1. Start with the Purpose of a Trainer

Decide what the role of a trainer is for you. Are you there to develop skills? Or to change the attitude? Is your job to pass on knowledge? Work out the answers to these questions so you can determine what type of Train the Trainer course you need.

It is rare for a training course to only need knowledge passing on. If this is indeed the situation, then it is probably cheaper and more effective to send the information as an email attachment.

If you are a skills trainer, you need the ability to demonstrate the skills required and to guide others then to develop that skill.

As an attitudinal trainer, you need to learn about individual and group psychology to manage the potential resistance to change. Also, you need to be able to facilitate as well as train.

2. Consider Learning Psychology as well as the coaching element

An active Train the Trainer course will cover the relevant learning psychology and how the trainer can work with this psychology both in the design and delivery of the content.

Consider using DiSC profiling to help with the psychology element.

A working understanding of learning psychology will enable the trainer to more effectively manage the learners while they are training them because they can respond to situations as they start to develop.

3. Develop Objectives and an Assessment Process

Trainers need to be able to design behaviour based objectives and realistic assessments to measure the course outcomes. All training can be measured in some way.

Your learners need to work towards a set of behaviour based objectives so that they know when they have achieved them or not achieved them.

4. Create Content to Support the Objectives

The content should relate to each of your objectives. Material not connected to a goal should be left out.

Your content is the journey of learning. Building a scheme or work is needed to ensure the framework of the training is covering all the needs required.

5. Make it interactive

Nobody learns by having a load of Powerpoint bullet points read out to them! That’s not training; that’s just plain lazy! Engage with your learners and work with different senses.

They need to present early in the session and then work to improve by the end of the course; presentations should be night and day!

Learning is fun. A good train the trainer course will demonstrate how learner-centred education and the use of learning psychology makes the training enjoyable, exciting and enables the learning to be remembered.

A Typical Train the Trainer Course

This is a typical train the trainer training course. It is aimed at those new to training to enable them to make an effective contribution to the training and development of others. It will give trainers the necessary skills and knowledge needed as a foundation from which they can later develop further specialist skills of identifying training needs, training design, training facilitation and training evaluation.

The course content and duration will be dependent upon the specific needs of the organisation.

Train the Trainer Suggested Course Outline

Course Objectives

• Write learning aims and objectives by best practice
• Analyse tasks and design training activities to facilitate the learning of those tasks
• Create training which works with all the different learning styles
• Instruct on a one to one or small group basis using appropriate demonstration and constructive feedback skills.
• Facilitate a group training session which uses activities such as role play, simulation or group discussion.
• Assess and evaluate immediate learning.

This typical Train the Trainer course is ideal for people who are new to training or people who have found themselves carrying out exercise with no or little previous development in train the trainer.

Course Content

The course will include:

• Examination of the psychology of how adults learn

• An introduction to training needs analysis

• A framework for designing a training session

• Instruction in writing the behavioural objectives and creating a measurable assessment process

• Some practice in delivering a training session

• Constructive feedback for each person attending.

I hope this helped if you were looking to put together an in-house training course, please contact me if you need any more information.