Training Stands Alone Together

Written by: John Gianopoulos

When an instructor faces a room of students, we seem to stand alone. When all goes well we’re the Rock Star!. But when all goes wrong ours is the only face people see. Many instructors get the blame when events beyond our control happen: technicians setup a room wrong, the systems crashed, books never arrived, course ware contained several major errors, etc…

These events cause many instructors to receive complaints they couldn’t effect at one time or another. Here are a few:

• Instructor didn’t know what he was doing…
• Systems kept crashing and teacher couldn’t fix it
• Nothing worked, instructor was [no good]
• Presenter couldn’t control the room
• Class was too fast (and in the same class, “Class was too slow”)

But we often forget the instructor is not alone. Many people helped us earn that place in front of the room; the technicians who set up and maintain the equipment, the administrator who orders and delivers our course ware, the manager who gives us the required time to study and prep for courses and certifications, our coworkers and peers who help with difficult concepts and share great analogies, the sales people who sell our services and keeps our paychecks coming in, and so on.

We instructors do stand alone, but we are not by ourselves. It would be nice if customers acknowledge those others who control events beyond the instructors’ control, but it would also be good for us instructors to remember all the people who helped make a class possible when things go great, as well as when things go wrong. Pay back does happen; I’d rather receive a dividend than a loss!

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