Training -- A Great Purpose

Training – A Great Purpose

This piece is dedicated to my profession, training, and to all trainers, who on a daily basis light up people's lives with their KASH -- Knowledge, Attitude, Skills And Habits. This is both a perspective as well as a reflective piece. Dedicating my first piece to training is my small way of expressing gratitude to the training profession and to all trainers who have shaped my personality over the last so many years.

I feel inspired to write to all of you about training and its purpose. Pardon me if you find it a bit autobiographical. My attempt here is to build a context for all of us in training based on my own experiences and the perspective I have built over 20 years of training and coaching.

My journey as a trainer started way back in 1987 when my brother Ravi forced me to enroll myself in a course in Public Speaking. If ever my brother had done me a favour, that was it. Life took a full U-turn from thereon, as I grew in self confidence and within months I had started my independent classes on public speaking.

Even as I meandered away from training for a few years (I spent six years of my prime youth as a journalist), I yearned to get back to it and literally missed the classroom and academic environment. By the grace of God, I got back to training (this time as a full time professional) and once again I was on my journey towards fulfilling my purpose in life -- training people to make themselves and therefore their life better.

As I reflect back upon the last 20 years or so, the transformation I have felt through learning from expert trainers is truly amazing. The trainers have been from various walks of life -- public speaking, journalism, Reiki, insurance sales, motivation, facilitation skills, etc -- and each of them brought to the table a uniqueness that moved beyond the subject and provided an insight into the trainer's personality, and not just the training.

While each great trainer was a subject matter expert, there was something common, and that was he/she had made training a purpose and not just a profession or activity. Training is truly a great purpose. It provides each one of us on a daily basis an amazing opportunity to impact, influence and guide people to become better individuals and professionals in their chosen field.

While training has various forms -- sales training, soft skills training, etc -- actually all training is behavioural training. In sales training, for example, actually we are moulding the behavior, temperament and outlook of people towards selling. Therefore, it is logical that there be an output linkage to training, as otherwise for the participant, the purpose of becoming successful in a particular field/profession is not fulfilled. So, in sales, it is measured through certain output parameters, in technical training, it is measured through the knowledge of the participants, in entrance test training, it is measured through how many students get through the test, and so on and so forth.

The purpose of training is to help our participants move from an X level of expertise/knowledge/skill to an X+ level, with a clear focus on not just measuring progress, but whether the participants have reached the desired level.

This calls for two clear focus areas for all trainers: Building a vision for yourself as a trainer and constantly working on your training delivery skills. As a trainer, you cannot directly influence results, but inside your temple called the classroom you can deeply influence the people who are supposed to get the results. For this, it is important to realise that just as a film set is the action ground for an actor, the classroom is the action ground for a trainer. Just as an actor expresses himself according to the given situation through emotions, gestures, expressions and dialogue delivery, we too as trainers have the opportunity on a daily basis to passionately express ourselves and deeply impact others through our classroom performance, like facilitation skills, subject knowledge, delivery, discipline, etc.

To become a great trainer therefore, we must constantly upgrade ourselves in the following areas:

1. Language development, including the English language, as it is the global language of communication (proper grammatical expression and choice of words is critical)

2. Constant improvement in our classroom delivery skills (for finally what matters is not just what we say, but how we say it)

3. An extensive reading habit on not only your subject matter of training, but a wide variety of subjects, as it helps build a wider perspective

4. An internal analysis of each training program that we conduct

5. A close study of participants' feedback post each training session

All these are critical to help us become dynamic trainers, and build an intellectual/spiritual dimension to our life and training.

The intent of this piece is:

1. To help all of you reflect upon the opportunity you have created for yourself in your life to impact and influence people and

2. To identify your core strengths and areas for improvement as a trainer.

I urge each one of you to feel proud about the choice you made to become a trainer, and also build a vision to be recognised as the best in class in the training industry.

Hope you find value in what I have shared with you. Look forward to your feedback and comments.

God Bless You!