The Seven Deadly Sins of Trainers
by Rollin O. Glaser, EdD

The older you get the faster life seems to pass. But it's not all bad. Each year brings opportunities to make changes in the way we've been doing things. And because I'm a trainer and facilitator, I've been thinking about some things I might work on during the coming year. I'll call it the Seven Deadly Sins of Trainers.

Sin Number One:
Inadequate or no planning.
How many times have you been asked to do a session but received little or no information about the problems, the participants, or the outcomes desired? And because you are so eager to make a contribution, you don't ask questions or insist on defining the problems the training is supposed to solve. This year, let's resolve to do a thorough needs analysis before we start the training - even if we run the risk of exasperating a few powerful people.

Sin Number Two:
Ignoring established principles of adult learning.
Let's agree that we will not make programs that are predominately lecture oriented, that we will not train when people are seated in rows facing us, and that we will not ignore our participants as resources to the learning process. By now we should all be familiar with what helps adults to learn. Let's put these principles into practice in our classes and courses for the coming year.

Sin Number Three:
Letting video carry the learning.
Okay, using well placed video now and then can make some sense. But too often, we expect video to do the work for us. Sure, we can relax while our participants watch the screen instead of interacting with each other. But how much learning is really taking place? While videos can be well done and helpful learning tools, eventually our participants need to define problems, do some critical thinking, and commit themselves to action.

Sin Number Four:
Presenting training of low relevance to our participants.
We all know how expensive training is to our organization. Sometimes we fail to make sure that the training we're presenting is clearly related to the problems our participants face. When our training is not relevant, we run the risk of boring our participants and diluting the impact of the learning training is meant to produce. From a practical point of view, this means constantly testing our content for its worth to our participants in solving organizational problems.

Sin Number Five:
Staying at too high a level on the ladder of abstraction.
Many trainers love theory. Some participants love theory, too. The trouble is the theory may not be connected to the problems faced by our participants. We need to find real examples from our organization. Stuff that our participants can relate to. This takes research and persistence, but the lower on the ladder of abstraction you remain, the more relevant your training becomes.

Sin Number Six:
Forgetting to help participants transfer their learning back to their jobs.
As trainers we may be making the assumption that our participants will connect classroom learning to their work. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. As trainers it's up to us to create a place for participants to make the connections. This means that what we teach or facilitate must be explicitly connected to work problems if we expect transfer of learning to take place.

Sin Number Seven:
Settling for "smile" evaluations from our participants.
We all do it. We ask our participants in various ways, "How did you like the course?" Rate the instructor on a scale from 1 to 5. And so on. We all know that our organizations expect much more from their training/learning investment, such as what changes occurred in output as a result of the training? This year, let's take the time to really get a handle on evaluation instead of settling for a round of applause.


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