As a manager, your job is to reach or exceed certain goals. Many times those goals are sales targets, time frames or budgets. Usually, you have a team which will help you reach your goals - they become goals for the team.

At some point, you discover that your team lack some vital skills, or knowledge to reach your goal. That is when you need to put on the hat of the educator!

Another aspect is within JCI (and other organizations) where the leaders changes roles. When you give up your job to your predecessor, you need to transfer your knowledge to the new person. You need to teach him/her the important parts of the job.

There is a training under development at the very moment (with Thor-Erik) focusing on this particular side of leadership. The training will be ran for the second time at JCI Drammen next Monday, and focuses on two aspects - the adult learning process (and how it differs from that of children), and how to apply this as a leader. The training is a three hours one, giving you knowledge to start working your own skills.

training, educator, mentorblogg.com

Public speaking is increasingly important, and particularly so for anyone interested in leadership, politics or sports. This guide for students is viable for others too. It does come with quite an amount of advertisements, but if you see beyond those, you should be able to pick up a tip or two.

I want to comment on one point in partiular:

"Speak with conviction as if you are really believing in what you are saying."

I must admit that I never like talking about something that I do not believe in, but I am no politician either. The best tip I ever got myself was to add something personal, like a personal story or memory. The reasoning was that "you may not know a lot about the topic, but using an experience you have, you can relate to the topic, and tell the audience what the topic means to you".

Thus, there is no need to be an expert, or even know a lot about the topic - as long as you can relate to it, you are able to share your experience, ideas and thoughts.

And as my mentor said:  "I am not particularly interested in the topic itself (I may know everything there is to it), but what I really want is to know how YOU relate to the topic. I want YOU to be part of it." 

Is he right? 

As a trainer, it is important to be aware of what you are saying and writing. It seems to me like everything a trainer says, is accepted almost without any questioning from the participants.

A while back, I gave a training on computer security (which is what I tend to do). The participants where normal people, with only a basic level of computer knowledge. At this particular training, I wanted to use an assistant trainer so he could learn how to teach this stuff.

My assistant did very well indeed, explaining about virus, spam and bot-nets. He even managed to get the basic message through to this crowd - that security is about your own behaviors. And he also handled questions very well. Until one point, when a participant asked:

When I do trainings, I usually never answer that question directly. There are many reasons, one being that when an authority (like a trainer) starts to reply directly to such questions, many in the crowd will actually download and use that particular tool. Another reason is that the need is highly personalized - someone might need a full security solution, while others only need a small footprint AV-client. For me, being a professional security adviser, it is not a good idea to stand on the stage and say you should use one tool in particular. And - another reason is making errors - wich is perfectly human, but still embarrasing...Read on!

Anyway, my Assistant did not have this experience yet, so he answered:

And for sure, the followup question came:

And my assistant wrote and URL on the white-board. And please note the spelling:

If you happen to know Kaspersky, and know the correct spelling, you would most likely ask about the correct spelling. But since these participants did not know, they typed the URL, and hit enter. When you do that today (august 2008), you reach a search page only. But back in April 2008, you entered a false download page tricking you to download a security tool that would install a bot-net (in other words - it made you believe you where secure, while your computer in fact where hijacked by hackers).

At this particular training, I decided that the risk was small, and allowed the participants to experiment (we where using a lab setup with high level of security). The result was confusion at the start, before they (to my amusement) decided that the software was good, and their level of knowledge was at fault. Thus, they continued try.

After a while, I interrupted and told them the correct spelling of Kaspersky Antivirus , and told them to compare the two websites.

They where amused. My assitant a bit embarrased - not for the spelling error - but for insisting he had it right!

The point is that when you are doing a training, writing an article, or in any other way representing yourself, your company or an organization, make sure that you are right. And make sure BEFORE you enter the stage!

training, security, error

I have been invited to come to Lithuania the weekend 12. - 14. September 2008 for the JCI National Congress. This is an incredible opportunity to visit a country I only have read of so far.

The location of the event is the city Druskininkai, and according to their Tourist website , it is a place for leisure! For me, this means preparations of course. I never visit a new place without doing some research. I usually look into the history, their current situation, and their culture. I think awareness and interest is a key in order to succeed when dealing with different cultures. 

And did I mention food? I am a keen cook, but I am a bit too traditional when it comes to cooking. I tend to stick to a somewhat narrowminded menu. So when I go to foreign countries, I always try to taste the local food. To me, this serves as a taste which I can then try to reproduce back home, and I believe that food is a very important part of every culture. It gives me the opportunity to taste the country!

When in Lithuania, I will be the head trainer (HT) of JCI Presenter . There will be two assistant trainers (AT) too. The secret with the new trainings in JCI, is that it is the ATs that are conducting the trainings, while the HT (me) just make sure they know what and how to do the things. This method allows for development of younger, better trainers. As soon as they are deemed good enough, they will become head trainers themselves, and can start helping develop even more trainers. 

In addition to JCI Presenter, I will do the first international run of the training Coach to Lead. This training has taken Norway with storm (well, maybe a bit exagerated...) , and is now ready for international success too! 

I have attached the program and the invitation to the national congress in Lithuania. May we meet there? 

Testing a training is vital in order to confirm the ideas, structure and content. Further, testing is vital in order to recieve feedback and see what works and what does not work. I tend to constantly adopt and adjust my trainings depending on the audience, but testing serves another purpose.

When you have designed your training, you have spent a lot of time playing around with things to say, things to do, and when to say it. Most importantly, you should have been spending a lot of time asking yourself -

• Why do I want to say this?
• What is the purpose of this exersice? 
• Can I say this differently?
• What options do I have to reach my goal (the objectives of the training)?
• What can I expect from the audience by doing this?
• How can I get the participants to do what I want them to do?

As you continue with your training, you develop - and try to follow - a red line. You add exersices to have the participants experience what you try to train them in, and you add times to reflect.

But at some point, you really need to take your ideas and theories from the drawing board and into life. And this is when you need to test your training. I still remember a few embarrasing moments where I had made a training and went straight to the client, recieving the unexpected. 

For this particular training, we (Thor-Erik and I) asked JCI Oslo to set up a training for us - i.e. - a session where we could run our training as we thought it should be, and then have the participants discuss and give their feedback on the content, the exersices and the red line. And the JCI Oslo Local President Farooq Baign accepted this challenge and gathered eight participants one tuesday evening. 

They spent a few hours on the training, and then they gave it back to us. We got some thoughtprovocing feedback, and ideas on how to improove the structure. We also where told how we could narrow down the definition and thus make it much clearer how to reach our objectives. 

Based on this test run, we went back to the drawing board. After endless nights; tears and pulling hair, we finally arrived at a training that is the standard of quality we know our participants requires. 

Thank you Farooq & JCI Oslo for this test run!