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Peggy Salvatore

Peggy Salvatore writes on business and health care issues, and she is a proud mother of three.

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When Your SME Goes Live: Review the Material During Your TTT Session

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Yes, it’s true. When you are conducting a train-the-trainer session, you need to work with your subject matter expert (SME) to train them how to teach their own material. It sounds silly. In fact, your SME may not want to be taught how to teach their own material! But as part of a train-the-trainer session, make sure you include this vital component.

To review from last week’s blog on train-the-trainer (TTT) sessions, they need to include three main topics:

  • The material to be taught
  • Vocal quality and body position
  • Classroom management

This week, we will explore how to make sure your SME is teaching the program that you have designed together.

TTT for the Unconscious Competent

In my book Working with SMEs, I discuss different types of subject matter experts including the type you most often will work with – a brilliant unconscious competent. Briefly, an unconscious competent is someone who knows their subject so well that they don’t even know how much they know.

In a class with targeted material and a limited amount of time, this can get very messy. As the SME begins to teach the real class, they will think of a million examples and stories from their career. Their love for the topic is the whole reason you want them to teach the class. It is that enthusiasm, however, that can become a runaway train. The SME may be very engaging and the class may love the session. However, without a little structure, the actual training material and lesson plan may be lost.

Therefore, before you put your SME in front of a class, remind them to follow the training program they worked with you to develop.  You can achieve this most easily by asking them to teach a module to you and a few other people using a clock and the timed, written materials. When they teach a lesson to you and are required to stick to the facilitator’s guide, you will both discover:

  • How well your timing actually works
  • How much flexibility the trainer can take to add their own stories and examples
  • If their discussion includes all the points in your learning objectives

Demonstration, Observation, Feedback

Ideally, you will teach the entire class as written to a group of trainers-in-training who will experience the course in its entirety before getting in front of a class. This allows you to get feedback and make any final tweaks in timing, activities and content level.  After you’ve demonstrated the way the class is designed to be taught, turn it over to the trainers to teach back to you. Give each trainee one section of the program to teach; it is unlikely you will have time for each trainee to teach back the entire course.

Some of your trainers who are not SMEs will probably follow your script pretty closely. It is your SME-trainers who most commonly may take the topic and run with it.

As you observe your new trainers, the non-SMEs will learn a lot from listening to the experts. And the SMEs will learn the limits of teaching within the structure of a designed learning experience.  Everybody wins in this scenario.

Finally, make sure to also observe your new trainers for their first few classes. When your SME actually goes live, you can be guaranteed that it will be a different experience for them. Your ongoing support through the transition to teaching real classes is very valuable. Hold their hand until they become an experienced trainer who knows how to teach their subject in a linear way.

The students will benefit and the SMEs will enjoy the experience much more as they become increasingly successful.

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When Your SME Goes Live

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microphone  This is the first in a series on conducting train-the-trainer sessions with your SMEs.

Your SME is one of the best resources on the subject of your training program, and that means they can be the perfect classroom facilitator. Most SMEs need some training on how to present material, whether or not they consider themselves seasoned speakers. For this reason, training professionals often include training specifically to teach SMEs how to be live trainers, and these classes are called Train-the-Trainer or TTT.

When a company frees some of its valuable subject matter expertise resources to train its other employees, it is a great opportunity to maximize the SME’s value. Here’s why:

  1. SMEs always have more in their heads. You capture some of that good stuff in a live training session.
  2. Live students will give immediate feedback about the content and level of the training so you know immediately when you are hitting the mark and when you need to adjust the material.
  3. Usually a company’s most valued SME assets not only have a lot of knowledge inside their heads, but their style and demeanor reflect company standards, too. Their personal style is also imparted indirectly as other employees observe the SME’s behavior during the training program.

What Does a Train-the-Trainer Program Include?

It’s a great idea to get your SMEs in front of your learners. It is also an even better idea to prepare them appropriately so you can make the most of the experience. Make sure to conduct a TTT session with your SME before you set them loose on your employees. Even if a SME is accustomed to making presentations, the learning environment is special and different. They need to be prepared to be successful as a facilitator and trainer.

TTT sessions need to:

  • Go over the material to be taught
  • Review presentation skills including body positioning and vocal quality
  • Cover methods for classroom management

In the next few weeks, I will discuss each of these items in more detail.

If you have experiences working with SMEs as trainers, please share your experiences in the comments below.

 

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Validating Your SME’s Information Without Invalidating Your SME

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question/Comment from Dale: Thank you Peggy for the useful tips on dealing with SMEs. Lots of good stuff here! In your section on the Not Quite Expert SME you recommend to loop in other knowledgeable people, but you don’t spend any time talking about the best way to do that. In my experience, I would never go behind the SME’s back. I would ask the SME who I am working with if there is anyone else they would want to weigh in on this content. I am concerned that inexperienced designers would act independently and undermine trust. On the review front, I would ask the SME who they would recommend to proof the content. And, we ALWAYS do dry runs before any content is put out. 

 

Thank you for this great question, Dale, Without trying to be too self-serving, I cover this in the book Working With SMEs but we couldn’t cover everything in the pre-learning section of the webinar.

If you find that you have a SME that isn’t an expert, you really need to first try to address it with the person themselves if that is possible. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the assigned SME will tell you upfront they aren’t the right person which gives you both a good place to start finding the right person. You are right, you never want to go behind anybody’s back and undercut their trust. These can be very sensitive political situations, too, depending who your SME is, right? So, yes, your instinct to tread carefully is a really good one.

One of the things someone mentioned to me when they were reading a first draft of the book is that sometimes you will get a SME who doesn’t want the task so they’ll tell you they don’t know or they aren’t the right person just to get off the hook. I don’t know how you sort that out if you aren’t on the inside of the department and have a good handle on that. But it is worth mentioning to make sure that if they say they aren’t the right person, that you believe them and then enlist their help to find the right person.

However, if you have a SME and you aren’t getting what you need, and they don’t want to admit it, you should document that. At some point, if you try to fill in information gaps in your training program and you aren’t getting answers from them, you might go to your manager and tell them the problem and show them your documentation. If you aren’t assigned a SME who really can give you what you need for your training program, something probably went wrong when the project manager asked for SMEs to be assigned. Another issue could be that the SME is really afraid for their job if they think that they cannot give you good content. They may be covering up and you really just have to sort that out.

When you are an outside training firm, identifying the SMEs on the project can be part of the Project Charter or Scope at the outset where it is defined who the client company will assign to work with you. Then you have that document to fall back on, where you can say, look, this is what we need to write this program and it looks like this person can’t help us. When it’s an internal training department, the head of training could be involved in helping you solve the problem.

I agree with you, I think you are right about asking for another SME to put an eye on the program. There should be several layers of signoffs anyway because even though your SME may be the most knowledgeable person in the organization about your topic, the SME is very rarely the person who is writing the checks or has responsibility for the final product. The person who has final authority for the project is the person who has the responsibility to approve your training program in a signoff procedure.

 

 

 

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Time is Your SME’s Most Precious Commodity

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Michelle: What do you find to be the most challenging type of SME and why?

The book Working With SMEs identifies eight different types of subject matter experts and gives you a plan for getting the best result with each style. They are:

1. The Speedy SME

2. The Scattered SME

3. The Shortcut SME

4. The Defensive SME

5. The Not-Quite-Expert SME

6. The Overcommitted SME

7. The Interrupted SME

8. The Reckless Reviewer

At the heart of most of these types of subject matter experts is the fact that they are in demand and overworked, so they may appear scattered, unfocused and in a hurry. The tools and tips for handling these issues usually simply requires making sure the SME has ample foreknowledge of what you will cover in your session, and that you confirm they have put aside a block of time that is dedicated to working on a training program with you.

For these reasons, I find the most challenging SME is the one who is too busy to really be doing the job of working on the training program. They are the most difficult not because they don’t care – because they usually care a lot – but it is hard to get an appointment, hard to keep the appointment, hard to keep their attention when you have them, and really tough to get a review of the material when you need it.

I find it most difficult because I think it is the hardest to overcome this limitation both for you and for them. They don’t have enough hours in the day, they may not be able to delegate this particular task to someone – or anything else on their plate for that matter – so sometimes the whole project is on hold waiting for them to become available.

This one situation comes particularly to mind. I wrote educational materials for administrators of a state program, and we wrote brochures on how to assemble a non-profit board, things like that. It was very difficult to get reviews, approvals and signoffs from people in the state capital in Harrisburg who had lots of other things tugging at them, and we were in Philadelphia – out of sight, out of mind.

As you know, these projects have timelines, resources lined up, and schedules to be met. The training requirements are usually already scheduled around a certain week or perhaps something needs to be put up on the learning system to meet a deadline for regulatory compliance. That “something” means you are under pressure, the clock is running, money is being spent while you are waiting and other resources – maybe graphic designers or printers – are all waiting for approvals so they can do their jobs.

For all these reasons, I think availability is the most important thing. If you can get your SME and get their attention, you can usually overcome all these other issues. You are, after all, working with a pro!

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Make the Most of Your F2F Time with Your SME

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Sarah, Part 2:

Do you have a set of questions that you use for most information-gathering sessions?

We talked about the value of having some standard opening questions and a standard last question in last week’s post. This week we will explore ways to make the most of your face-to-face time to ask questions that take the best advantage of the personal interview.

My best example is my current project. I am in the final stages of writing a book for a retired CEO who has taught leadership classes. I have loads of class notes and material, but the value of our weekly two-hour interviews is that we are uncovering the kind of detail that wouldn’t make it into his class notes. During our talks, he mentions extra materials from classes and seminars he has taught that helps the book tremendously. When you familiarize yourself with information before the interview, the interviews really are for, what journalists call, color.

In face-to-face interviews you get a sense of context and the “why” behind certain facts or recommended courses of action. It is one level of detail to say, “Involve your employees in customer contact”. It is another level of impact to tell a story about the time he took an employee off the manufacturing line along on a  business trip to Turkey, the results it won for the customer and the employee’s improved attitude toward his job.

I am always learning something new about how to improve the process. With this particular subject matter expert, I record all our sessions, something I recommend for all your SME interviews. What I learned from this encounter is that he says something useful as he walks in the door and then may throw out another important fact as he leaves. I have learned to click on the record button the minute I see him and I don’t click stop until he is gone. When you are working with someone who is colorful and constantly throwing out gems of information, catch every little bit. Many of your high-level (unconscious competent) SMEs will fit into this niche.

As one last little tidbit, some of his commentary is so impactful that we may use some of the audio from the interview sessions in the materials as links to mp3s. When you are dealing with a charismatic leader or person with some significance, you don’t want to lose anything. Their own words are often the very best, so capture and use audio and video whenever possible so your expert can connect directly with the learner.

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Standard Questions to Ask Your Subject Matter Experts

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Sarah:

Do you have a set of questions you use for most information-gathering sessions?

Yes. I have standard set of opening and closing questions leftover from my reporter days, and they are good ones when you are gathering info for a training program too.

For the standard first question, check their name, spelling, title, division, business unit, contact info just to make sure those things are correct. It seems like a simple thing, but it is good to have it. If you are an internal to the organization, you will probably have those things at your fingertips, but if you are an outside training organization, you want to double check your information with your client. More than once, a person’s job title changed from the time a training project started and to the time it was completed.

For the standard last question,  ask them what you didn’t ask them. For example, say, “Is there anything else you can think of that I didn’t ask you that is important for the learner to know? What would you like the learner to know that we haven’t covered?” This is a good question because you may find out that their mind goes somewhere else completely on the matter, and you can pick up some good information with that last question. Assume you don’t know what you don’t know.

As for the messy middle, if I don’t know the topic or the person, I will ask for materials to study before I meet with them. Ask for  journal articles, checklists, slide presentations and, any material they may have in their files to give you some grounding in the topic. And then, I develop a set of questions out of those materials.

Preparation can make the interview process go more quickly and smoothly than if you enter an informational session with your subject matter expert without doing your homework first.

 

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Preparing You and Your SME for an Interview

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Sarah:

Do you send SME’s pre-work or questions ahead of time or prefer to wait until you meet face-to-face? Best practices for this would be helpful.

Yes, if you think that your subject matter expert may need to assemble some materials for you or in any way prepare something to give you, you can send them an outline of your interview in advance. Usually, when a SME is asked to participate in a learning program they already understand their focus. However, you can send them questions before you meet with them is you want them to think about a specific topic in some detail, but it isn’t usually necessary.

If you need your SME to provide content for a system or process you’ve already outlined, it helps to provide that in advance so they can think about how their material is best presented in that format.

On the other hand, if I anticipate that the subject is difficult or complex, I ask for pre-work from the SME so I can prepare.

  • Do they have articles or books that they’ve written that they can provide to you for background?
  • Do they have best practices that they’ve codified and can give you with a template, list or system?
  • Have they given a speech on the topic and have a slide presentation that would be helpful?
  • Are there newspaper or journal articles written about them or their topic?

Ask them if they have those types of background materials because when you’ve done a little advance homework, you are more able to be focused in your questioning.

Essentially, anything that you can do to prepare both yourself and your SME for an in-depth interview session will help you both have a more productive session.

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More Input on Incentivizng your Subject Matter Expert

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Denise:

Other than the great feeling of “I’ve helped my company out…” are there standard incentives you suggest to offer a SME who you are taking away from their job – where they may be losing money?

We received several questions about incentivizing SMEs, so I thought the topic deserved more attention.

It’s hard to pull people away from jobs where they are paid for performance to do something that doesn’t overtly result in monetary rewards. Recently, one client pulled district sales managers away from their sales duties to help with training, and they got a lot of resistance to participate for that reason.

We kicked around offering a bonus for being part of the program and giving them some kind of recognition, certificate or award. Another option is to require training as part of the job responsibilities that will be reflected in their reviews and job performance. In the case of the above-mentioned situation, there was resistance and part of the program had to be severely cut back due to a lack of participation.

In the book Working with SMEs I talk a little about resistance  from people who, for any number of reasons, don’t want to take time out of their regular responsibilities to be a subject matter expert for your training program. One of the recommendations is to fall back on “you are helping the company out” and remind them that their coworkers and colleagues who are trained on these materials are going to be working with them.

It is a tough issue because you need to incent people somehow. If you require an employee to participate in developing or delivering training, you have to make it worth their while. If you require it and they perceive that they are losing money, or losing time on a pet project by being involved as a SME in your training program, you may encounter some attitude and pushback. It isn’t fun for you, and quite honestly, you are probably not getting everything you need from your SME, either.

I am interested in hearing more ideas from people who have successfully negotiated this problem.

 

 

 

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Should You Handhold Your SME Through Their Review of Your Content?

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Amy:

When having SMEs review material for content, what is your approach? Do you prefer a facilitated session to walk through the material or allow them to review the material independently to provide feedback? Or does it depend on the type of SME you are dealing with?

I think it depends more on the material than the SME. If the material is very involved, or requires many steps for example, you would want to review it with them. For example, if you are reviewing documentation for a new software program, everyone is still learning what was in each field and drop down menu, so it is good to be with your SMEs for reviews. You will want to ask questions to clarify the content of fields, review drop downs menus and steps for accessing the program such as new password protocols.

 

Sometimes the material is straightforward, especially if your SME gave you a lot of great information to work at the outset. You may have detailed slides or journal articles that they’ve authored in which case their review of the content is probably going to be rather perfunctory. In that case, you can probably write most of your training from their content with pretty much confidence. During the review, they can independently check your word choices, context, how you’ve framed things, review questions and answers if you’ve written those, and check case studies to make sure they feel authentic. But, no, in the case where you have a lot of good content to write the project, I don’t think you would need to be with them for that review. In fact, I personally would rather let them have time on their own to review it and think about it.

I cover this topic in the book in more detail including review sign off sheets and a flow chart for documenting processes.

If readers have  experience handling complex reviews with subject matter experts, I’d like to hear how you’ve handled it. Contact me at workingwithsmes@gmail.com with questions, or leave a message in the comment section.

 

 

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Dueling SMEs! Resolving Information Discrepencies

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Sarah:

Can you talk about ways to resolve information discrepancies between SMEs. Example: the SMEs have very different methods of performing the work and have strong opinions that “their way is right”.

 

I love this question because it happens! First, I am assuming you have presented this material to both of them and they have both dug in their heels. Without the two – or more! – coming to an agreement, here are a few ways to handle it:

 

  1. If you have two subject matter experts who are at very different levels in the organization or different levels of experience, the more experienced one can trump the junior SME simply because a. there is a higher probability they are correct (although not always!) and b. 9 times out of 10 it will politically be the wiser move.

 

  1. If you have two highly regarded subject matter experts of relatively equal weight, you have a sticky wicket, for sure. In that case, the stakeholder in charge of the project who is usually also the person writing the checks or providing the resources, gets to make the call. They may choose one over the other for any number of reasons having to do with personal preference, political considerations in the organization, seniority, favoritism, or any other factors that you may not know or care about. It is just your job to make sure you satisfy your client and that the information is correct to the best of your ability. That sometimes means deferring to the project owner, not the SME. The project owner will have to deal with the SMEs. That’s outside the scope of your job, although don’t be surprised if you end up taking the heat on something like that. Consider it all in a day’s work.

 

  1. A third option is calling in an outside expert to referee the information.  If everyone respects that person, it could be a solution. I’ve actually been in that situation, although in my experience the outside SME can really muddy the waters further. Not because they aren’t knowledgeable but because now the client is faced with more alternatives!  If your client is already confused, yikes! If you can, try to get the existing SMEs and the clients to come to an agreement using 1 or 2. I actually address this option in the book Working with SMEs in more detail because this situation was going on while I was writing it, so it was on my mind.

 

If readers have any more ideas about how to handle this situation, I’d be interested to hear them.