Training materials. 27 Ways to Integrate Training and Development with the Needs of Your Organization

Citation

(2001), "Training materials. 27 Ways to Integrate Training and Development with the Needs of Your Organization", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 8/9. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443had.004

Training materials. 27 Ways to Integrate Training and Development with the Needs of Your Organization

Training materials

27 Ways to Integrate Training and Development with the Needs of Your Organization

Sharon Bartram and Brenda GibsonGower0 566 08415 5£175

75 Ways of Working with Groups to Develop Their Training Skills

Sharon Bartram and Brenda GibsonGower0 566 08414 7£195

Both these resources are devoted to training the trainer. The first focuses on the role of the trainer within an organisation. It is designed to help the trainer position him/herself on the organisation and work towards ensuring that the training they are responsible for has a "business edge". It is appropriate, therefore, that a number of the exercises are designed to help the trainers better understand the context in which they work. One exercise seeks to generate information about the values currently placed on training and learning in the organisation. Another is entitled "How do we rate as a learning organisation?" A slight concern here is the absence of any theoretical underpinning which may encourage a sense that a notion such as the learning organisation is a simple one and that it does not represent any "contested terrain".

In other sections of the manual activities are designed to:

• •

  get the trainers closer to their customers (whether internal or external) and to

• •

  manage their resources.

A potentially very valuable section is that entitled "Making a Difference", where the activities are devoted to help the trainer "make the case for training" as effectively as possible. A second part to the manual – although in reality it is only a handful of pages – draws together all that has been covered in each of the preceding sections and guides the reader through identifying changes required and the actions needed to make the changes a reality.

Equipped with the second manual, 75 Ways of Working with Groups to Develop Their Training Skills, few trainers should be short of an activity to help them run lively and pertinent "train the trainer" programmes. Although there are chapters devoted to training needs and evaluation the emphasis is firmly on activities to use as learning aides when working directly with groups of trainee trainers. So, for example, there are activities designed to get trainees thinking about the learning process and the problems and difficulties associated with learning. Some of these appear to be new versions of old exercises. Crack the Code, for example, designed to identify potential problems when training others in a skill, seemed to me remarkably similar to an old John Adair exercise called "Ozubulla" (Adair et al., 1978). Elsewhere, the resource focuses on the potentially tricky aspects of training such as coaching, role play and giving feedback. This latter theme is a hugely complex aspect of training and whilst it was encouraging that the exercises sought to get trainees to "feel" what it is like to give and receive feedback the emphasis on giving positive feedback presented, in my view, an unrealistically simple picture. Trainers need to develop the confidence to be constructively critical, to challenge perceptions of satisfactory performance and thus to handle uncomfortable situations which will result. Although I felt this was a weakness it represents a small gripe in an overall very sound collection of materials. Interestingly, I was much more comfortable with a similar emphasis on positive feedback within the context of the final set of activities suggested for "ending sessions".

Taken together, although not a cheap resource, the two manuals represent an excellent library of "train the trainer" materials. The activities should provide trainee trainers with the opportunities to experience novel, interesting and fun ways of learning about training. Used appropriately and with sensitivity they should give trainers the encouragement to be innovative in their own design of training events and their delivery.

Reference

Adair, J., Ayres, R., Debenham, I. and Despres, D. (1978), A Handbook of Management Training Exercises, British Association for Industrial and Commercial Education, London.