This is the third of four posts on tips for training your subject matter expert to be polished in front of learners.

To review from our previous weeks, train-the-trainer sessions – or TTT sessions – need to include three main topics:

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

This week, we will explore vocal quality and body position to ensure your material can be seen, heard and remembered.

Presentation Training is Essential

Except for a largely untrained rock band experience, I didn’t have any real experience in front of an audience until I spent a few years with Toastmasters. For anyone who wants to truly understand presentation, Toastmasters provides the ultimate education. Not everyone has the time or proximity to take advantage of a Toastmasters chapter, but everyone who gets in front of a group as a speaker, trainer or facilitator needs the skills it teaches.

To get any real value out of a program like Toastmasters or a certified facilitation course, you need months, if not years, to become truly polished and comfortable. Let’s assume you don’t have that kind of time to get ready, or get someone else ready, to present a class or facilitate a meeting. Now what?

When you are training your trainers, if your SME can nail down a few basic behaviors the material can be seen, heard and remembered. I recommend reinforcing basic speaking skills even for seasoned trainers during your train-the-trainer session. Refreshers are good for everyone. Even seasoned SME-trainers can use a little reminding about basic presentation skills.

Be Seen, Be Heard, Be Clear

Entire books have been written on speaking well and body language. For brevity, I just want to arm you with a few highlights that you can use in a quick TTT module. If you only have time to emphasize a few things, there are two main components to speaking, training and facilitating: voice quality and body posture.

1. Vocal Quality: Simply put, you must be able to be heard. This means accounting for people with different abilities to hear, as well. Don’t assume everyone has excellent hearing; they don’t. So even if you think your volume is fine, ask if everyone can hear you. Adjust seating if necessary.

Be sure to articulate your words and speak at a comfortable pace. Most of us have some regional accent or may speak too quickly when we are nervous. All the more reason to slow it down just one notch and pronounce consonants like “p’s” and “t’s” clearly that compensate somewhat for regional variations in pronunciation. This goes double if you have attendees who are non-native speakers. Keep your word choices simple so everyone understands what you are talking about. Even a room full of PhDs may have different specialties and you may be speaking across disciplines. Your goal is to be understood easily by as many people as possible.

When attendees speak, often their comments get lost. If you are leading a discussion or taking questions, be sure to repeat the questions before you answer them or sum up comments made by attendees. When it is obvious a speaker’s volume is too low to be heard, you can also ask them to repeat their comment so everyone can hear them. “Jane, that’s a great point. Would you mind repeating it to make sure everyone heard it?” It is more common than not that your attendees have not spoken loudly enough to be heard by everyone.

Unamplified Situations: In small rooms, you may be unamplified so make sure to speak loudly and clearly without shouting. Want to know if everyone can hear you? Ask them. Ask them early. Ask them again a bit later just to make sure you haven’t lost them. I have a habit of dropping my voice when I am engrossed in the material and I need to constantly remind myself to keep my voice level up.

Amplified Situations: Make sure you do a sound check both before the presentation or class and right after everyone arrives. Place your mic appropriately on your body so you can move your head and body naturally. You don’t want to talk into your collar! When the room is full, do one last check before you begin because people and their clothing absorb sound. You might have been loud and clear in a large empty hall during your sound check, but you may be muffled with a roomful of people during the real thing. Also, if you move around when you speak, be aware of the placement of your mic so it doesn’t create feedback.

2. Body positioning: Your attendees need to see you and they need to see your material if you are using a video or slide presentation. Don’t compete with your slides for attention. If they contain vital information, step aside so they can be read by everyone. Sometimes, with a small room or due to some other logistics, it is hard to find a place to stand where you aren’t obstructing someone’s view of critical material. If that’s the case, move around enough so everyone gets a chance to see your presentation. Also, just like with vocal volume, ask if everyone can see. Again, offer to adjust seating and ask if people would like to move closer.

Everyone needs to see you – not just any side of you but your face. Your face communicates a lot of your message. In fact, if you have attendees who have trouble hearing you, they will be getting critical information by seeing your face. Again, this may mean moving around depending on the size and orientation of the room. As much as possible, do not turn your back on your attendees at any time. It not only obscures your facial expressions, it is impolite.

Finally, body posture communicates most of your message. I’ve seen studies that say body language makes up 80% or more of our message. Smile. Make eye contact with your attendees. Keep an open posture, meaning don’t put your hands in your pockets or fold your arms. Gesture using your arms from the center of your body. Open palms and open arms are good signals to your audience that you want to communicate with them.

One last little hint: just because a presenter is comfortable in front of the class doesn’t necessarily mean they are effective. Reinforce these basic skills to make sure they are not only comfortable with themselves, but that your trainers are making the learning experience comfortable for the attendees, too. When the attendees can see and hear the material, you have accomplished the first step to them remembering what you have told them!

What are your favorite train-the-trainer tips? Pet peeves? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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.

  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.

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!

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.

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.