“It’s because I’m a trainer”…these words certainly got my attention.
At the time and to paint the picture (please excuse the pun) I was sitting in a Sorbet nail bar in Johannesburg having a well-deserved pedicure and another client was berating the staff for not having the nail polish colour she wanted. Needless to say there are more than 150 other colours to choose from, but I found her response to their apology amazing, what did being a trainer have to do with anything at all?
It made me think of two things…firstly, it is such a small world and you never know who you may be sitting next to…aka me at the time, the owner of one of the busiest training companies in South Africa.
And the second thing…it made me incredibly grateful for the Course Leaders that I work with on a regular basis, but I suppose the bigger question here is what actually makes a great Course Leader?
There is that old saying by George Bernard Shaw that says ‘those who can, do and those who can’t, teach’ – well nothing in my experience could be further from the truth!
And before anyone gets upset and think I am teacher-bashing…I’m not, I personally think teachers are fantastic and in South Africa we all know they are never paid enough! But this article considers my paradigm, the world of Alusani® and my experience with Course Leaders.
Over the years, I have deliberately looked for expert Course Leaders who maintain a business, consultancy or practice with hands-on projects, this is done so that they can bring real value and experience to the training room. Our Course Leaders are not individuals who simply understand the theory but who never actually get around to applying it, they are all active in their respective fields, so they ‘do’ and they ‘teach’ – they all have enormous amounts of what I like to call ‘war stories’ that they can share with our Course Participants.
An example, and I come across this sad reality almost every single day – there are a large number of training providers who use Course Leaders who have never been on a building site and who have no experience in the construction industry but they are training NEC, FIDIC, JBCC and related courses, take your pick – with little or no experience. Another example is MS Project for construction – granted there are many very capable MS Project trainers out there but finding one that has that magic combination of understanding the finer nuances of MS Projects but more importantly how it is used and applied in the construction and engineering fields – is priceless, I know because it took me two years to find one!
So, to all the Course Leaders that I have been privileged to work with exclusively at Alusani® over the past 10 years (and you know who you are) I wanted to say thank you:-)
To everyone else reading this article, I will leave you with this parting thought the next time you pick up a brochure and are thinking about attending a training course, training is expensive so please give some serious consideration to who is training the course you are attending. What are their credentials and do those credentials align with the topic they are actually training? If not, you are probably going to be wasting both your time and money!
Oh yes and one last final thought – beware the training course brochure that doesn’t include any information about the Course Leader!
This article was published on LinkedIn brings to your attention the need to know what credentials your Course Leader has, and if it aligns with the topic that he/she is training.
For more info about our courses, please email imogen@alusani.co.za.