The Empty-Handed Trainer!

You are the trainer. You get the call. From the client (or the vendor). Training is confirmed for the next week. Spend the weekend downloading other PPTs of similar trainings. Scour the net for `activities’ as the client says they wanted the training to be fun and enjoyable. 

D-day is here. Armed with a laptop arrive early. Welcome the participants and launch into your monologue, when suddenly, the screen behind you goes blank. You stop and fiddle with the laptop. Its gone blank as well!!!! Call the IT guys for help. 

Till they arrive, you improvise and make the participants do an activity. However, since there was no introduction or context and your trainer notes were on the PPT itself, you struggle to maintain their interest. The participants demand to know why they were made to squat and hold their partner’s hand for 15 minutes? You stumble your way to debrief before mercifully help arrives. The IT guys are here. 

They fiddle with your system for a while before declaring it clinically dead. What??!! This can’t happen! Anyway, good professionals have a plan B right? You made a copy on your pen drive. So the IT guys organize another laptop and you run the presentation on their system. So far so good. 

Things seem to be going OK till mid-morning when suddenly the power goes down. This time, not just the screen, but the room becomes dark as well. All wait in silence for the generators to kick in, but it doesn’t happen. The maintenance guys report that the generators have conked out and the repair guys are coming. But it will take an hour. 

1 hour! One whole hour without a PPT? Can you do it? Can you continue the training without your system? Can you keep the participants engaged and facilitate the training with only one aid: Yourself?

That is the true test of a good facilitator. If PPTs were banned and facilitators were forced to rely on their experience and their facilitation prowess, how many of us would pass the test? How many of us would still get that coveted 4+ rating without our laptops? 

This is perhaps the key question that clients must ask. 

Who is a good trainer? What makes a great facilitator? The answer perhaps lies in the trainer’s past. “Postmen Trainers’, those who simply deliver without applying that knowledge to their own lives seem to be everywhere. They get away with poor quality trainings, training contracts by undercutting and lowering prices. But what happens when the lights go off? 

Great trainers and facilitators have the chops to improvise. They have the stories from their diverse life experiences to keep the training going. To put the training in perspective. 

Great facilitators don’t just deliver the content. They ARE the content.