Today a colleague trained me on a task. My eyes were glazed and pained from concentration. After 45 minutes I walked away without a clue what to do. What happened? They were the experts…why didn’t I get it?
It seems almost everywhere you go, there’s the perception that subject matter experts make great trainers. Why not, right? They know so much about the topic, and they’re eager to tell you all about it. Pause here. Think of the last time a SME tried to teach you something. Maybe your mother helped you bake her special dessert. Your co-worker about Excel. Your spouse reading IKEA instructions. What did you learn? How did it feel to learn from them and why?
SME’s definitely know their stuff. That’s why they’re called experts. But they don’t necessarily know the best what to teach what they know. Often they’re so deep in the thick of it they can’t see where the learning begins and ends. They can lose perspective on key points that need to get across. To a SME, all the information is crucial; the concept of less is more doesn’t register.
As trainers we need SME’s. They provide not only a wealth of knowledge, but insight into roles we can’t get otherwise. They hold a very critical role in the instructional design process. Learning how to work with SME’s is essential to producing great training.
It seems every time I facilitate Train the Trainer someone will anxiously ask “How can I teach if I don’t know anything about the topic?” The idea of teaching something foreign seems as ridiculous as stepping into a pool of piranhas – you will get eaten alive. Really, this is the art of facilitation. Like an actor who doesn’t need to know all the lines, a trainer doesn’t need to know all the content. What they do need are the skills to transfer learning. The first rule of training: learning is about the students. What do they need to get out of it? Building from this view means the training will be heard, loud and clear.
Spruce Learning 