Training….what can I do?

I was trying to determine why the act of training is such a difficult issue to get really good at consistently. I was talking to a group of trainers and asked them what their definition of training was and I got a very mixed bag of definitions. Listed below find the definitions of training.

Dictionary.com - the education, instruction, or discipline of a person or thing that is being trained

iGoogle - activity leading to skilled behavior

Webster’s - a: to form by instruction, discipline, or drill b: to teach so as to make fit, qualified, or proficient

Then I found the one I believe I like the most below…..

Wikipedia - the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies

The definitions seems clear but the execution is much different. It seems to come down to the trainer, not the training.

Everywhere I go training seems to be so ignored or executed poorly. Why? If you had the ear of the boss and wanted training to be perfect, what would you tell him he must do?

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark D. Dion on July 16, 2008 at 7:35am

Thanks for your reply Brian!

Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on July 15, 2008 at 5:16pm

Great! I love the way you have shown us such useful information.

Permalink Reply by Paul Paz on July 16, 2008 at 9:12pm

Ir is such a pleasure to have acces to so many fresh ideas and perspecives in this thread!
Paul www.WaitersWorld.com

Permalink Reply by Mel Kleiman on October 28, 2008 at 5:15pm

I would tell the boss to quit worrying about training and looking at educating people. We train animals and we educate people.

You can train for a skill like how to give good customer service but until you educate people on why they need to give good customer service all you may get is rote behavior.

Permalink Reply by Paul Paz on October 29, 2008 at 12:04am

Hey Mel...
Excellent perspective!
we seem to always leave out the "why".
Paul

Permalink Reply by Stephen J Serva Dei on June 6, 2009 at 2:41am

This is an excellent point... however, education should start at infancy... the problem is the 'system' does not educate, it 'trains' people to think in a certain way and 'rewards' those who respond best to the 'testing'.

Educating people is a HUGE issue, if someone has been trained to think a certain way for 16 years, then they come to work for you, you have to win their trust very quickly to be able to teach them the whole range of skills necessary for them to contribute to building up the whole.

THEN their real education and awakening can happen - and if the trainer, the leader is truly such, they will know how to encourage the growth and skills development of those they choose to work with.