 Hello, I'm James Martin, director of the North Carolina LTAP Center. Good training is much like a good road. You must start with a proper base. This videotape presents excerpts on basic training techniques from a presentation by Dr. Gene Harding. Dr. Harding is a retired professor of journalism from the University of Nebraska and has over 30 years experience in the training field. He currently is a private consultant and assists several LTAP centers with their training programs. This videotape presents a review of the building blocks necessary for turning field experts into training experts. The key areas to be covered are what is training, making training fun for you and your trainees, communication in training, trainer qualities, trainer delivery, training mistakes, what makes a good learning environment, friend style training. If you've never trained before, you'll find this tape to be very helpful in becoming a trainer. If you have trained before, this videotape may show you something new about the building blocks of training. What is training? It's a process of teaching new skills and knowledge or refreshing skills already learned. If training is done right, it can save time and money. In today's competitive market, we must train not only to have our business thrive, but survive. As serious as that may sound, the first key concept about training is to have fun. You can't force people to learn. Absolutely. I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't work. Our job as trainers, teachers, bosses is to get people to want the drink. Can't hold their heads under the water. And so we're going to work on that today. There's a definition of knowledge that I like. Really, it comes from old Greek roots, which mean having sport with knowing. Knowledge is having sport with knowing. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. Absolutely. In Nebraska, I guess we have some fame is a little heavy word there for our T-square program, because what we've done a lot of is go out and find very good operators, people who work the roads and know what they're doing, and then try to help them become teachers, trainers, so that they can share their skills. Well, most of these guys are shy. You spend all your time in the cab of a motor grader by yourself for 20 years. You're not exactly a social butterfly yet. And so we have to help them learn to get out and meet strangers easily and talk about ideas without being embarrassed. They have to have fun. Absolutely have to have fun. I found a shot that kind of characterizes our guys there, I think. And they haven't always loved school. School was not always a great experience for our learners. They're great guys. They're knowledgeable. They're real. Hardly ever find a phony in that profession. They're straight up. But they don't know how to take charge in the hate school. They don't like to sit in rows like we do here, like to sit in a circle. One-on-one, they're great conversationalists. Five strangers and they're mute. So we work from that standpoint and try to have fun. Another key concept of training is communication. Good communication can make or break a training experience. I believe that the trainer is the key to learning. There is information everywhere. LTAP puts out manuals and tapes and films. You can get them everywhere. They tell you everything everyone would know about anything that has to do with transportation. So why do we need a trainer? Help me out, Jeff. Help them understand what the tape's about. All right, help them understand. What else? Any ideas you have? What do you think, Fred? To convey the knowledge that you have to others. The tape did that. The book did that. Why do you need me? Help. I need the money. To help in understanding. Interpretation. Help interpret it. Anything that comes to your mind, sir? I think you, in fact, I do. There has to be, right, you're all right. There has to be a human factor. These folks don't see themselves. And I don't always see myself as a student, a learner. But in conjunction with some other human being, it's fun to work with ideas and discuss it and play it through my own computer. And I learn that way. Otherwise, we could send learning kits out. We could play them on jukeboxes. We can send videotapes. Listen to audio tapes in your car or the cab of your motor grader. Doesn't work. There has to be a person involved. For most learners. All right, so what makes a good trainer? We'll get into that in a little detail, but one or two things. What do you think's a good trainer back there, partner? What's your name? Jeff. Jeff. What's one thing that you think makes a good trainer? One on one or on a group. Yeah, and if you're in a group, maybe you feel like it's one on one. It's a trainer is there. One more thing, and we'll get at it. What else do you think is it? Knowledge of the subject. Have to know the subject. Yeah, that helps a lot. There are different kinds of training. Sometimes I've seen some pretty good, what would you call it, facilitators come in and there's a lot of knowledge in this group and they just get you to teach each other and they're organizing and making connections and they may not know as much as Tom or Fred, but they get Tom and Fred teaching the rest of the group. Well, communication is probably, at least from my point of view, that's the base. If you've ever been through some training, you know you tend to associate the information you receive with the trainer. The information you receive may be earth-shattering, but if it's deliberate in a boring or harsh manner, you're not going to remember it. A trainer should always remember he's the host as well as the guest. Well, let's talk about good trainers. Let me give you the first thing on my own list and that is I think as a trainer, you're both the host and the guest, all right? Your job is to get people to want to learn. And the example you gave us, Tom, he wasn't doing that at all. He was just saying, it's your problem, but he'd go for it. Now, it is the other guy's responsibility. You can't poke knowledge into people's ears. On the other hand, you might help them open the ears a little bit. You're the host and the guest. That's the, you know, we could go home now if people really believed that and take that as the one big lesson you've learned a lot and I had to remind myself often. You're here to be treated like somebody special, not like dirt. And no matter how objectionable one of you might be to me, fortunately you're not. I had to treat you as I would one of my in-laws that I don't care a lot about, but they're a guest in my house for a couple of days. You deserve courteous treatment. And we're gonna talk about physiologically why that's true. On the other hand, I'm your guest. If I do something that offends you, you'll close the door on me. We tend to personify information. We put a person's face on it. And if we don't like the person, we don't wanna hear what the person has to say so we turn away the knowledge the person's carrying. So we're reciprocal, aren't we? Hosts and guests. We need to be encouragers. Here's a little shot. When you're working with people who are out working on the road, which one of these characters do they wanna talk with? Not the old professor. Which is why in Nebraska we use working men. They know their business. They can talk the language. They don't have to learn to speak the right language. That's their language every day. And they do it. My son works with me most of the time and in addition to being an adult educator, he's a construction guy. And it helps a lot to have that guy on the left up here with the old professor. Is that a picture of him? That's him on the left. Yeah. Oh, well, and you're right. And that's me in my younger days there. Pipe. Yeah. All right. You're not a cop. You're not a babysitter. You're not God. You're another interested human being who knows something that can be useful to people and you're excited about helping share, get it there. Now, given that what is a trainer? What does a trainer do? Well, we're gonna talk about that all day, but the truth is when it's over, it isn't what the trainer does. It's what the trainer gets the learner to do that makes a difference. We do learn by doing. You know the old gag of Socrates said to learn to be is to do. That was it. And Plato said to do is to be. And another great Italian philosopher, Sinatra says dooby dooby dooby. I don't want that. One of my worst jokes. Telling is not teaching. Listening is not learning. So what you're saying is they have to know the machine, right? To get out, do something with it then. Then we learn. And one last little thing that works with people who are working with things is a pretty good rule. As a good trainer, as a lubricant, not a hammer. Our job is go around and grease those irks and I'll whack them on the head to try to get learning to happen. Another key concept in training is delivery of the message. As mentioned earlier, a good training experience has a lot to do with how you communicate verbally. What you don't realize is how important nonverbal communication is. Like eye contact, where to stand, and hand gestures. All are important in delivering a message, but many times we forget how important. Person named Albert Moravian is still working. He's been at it for a couple of lifetimes, I think. But I think he's our premier expert on how we do impact other people. And this is of extreme importance to anyone who wants to train. He says, and you've heard these figures before somewhere I'll bet, 7% of your impact has to do with words. Have you come across that? 7% of your effectiveness is the language. Now we're saying use appropriate language to be sensitive to people's hot spots and don't hurt them. The 7% equals words. 55% of your impact has to do with the way you look. Now the touchy feelies like to talk about body language. This guy's a serious scholar of how we communicate and he doesn't use that term, but his facial expression, gestures. So for 55% of your effectiveness has to do with that. As a presenter, what's left? He says, sound of your voice. 38% is what's left. This is non-verbal, all right? Sound of your voice, we're not saying is your voice beautiful. It doesn't sound authentic. You sound real, you sound phony. You sound friendly. As you were saying back there guys, you sound interesting. All right, so it has to do with inflection and volume. Now, what are the other components then? Well, almost everything else. The 93% we want to be concerned about. Do you need a number here, Fred? Are you okay on that? Oh yes. Okay. He breaks these down into measurable categories. One is distance. I don't just talk, poor old Pierce will catch it all day if I don't practice what I preach because you just happen to be close. So I'll be on your back. I need to get my fanning back in there and talk to you. I don't know if I can hear, but that's what we have to know. And face you. Trainers often play to one side of a room if you have several, it's just comfortable. You find one guy who smiles a lot and you tend to work toward that one and stay away from that growly one over in the corner there. We have to work there. In fact, the growly ones, the one who needs your attention. A lot of beginning trainers worry about what about the guy who just has to be there? Didn't want to be there. He sits there and scowls all the time. How do you deal with him? Just simply go over there. And instead of being that far away, he may be sitting in the back row because he just didn't want to be there. That's not always true, but sometimes. And so you go stand there and go ahead with your workshop. Does that make any sense to you? You say to him and you move right on for as a chance to shove it or whatever. So you use what you know about distance. You haven't come over there in a threatening way. You're not punishing him. You're just drifting around talking to people and friends stand close together. So you come back there and talk a little bit. Hey, can I use your pencil? Sure. I don't want to, but you interact with the guy in some other level and you get him going. Facial expression, boy. What's your reaction when you talk with someone who talks to you like this the whole time? Well, how about you, Jeff, he says? I'm not getting much from that. Nothing happens. All this so-called nonverbal business give meaning to the words. It personalizes it. That's why it's important to think about once in our lives. I'd hate to make this our religion, but it's an important thing to think about. We trust people, friendly people have a lot of facial expression. You watch. People who are friends, their faces are going wild. People who are suspicious or frightened or uninterested or angry freeze. Well, we all know how to do it. I'm not gonna go through the details about how to have facial expression. It's just we have to use the same stuff that we use in our social life with trainers. So eyes move, we smile, we frown. You don't go around with a silly smile pasted on and all you're saying, thank you, have a nice day. You don't need that. You just need something happening. And you know, those of you who train, I guess that's almost everybody in here, when you have trainees who just sit there, you don't know if you're getting anywhere. They might be learning, they may not be learning. How do you stimulate it? You model it. You smile at guys, you nod with guys, you shake your head and all the stuff that you do in real life. And it happens. Eye contact, let's talk about that. These are basics. I'll ask you the same question. How do you feel about people who won't look at you when you talk with them? What feelings do you get? Like they're ignoring you. What? Like they're ignoring you. Yeah, you feel like they're ignoring you. You don't matter, you don't care. What else? Trust them. You don't trust them. Any other? They're not interested. They don't like you. They don't know the answer. All right. Any of those might be wrong, incidentally. We read people wrong all the time, but the truth is we read people. And we want to be sure that what we're sending is positive to people. But you read some of the books on body language. A guy who sits like that is what? Aggressive. He's aggressive, closed off. I don't believe that at all. I believe he's comfortable. He hasn't been trying to hold back, but you can misread, that's my point. On the other hand, the trainees are reading you all the time. You have to be active. Eye contact, head nods. You watch when you go to lunch today. People who are talking to each other are nodding while they're talking and they're nodding while they're listening. That means we're in connection. We already do it. But we forget to do that. I'll say, Jeff, how do you think that we ought to deal with the sign problem that we're having to da, da, da, da? He tells me, and I just stand here. Doesn't encourage him too much to think, to learn, to interact. I have to, mm-hmm. Like he does all the time. You do it well. Gestures and hand movements. You disappointed me. One reason we don't need to look at the tape is you're all so good. But you watch people who don't do any training or talk to a group ever, and what do they do? They stand like this. Say, well, my first job was over in gauge candy. I guess I worked on a drag line mostly. What do you see in it? Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve. What? Steve. Fear. Steve, yeah, fear, yeah. Sure. That's the message that comes through, not the words, the words are seven percent. And you see this guy who'd rather be in hell than be right here today. Friendly people use their hands a lot. That's all. So you have to do it. And you all did. But they go. And the broader the gestures, the more comfortable the person. As we work with our guys who are wonderful people, but be generous as presenters, they, we're gonna go in like this. It looks like their elbows are connected to their ribs for a while. It's gesture free. If it's difficult for you, you ought to think about it. Because you do it in other phases of your life. How can I get my hands going like real people talk? Then this all adds up to, this is a believable, friendly, sincere person. That's the bottom line. Why we do all those things. And we have to be conscious of them. If you're training a lot and you're working with people day after day after day, you get tired. And you find yourself not employing the stuff you usually use with friends. This could be cause it's getting to be routine. And I think we have to be aware of these things. It's bottom, it's the building blocks for training. Remember in grade school being called to the chalkboard involuntarily? It wasn't a very comfortable feeling, was it? You were more worried about making a fool of yourself than learning. These scare tactics turned learning into fear or even anger. In any case, learning ceased. Making people feel comfortable in training allows people to learn. Here are some common mistakes to avoid. You don't want people to have much of a chance of being quote wrong, unquote. None of us wants to be wrong, particularly people who don't see themselves as students who are maybe reluctant to be there. Don't let them be wrong. Help them be right, find something right. If you don't agree, there are ways that you can deal with that in kind of a more diplomatic way than saying, nope, that would never work. One would be to say, if you're doing it that way, I suppose it's working for you. Let me tell you the way I've been thinking about that problem. And I think, what do you think of this? Would it work? And you'd give your idea. Don't nail it. Once you've been humiliated, we have various levels of humiliation tolerance, all of us, but once you've been humiliated, you retire. Your body may be there, but your soul goes home and you don't need that. So don't ever hurt people. I'm sorry, it doesn't work. Even, I've done some training with the Air Force out of Omaha, and they're some of the most humane trainers? No, and I was a shock to me because I had some early military experience that wasn't that loving. They've learned. You encourage, you don't kick. So focus on what, who, when, what, why, how, like news people have open-ended questions, center on people's areas of interest, help them see something new, and always let people maintain their self-respect and integrity. Your learning environment is another key aspect of training. If you have uncomfortable seats, poor lighting, a broken slide projector, your trainees are not going to remember what you've said. They're gonna remember the lousy conditions that were part of your training. You need to have people comfortable, physically and mentally. What makes a good learning environment for group activities? Start anywhere, okay? We came up with no distractions such as things that would draw your attention to your side or background, or as it would distract you. Should be comfortable with tables, chairs, the lighting, the temperature. Shouldn't have people sitting in blind spots or they're having to do this to look around and see other things. Break at normal intervals and have good acoustics where everyone can hear and see well. You've about done the whole thing, haven't you? If people are seated in a bad spot, what do you do about it? Move them, sure. Breaks are tough for presenters. We're gonna have one every 50 minutes, but I got carried away on the second one this morning. You knew it. I have seen some pretty good trainers appoint someone as the break chair. And when we get to 50 minutes, make noise, we're gonna quit. You're in charge and it can help. Because if you get into what you're talking about, you stay there and you could use help. Light, we need a lot of light. These subdued ones are for romance, not for learning, for a lot of reasons. But one is that we are often using a lot of visuals. You can dim lights, but they have to have the capacity to go out. Particularly if you're using video and it's amateur stuff, you need to have some decent light in there you don't get anything. We should have done it. But do you happen to think of something else that I get caught in this situation a lot of times? If you've got audience that's coming in from great distances and they have to have a three hour drive back home, they want you to end on time. They don't like for you. You say, we're gonna end at 3.30. They want to be out of there by 3.30. Exactly. And if I tell them I'm gonna end at 3.30, I try to end at 3 o'clock if I know they've got to drive 200 miles away. Are you suggesting that we all wrap this up? I really hadn't thought of that. I didn't have that angle. Well then, equipment too. Do you have outlets? Do you have extension cords if you're working in a place unfamiliar with you? Do you have your old trusty marker and masking tape to take care of those things? And you ought to have spare parts along and you ought to be able to deal with breakdowns when the machine doesn't work and so forth, that part of it. I think it's a good idea like you said this morning to have where everybody can see each other also instead of having a white ridge, can't see anyone but to you and if it was out and if you could arrange it where everybody can, it makes it a little better discussion. A half circle, or if you're saying a V or a U, they're all, or two, if you've got a lot of people, two half circles. At least you can get up this close to the second row, you know, all around. Some work, you can't do that. They have to have tables to work on and you have to modify it. Part of it gets back to that business of proximity. Can I get close enough to those folks? And can they see one another? They feel they're part of the group or just that individual out there who may be pounced on by the instructor in an effort to be personal. You just have to watch it a lot. One of the most important things about being a trainer is to approach training like you were teaching friends, be sympathetic to their needs, show them respect, show them hospitality. We all appreciate information and tips from our friends. People need to be talked to, why is television so popular with everybody? The news shows in everybody, they even overdo it, but it's better than the old-fashioned way of just sitting there and reading the news like the old guy on Murphy Brown. People want to be talked to as if they're equals and we do that in a conversation, I call it friend style. That doesn't mean we're becoming buddies. I mean that my demeanor is that of a friend, not of the Big Shot Authority or the dictator. And it works better, people listen to friends. The deep research shows that. So we try to use the same speaking style, the same gesturing style, the same amount of eye contact. And we have to practice it. It comes easy when you're working with your neighbor whom you like, but it is more difficult with strangers because you know they're checking everything out on you and they want to, oh, he's wrong on that asphalt fact or his gravy on his shirt or there are a million things that you're the spectacle of here. We have to forget that and talk to them like they're friends. Now, it's relatively easy. We didn't give it a lot of time in this workshop. It's relatively easy to get content together. Oh, I shall tell you what the rules are. There's a content. It's relatively easy to find visual, audio-visual stuff. There are tapes everywhere and there are movies in there. You can get computer programs, it'll almost do it for you. But is hard is to establish a kind of climate where people say, I'm glad I was there. They're good people and I'm somebody myself. No matter how rotten the person you're trying to teach is, if we can always know that person, if they're probably doing the best he or she knows how given where they came from. They'd like to be a good person. If you can approach your training with that understanding, everybody in this room wants to be the best he or she knows how to be. And so they're using what they got. They might not have very much. I don't know where they're coming from. Maybe their son today, their four-year-old had a swimming lesson that didn't go well. It's kind of hard to stay on the topic. How did he go? He did fine. He's okay, all right. But we have a lot of baggage we bring in with us, including all of our past. The trainer has to understand that and go with it. This guy's doing the best he knows how to do given where he is today. He doesn't want to be a slob. Nobody starts out the day saying, I'm going to be the best slob I can be. So what we do is try to make them the best person they can with whatever little influence we have. Make them feel important. Make them feel able. Make them see that the work that they do is important and that learning this can be enjoyable. I hope you found this video to be helpful and informative. You now should have some insight into turning field experts into training experts.