The field of training is vast, really infinite and trainers are many. Softskill trainers and corporate trainers work as educators or instructors in a business environment imparting knowledge to a group of employees to upskill, grow and improve achievement and the skills required to do so. Corporate trainers are, thus, becoming a valuable asset for start-ups as well as large, established companies who invest in training sessions and consequently benefit from better productivity. The training field of open/public training is increasing as well. Many just decide to become a trainer and work as one quite quickly.
What are the skills a trainer may already have to qualify for the job? What are the skills he needs to acquire to stand out and excel in the field? – Just standing up and then share knowledge is just not enough anymore. The skills required for this profession require skills and abilities some of which maybe innate and most of which have to the acquired and improved upon.
Here we have a body of knowledge that needs to be transmitted. Training and exercise design are incremental skills that bring forth any content in a lively, interestingly and in accelerated fashion. Content organization and the ability to dissect a topic into palpable segments that then include a section imparting the knowledge in a way the learner will be able to reproduce the knowledge right away is rather a learned skill than an innate ability.
Someone interested in becoming a trainer usually already brings good connection and engagement skills. The ability to create and maintain rapport with every student and at all times is excruciatingly important and the fundamental of training. A trainer who thinks he must display authority or acts in ways showing off his power is rather outdated. What has commonly grown as a rule of thumb in the training field is the trainer’s ability to create and maintain rapport with the individuals as well as the audience at large. This is very simply measured by the feedback. A trainer with good connection and engagement skills receives positive feedback. People will say that the like the trainer and they like listening to her/him.
This requires a level of personability, being and expressing oneself heart-centered and a certain shine, maybe charisma a trainer needs to easily and powerfully connect with each and everyone regardless of existing sympathy or not. Maybe it is nearly an automatic/natural engagement ability that is required. Some trainers bring this ability already to the field. I have seen more trainers that yet have to work on and increase this important asset to be accepted and rock as a trainer.
There needs to be an atmosphere of trust, safety and unity. The belief having to be an authority, elevating self in any form or fashion, thinking a trainer has to be “above” can come across tacky and is rather outdated. A trainer creates rapport with the audience from the on-set and shows through the way he walks and talks and acts how he is your friend, creating a level or equality and an atmosphere of trust, harmony and safety.
Some of the skills that are required for someone to become a trainer are good articulation skills, the ability to speak so the other understands. Advanced language and speaking skills help to create trust with each and any individual and each and any audience in an engaging way. Our subconscious mind is present at all times and trust as well as memory happen on that level. A trainer who wishes to excel will have to spend quite some time to advance his metaphor, parable, anecdotes, and story-telling abilities. This includes advanced opening and closing as well as what is called “looping skills” as stimulating the subconscious mind of the learner optimally is the essence of successful adaptation and memory creation of a new content or topic. There should be no boring moment in a training which is solely the trainer’s job.
Typically, the language required for high-quality trainings is built on patterns that guarantee organized, sequential thinking and speaking that begins and end in one chunk and then connects to the next chunk, etc. The art of framing and titling are essential ingredients to excel in this field. A trainer either has or needs to learn a structured and procedural way for coding the learnings.
The expectation of today’s performance as a trainer keeps growing. The basic skill a trainer would already have is humor, entertainment, animation and the ability to use the whole stage and use the body for engaging the listener into states of mind like excitement, passion, interest, inspiration, curiosity, motivation maybe even playfulness and more… These states of mind determine the listener’s ability to take in, sort and process and reproduce a topic or learning content. Typically only speakers who are passionate about training enter this field and so already bring levels of animation and the ability to engage their listeners. However this ability is a never ending skill that can always advance…
Accelerate learning happens when all sensory channels are engaged. What the learner can see with his eyes and hear with his ears and feel in the body is important. Kinesthetic and motoric learning are more and more acknowledged and required. Hopefully the trainer knows how to use his body to portray wholistic learning and hopefully the trainer knows how to include moving around more than sitting for each and every learning session. How the trainer is able to bring forth the visual, audio, kinesthetic and also other channels that include full sensory adaptation is important for raising excited and engaged learning states. So, the creation of expanded states of mind and the application of accelerated learning styles are incremental for fun in the training room and for the guarantee of long-term memory.
Our initial question of: What are the skills a trainer may already have to qualify for the job? What are the skills he needs to acquire to stand out and excel in the field? are hopefully answered in some form. Yes, there are certain abilities required and most abilities to be learned. I can only say I teach to teach and trainer to train a professional life time and I have just begun… This field is truly never-ending and I invite everyone to open to yet learning more…
Dr.A.Doris Greenwood, author and Meta Master Trainer training trainers to train trainers, offering Corporate and NLP Trainer Training and certifying in all levels of NLP and Emotional Intelligence.
