “I learn with my head
and ignore my emotions.
9. Lack Of Time: “I don’t have the time.”
10. Control: “I need to control what happens to
me.”
11. Judgment Of Others: “I have to be right for
the sake of my identity with others.”
12. Confusion: “I get caught in a mood of
perplexity rather than wonder.”
13. Mood Of Self-importance: “I cannot laugh
at myself.”
14. Anxiety: “I am anxious about what might
happen.”
15. Mood Of Resignation: “Learning will make
no difference.”

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MTL Course Topics
BLOCKED TRAINEES
How you handle blocked trainees will go a long way in
determining your credibility as a course leader. You can...
1. let things pass: notice what's going on, but don't
respond
2. be open about how you feel
3. be oblique but still make your point, ("I once ran a
course with everyone not wanting to be there...")
4. empathize as a way of offering no resistance
5. use the difficulty as material for why there are learning
blocks, ("Why exactly do you need to joke about this?")
6. isolate individuals by bringing in the rest of the group or
having a quiet word with them at break-time
7. ask disruptives to leave the programme.
Sometimes your most vociferous challengers can become
your greatest advocates when you convert them, a
phenomenon known as Extinction Burst.

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MTL Course Topics
SURFACE & SUB-SURFACE
The training process operates on more than just the surface
level. Underneath the programme of lectures,
presentations, inputs and exercises, there is a sub-surface
level about how people are valued and how resourceful
they can be as learners. Resourceful trainers are intuitively
aware of these levels.
1. Trainees may forget what you taught but they will
remember how you taught
2. You entertain to the conscious; you teach to the sub-
conscious
3. The difference in their lives may not come from what
they learn about a skill, but what they learn about
themselves.

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MTL Course Topics
ACCELERATED LEARNING
Accelerated Learning (AL) was developed in the 1970's by Dr
Georgi Lozanov, a professor of psychiatry in Austria who
demonstrated that, with certain classroom techniques,
students could learn and retain more in less time. When
used on language students, AL techniques enabled students
to learn up to 1000 new words a day with 98% retention.
The idea of Accelerated Learning was based on newly-
developed knowledge of how people learn, including the
following:
1. We learn best through all our senses and all our brains
(ie the conscious and sub-conscious)
2. We learn best when we are motivated and interested
3. We learn best when the atmosphere is can-do,
successful, and fun
4. We learn best when information is put in context
5. We learn best when we are relaxed and enjoying
ourselves.

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EMPOWERING BELIEFS
Few trainers do not feel some apprehension at the start of
each new course or training programme. The more
prepared you are, the more the feelings we call "nerves"
seem to strike. Will the butterflies in your stomach scatter
against the glass or fly in formation?
Resourceful trainers are not immune to doubts but they are
guided by their own empowering beliefs. Some of these
beliefs may include the belief that...
1. learning is natural not forced, easy not hard
2. everyone has all the resources they ever need to learn
3. learning is more about what they do than what I do
4. drawing their learning out is more important than
pouring my learning in
5. there are no difficult trainees, only unresourceful
trainers.

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Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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Training Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn