“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
Louis L’Amour
As a trainer there will come a time where you think everything is finished. You have done all the research. All the course training standards and lesson plans are finished. The PowerPoint presentations are finished. Now it is just a matter of continuing to roll out the training.
That is the point where you need to take a breath and ask questions such as:
- What’s missing? What are my potential blind spots with this training?
- What else do I need to read or learn?
- What’s next? What’s the next iteration of this?
- What are we going to continue to do to get feedback and evaluate this training?
“Approach each day as if you have something new to learn. Your task is not to begin in a noble place, but to end up in one.”
Eric Greitens, Resilience
As soon as you think you are finished, think you know everything there is to learn on the topic, think you have mastered this subject or think there is nothing else you could learn on this or do to improve this training, your slide to mediocrity will have begun.
“No matter how much you have achieved, you will always be merely good relative to what you can become. Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point. The moment you think of yourself as great, your slide toward mediocrity will have already begun.”
Jim Collins, Good to Great and the Social Sectors
We have all been in training where the trainer has not updated the content, the delivery or their knowledge in a one or two decades. Don’t be that trainer. Strive to be a great trainer, understanding the message from Jim Collins that that is a dynamic process and not an end state.
Being a good trainer is a lot of work and involves a never-ending quest to improve yourself and your training in order to best serve the people you have the privilege to teach, train, coach and mentor. If you get to the point where you believe everything is finished then it is time to step back, reassess, and get back to work. If you still think you are finished it may be time to move on from that training position. Being a trainer is too important to get stuck there and believe you are finished.
Take care.
Brian Willis
Winning Mind Training – Providing practical training to law enforcement professionals in the areas of instructor development, Performance Enhancement Imagery, leadership and mindset.
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