If you want to enhance the quality and effectiveness of your training you need to embrace the power of fresh eyes and tough questions.
Bring in Fresh Eyes to look at your training.
We all tend to see what we expect to see. When you create programs and teach them every day you can become ‘blind’ to gaps and issues in your training. Someone coming in with fresh eyes will often see gaps, holes, inefficiencies and issues you never will. When they point them out very often you wonder how you could of failed to see what was right there in front of you. It’s ok. It is all part of being human. The way to combat your potential ‘blindness’ is to bring in fresh eyes on a regular basis.
Bring in someone from outside your training section to ask challenging questions.
Questions like:
- What is the purpose and intended learning of the drills and exercises you run?
- What is the rationale behind what you are teaching?
- What is the reason the material is being taught in the sequence it is?
- In what areas of your training are you not getting the intended outcomes?
- What other training methodologies have you considered?
- Is there evidence, research or science to support what you are teaching?
Ask tough questions of yourself and your fellow trainers.
Do you know the history behind what you are teaching? Do you know the rationale behind what is in the lesson plans? Do you know why you are teaching what you are, in the manner and sequence you are?
Are you delivering training in order to help people pass the test in training, or to help them learn, retain and be able to recall and apply what you are teaching in the classroom or mat room in the field?
Are you providing strategies to help people understand how best to continue training on their own?
Are you training people for critical thinking or compliance?
Are you attending conferences and talking to trainers from other agencies to find out what they are doing? Are you asking them about what worked and did not work for them and what changes they have made as a result? Are you asking them about the most effective changes they have made to their training in the last 6 to 12 months?
Are you asking questions of the men and women you are teaching about what they need from you to help them better do their jobs? Are you asking them if the tactics and techniques you are teaching actually being used in the field? Are you asking them for feedback on more effective ways for you to deliver the material to help them learn and retain it.
Fresh eyes and hard questions will reveal gaps in your knowledge, your understanding, your methodologies and your training. You can only fill those gaps if you know they exist.
Bringing in someone with fresh eyes who is willing to ask hard questions, and continually asking yourself the hard questions takes courage and humility. If you care about the people you are training, and I know you do, it is a critical step to ensuring you are serving them in the best manner possible.
What’s Important Now? Embrace the power of tough questions and fresh eyes.
Take care.
Brian Willis
Winning Mind Training – Dedicated to helping good trainers become great trainers and great trainers to deliver awesome training.
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