Chapter 8
The Coach as Trainer

Let’s start with three images.

First, imagine a lion tamer. Confronting those wild cats, a chair in one hand and a whip in the other, a lion tamer thrusts and lunges, the lions roar and claw, and then the tamer gets those huge hunks of ferocity to sit up on chairs, roll over, and otherwise shame their heritage.

Second, a frequent scene from the Westerns has cowpokes sitting on the fence, watching one veteran bronc buster after another get thrown by a raging mustang.

“Nobody can break Fury,” one grizzled vet asserts.

“Bet I could,” says the fuzzy-cheeked new kid.

The camera cuts to the kid, clinging to the infuriated horse that’s whirling, bucking, trying to scrape the kid off on the railing, all but jumping out of its hide in its efforts to throw its rider.

The kid, of course, breaks Fury, earning the grudging respect of the rest of the cowboys.

Finally, a grizzled drill instructor confronts a new crop of recruits. Disgust floods his face as he walks up and down the line of ragtag misfits, which he must, of course, shape into an efficient fighting machine.

Most of the recruits look scared. One wears a smirk.

“Something funny?” the DI asks, getting in the recruit’s face.

“No,” the cocky kid replies, adding “Sir” a beat too late.

The DI rides the kid mercilessly, singling him out for physical punishment and verbal abuse.

The kid takes everything the DI can dish out and, in the process, learns to become a man.

Why begin this chapter on the coach as trainer with the images of a lion tamer, a horse breaker, and a drill instructor? Only to reject them as examples of training. When we talk about your role as a trainer, we don’t mean taming lions, breaking horses, or molding raw recruits into Marines.

Don’t confront the trainee with a whip and a chair. Don’t get on the trainee’s back. Don’t get in the trainee’s face.

One more image, common to us all: the teacher holding forth behind the lectern at the front of the classroom, carried away by the sound of his or her own voice, while all the students nod off. Nope. That’s not an ideal image either.

Come out from behind the podium. Stand shoulder to shoulder with the learner. Only then will you be ready to teach and train—and learn.

As a manager, you are probably responsible (to a certain degree) for training your team of employees. They may need to know how to do their tasks, or you may need to teach them about new company policies, initiatives, and procedures. You may have already done a lot of training or presentations and feel confident in those skills.

Adding a coach approach to your training skills can make you far more effective as a teacher and help you connect to your trainees on a deeper level. You can encourage real learning by bringing in a few coaching techniques.

Guidelines for the Coach as Trainer

The first requirement to be an effective trainer is mastery of the task or knowledge. It’s fairly common today for top management to bring in a supervisor from another area to take over an operation. Some supervisors receive only management training and join an organization without being familiar with the products, services, or processes involved.

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If you find yourself in this position, your first job is to learn before you teach. Take every training opportunity that presents itself and that you can seek out, including informal on-the-job training. Read. Observe. Ask questions. Do your homework. Don’t be too proud to ask those who work “for” you to become your teachers.

You have a great opportunity for self-coaching here. Figure out what you want to know about, set a timeline for when you want to know it, seek out learning opportunities, and track your progress.

Simply knowing the job isn’t enough to enable you to teach it effectively. You need to have presentation and training skills to transmit knowledge to others.

The first guideline for good teaching, then, involves what you do before you start.

Prepare to Present

A coach approach to preparing for training focuses on the learner. What do you want the other person (or people) to know? What are the key goals of the training? How do your employees learn best (being told, being shown, being allowed to do)? How do you teach best?

Think through the process or material you’re going to teach. Break it down into steps. Keep things as simple and direct as you can, and be careful not to skip anything. If you’ve done the task for a long time, you may not even think about some of the steps involved. Approach it from the point of view of someone new to the task, the machinery, or the process.

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As you start planning the training, keep a few preparation steps in mind. After adopting a learning-centered mindset and thinking about the processes you’ll be teaching, you may need to do some more research and outlining. Perform necessary research you need to do ahead of time. Then develop your outline, keeping it as simple as possible. Start filling out your content once you have an outline ready.

When developing your content, use simple, direct language. If workers need to know technical terms, use and explain those terms. If they don’t need them, don’t bring them up. Give them what they need—not what you want to teach. Rehearse your presentation. No matter how well you know the process, you need to practice explaining it. Go over the steps in your mind several times—first thing when you wake up, on your way to work, and again a few minutes before you start the training. If you have limited time, say a one-hour teleconference call or 90 minutes in a meeting room, rehearse with a stopwatch so that you know whether you are respecting the time limits. The more you rehearse, the less you’ll need your notes.

Practice key words and phrases you’ll need to use and any statistics you need to cite.

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Anticipate questions and practice answers. (If you get a question you can’t handle, admit that you don’t have an answer and make it your business to get one as soon as possible.)

Even five minutes of this kind of rehearsal pays real dividends in terms of your ability to communicate clearly and to get your trainees up and running at the level you expect.

Prepare to Demonstrate

You’ve got it all over a training manual or demonstration tape. You can get feedback, verbal and nonverbal, and you can answer questions. You can watch workers try things and see how well they understand. Most important, you can put your hands on the equipment and show while you tell.

Some learners do well with auditory learning (listening), others do better with visual learning (being shown), and some prefer kinesthetic (movement, hands-on) techniques. If you can use more than one technique (or all three), you’ll not only reach all your trainees, you’ll reinforce their learning.

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Work through the demonstration at least once and preferably a few times before you attempt it for trainees. If possible, work on the same equipment you’ll use for the demonstration. Be prepared for technology failures with hard-copy backups of material you’ll need (handouts, outlines, etc.).

Apply the KYHO Principle

After you’ve demonstrated the process and answered questions, step aside and let the trainees do it. Resist the temptation to do it for them the first time they falter. Stick to the Keep Your Hands Off (KYHO) principle. Answer questions. Give prompts. But keep your hands clasped behind your back.

Don’t show off your mastery. The teacher isn’t the star—even though you might have the spotlight on you for a while. The learner is the focus.

If the demonstration does not seem to be working for your trainees, take a few deep breaths, think through the process, and try it again. Let your trainees in on the fun. “Okay, guys. What am I doing wrong here?” Don’t try to fake it. Say, “I just did that to see if you were paying attention” only if that’s really the case. Listen to their responses. They will tell you what makes sense, what doesn’t. You can then respond in support of their learning.

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Also be aware that true learning takes practice. After you tell, show, and even let them do it once, they will still need practice until they are sure of themselves. Don’t expect 100 percent mastery as soon as the class is done. Be ready to support your trainees as needed, again, letting them do the learning.

Train for Small Successes

Teach enough, but not too much.

Don’t parcel out information in such small doses that they must keep coming back to you for each new step. (“As soon as you’ve logged into the intranet, I’ll come back and show you how to fill out this sales form.”) This fosters dependence, slows the learning, and frustrates learners. Give them enough information to let them carry out a process without you being there. Let them get into the process quickly enough to experience and appreciate it.

It’s the difference between making beginning guitar students practice three chords over and over for weeks and teaching them to play a simple three-chord song. The first approach is boring and frustrating. The second is fun (which is why they call it “playing,” not “working” the guitar).

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But don’t load on so much all at once that they’re bound to fail. Progress at the pace of the learner. If you’re training more than one person, and they’re progressing at different rates, separate them if you can, so the faster learner doesn’t rush the slower one past important steps, and the slower one doesn’t frustrate the speedy learner.

Offer praise and reinforcement if appropriate and if you’re comfortable doing it. Keep criticism to a minimum and your comments constructive—focused on how to improve, rather than on what’s going wrong. Don’t say anything that doesn’t seem honest and natural to you. Remember: What you say isn’t as important as what you let them do.

Foster Mastery and Independence

Never lose sight of your true goal as a trainer—to focus on other aspects of your job as a manager.

If they walk away from the training session convinced they did it all themselves, fine. You aren’t in this to get credit or to keep them dependent on you for training and information. You’re in it to coach workers to peak performance, including acquisition of new skills and techniques.

Smile if you hear them say, “I probably could have picked it up faster without any help.” They’re really saying that you did your job well.

Before, During, and After Training

New hires might come in with experience, certificates, and degrees attesting to their competence. But somehow they don’t seem to know what you thought they would.

They, like you, are victims of a changing work world where what we learned yesterday is no longer very helpful today. Your systems may not look anything like what the new hire worked with just a few months ago in school or at his or her previous job. An employee returning to the work-place after a time out for other pursuits may be several generations behind. Therefore, make sure you take the time necessary to address the issues specific to each stage of the process before moving on to the next phase.

Before You Start Training

Explain clearly what the learners are going to do and why they’re going to do it. Describe the specific goals. Define the desired outcomes.

If you just dive right in, you’re more likely to encounter snags and frustrations. It’s harder to do something right if you have to undo something wrong.

Take time here. It will save you time later. Also, by clearly delineating the goals and outcomes, you’ll know whether the training was successful.

If you’re training several people at a time, you’ll also need to kick off the session with some logistics. This may seem minor, but outlining when bathroom breaks can be taken and requesting that everyone silence their cell phones helps keep people focused and on task.

While You Train

Take it one step at a time, demonstrating, observing, commenting. Get feedback from the workers at each step. It’s a lot easier and less frustrating to keep them on track than to have to figure out where they are and get them back on track later. If you can adjust your material on the fly, the audience will have a far more satisfying learning experience. Anything interactive you can do (asking questions, role-playing if necessary, getting the trainees involved) will drive home your point and keep attendees attentive.

After You Train

Be ready with feedback for learners, and stay open to questions. Be prepared to get feedback from students on your training method.

Don’t assume that because you walked them through it once, they’ve got it forever. Some people can learn quickly, while others need to go through the process many times.

Don’t forget to follow up. Did you have handouts or copies of your slides for trainees? How about a pop quiz? A Q&A session or follow-up meeting scheduled? Make sure your employees get what you promise them. This will reinforce their learning, especially if they have written materials to refer to.

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Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd?

The best training often takes place one-on-one, creating an intense learning experience, which helps explain why some of the most effective training occurs spontaneously on the job. It also explains why you, and not a hired outside trainer, wind up doing a lot of the teaching.

However, in some situations, one-on-one training isn’t effective, because there’s too much attention on the individual learner, who might become overly self-conscious. That extra attention may not even be necessary, especially if the task requires a lot of practice and not much supervision. Sometimes you’ll need to teach employees in groups, not only to save time but because they’ll pick it up faster that way. They can then start explaining things to each other, reinforcing their learning and bringing you new viewpoints to consider.

Be prepared to deliver training via Webinar, live seminar, conference call, and even podcasting and written materials. The variety of training options available with modern technology makes imparting information easier than ever.

What Kind of Trainer Are You?

You’ve probably had gruff teachers and jovial teachers, distant teachers and teachers who wanted to be your pal, strict teachers and hang-loose teachers. What kind should you be?

You should be yourself. Of course, that means you should be your best self—prepared, focused, attentive. But it also means that you should train in a way that comes naturally to you. There are really only two basic qualities you must have to be a good trainer:

1. You have to know what you’re teaching.

2. You have to genuinely care about your students.

No matter how well you’ve seen a technique work when somebody else used it, if it feels phony to you when you try it, don’t do it. Be authentic—it helps others connect to you and feel at ease.

To take a coach approach, reflect on your own skills, capabilities, and values. If you’re a good storyteller, then using anecdotes and examples can boost your training abilities. If you’re methodical and protocol-oriented, you will be good at outlining a step-by-step process. If you’re a natural speaker, then you’ll be able to command attention and keep a training session focused on its goals and keep it from getting derailed.

What do you bring to the table? List your skills and abilities, and you’ll start to see how they can translate into good training techniques.

Four Stages of Learning

There are four stages to learning as a person moves toward mastering a process. Knowing these stages and being aware of where your employees fall in them will help you be a better trainer (and coach). The stages are:

Unconscious Incompetence

Conscious Incompetence

Conscious Competence

Unconscious Competence

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Unconscious Incompetence

In this stage, a person is not even aware that he doesn’t know something. This is before learning takes place. A good analogy is a preteen who’s thinking about driving a car. At age 12, before taking a class or getting behind the wheel, she thinks it will be easy, because she sees her parents driving like it’s no big deal. She’s not yet aware that driving takes concentration, knowledge of road laws, multitasking of steering and working pedals, plus dealing with all the distractions on the road.

Conscious Incompetence

In this stage, the learner becomes aware that she doesn’t know something and has to focus hard on acquiring new information. She is suddenly aware that she doesn’t really know what’s going on! This might be when a 15-year-old is in Driver’s Ed class and starts to realize that driving is a lot more complicated than just turning a wheel. She starts to learn how a car works, when to change the oil, defensive driving techniques, and more. She finally gets to do some practice driving with her instructor and is nearly overwhelmed at how much there is to think about! She drives very slowly and cautiously, even with the encouragement from her teacher.

When you’re training employees, they will start at this phase as soon as you begin imparting information. It takes a while at this stage before they feel comfortable moving to the next one. Don’t rush them.

Conscious Competence

In this stage, learners are starting to get it! The process or information is coming more easily and naturally, but it still takes deliberate effort to do it right. They are successful, but still need some concentration to get there.

In terms of driving a car, conscious competence would be reached when the student has a lot more practice in the driver’s ed car, and even after she gets her learner’s permit and can drive while supervised by her parent. She no longer has to remind herself to put on her turn signal or check her mirrors constantly, as these behaviors are becoming more automatic. She is more comfortable driving and is doing a good job.

Conscious competence will be developed in your employees once you release them from training and allow them to go out and do. The more hands-on they get, the faster they will reach this stage.

Unconscious Competence

The information has been learned, processed, and internalized. Now it’s second nature—the learner doesn’t even have to think about it, it’s done automatically.

Our driving student has gotten her license and regularly drives a car with no mishaps. She’s so good at driving that it’s second nature, and she can relax her focus a bit (while still staying attentive). Sometimes, she finds herself at the mall, even though that wasn’t where she intended to go!

With enough practice, your employees will reach this stage, where whatever you trained them on is just part of what they do naturally.

The Learner’s Point of View

Let’s invite your students to tell you what they need from you as you train them in the workplace. Follow these nine simple principles, and everyone will get the most out of every training session.

1. Remove or minimize the distractions. I’ll give you my attention while you teach me, but you’ve got to do your part by eliminating anything that will get in the way. (This is why we recommend covering logistics at the beginning of a session.)

Potential distractions include

cell phones and text messages

“buzz” (background noise)

“flicker” (irrelevant visual stimulus)

an audience

need for breaks (snacks, restroom)

2. Respect my intelligence. I’m your learner. You’re my coach, trainer, and manager. You know what I need to know and how I should do it. But that doesn’t make you smarter than me.

I may be ignorant about this process, but I’m not stupid. There’s a big difference. Ignorance is a temporary condition. I can learn—if you’ll help me and let me.

Don’t talk down to me. Don’t lecture me. Don’t disrespect me. If you do, I can guarantee that you won’t teach me anything because I will shut you out.

3. Respect my time. I know you’re busy. You’ve got all that important manager stuff to do. But I’m busy, too. I’ve got worker stuff to do, and my stuff is as important to me as your stuff is to you. (This is why we suggest rehearsing with a stopwatch.)

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I’ve also got a life outside the workplace, just as you do. I want to have time to live and enjoy that life.

I don’t resent good training. I need it, and I want to learn. But I do resent unnecessary training, interruptions, and repetition after I’ve already got it. Don’t make me run laps just to keep me busy, coach. Let me get it and get on with it.

4. Take one step at a time. You can do this stuff in your sleep. But to me it’s new. So give me the big picture, what it’s supposed to look like when it’s done, and then let me take it one step at a time.

5. Take small enough steps. Your definition of a “step” might not be the same as mine. Match your pace to mine in the beginning. I’ll soon be able to keep up with you.

6. Build on what I know. This process is new to me, but I know a lot about a lot of things.

When you teach me the new intranet reporting system, don’t forget that I already know how to use a computer.

When you teach me how to motivate a potential customer, don’t forget that I was a customer for a lot of years before I started training to be a salesperson.

Use experience—yours and mine—to teach me. For example, do you handle that foot pedal the same way you feather the clutch on a car? Does the tug I’m supposed to feel when the gear engages feel anything like the way a trout feels on the line when it’s mouthing the bait but hasn’t swallowed the hook yet?

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I may not understand the physics of jet propulsion, but I know what happens when you blow up a balloon and let it go without tying it off.

If you can explain what I don’t know in terms of what I do know, I’ll pick it up a lot faster. If you aren’t sure how much I know, I’ve got a simple suggestion: Ask me. Let me show you what I know. If I’m doing it wrong—or in a way you don’t want me to use—you’ll see that, and we can work on it.

7. Give me lots of feedback. Tell me how I’m doing.

I’d prefer you tell me nicely, with encouragement. You can skip the sarcasm, and you don’t have to raise your voice. But however you do it, let me know if I’m doing it the way you want me to.

“Yes” is as important as “no.” “Good job!” is just as helpful as “Not that way.” Don’t overdo the praise, and don’t wait until I screw up to talk to me.

Don’t just tell me what I’m doing wrong. Tell me how to do it right. In fact, if you just tell me how to do it right, you don’t even have to bother telling me I’m wrong.

8. Don’t let it get away. If you want me to really remember what we went over, give me another shot at it the same day, ideally about two hours after the first session. That will do me a lot more good than a review next week or even the next day. Reinforcing what I’ve learned promptly makes it stick.

9. Let it all settle. You did a great job, and I get it—I really do. But it seems to take a while for everything I learn to sink in. Don’t make me tackle another new project right away. My subconscious needs to chew on this for a bit before we move on to more new stuff.

An Ideal Training Session

Now that you’ve heard about learning from your employees, let’s take a look at the process again from your point of view, which is similar. The following five steps provide a basic structure for any training session.

Step 1. Lay it all out. Explain the problem and the outcome you want.

Step 2. Get them doing it. The sooner workers get their hands on the task, the more involved they’ll be, and the better they’ll learn the process.

Step 3. Give feedback as you go. Anticipate and answer questions and guide the process each step of the way. Let them know how they’re doing.

Step 4. Give it a rest. Let a tough lesson settle while workers do something relatively unchallenging.

Step 5. Reinforce it. Review the same day. If possible, it’s best to review about two hours after the initial training session.

How Will You Know If It Worked?

As with any other task in the workplace, you need a clear definition of what you want to accomplish in the training session and a way to evaluate whether you’ve accomplished it.

Before you started the training, you probably asked yourself, “What do I want or need to teach them?” Perhaps you also asked the more important question: “What do I want them to learn?” You should also ask these two key questions:

How will I know what they’ve learned? (evidence procedure)

How should they act after the training?

With many processes, these questions are easy to answer. Either they can do it or they can’t. They will improve with practice. But if they’re clearly on the right track, that’s success.

However, other types of training are more difficult to evaluate. Quality training and sensitivity training fall into this category. Unfortunately, these types of training often fail, not for lack of good intentions but for lack of clear objectives and a way to measure or observe the results of the training.

Any time you plan to train workers, build into your plan a way to follow up. Keep it simple, and tell the learners what will be expected of them: “We’ll try this again in a week to see how you do. I hope that you’ll all be able to do it with confidence.”

Discuss specific performance objectives and timelines. Don’t end the training session until everybody knows what’s supposed to happen next.

After the training, follow up as promised, especially if you need to send out more materials. Have an evaluation form or survey about the training to help you determine if it was effective (and how to improve).

Training need not be formal, and it shouldn’t be frightening for you or for employees.

Break down the process into manageable sections.

Get them doing instead of just listening.

Follow up.

You are the first and best source of on-the-job, on-the-spot training. Do your job well, bring in a coach approach, and watch employees grow in mastery, confidence, and productivity.

The Coach’s Checklist for Chapter 8

Before you train others to do a task, make sure you have it mastered yourself.

Bring a coach approach, focused on the learning, to your training.

Break down the process you want to teach into steps and keep them simple.

Demonstrate how to do a task, then KYHO (keep your hands off) while the trainee begins to do it.

Set up the training so the trainee experiences a series of small successes leading to the big success of mastery.

Be aware of the four stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.

Be empathetic with learners, show them respect, and help them build on what they know.

Make sure you have a way to know whether learners have mastered the tasks you’re training them in.