What Great Trainers Do

1

The Challenge of Training

It is a splendid vocation you have chosen—to smooth the way for the march of unappreciated truths, and new and courageous lines of thought.

——Petra in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People

As educator John Holt said, “Man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns.”¹ Some psychologists claim that learning is one of our most universal characteristics.² Furthermore, organizations need their members to learn—to develop new skills, to adapt to changing situations, to adjust to shifting needs and opportunities. Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey argue that:

There is no more perfect marriage of interests—between the needs of an organization and the needs of its individual members—than the ongoing ...