Articles » Training Trainers
Why are we the Last to be Trained?
The importance of Training Trainers
Twenty years ago I was promoted to the position of Training Manager for a large pharmaceutical company. The selection process was a little complicated and to this day I believe that I was chosen because I made the Vice President of Sales laugh at a company social function and I was the number one sales representative in my region at the time. Nothing else qualified me to be a trainer.
Twenty-one years ago, the reasoning behind the selection process was: Good representatives (subject matter experts) make good trainers and/or good managers. That reasoning is still the foundation of the process of selecting trainers and managers today. The missing piece of the puzzle is training. Good sales representatives are usually trained to be good sales representatives. Companies won’t leave that process to trial and error. Years of bad experiences have not always resulted in valuable lessons learned. We all know that a good subject matter expert does not always make a good trainer or a good manager. Yet, we repeat the failed process again and again. Companies have begun to train managers more frequently, however, trainers are usually still the last to be trained.
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