DO YOU HAVE TRAINER POTENTIAL?

Are you interested in being a TRAINER? At Wilkinson Coutts Training Ltd we are growing fast, presenting an expanding wide range of subjects based around the topics of mechanical plant integrity

ASSESS YOUR TRAINER POTENTIAL

Cast your mind back to how you learned to speak as a small child. Your very first words you used were when you wanted a drink or some food. You tried numerous sounds that no-one understood until you found one that worked, then you stuck with it.

Now you’d got the idea as to how things worked you learned other words and behaviours by watching and copying those people around you. Your learning was not a linear exercise so by the time you started school you already knew how to say 90% of the words that you will ever use. In early school you quickly used how to understand numbers and units, using wooden or plastic number-blocks and then weights and measures (remember the water, sand and buckets?). You learned motor skills using Lego or similar construction toys and limits of acceptable behaviour by being faced with a mixture of enticements and penalties.

The strange thing is 99% of all of this was learned by a mixture of curiosity and following others, with not a PowerPoint slide in sight.

The skills of the trainer

Learning from how things work in early life human learning it’s not too difficult to replicate the principles and come up with a set of rules for teaching people technical subjects. You just have to:

• Get the Content right
• Get the Method right

And

• Get the Group Dynamics right

This sounds easy enough but will only work if as a trainer you actually want to teach the delegates before you. Again, this is easy to agree with until you look at some of the alternative objectives of trainers that you encounter doing training courses. You can even hear trainers discussing these amongst themselves as if they were valid objectives. Here are a few:

• I like to avoid delegate questions
• I like to let the delegates know who’s boss
• I like to let delegates learn at their own pace
• I like to let delegates learn in the way that suits them.
• I like delegates to like me

They sound good stuff but are really just look-good platitudes. None of these is anywhere near the same as having the objective: I want to TEACH the delegates in the most effective way there is.

Almost anyone can present a technical training course, of sorts. You can see them all the time at events and seminars etc. Presentations are often made by people who try their best but whose heart clearly isn’t in it or who have just had a slide presentation dropped on them by their boss the day before and told to get on with it.

Presenting technical training courses effectively and professionally is a different matter altogether. You have to have a detailed knowledge of the integrity subject you are teaching, and related topics also, because delegates will ask you questions that you haven’t anticipated. It is hard and challenging work. You are regularly faced with delegates who will challenge your knowledge and methods and, for every minute of every training day, your credibility hangs by a thread. That’s what makes it so interesting.

Are you interested in becoming a trainer?

Check your understanding of how Wilkinson Coutts trainers work using this short questionnaire. You can find the link for the answers at the end, but have a go at the questions first, and see how you do?

 Q1. Teaching methods

If you spend an hour talking through 40 PowerPoint slides containing bullet points and crap clipart to a group of 10 course delegates, how much of the technical information you’ve just presented do you reckon they’ll remember?

a) About 70%
b) 50-70%
c) Probably about half
d) 5% if you are lucky

Q2. Trainer scope

How many different API-cert courses a will a Wilkinson Coutts trainer be expected to be able to cover, following the necessary training and familiarity?

a) 1
b) 2-3
c) 4-5
d) More than 5

Q3. Trainer Qualifications

What are the minimum qualifications you need to be accepted as Wilkinson Coutts trainer?

a) Basic qualifications and engineering knowledge and experience
b) Handfuls of NDT qualifications
c) HND
d) Degree and MSc

Q4. Learning methods

Which of the following training methods would you consider the most effective way to teach people a technical methodology (such as some aspect of code design or mechanical integrity calculations)?

a) You speak, they listen
b) They ask, you answer
c) Test them using closed-book questions
d) Test them using open-book questions

Q5. Trainer travel

How many air miles would you estimate a Wilkinson Coutts overseas API trainer would expect to complete in a year?

a) 10,000 -20,000 miles
b) 20,000-50,000 miles
c) 50,000-150,000 miles
d) 150,000 to 200,000 miles

NOW HAVE A LOOK AT THE ANSWERS

SO HOW DID YOU DO?

At this stage it doesn’t matter how you did. Hopefully you can see that Wilkinson Coutts have firm ideas as to which training methods are the most effective. There’s basically five parts to our trainers’ skills:

1. A deep knowledge of the business. You have to impress the delegates with your knowledge, to gain trust and credibility
2. Finding out what the delegates need and want. We don’t just read off Powerpoint slides
3. Strong 2-way communication and interpersonal skills (easy to say but less easy to do)
4. A passion for continuous learning. We will help you broaden your technical skills to a level that will double or treble your integrity knowledge.
5. Managing course content and time. Our courses programmes and daily schedules are designed to provide delegates with what they need, rather than what the trainer thinks is easiest.

YOUR NEXT STEP

First of all, read our linked article; Applying for TRAINER POSITIONS

If you are interested in discussing becoming a trainer at Wilkinson Coutts then get in touch, and we start the necessary discussions with you. We can promise you that you will find it more challenging than working for other training companies. On the other hand, we will teach you to a level that others won’t, and our commitment is to pay the best rates and benefits for those people who can meet our high-performance standards.

Contact Paul or Craig at:
www.wilkinsoncoutts.com