New Trainer's Toolkit

This pack provides exactly what so many new trainers have been asking for: key training techniques, clearly explained - and thoroughly tested by an experienced trainer.

The New Trainer''''s Toolkit contains precisely the sort of help new trainers will be seeking. This is the training resource for anyone new to training. It will guide you, support you and inspire you from the moment you open its pages.

Author: Arthur Proud
Pages: 352
''''OK to copy'''' pages: 134

Contents
1. Effective Seating
Giving thought to the best seating for the venue and the type of session will have an immediate positive effect. This unit gives you a number of different ways of laying out your training room, with the pros and cons of each, and the type of course for which each layout is suited

2. Introductory Activities
Introductions are vital but often tedious. Here you will find four ready-made exercises for introducing participants to one another. Using these will ensure you never have to go through the boring ''''creeping death'''' of asking each person in turn to introduce themselves.

3. Session Objectives
Objectives and Learning Points are essential, although even some experienced trainers have difficulties with them. By using this easy-to-follow guide you will be able to design concise objectives for your sessions and follow them up with Learning Points that will give your sessions a firm foundation.

4. Organising a Session
Crucial to a smooth-running course is the organisation of your material into a coherent form, enabling seamless delivery. Using the Day Sheet and the Trainer''''s Checklist will not only help your design process, but will ensure your course looks and feels professional.

5. Learning Reviews
The reviewing of a day''''s work is important for participants because it reinforces the learning of that day. This unit provides three review processes which you can use as they stand.

6. Your Guide to Working with a Second Trainer
Real team work is required if you are to make full use of the advantages of working with a second trainer. In this unit you will find the signalling processes you will need when you''''re ''''up front'''' as well as a list of important dos and don''''ts.

7. Producing Trainer''''s Briefs
The single most important tool which you''''ll take in to the training room is your Trainer''''s Brief to guide you through the whole session. This unit takes you through the process of writing a brief, providing an example of a completed version as well as a template for writing your own.

8. Choosing the Right Training Method
How can you best put your point across? The choice of method used in a session, whether to lecture, play a game, or use a video or a case study, should never be random. This unit examines the advantages and disadvantages of many methods of training and recommends uses for each.

9. Producing Useful Handouts
Most people attending or commissioning training courses expect handouts - some organisations seem to measure the effectiveness of a course by the amount of paper brought back. However, it is usually necessary to have some handouts: this unit outlines the key aspects of producing handouts which will add to your effectiveness as a trainer and continue to be of real use to the participants.

10. Session Design
An understanding of the theory of session design will allow you to construct each session in such a way that learning is maximised. This unit relates the design of your sessions to The Learning Cycle and to the relationship between learning and the degree of participation required.

11. Handling a Difficult Group
Aggressive, uncooperative or defensive participants can cause worry to any trainer. This unit identifies the four most common difficult behaviours you''''ll come across in a group and shows you ways of dealing positively and successfully with them.

12. Session Warmers
The ''''graveyard'''' session after lunch can be a difficult one. Here are detailed plans for two activities that you can use to liven things up. In addition to being very funny, they both have clear Learning Points.

13. Steering the Discussion
Discussions will often form a significant and powerful part of your sessions and you will spend a lot of time leading discussion groups. However they can easily go out of control. Here is a process for controlling a group discussion in an effortless manner.

14. Dealing with the Unexpected
You have to expect the unexpected! This unit helps you to anticipate where possible and provides a handy list of tips for you to use during unforeseen events, and a useful set of rules for use on all occasions when the unexpected happens.

15. Reviewing Your Training Skills
In order to help others to develop you must continually develop and improve, as well as keeping up to date with the latest training aids and research. This unit encourages you to do so and provides you with a personal review to help you to assess and improve your performance after every event you run.

16. Course Validation
Validating a course is an important activity. This unit explains the difference between validation and evaluation and provides you with three validation forms of varying degrees of complexity which you can ask participants to complete at the end of a training event.

17. Dealing with Participants
Managing people on a course, with all their worries and insecurities, can be a challenging responsibility. In this unit, after an exploration of the different types of behaviour you are likely to meet, you will find a description and an explanation of the Golden Rules for dealing with all participants.

18. Ground Rules, the Issues Chart, and the Agenda
You will need a reference point to which procedural disputes can be referred and a way of avoiding irrelevant or premature discussions. This unit shows more than one way of establishing agreed Ground Rules for the running of a training event and the way to establish an Issues Chart for troublesome items. There is also an explanation of the use of the Agenda as a vital opening piece for a course.

19. Call-up Notices and Delegate Lists
Producing Call-up notices and keeping lists are tasks vital to the efficient running of a course. The Call-up letter is the beginning of the training: the message you send to participants about the course and about yourself is important. This unit will help you to ensure that the right message gets across even before the start of the course. It provides sample letters, templates for letters of invitation and a template for writing to participants'''' managers. There is also a course delegate list of keeping track of participants and objectives.

20. The Learning Diary
Your participants will benefit from a means of regularly reviewing the progress of their learning and development. In this unit you will find the Learning Diary and a tool to enable you and your groups to use it at the end of each day on any training course.

21. Three Useful Training Sessions
There are times when you need to take the focus away from the course material for a short time. Here are the three short sessions you can use in almost any event to lighten the atmosphere whilst at the same time providing learning that is valuable in any organisational environment.

22. The Trainer''''s Toolbox
You need to be certain that you have with you everything you might need during a course. This unit provides a list of essential pieces of kit that you need in the training room. Taking a toolbox with you every time you train will save you having to drop everything to go and look for a pair of scissors, some Blu-Tack or a spare light bulb.

23. The Qualities and Competencies of a Trainer
An awareness of your strengths and weaknesses as a trainer is essential to your continuing development. This unit lists the qualities and competencies you''''ll need and the seven groups of dimensions which underpin them. It also provides you with a skills inventory, through which you can select your own areas for development.

24. Presenting Your Material
For your groups to get the best out of your material you must present it professionally. This unit targets all those factors which will make or break your presentation - including your appearance, your attitude, your voice and language and those mannerisms which can come between you and a successful event.

25. Organising Discussion Groups
Much of the work you do as a trainer will involve organising and facilitating discussion groups and syndicates. This unit shows you when and how to use groups of varying sizes to maximum effect: it discusses optimum numbers for different activities and provides a structure for group debriefing.

26. Confidence ''''on the stage''''
If you are to do yourself justice in front of a group of comparative strangers, you must feel fully confident in your own abilities. In this unit you will find a technique which you can bring swiftly into action to develop and retain your self-confidence, thereby enhancing your training success.

27. Preparing a Session: Focusing, Preparing, and the Visuals
Planning, preparation and practice form the basis of a seamless professional delivery. This unit presents the most important factors of your preparation, including the use of those ''''hidden trainers'''', the visual aids.

352 pages, with 134 OK to copy pages