How to Run Seminars and Workshops, 4th Edition

Chapter 17Avoiding the Training TrapProblems with Relevance and Respect

Company training departments can take on many appearances. Some look strangely like personnel departments while others look more like marketing departments. Still other training departments appear so far removed from the rest of their organizations, they almost are separate entities. This would all be well and good, if it were not for the fact that the more removed a training department is from the rest of the company, the less credible it is in the eyes of those who depend on it.

How to Build Credibility and Gain Respect for Training

One of the biggest problems any training department must take on is the notion from those who are out doing their jobs as opposed to learning about it, that the training department is out of touch with what is really happening within the company. Therefore, we must confront problem one: relevance within a training department.

This lack of relevance issue is one of the first and often cheapest shots that a training department must contend with. At first glance, it appears to be a pretty good argument. How can this individual teach me something he or she is not currently doing? A particularly poignant example would be that of sales training. Products change, as do customers and their demands. How does an individual who has not been actively selling in the field effectively teach someone who is? There is an answer, albeit a somewhat disappointing one.

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