[MUSIC] Welcome back. More and more, managers are being asked to be involved in their employees' training. In this lesson, we will discuss why that is. And what the manager as trainer role looks like. We will also discuss, what happens when your employees need training on something that you don't know how to do. Finally, I will describe some issues related to overuse of the trainer role. Managers, have to have a lot of roles, that's become increasingly clear, I hope as we've been going through this module. And the trainer role, is one that is becoming again, more and more important. And there's a couple of reasons why, we're asking managers to be more and more involved in training. First of all there's just more training, in general. And so, because skill sets are required to adapt so quickly, we're asking so much more of employees. A lot of that training has to happen at work, on the job, and the person to do it is the manager. Defining the trainer role, is teaching information, knowledge, and insights that are assumed to be unknown by the employee. So if I'm wearing my trainer role, my assumption is that you don't know what I'm going to teach you. And my job, is to make sure I teach it to you. And that you learn it, that you can implement it. So the trainer role, for managers, I think I would say just in the last, 20 years or so, has become so much more important. Because there's just so much more we're being asked to know, and to learn, and at a rapid pace. How managers show up as trainers can vary. A perfect example of training is this course. [LAUGH] So I am, through my voice, and through the tools in this course, teaching you concepts, ideas, insights, perspectives, tools, that sort of go under the assumption of unknown to you now. But the goal, to make sure that they are known to you. And that you learn them by the end of the course. Teaching, training is anytime someone is infusing you with insights or knowledge that you didn't already have. And I think for managers, this happens a lot throughout the day. Almost to the point that we don't even pay attention to it, because we're doing a lot and lot of teaching. So an example of a manger, as a trainer, is something as simple as let's say a new phone system. We get a lot of new tools at work on a regular basis. So a phone system, seems to be one that happens, not all the time, but enough, that I think it's a good example because it's pretty robust. So we get a new phone system, and let's say the manager goes to a class to learn about the new phone system. And then, maybe there's even a training, that everybody goes to that's conducted by a trainer on the phone system. And yet we still always have people [LAUGH] who don't quite get the phone system, right? That might even be me [LAUGH] if I worked for you. And so, as the manager, you're going to need to sit down. And teach someone, here's how you program your voicemail. Here's how you transfer a call. Here's how you access your voicemail. Her's how you forward your calls. That is the act of training. It's assuming that I don't know how. And that I need to teach you. Now here's the thing that I want to say about manager as trainer. There are a lot of things, that your employees are going to have to do, that you will not know how to do. And that's okay. I do not hold the belief that, as the manager, you need to be the expert in everything your employees do. I think that's an exhausting approach. And is not reasonable, or realistic, especially in the world that we live in today. I do think though, that is important, that managers recognize, the training responsibility sits with them. If I know that someone has to learn how to do something. It may not necessarily be me who teaches it. But I'm responsible, to make sure that they get the training that they need. We have to keep in mind a couple things because this can be overused. And I've seen manager as trainer overused a lot. And the reason why is a lot of managers like to teach. That's why they go into managing. They like to be helpful. They know their topic very well, so they want to teach it to people. The problem is, not every performance problem is a training problem. A lot of people actually know what to do, so when you approach a performance problem. Or when you approach every performance problem, as a training problem, you may be missing what's really going on. When people prefer the manager as trainer role, they train everybody. [LAUGH] Instead of really exploring, what employees do and don't know. Another assumption, from the manager's trainer perspective, could be that everybody learns the same way. And we know that's also not true. We tend to teach the same way that we learn. And not everybody learns like you do. An overuse could be, that we just teach, teach, teach, in the same way for everybody. And that can be not very effective. And also training can be overtelling. Just like in the mentoring, it can be overtelling. So rather than helping employees really solve, what's going on, we just sort of tell, tell, tell, tell, teach, teach, teach, teach. Just pay attention here, because training is a very common requirement role for managers. But you have to know when to back up, and really do the coaching, which is really at the heart of what we're going to be talking about here. So in summary, some employees, will need to be taught how to do their work. It's just natural, we have so much changing all the time. Managers, must be able to teach or identify a proper teacher for their team. So like I said, it doesn't always have to be you. You can be the trainer or you can identify somebody else. And because of the ever-changing expectations of our team members, we are going to continue to need that manager as trainer role as a priority for managers. It really is the responsibility of managers today, to be involved in the training and development of their team. So in our next lesson, we're going to compare all of these roles that we've been talking about.
