Training trainers: between active listening and adapting to new challenges

Can you tell us about your personal background and what motivated you to specialise in training trainers?

After completing my higher education in this field in France, I spent 15 years in communications management at various companies in Switzerland, notably at Fnac Suisse SA.

In 2009, thanks to a restructuring, I took a new direction in my career and embarked on a training programme.

In order to validate my practice, I obtained a Swiss federal trainer's certificate in 2012 and five years later, I became a full-time independent trainer. 

I have been working in this sector for over 12 years: my experience and federal certification have led several institutes I work for to entrust me with training their trainers.

What do you think are the main challenges facing trainers today?

In my opinion, our primary challenge lies in the diversity of our learners (in terms of age, experience, level, etc.) and their learning styles: our audiences are often very heterogeneous, and we must «cater to everyone» or risk seeing half of them drop out...

Afterwards, the question inevitably arises of technological developments, which are as worrying as they are promising in terms of new possibilities.

What essential skills must a good trainer possess in order to maximise the impact of their teaching?

They are distilled according to the circumstances: when creating a training course, a good trainer relies not only on their analytical and summarising skills to develop the content, but also on significant adaptability, because a good training course is, above all, one that is designed and tailored to its audience.

When delivering training, good public speaking skills and solid facilitation skills are essential. Not to mention listening and empathy, which enable you to adapt to your audience and tailor your content as you go along...

How do you adapt your training methods to the individual needs of each trainer?

First and foremost, by practising active listening: the key is to get the trainer to talk about their own issues and respond to them. Ideally, you should prepare a broad theoretical overview of the topics to be covered and then quickly move on to the interactive part where the trainer can ask questions, talk about their own experiences, etc.

What innovative tools or techniques do you use to make your training courses more effective and engaging?

The idea is to offer materials that enable learners to focus and maintain their attention, regardless of their learning style (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic): animations, videos and lots of interaction...

How do you assess the progress and skills acquired by the trainers you train?

The most effective tool remains observation in real-life situations: observing trainers giving their lessons allows you to assess their ability to put the skills they have acquired into practice.

The following interview gives them the opportunity to conduct a self-assessment and identify areas for improvement.

In your opinion, what are the most common mistakes made by novice trainers, and how can they avoid them?

Information overload and time management.

It is tempting to cover the subject exhaustively... and it is often very difficult to estimate how long a lesson will take, at the risk of having too much... or not enough! To remedy this, it is necessary to first define the content according to the learners and then have several independent lessons that can be used... or not... without the content losing its meaning. The ideal approach is to always set aside time for theory and to have several practical applications, with flexible duration.

Novice trainers also fear silence and develop a natural tendency to monopolise the conversation, neglecting interaction with their learners. This is usually linked to a lack of self-confidence during their first training sessions. The remedy: encourage learner participation and organise lots of practical activities.

How has digitalisation transformed the field of trainer training, and how do you integrate these technologies into your courses?

Above all, it has democratised access to training: online platforms offer broader and more flexible access to all types of training, reducing geographical and time constraints. Using these technologies is important for varying content and activities.

Can you share with us a memorable experience or success from a training course you have delivered?

I had to lead an online training session for language teachers, who were clearly annoyed at having to listen to someone teaching them their job when they had been practising their profession for so many years... The training began in an icy, hostile silence. Being online, I couldn't rely on the ’magic’ of face-to-face interaction to break the ice... So I forgot about the planned programme and started by sharing experiences on the subject. At the end of the session, they didn't want to log off!

How do you see the role of trainer evolving in the coming years, particularly in light of global challenges such as artificial intelligence and distance learning?

The role of the trainer is changing: they will have to shift from being a dispenser of knowledge to a learning facilitator, helping learners to build their own knowledge and develop their critical thinking skills.

In my opinion, AI represents more of an opportunity than a threat: it allows for the development of tailor-made content and optimises preparation time by taking care of certain repetitive tasks, such as correcting exercises or generating content.

Distance learning is already happening and proving to be very effective, particularly in a flipped classroom system. However, I remain convinced that learners are primarily looking for social interaction (with the trainer and other learners) in training, and after COVID, we found that many of them were very happy to return to face-to-face learning.