Master Trainers, Master Learners
Training the Trainers
One of the most deadly sentences in the English language is “I am so glad I am done with school.”
—Pat Wagner, Management Consultant and Trainer
Few of us start our careers with the general goal of becoming a trainer or with the specific goal of becoming a trainer within a library or nonprofit organization. For most of us, this happens as our careers and the needs of the organizations we serve change. “I think people are being thrown into it; I sure was,” Louise Whitaker recalls.
Joining colleagues in a master trainer program designed to hone our skills and fill the enormous gaps we find in our own knowledge and experience can, therefore, be exhilarating, challenging, encouraging, and humbling all at the same time. The notification of acceptance into a program conveys with it a certain level of acknowledgment that we are seen as having potential as trainer-teacher-learners. There is also recognition that we have already developed decision-making skills that are of use to those we serve, and that we need to be able to use and improve those skills in moments we are never able to anticipate before they actually occur.
Spending several days together with colleagues in a master trainer program builds and instills a sense of the power of community that might otherwise take months or years to develop—if ever it develops. Working together lesson by lesson, project by project to support and learn from each other increases our skills while also reminding us what our own learners experience as we lead them through learning opportunities. A significant sense of camaraderie develops quickly, accompanied by a sense of responsibility that extends to our classmates, to the organization supporting our participation in the program, to the colleagues who trust that we will share what we have learned, and to ourselves as trainer-teacher-learners in the act of trying to improve ourselves. Immersed for several days in what amounts to an incredibly intense learning lab, we try to fight off all distractions and concentrate on what is being offered. If the process is successful, we and our organizations are transformed positively.
With this in mind, we explore three master trainer programs in this chapter, review the qualities and skills master trainers share, and continue exploring the impacts master trainer programs can and do have according to colleagues throughout the United States.
Master Trainers in North Carolina
For more than a decade the State Library of North Carolina has offered its Master Trainer certification program. The program is well respected and highly thought of in the North Carolina community and other parts of the country. Its master trainers are sought to conduct training for libraries across the state—both in person and virtually through webinars.
The program, funded by a federal IMLS/LSTA (Institute of Museum and Library Services/Library Services and Technology Act) grant, is one of the most successful curriculums ever initiated by the state library. It features a competitive process, with those interested in participating required to complete an application and have a letter of recommendation from their library director. When the final class is selected, public and academic libraries from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Outer Banks are represented.
The Master Trainer program began in 1997 and has had more than one hundred graduates. The program began when state librarian Sandy Cooper saw a dramatic need for training resulting from the influx of computer-related technology in libraries. At that time, not every library had a computer, state library continuing education consultant Raye Oldham says. The need for the program has continued, and the focus has changed from technology to instructional design. Initially the program comprised classes exclusively for academic librarians or exclusively for public librarians. But, according to Oldham, they quickly recognized a need for a mix within each class: “We’re blending the types of libraries so they can learn from each other and see what they have in common.”
During its first ten years of operation, the program has changed to incorporate e-learning, so face-to-face time between instructors and students has decreased. It began as a three-part, nine-day program. The first segment consisted of a five-day boot camp for library staff where participants learned the basics of training design and learning theories and split into groups for practice teaching. The second segment was a three-day session in which each participant delivered a one-hour presentation in front of the other participants. The final segment was a single-day “Trainers’ Showcase” where trainers could present in front of peers and library directors from across the state.
The program now begins with synchronous and asynchronous training sessions followed by a four-day segment. After a brief introduction, instructor Margery Orell tells participants that they will earn the equivalent of a master’s degree during their subsequent months together. By the end of the first week, participants in small groups develop and present a one-hour training session on a topic of their choice. They are evaluated not only by the program’s facilitators but by their peers.
There are four months of work between the first and second sessions; participants strive within their own libraries to develop and present the one-hour training program, and there are online coaching sessions. Participants then reconvene for the three-day session that consists of a day of review and more learning, the training showcase and graduation ceremony, and a third day of feedback and evaluations.
Oldham says the showcase has remained an important part of the program for both participants and their directors: “It’s similar to what parents experience with a science fair or graduation, not to see the individual work but within the context of the larger group and to see their trainer spotlighted. It’s a positive experience that you can’t really achieve in another way.”
Master Trainers in New Jersey
The New Jersey Train-the-Trainer project, a New Jersey State Library–sponsored program that has graduated more than 270 participants since being organized in the late 1990s, is a far more concentrated effort than that offered in North Carolina. Participants, with a goal of creating training plans they can use within their own organizations, gather for three consecutive days of work, separate for a week, then reconvene for a fourth day that includes time for participants to deliver presentations drawn from what they have developed through the workshop. The program offers 30 hours of continuing education credit.
Before they meet for the first time, participants complete online forms including a learning style profile that explores how they prefer to solve problems; how they prefer to interact in group discussions; and how they prefer to learn material they are studying. They also complete an instructional styles diagnosis inventory that gives them an opportunity to explore how they prefer to conduct themselves when they are instructing other adults.
“The ultimate goal of the NJTTT workshop is that participants will learn how to develop and conduct effective training,” Peter Bromberg, who participated as a learner and remained active as an organizer and presenter, has written. “This model has helped create a tight-knit community of trainers who come from libraries of all types, and all geographic regions across the state.”1
During their time together, participants are exposed to and work with a variety of themes including how to use adult learning principles, developing learning objectives, selecting training methods and training aids, working in electronic classrooms, developing lesson plans, honing facilitation and presentation skills, and evaluating training programs. Comments from participants are tremendously enthusiastic, Bromberg reports.
The planners took a two-year hiatus beginning in 2007 to completely reorganize what was being offered; the new version, first offered in 2009, is much more technology rich and continues to attract committed and energetic participants who have been involved in training programs but arrive with “little or no formal background in the art of training adults,” according to Bromberg. “The Train-the-Trainer program was invaluable,” he says. “It gave me the theory and foundation I needed to become a good trainer. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.” Although New Jersey libraries received devastating cuts at the state level in 2010, we were happy to see that the Train-the-Trainer program is still listed as a high priority for 2011.
Master Trainers in California
Drawing from the North Carolina and New Jersey examples, the California-based Infopeople project organized a four-day Master Trainer program in 2002 and invited representatives from fourteen of the state’s largest library systems to participate at no charge to the libraries. It was, for those who participated, a transformative experience at many levels. It provided the sort of well-balanced curriculum offered in North Carolina and New Jersey; included time, on the first day, for the trainers and administrators from library systems in Northern and Southern California as well as Central California Valley communities to interact and discuss training successes and training needs; and included a variety of exercises and opportunities to develop a learning community designed to last far longer than the four-day program itself.
Broad topics covered throughout the program included defining the term master trainer to denote those who are continually engaged in improving their skills and engaged in learning, are willing to take risks and set high goals for themselves and their organizations, and are willing to try new techniques in their workplace learning and performance efforts. The program continued with in-depth explorations of how to conduct needs assessments and evaluations, design and develop effective lessons, deliver effective learning opportunities, and spread innovation throughout an organization. The culminating experience of delivering a presentation common to other master trainer programs was replicated in the Infopeople offering; program participants delivered five-minute presentations that were video taped so they would have yet another tool to help them improve the skills they already possessed or were in the process of developing. Participants also left the program with a binder full of training materials that continues to serve as a ready reference source for those of us who retained or have access to it.
Infopeople sought innovative ways to keep the program alive while trying to organize a new master trainer cohort: components of the four-day training were offered as one-day stand-alone workshops throughout the state, and the organization posted some of its training materials within its online archives for those who wanted to draw from what had been developed. An attempt to update the curriculum formally and create a second cohort of master trainers throughout California ended in autumn 2008 when budget constraints put the project on hold.
Learning That Continues to Spread
The learning gained in each of the three master trainer programs reviewed above does not end with graduation, as it does with so many other types of education and workplace learning and performance efforts. The leadership skills enhanced through these programs are supported by those who sponsor the sessions; there is also continuing contact and collaboration among the trainers themselves.
North Carolina Master Trainers are grouped into regional subgroups that meet regularly to discuss and create new training. Graduates are also part of the statewide Master Trainers electronic discussion list. Lydia Towery, librarian at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and graduate of the 1998 Master Trainer program, says that one of the most beneficial aspects of the program is the opportunity to network with other trainers. It is a benefit to be able to send an e-mail to the discussion list or call a fellow Master Trainer program participant on the phone and mention the cycle of learning to others sharing that common language.
Raye Oldham says that once participants complete the program, they often are promoted in their own library or hired by another library or organization, but even this has potential benefits to the entire library and nonprofit workplace learning industry; as those of us who graduate from master trainer programs move into new positions, we encounter colleagues with similar experiences and continue to learn—and share what we learn—in increasingly diffused communities of learners, including the ALA’s training group (the ALA Learning Round Table) and ASTD. Oldham is not aware of any other state library system that offers a comprehensive training program comparable to what has been created in North Carolina.
The New Jersey program has also documented successful outcomes, according to Peter Bromberg: “This model has helped create a tight-knit community of trainers who come from libraries of all types, and all geographic regions across the state. In any given year we may have from seven to fifteen trainers, and another five to ten graduates who understudy lessons, help plan, and/or attend a day or two of training as observers and offer structured feedback to trainers.”2
There were numerous attempts by Infopeople to build upon its initial successes. Its program graduates were encouraged to post new resources on a shared site maintained by Infopeople, remain in touch via a discussion list, and take initiative in letting Infopeople representatives know what they could do to support the trainers once they had returned to their own organizations. Although Infopeople was unable to obtain funding through the California state library to repeat the comprehensive four-day workshop to form a second cohort of master trainers—which suggests that if we expect to see more programs along these lines we must be creative in establishing sustainable long-term funding sources—annual reunions for those who attended continued for a few years. The annual gatherings alternated between the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas so the group would retain its statewide presence. As the cohort of original participants dwindled—many moved into other positions within their organizations or within other organizations—the reunion sessions remained open to people who had moved into training positions within the original fourteen library systems. Although the final formal reunion was held in 2006, some of the original participants and their successors remain in contact with each other, and a few have become involved with Infopeople in other capacities.
Learning from the Lessons We Are Offered
Some of the best lessons we have acquired through participation in a master trainer program come from unexpectedly having to apply what we were being taught. One of us, for example, had to withdraw from a master trainer program because of complications from a pregnancy and later start again from the beginning. (We’ll let you figure out which one of us that was.) The obvious lesson learned and applied was that learning is sometimes significantly affected by unexpected circumstances, and this is a lesson any of us can recall and use effectively when our own students’ personal challenges interfere with their ability to complete the assignments.
One of us—the one who was not affected by a pregnancy—had a similarly unexpected and sobering learning experience while attending Infopeople’s four-day Master Trainer program. Preparations for the culminating final presentation were interrupted by the news that a close family member had been rushed to a hospital for emergency surgery. There was the immediate dilemma to resolve: withdraw from the final day of the program to be at the relative’s bedside, or remain onsite at the program and deliver the presentation as scheduled. The decision to remain onsite and finish the program—fully supported by the relative—offered one of the most important lessons acquired: although there is no clear right or wrong answer in this sort of situation, whatever decision is made becomes the right one at that moment, and we discover amazing reservoirs of strength and support within ourselves and those who surround us. We also discover that decisions made with that incredible level of support prepare us for many of the easier decisions—as well as even more difficult ones—we face in nearly every task we undertake.
Though we certainly hope that those of you reading these lines do not find your master trainer experiences taking you down these particular paths, we can assure you that whatever you do experience can somehow be turned to your benefit if you are willing to apply what you are learning, make the decision that is best for you, and find a way to integrate that experience into your own best practices as you continue in your role of trainer-as-leader.
The Preparation That Trainers Typically Do (or Do Not) Receive
Few of our colleagues in libraries recall having received formal training before beginning to serve as trainers or workplace learning and performance program managers—which is a shame since there certainly are options, including workshops through ASTD, instructional design programs at colleges and universities, e-learning certificate programs through a variety of sources including the eLearning Guild, and an increasingly varied set of online offerings through webinars and other online courses.
Much of what we use in our day-to-day work is what we have picked up along the way. We continue to acquire skills and knowledge and seek fast ways to fill the gaps through a variety of options: those rare master trainer programs, the increasingly common webinars, half- or full-day workshops, conferences, and brief or semester-long online courses. Those of us who reach the point where we see no other option are immersing ourselves in certification programs such as ASTD’s Certified Professional in Learning and Performance offering or making the commitment to return to graduate-level coursework while keeping up with our full-time occupations. In this way, we are able to enhance skills that are beginning to feel more than a little bit outdated, and we receive useful and effective reminders of what our own learners experience when they engage in lifelong learning.
Jay Turner, one of our colleagues who did have formal training before accepting the position he holds at Gwinnett County, recalls attending a weeklong train-the-trainer program hosted by Georgia Public Library Service “several years ago, before I was a training manager,” and he has also attended the Train-the-Trainer Boot Camp offered by the Bob Pike Group. “I’m a firm believer that professionals should be credentialed in their specialties,” he notes.
I think all workplace learning leaders should go through a full-blown train-the-trainer program, and that a version of it—something less time intensive and more tailored for the job—could be offered to other levels of staff who are not necessarily workplace learning and performance leaders. … Who wants to be taught by someone who comes across amateurish? Definitely not me. At Gwinnett, most members of our training team have attended what I consider the core pieces of Pike’s Train-the-Trainer Boot Camp.
To make such a program a reality, organizations have to be willing to devote resources to improving their learning and developmental efforts by investing in their learning and performance pros. This could include providing funding for these professionals to attend outside master trainer programs, or providing the time and funding for your own staff to develop such a program in house.
More common among trainers is the experience Jason Puckett describes while recalling the first library instruction class he offered to a group of freshman at Emory University:
I was terrified. I wore a tie in the hope that it might make them treat me with more respect. I did that for about the first year—wore a tie whenever I was teaching. It was my security blanket. They were completely bored. I knew the subject matter I was trying to teach them but had no idea how to present it in a way that would be the slightest bit engaging or interesting. I just demonstrated the process and was relieved it was over.
Puckett later received formal training on how to teach when he began earning his MLIS and took one class on library instruction. “I would have taken more [classes] if they had more,” Puckett says. “We worked on actual course planning and were required to find a venue to teach them. This is where I learned a lot about learning theory, planning outcomes, learning styles and so on, a lot of the theoretical stuff that I think has helped me pin down why some teaching techniques work better than others and helped me expand my repertoire.”
Pat Wagner was only sixteen years old when she gave her first training session. Her high school journalism department won an award and as a result she attended a national secondary school journalism conference. Wagner gave a presentation on how to research and prepare feature stories for school newspapers to an auditorium full of high school students attending the conference. The presentation was an hour long and, though it was exhilarating, she had terrible stage fright, she remembers. When asked why she gave such a presentation, Wagner said it was out of respect for her journalism teacher and the realization that she had something to offer. Wagner’s lesson learned was, “You can’t wait until you are perfect and you can’t wait until fear goes away.”
Skills and Qualities of a Master Trainer
The Infopeople Master Trainer sessions offered explicit guidance to those attempting to define master trainer skills: subject matter expertise, design and development experience, the ability to produce effective materials for learners, communication and theatrical skills, and a cool head and warm heart. Addressing the subject of expertise, Louise Whitaker notes that not all trainers need to be experts in every subject they teach:
When you’re standing up in front of a group, at that particular moment you’re the expert because most people there are not going to know as much as you know. Rather than feeling that you don’t know what you’re doing, you go into it with a different mindset. I think it’s also important for the trainer to be open to learning. It’s amazing the number of times in a session that someone says something and you say, “Oh, I didn’t know that” or “I didn’t think of that.” You can learn from them as easily as they learn from you.
Among the critically important traits great trainers bring to learners is a sense of enthusiasm, Denver Public’s Sandra Smith suggests. Trainers should be “enthusiastic if not passionate.” They also should be “open and friendly,” “connect with people on an interpersonal level,” “convey that they are interested in the attendees’ interest” in the topics being explored, and “feel a commitment” to the topics as well as the importance of the topics to the organizations and customers being served. She also advocates being adept at time management, having strong skills to organize material being offered to learners, having an ability to communicate effectively to groups as well as to individuals, being proactive in solving problems and in the overall process of serving as a trainer, and understanding that learners may be at different stages of acquiring knowledge even though they are all attending a workshop designed to move attendees from one pre-specified skill level to another.”
“In almost any training, you’re going to have people at different levels,” Whitaker agrees. “You have to be patient with the person at the bottom rung or they’re going to feel that they’re a disruption, that they shouldn’t be in there, so I think it’s important to recognize that not everyone that is in a training is going to have the same skills. That’s frustrating sometimes.”
“Thinking on your feet is important,” Jason Puckett says. “Being willing to take risks in front of a room full of people. Being able to put yourself in the position of the learner.” “I’m having a rather humbling experience at work right now learning some responsibilities in a completely new area to me,” he notes. “I’m completely lost at the moment and trying to remember this feeling for the next time I get impatient with a student who isn’t getting what seems very obvious to me.”
Our own experience confirms what Puckett suggests, and we have even found that taking similar courses in two different settings can be invaluable. Having learned in a frustrating and ill-defined course, then learning the same material from well-organized and inspirational instructors brings to the trainer-teacher-learner in all of us a lesson learned viscerally and one we can replicate for those we serve.
“Being honest about what you don’t know” is also important, according to Puckett. “When I was less secure as a teacher, I was afraid of the questions I couldn’t answer. Now I find I’m a lot more comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know, let’s try it and see,’ or ‘I don’t know, e-mail me after class and I’ll figure it out.’ Nobody expects you to know everything, and it took me a surprisingly long time to learn that.”
Patience also is high on the list of qualities cited by Janet Hildebrand: “Patience, understanding, ability to ‘read’ the specific learner and put themselves in that learner’s place, desire to help the other person be successful, ability to articulate clearly, a sense of fun about learning” are all among the elements she and her colleagues seek among trainers at the Contra Costa County Library system. “Actual depth of expertise may not always be the most important trait, but rather knowing enough to be ahead of the learner and not afraid to not know everything—to be still learning oneself” are also important, she continues.
Although Hildebrand and her colleagues do look for employees and prospective employees who already display many of these skills and qualities, they are also open to working “with those who want to and who volunteer and have potential to develop into good trainers,” she says, noting that an organization with this philosophy “begins to develop an environment where this kind of learning and helping each other is the norm; when you look around, everyone is doing it, and they are enjoying their relationship and connectivity with each other, and they are all feeling successful … It may take a few years, but that’s how it comes about.”
An interest in continuing education is essential, Pat Wagner says. Noting that learners frequently approach her after training sessions and ask how they can do what she is doing, she says her first response is, “What are you reading? If you want to be a trainer, what are you reading about training?” She is surprised by the large number of librarians who consult her or other trainers for resources before even searching their own collections. Wagner, in a constant attempt to gain new information, has acquired more than three thousand books and offers no hint that she is finished adding to her collection. “One of the most deadly sentences in the English language is ‘I am so glad I am done with school,’” she suggests. In her consulting practice, she wants people to have the richness and complexity of a postgraduate college class, so she strives to learn as much as she can about a variety of topics.
Returning to the theme of what train-the-trainer programs should inspire and provide, Jay Turner suggests “presentation skills—face-to-face and live online; assessing needs, developing courses; evaluating training initiatives; working with problem participants or exceptional learners; effective use of props, visuals, and classroom technology; [and] developing effective job aids. I’ll also say that, with the proliferation of e-learning, I’d love to see a separate train-the-trainer program for e-learning.”
Qualities and Passion
It is clear that there are particular personal qualities that help workplace learning and performance leaders succeed within libraries and nonprofit organizations. Having a passion for learning and sharing that love of learning top the list, but other valuable qualities can be cultivated during our careers. The ability to think on our feet in order to troubleshoot technological and other problems during a learning session is helpful. Demonstrating patience and empathy with learners who may be apprehensive or shy is another key quality. The ability to balance confidence with humility remains important for any trainer. Being self-motivated as well as flexible helps in the ever-changing field of workplace learning and performance. It is also important to be enthusiastic about what we do. As trainer-learner-leaders, if we are not enthusiastic about what we are doing, it is obvious to our learners.
To make workplace learning and performance programs as good as they can be, organizations have to be willing to devote resources to improving their offerings by investing in their learning and performance leaders. This could include providing funding for these professionals to attend outside master trainer programs or providing the time and funding for other members of staff to develop such a program in-house.
The good news is that this dichotomy does not exist in the Gwinnett County Public Library system and other first-rate organizations. Jay Turner says administrators at Gwinnett support his attendance at off-site training sessions, display an understanding that administrative leave and fees to attend learning opportunities are a direct investment in the library’s staff development program, and take pride in being on the cutting edge of library services. Maintaining an innovative employee development program is just one of the ways the library works to achieve its goals.
It is obvious that not all libraries and nonprofit organizations are this fortunate, so we agree with Turner’s assertion that workplace learning and performance leaders have to be master salespeople as well as master trainers. As Turner says, we need to look for opportunities to demonstrate how we are incorporating into our work the concepts from seminars we attend and to paint the picture of how our efforts tangibly help our organizations meet their goals and implement their mission, vision, and value statements. Furthermore, as we suggest in chapter 7 and Turner says in conversations, we need a long-range view of how what we provide ultimately serves the needs of the library members and guests we serve and the larger communities in which they operate.
It is not, as Peter Bromberg notes, enough to “just grab someone and say, ‘You’re training this workshop’ and expect them to do a good job. … Generally speaking, one doesn’t become a good artist, good musician, good ball player, or good mathematician without some training.” As leaders, we need to argue for more and make the sustained efforts required to produce the magnificent results we should expect from trainers who are masters at their craft.
Notes
1. Peter Bromberg, “New Jersey’s Train-the-Trainer: Creating a Community of Library Instructors,” 2004, www.sjrlc.org/ttt.htm.
2. Ibid.