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From NetSpeed Leader Volume 30, December 2006
This month's Trainer Tips are from Kate
Williams,
a veteran Trainer and Certified NetSpeed Leadership
Consultant
based in Seattle, WA.
Plan to Tinker
The most successful strategy I used recently to
prepare for
delivery of a training session was this: I planned to
tinker.
Tinkering with training is a metaphor I have borrowed
from the
work of one of my favorite adult learning mentors,
Maryellen
Weimer. In her book, Learner-Centered
Teaching,
Weimer says:
"Start out assuming that you will have to tinker
before and
during the process of implementation; then view it as
those
who tinker do: an activity of intrigue, challenge,
frustration,
and satisfaction." (p. 188-189)
I approached my training session with some
trepidation and a
list of all the reasons I had to feel disoriented and
less than
competent:
I was jet-lagged and traveling with
strangers.
These strangers would be evaluating my
performance—and
evaluating the program I was presenting (in this
case,
NetSpeed Leadership).
I was working with participants whose first
language was
not English.
It was the first time I had facilitated this
particular module.
Maryellen Weimer’s metaphor helped me get a better
perspective on my situation and to meet these
challenges
positively. She reminded me that having to adjust my
techniques and the design as I used them is not a
sign of
incompetence. Figuring out what is needed -- what
might be
“wrong” and fixing it so that it runs well for you and
your
participants -- is a sign of training prowess.
In this situation, being prepared meant being
prepared enough
to tinker. I needed to know:
The instructions for an activity so that I
could make them
sometimes shorter, more precise, and illustrated
visually so
that I could adapt to participant language needs.
The ongoing needs of the client (in the
room with us
observing) so that I could change the emphasis on
particular
outcomes as we both learned more about
participants’ current
level of understanding, skill, and application.
The length of an activity so that I could
change the activity
to fit the time available for the whole workshop.
The transitions that would help me move
quickly through
some content and dive more deeply into some
content.
Maryellen and I both know farmers who tinker
endlessly with
their equipment, always checking, listening,
observing. They
are alert to subtle signals that may indicate the need
to tinker.
Like our farmer friends, we can never become smug
about
having gotten our equipment to run. Our job is to
keep it
running, keeping our instructional strategies always
effective
and our focus on facilitating as much learning as
possible. Plan to tinker.
Reference: Weimer, M. (2002). Learner-centered
teaching: Five
key changes to practice. San Francisco: Jossey
Bass. |
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