Tag Archives: training

Don’t Value Excellence (WHAT??) Read on…..

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Assuming you have taken the time to identify your personal values/principles, let me take a punt at identifying two of them.

Family. See, told you I was clever. Okay, unless you’re living alone or are a complete psychopath there is a good chance you put Family on your list. The level of compliance with that value (over work, for example) is another question, but for another time.

The second on is Excellence. Was I right? Is excellence on your list of personal value statements, appropriately defined? Well, if I was – I recommend that you take it off.

That may seem an odd thing to suggest. You may feel that excellence as a value is an accurate reflection of what you believe to be a unifying truth. Well it is. And it was on my list of values for a long, long time. And then I removed it.

I removed it because excellence is a lovely target to have, but an impossible one to hit. Not always – sometimes you do something that you think is perfect, and sometimes you will be absolutely right.

But I know of no-one who is ever completely satisfied with an outcome that can be and is affected in any way at all by the actions or assessments of other people. Excellence is so easily defined as being somewhat parallel to perfection. And that target constantly changes.

I have written books, and both although and because my valuing of ‘excellence’ existed, I rewrote them all. Some needed routine legal/practice/digital updating but others just weren’t good enough – for me. And even when I was happy with it, and felt I had achieved excellence – someone else saw it and made some genuinely pertinent observation that made me wish ‘I’d thought of that’.

Which is a good example of showing that excellence is very often in the eye of the beholder, which means it is to some degree outside of your Circle of Influence. Well, certainly the smaller Circle of Control, anyway.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t aim for excellence. But if you’re going to make it a value, prepare to disappoint yourself. You will do that constantly.

What to do, instead? I suggest you consider valuing Effort. You know how much of yourself you put into any endeavour, and you know when you aren’t doing enough. Other people’s opinions and assessments can’t affect what you know you have done, and how well you tried to do it. If you value effort, you value the mental effort you take to learn the particular method for doing something, you know whether you sweated enough in terms of the physical effort, and you know whether you put the time (psychological effort) into the task.

You can also, then, make some allowance and forgive yourself when you did all you could and it still wasn’t enough. For example, when you make an error that costs you dearly. You may well have done an excellent job, but something or someone felt disappointed and the result was you lost out. But you know, at the very least, that you did the best you could with the resources you had.

You put in the Effort. Your integrity is sound, and you maintain your sense of dignity and personal self-esteem.

Which is excellent.

Review your value of ‘Excellence’ and redefine it to mean Effort. It is worth the, er, investment.

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. Or Beguiled?

23 Monday Mar 2020

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When I have promoted my works and offer training in the realms of personal development, I often find resistance not to the time or costs, but to the very idea of the material. I wrote in Police Time Management why I think this is in respect of that particular field of knowledge, but today I listened to a lecture by the late, great Jim Rohn and I think he hit the nail on the proverbial.

He spoke of the Sermon on the Mount and described how the response was reported in the Bible as being divided into three types – the perplexed, the mockers and the believers. Hence my title this morning.

Let’s have a think about all three, and their motivations.

The Perplexed. They don’t know what you’re talking about. These people are the ones in the Unconscious Incompetence bracket of Noel Burch’s model. They don’t know what they don’t know and are equally unable to comprehend that what they don’t know will serve them. They’ve likely already concluded it’s too hard to understand so they don’t bother trying.

The Mockers. These are the ones who know it all, or think they do. They don’t see that there is an alternative way of thinking to the one they’ve already decided is best. And rather than articulate that because they know it to be a stupid position or can’t face the work involved, they attack the idea. It’s easier than knuckling down and listening.

The Believers. Now, here we have to be careful because there are actually three strands. There are the Believers who believe regardless of the efficacy of the argument, so they’ll believe no matter what is said, if they are convinced by the speaker. Then there are Believers who are the Consciously Incompetent, who know that there is something that they don’t know – and want to know it. And the final subset are the ones who’ve had the training and have applied it to the degree that they know it to be good stuff.

That last set is very present on LinkedIn, but there’s something they could do that they aren’t doing. They aren’t letting anyone else know that the stuff is good.

Some possible reasons. They are naturally well-organised ‘time-managers’ and don’t realise that others need this input. Or perhaps they think it’s a great secret and don’t want anyone to know because it makes them appear really effective. Or they think that the cost of training their peers and staff in such material isn’t cost-effective.

So they are Believers but not Advocates. I like the by-line I use for my LinkedIn page – Advocate of the Seven Habits – because it underlines my willingness to communicate something I believe in. I would ask others to do the same, but not only in terms of their chosen profession.

I would encourage people to look at the provision of training in the sub-skills of ‘work’ – sector specific or in a more general sense – like communications, self- and time-management, administration practices, even mindfulness (ugh) if it makes their staff more productive and less stressed.

As the greats have said (and I paraphrase) – Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll produce enough fish for his employer to sell at a massive profit through enhanced effectiveness and efficiencies.

Go on. Train your staff or just buy them a book about ‘stuff’. Many have, and many have benefited as a consequence.

Be the right kind of Believer.

Half a Life. That’s all you have left….. if you aren’t careful.

14 Friday Feb 2020

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The Half-Life. A physics term identifying how long a radioactive element/isotope takes to lose half its mass through decay. For example, the half life of uranium being from 159,200 years to 4.5 billion years, one kg of uranium will become 500g in 159,200 years or so (!), but that 500g will only become 250g in the next 159,200 years. Simples.

But there is another HalfLife, the one proposed by Stephen Covey, who opined that the Half Life of a career is as little as 2 years, and what he meant was that in just 2 years the currency of your professional knowledge is reduced by half if you don’t maintain competence (Second Resolution). I know from my own experience, after returning to work after an 18-month post-retirement absence, that a lot of new mnemonics and practices had been created while I was gone. I was still competent to do a lot of stuff but I would have needed some retraining to get back up to full speed. Which is why, when it was appropriate, I chased up the training I required.

A surprising number of people object to on-the-job training and to attending courses. I know that some of their reluctance is down to a perceived interruption to the work that they are already doing, that mounts up inexorably while they are away and, occasionally, the belief that the training is unnecessary and irrelevant. We had a saying in the police:

“That was a three-week course crammed into six.”

But if we are to stay relevant, if we are to provide the best possible service, we have to keep up with developments within our selected professions if we aren’t to become redundant-but-still-present.

The problem with being redundant-but-still-present is that it can all too quickly turn into ‘just’ redundant. Being on top of your game and staying on top of your game aren’t distinct processes – they are the same thing. What’s more, by properly engaging in the training you are offered, you start to develop the ability to influence that training – to make sure it IS relevant and appropriate rather than a tick-box exercise.

I do chuckle at CPD that requires ticking a box that you read something. Who actually reads something if all you have to do is declare you read it? Well, the ethical do, but that isn’t all of us, is it?

Look upon training as a development opportunity, and opportunity to ask questions, and an opportunity to have a bit of a rest from the daily grind of that real work you’re worried will come back and bite you.

Of course, the ability to do the latter, to relax during a course while other work isn’t getting done, requires that you apply some of the time management advice of the kind I promote.

So welcome training, seek it out, maximise its effectiveness and utilise what you learn as quickly after the training as is possible.

Or that career you thought you had for ever might just be half as long as you expected.

 

Time Management Training is available HERE.

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Martin Luther King? Meh.

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

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This afternoon I will be giving a talk to members of an organisation celebrating the Third Age, with no idea of the numbers – although 104 13-year-olds is my record.

If you recall, last Thursday I proposed and encouraged the concept of Third-Person Teaching to readers, and this ‘giving talks’ is the result of my adherence to the idea. Many moons ago I was offered the opportunity to teach self-development material to my peers, and the one experience that I lacked was public speaking. I knew the material but I’d not really been heavily involved in speaking to large audiences and I knew that I wold be expected to do exactly that if I entered the world of training. I knew the stuff – I just hadn’t preached it afore.

My first port of call was a local Speakers Club, which welcomed me and over the next few months developed me. But it was Day 1 that amazed me.

I was asked to introduce myself, and so I did. And as I sat down I remember thinking, “That was GREAT!” Admittedly, the subject I had spoken upon was my favourite – me – but their encouragement and a feeling (on my part) that my presentation had ‘flowed’ imbued within me an enthusiasm for speaking. Which was just as well because they volunteered me to talk for two minutes on ‘sycophancy’, the sods. Blew them away.

There is a theory that people fear speaking in public more than death. I recognise that speaking with no preparation and with no notice can be challenging, even though that last one’s happened to me three times and I have more than coped. But if you know your subject and how you are going to put it across – have fun doing so! If you can talk in a group of three – and we all gather around the water fountain and gossip – then you can talk to a group of a hundred. You just have to ‘not whisper’.

I encourage you, therefore, as part of your professional and personal development, to go to a local speakers’ club and see just how ‘normal’ the members are – normal, yet able to enthral an audience with both prepared and ad hoc speeches.

You may never have to make a training presentation, but I’d gamble that you all have clubs you might wish to direct, children whose weddings need your input, best man speeches to deliver – public speaking is common, and it is not hard.

But a very important consideration is this – when you have to prepare a talk, you learn. When you learn, you discover new ways of thinking, and you start to develop an open mind that sees through waffle and ‘the reality of the matter is’ and realise that some public speakers are just semi-professional liars. You also realise that although Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech was magic, his delivery was a bit OTT. He’d get marked down at Speakers Club, I’m telling you.

The only caveat I have is this.

Gestures are encouraged at Speakers Clubs. Appropriate gestures. Not this constant hand waving seen by people sitting down on panel shows. For goodness’ sake people, you’re not lecturing or acting, you’re just answering a bloody question. Hand waving is not required.

Another benefit is you stop saying, “I mean” and “Sort of” and “Kind of” and “obviously” because you start to think before you speak, instead of after. Oh, wonderful thing!

If you just learn that, people will be grateful.

Here’s to trainers and teachers. The GOOD ones, anyway.

06 Thursday Feb 2020

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Today, I will end this post with a blatantly stolen question from a Seven Habits workbook – from version 1, pre-1997. I am proud/ashamed (delete as applicable) to say I have a copy of all four, progressive versions of the said workbook, plus their one for policing. I am a Seven Habits nerd. And proud of it.

Trainers. Occasionally pointed at with the comment, “Those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach.” What an arrogant and incorrect paradigm.

In my experience, yes, there may be some who go into training to avoid work. Of course, having done so they realise the amount of work they have to do in order to teach.

But the motive for many must be, “I enjoy what I have learned and what I am doing, so I want to teach others for two reasons. Firstly, to make them better and secondly – to make me better.”

Stephen Covey was the author who introduced (at least to me) the concept of Third Person Teaching. And what a powerful idea.

He proposed that the best way to learn by far, is to teach. Which means when we learn, we must prepare ourselves to teach others what we are learning. This requires attentive listening, a probing mind – and a willingness to stand by what we have learned if we wish to teach it. For example, I couldn’t and wouldn’t have sought to teach teenagers and colleagues The Seven Habits if I had not believed in them, and if I did not wish to live by them. (Okay, I’m still trying…….)

If you listen or watch one of Covey’s lectures on YouTube, you may see or hear the one where he tells the audience on round tables that the person sitting at 6 o’clock will be expected to teach his next concept when he finishes talking, at which those at 6 o’clock desperately squirm and wriggle their chairs towards 5 and 7.

Teaching is hard if you don’t know what it is your expounding, but it is exceptionally hard to teach something you don’t believe in. But when you do believe in it, the information flows, and queries are answered with clarity and aplomb. When you live it, half the lesson is planned and presented even before you pick up a pen or start talking.

So have some respect for trainers who have lived what they are teaching you. They have learned what works and what does not, and they are willing to put their character on the line to show you the better way.

On the other hand, beware trainers who just regurgitate what someone else has told them to say. I recall several ‘debates’ with trainers who tried to instil blind obedience to ‘their’ input, when I could show them they were wrong. It seemed in that particular organisation that a questioning mind wasn’t a prerequisite for a trainer, and it wasn’t welcomed in a student. Unfortunately, I have one, and I also back it up with professional qualifications. Which, for someone training ME, can be a minefield. 😊

I think it soon becomes evident when a trainer is regurgitating, and when a trainer believes in what they are teaching. Learn to spot the difference, and always be mindful that the easier it looks – the harder the effort that was put in to make it that way.

Now, that question. Who will you teach about Three-Person Teaching?

Now, go teach someone about this and see how quickly you go back to Line 1……..

 

What I teach.

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An Italian’s view on Competence.

30 Monday Dec 2019

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Am I Competent?

No, I don’t mean me, specifically. It’s a question I often asked myself in times of doubt, and I’m sure it’s a question you may have asked yourself. It is something I know I’ve asked myself when a colleague has pulled some masterful piece of work out of his or her bag, a piece of work I either should have considered or could have considered – but didn’t. Occasionally the reverse happened, and I did something that made a colleague think ‘Wow!’ I liked days like that. I’m sure you do, too.

What IS Competence? In my book The Three Resolutions I define it as “the ability to get things done in accordance with the current technology, methodology and ethics of the role being undertaken”.

That general definition covers a multitude of professions, trades and pastimes. The ‘things to be done’ are the results expected from the individual that relate to the objectives of the organisation – it may be sales, it may be production, it may be distribution, it could be the provision of any services you can think of. If you disagree with the definition just apply your own – it’s your understanding of competence that is important, and even more so when you apply it to your own work.

The chances are that having obtained your current job you either received training or were expected to already know what it was you were supposed to be doing. Even in that latter situation I’d imagine there was some tempering of what you knew in the sense that it had to be applied to the specific new situation in which you found yourself. I know, for example, that after 14 weeks Police training my naïve colleagues and I underwent a Force-level ‘local procedure course’ where we were enlightened as to “how we do it ‘round ‘ere”, followed by another “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” inflicted on us when we got to our first station. Then there were to be many other “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” courses as we were to transfer between stations and departments. I probably inflicted a few rounds of “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” myself.

And on each pf my subsequent HWDIRH courses I probably discovered that either I was not competent in the eyes of new ‘trainer’ because of the way I HAD been doing it, or the ‘trainer’ was evidently incompetent because I could see (having got older and wiser) that s/he was regurgitating ‘facts’ with no understanding whatsoever of the principles behind them. Such incompetence, by the way, was often the reliance on HWDIRH being set in stone – the ONLY way.

It is clear to me that no matter where you go and whatever you do, there is a ‘window’ that exists, through which you will be viewed as competent or otherwise, and this is called the ‘AYNOBETA WINDOW’ after Paulo Aynobeta, famed Italian business consultant* and expert in on-the-job training.

Someone, somewhere, will always know more than you. It is plain if you are wholly new to a field and are completely uninformed that people will see you through this window, and be right. On such occasions, suck it up, accept the impatience as a sense of urgency that you learn the new things being taught. (Particularly if you’ve just joined the Marines)

But in progressing along a ‘training continuum’ where you’ve already gained some competence in your field, the situation may be a bit different with the other party’s AYNOBETA WINDOW. If they DO know more than you do it will be evident the moment that they take the time to explain their thinking and you discover a new perspective. If they DON’T know more, that will become evident the minute they shout you down, refuse to listen to you, or call you an idiot for your failure to succumb to their greatness. Avoid these people like the plague. And don’t become one.

A friend of mine suggests that when we disagree with somebody, a great sentence is this: “Ah, you see things differently – tell me more.” It’s seldom easy to remember to use it, but there it is. Another question to be asked in any difference of opinion is, “What is your underlying concern?” They both send the same message – ‘your opinion is important to me and may be correct – tell me more’, and it actually invites the respondent to review their own understanding of the situation. This practice may well develop BOTH parties to the conversation.

Competence can be learned and incompetence can be unlearned. And in the great continuum of life, the skills applicable today may no longer work tomorrow and our competence needs to take new possibilities, and the subsequent need for new learning, into account.

We’re only competent until something changes, but after that change we are only incompetent as long as we are unable or unwilling to learn the new skill required. Once we take the time to be retrained, or to train ourselves, we resume our journey through competence to expertise. And that is a place many of us would like to be.

 

*Yes, I made him up.

Why you choose not to manage time better.

31 Thursday Oct 2019

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What is your attitude to ‘Time Management’?

When I ask that question, I am not referring to how you ‘see’ time management as a method, or technique, or as a great big pile of ‘new stuff to learn’. In my book I cover that in a chapter entitled ‘Why NOT Time Management’.

No, what I intend to address here is more about your attitude towards the things that have an effect on how they manage their time or, more specifically, whether you want to (learn to) manage your time.

Another question is “Why is it people don’t think they need to, or even can manage their time?” – rather than “Why they don’t want to?”

The truth is, everyone needs to manage their time better, but many just don’t want to be told that. The suggestion that they need instruction in time management openly implies that they possess an inability to do what in their minds ‘should come naturally’ and they don’t like that. They are happy to be trained in their job, how to cook, or how to drive a car, but to many people time management is seen as an innate skill, even an instinct, and “I won’t / don’t need to be told how to do that!”

Your ability – or inability – to manage your time is affected by a plethora of circumstances, but if we were to identify specific situations where people find time management challenging, we would discover that they all come under one or more of five headings.

  1. Some of them are outside your control and you accept that;
  2. Some are controllable, but you simply won’t try because you think they can’t be controlled;
  3. Some aren’t controllable, but you mistakenly try, anyway, and your failure teaches you to stop trying at all;
  4. Some are within your ability to control them, and you know it, but nevertheless you don’t even try;
  5. But most of all you love the ones you think you can control, and you are controlling them.

The objective of my book is to increase the number you can and do control (bring 2 and 4 under 5); to manage your attitude and response to the ones you can’t (improve your understanding of 1 and 3); and to stop wasting your time trying to control the impossible.

I encourage you to think about that, deeply. I firmly believe what you are about to read applies to everything in your life. There are two reasons for this.

First of all, we don’t live compartmental lives any more, thanks to the smartphone, but we nevertheless still insist on thinking that we do. But the main reason I think it applies across the work/personal divide is because of the choices we make.

We choose our work – we apply for a job, fill out the form, complete silly answers to odd questions, maybe do a presentation, certainly undergo the ordeal of an interview, and then we get it. And then the job changes, things happen we didn’t expect, systems change, people change, laws and practices change, the work gets harder and more prolific, we aren’t retrained and we get fed up with what we used to love.

Everything in our lives – what we do, how we get what we have, how we behave – can have time management principles applied to it if we are to be at our most effective. And as personal time management can be affected by many criteria, it means our whole lives are affected by the same criteria.

What are those criteria, then?

  • Expectation – we have duties but we also make personal commitments which give rise to expectations in others, just as we expect others to do what we require of them.
  • Communication and miscommunication – how and what we communicate affects our ability to perform, just as it affects others’ ability to perform for us.
  • Interruptions (phone people) – the immediacy of the mobile phone has inadvertently enabled people to think it’s okay to interrupt other peoples’ conversations.
  • Priorities – we have priorities, those around us have priorities, and no-one thinks that everything being a priority means that nothing is a priority.
  • New systems, protocols and procedures – when you change a system, the training and changes to the old system have a time impact that is rarely taken into account.
  • Expanding responsibilities – the more you take on, imposed or elective, requires improved ability to manage everything.
  • Lack of practical training – a lot of what people need to know is now just ‘expected’. For example, is your ability use a computer now just assumed?
  • Lack of meaningful support – other peoples’ busy-ness means that they aren’t available to help as much as they used to be.
  • Values misalignment – what you think is important and requires passion, may not be approached in the same way by someone whose interests and focus lie elsewhere.
  • Unexpected responsibilities – surprise, you have a new role (no training, support, extra time or money available, sorry).

The challenge is not that these things shouldn’t happen. It is that they are facts of life. A lot of what we think is an annoying obstacle to our lovely and peaceful existence is, in fact, perfectly normal, and it is our response to it rather than the event itself that causes our stress. We think we can’t manage things, but the truth is, as indicated in the first paragraphs of this section, we choose not to manage things when we could, or we fail to learn how to manage things because we don’t want to or don’t know how to.

Proactivity and Time Management Methods are the answer. Or an effective part of it, anyway.

Go learn.

You really can’t wait to learn what you need to know now.

23 Sunday Oct 2016

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“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi

One of the fascinating things I have learned in trying to start a personal development training and coaching business is how many such businesses exist, even in my out-of-the-way, not-quite-rural part of the world. I am somewhat under-whelmed in the levels of interest shown in my own services, but if the proliferation of such businesses is a reflection of a need for such help, it must in turn represent some kind of insidious internal disquiet in people about where they are now, compared to where they want to be. They are willing to pay stupid money to some companies (while resisting inexpensive little me) in order to find something they seem unable to discover for themselves.

On the other side of the scales, however, there are those who absolutely dismiss the potential benefits of training, whether it be for them or for the people they manage, work for, or even live with.

I read a great story that might illustrate what I see to be the benefit of self-leadership training. It concerns a middle aged man, shall we say in his early 50s, who was sat at his father’s bedside as the septuagenarian drew close to death. As the old man ebbed away, he managed to impart one more piece of wisdom to his son. He said, “Don’t do it like I did it, son. I was wrong. Live life better than I did.” Then he sighed, and left.

The son was bereft, partly because his father was gone but, as he disclosed to a confidante, also because he realised something else. To that confidante he said, “I am 55 years old, and my father says I’ve being doing it all wrong. I am half way, if not more through life. What the hell can I do with the knowledge that I’ve been doing it wrong?”

The confidante smiled wisely. He said, “How old is your son?”

“Twenty-five, why?”

“What your father learned by his seventies, you learned in your fifties, and you can teach your son in his twenties. In turn, he can teach his children from the day they are born. 70 years’ wisdom available to a child. That is what you can do.”

The purpose of coaching and training is to provide the student, Oh Padawan, with a short cut to the wisdom that they may find for themselves – but now. So they can use it, now. Not when it is too late.

A coach is not there to tell you what to do. S/he is there to help you discover where to look and to open your eyes to alternatives. The coach’s job is to assist you in your relentless search to be better than you already are. On your own terms and in your own circumstances.

Seek it and use it.

My rates are pretty good………………

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Don’t just be interested – be QUALIFIED.

19 Sunday Jun 2016

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“Renewal is the principle – and the process – that empowers us to move on in an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.” Stephen R Covey

I am now involved in the provision of a new Third Resolution ‘service’, having qualified (a loose term) as an Institute of Advanced Motorists Local Observer. This means I get to tell other people, with a level of authority, what I think of their driving. That is something I missed from my days as a uniformed copper. Although unlike then, those people will have paid to be told and they won’t argue (much) about my being right.

Yesterday, I attended a training session and was slightly taken aback to learn that for every 100 people who start training as advanced drivers, as many as 60% plus elect NOT to take the test at the end of the programme. Just as we say ‘You’ll pass the test!’, they decide that they don’t want to be tested. They’re good enough, the ‘authority’ tells them so, and they demur.

This is not like school, where you take an exam at the end of a school year, ready or not. These are people who have been prepared for, and told they can pass.

And I am astounded. I have spent my entire life testing myself against higher standards. I have sought out education and gained qualifications. Occasionally I have failed, only to revisit that failure and again take on that challenge, only to succeed. That doesn’t mean I am ecstatic when I approach an exam or assessment. I am nervous about the result. But I welcome the challenge because if I come through, I have proved to myself I am better than I was before.

So when I read that ‘our children are being stressed out through tests’ I think to myself, “Why are we telling our children to fear assessment? What numpty decided that being properly prepared for the challenges that will face us can only be overcome when they face us, and that we should not test ourselves in anticipation of that test.

Fortunately – and here’s the paradox – not one of us would want to be diagnosed by an unqualified doctor, have our accounts done by someone who can’t prove they are qualified (or at least have a Maths GCSE), or use a Uber driver who hasn’t passed his driving test. We absolutely insist that those who provide our services are qualified – trained and assessed – to do so. And yet some twits have decided that asking a teenager to take an exam in a peaceful, quiet room is stressful.

Life is a test. It tests our ability to cope, it tests our ability to overcome, it tests our ability to live a life of meaning. It wants us to be better, to find something about which we can be passionate.

Getting trained and independently assessed in those areas about which we are passionate and which serve our sense of meaning is a discipline (First Resolution), provides competence and builds our character (Second Resolution), and inevitably encourages us to start providing excellence in service when we manifest our training through employment or hobbies (Third Resolution).

And if your training and assessment is connected to your vision/mission/purpose – what the hell is there to get stressed about?

This week I encourage all readers to identify a mission- or passion-related qualification and go and sign up for the course that will demonstrate to others that you aren’t just interested – you are qualified.

For more on The Three Resolutions, go HERE to Amazon to get the Kindle version of the book, or HERE for a Paperback edition.

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Are you careful about your own competency training?

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Character and Competence

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I am a director of a company that provides investigation training for people ranging from those who’ve never conducted a professional investigation in their lives to those with some experience who want to enhance their knowledge.

We have allied ourselves to a qualification awarding body who accredit and therefore endorse our training course. For accuracy’s sake this means that the qualification that can be obtained through the course is acceptable to the authorities who one day may issue licences to investigators.

Unfortunately, we are becoming more aware of companies who provide what they call ‘private investigation training’ whose qualifications are that they’ve read some books, consulted with some investigators, and then written a course for one reason only – to make money. They haven’t bothered with writing their courses for accreditation and authority approval, they’ve just put a course together that fits a template that they think is what the student needs. Nor have they bothered to gain qualifications as trainers, also an essential element of the qualification/training process for formal educational awards.

What this actually means is that students pay out hundreds of pounds to achieve absolutely nothing, because they’ll have to pay it out again to a formally approved trainer when they need to qualify for a licence.

Which brings me to the point I am trying to make, which is to tell you to ensure that when you are seeking competence, be it in the workplace or in your personal life (e.g. hobbies, service provision), you make sure that the source of your training is an authoritative, expert source – and not a wannabe with an eye for your fast buck.

And ensure, also, that this expert is competent in training. I know many experts who couldn’t teach to save their lives. They aren’t competent to train even though they are marvellous at their trade.

It’s you r time and money you waste when one or both of these factors – competence and the ability to impart knowledge – are lacking.