I Think I Can, I Think I Can ...

Remember Casey Junior, the little train from the movie Dumbo that thought he could? He was all loaded up with circus animals taking them to the next stop, when he approached a hill. To get himself up that hill, he muttered to himself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can …” and as we know, he did get to the top of that hill.

As much as having a Casey Junior attitude is a positive trait, I think we also need to be careful as trainers that we don’t say we can do things when the reality is – we can’t.

Often opportunities arise for us to deliver content that is outside our expertise, and we say yes because the financial rewards blur our thinking. The challenge is to look at that opportunity and be honest with yourself and say, “Can I truly deliver a program that will change behaviour?”

I’m not doubting that you could create a program, I’m not doubting that you could research the content – what I’m saying is that your past experience and your training development skills is what takes a trainer from being good, to being great.

My thoughts:

1. Be honest with yourself

2. Use your network to maximise the opportunity

3. Know your expertise and stick to it

Who Are You?

Do the names Gagne, Knowles, Bloom, Skinner, Rogers mean anything to you? Who are these people?

Recently I was working with a client mapping my Training the Trainer workshop with an accreditation process that they required. Part of their accreditation had us looking at three key learning philosophies (behaviourism, constructivism and cognitivism) as it was critical they understood elements of this learning theory to pass their accreditation.

What was really exciting for me was to re-visit people like Skinner and Knowles and be reminded of the contribution they had made to adult education.

For those of you who don’t know;
Bloom’s Taxonomy – great for writing learning objectives.
Malcolm Knowles – the pioneer of adult learning principles.
Gagne – contributed to the theory of instruction with his ‘9 Events of Instruction’.
Skinner – had his Programmed Instruction Theory, which he called ‘chaining’.
Carl Rogers – a psychologist who had an impact on education with his personality theory.

All of these people’s theories form the foundation of what you do as a trainer. Not only in the training room, but how you prepare and how you design your programmes. I challenge you this month to re-visit some key learning identities such as the aforementioned, and map it against your delivery and design. Maybe, just maybe – there are elements of their theories that we’ve forgotten, yet should include in our sessions if we are to be the best trainers we can possibly be.