This Tip focuses on one of the immutable rules for a trainer, to treat the learner with respect, valuing the learner’s knowledge and experience.
There are only two immutable rules for a trainer.
The first is to treat the learner with respect.
This includes recognizing and respecting the learner’s previous experience, current expertise, and pressing interests and needs. This means not wasting their time by teaching them what they already know.
The trainer can discover these through formal training needs assessments, informal e-mail queries, or introductory questions at the beginning of a session. Having the participants indicate which learning objectives are most relevant to their needs is also a good training strategy.
The workshop should be tailored to meet the learners’ needs.
This also includes respecting the learner’s time by:
ensuring that there is good, relevant content and appropriate learning activiites that build or strengthen necessary skills; and
using learning activities that meet the needs of different learning preferences.
The trainer must also treat the learner with respect when interacting during the session.
This means that the trainer needs to be willing to:
recognize that the learners are thinking adults,
treat learners with courtesy and respect, and
actively listen to their feedback.
One useful activity to co-opt experienced and more seasoned participants is to create small groups of seasoned and inexperienced participants. The seasoned participants can tell the inexperienced what they needed to know to be successful. The inexperienced participants can ask questions of the seasoned participants. Then they can sit with their small group. This way they can continue the dialogue. Also, the seasoned participants can help to facilitate and answer content questions.
When a trainer treats the learner with respect, the trainer will establish and maintain an environment that is conducive to and supportive of learning.
