Train the Trainer at Dale Carnegie

The last 3 days have been the best days of my life in about 2 years now. Sitting through the Dale Carnegie session for Train the Trainer was such a fantastic and eye opening experience. i believe there’s so much to learn and a bit of formal education helps instead of learning everything by experience which can take ages. After hunting high and low for a course that could help me formally learn the ropes of training, a friend suggested this. I grabbed at the opportunity since Dale Carnegie has an international name.

The first thing that i realized was that training had spread to every sphere. It’s no longer training the untrained youth to place them in jobs or the general HR training that i thought training was all about. Training has applications in Nationalised banks and govt organisations that have made training a regular dept and have regular trainers. There were a few senior people taking the course since training had now become an inherent part of their job profiles and they wanted to do it well.

i was a little nervous initially about facing people during my presentations after a gap of more than 2 years. i guess all the participants were a little knotted at the thought which is quite natural. But all of us did a great job, made a few mistakes and invariably ran short of time for our 7 min slot each.

The trainer, Mr. Rajesh Parekh, (the most suave gujju I have come across!!) was exemplary and taught us so much by just being himself. His voice projection was just amazing. He didn’t jump around to create energy levels but his presence itself made everyone sit up and pay attention. There wasn’t one dull moment during the 3-day workshop.

The training methodology of Dale Carnegie ensures a great mix of slides, presentation and participant activities. When I look back, I don’t remember one stretch when we had to wait for the trainer’s monologue to finish. At all points, we were engaged in giving ideas, doing activities or listening to the trainer who made complete sense. Sticking to only 90-minutes of training between breaks was a great technique to keep us alert all the time.

It was training and fun. The group of 28 participants were from a variety of professions and age groups, added to the learning. On the third day, when we were divided into 2 groups to make presentations at the same time in separate rooms, we really missed each other. We were eager to watch each topic and get everyone’s feedback on what we did. That quite didn’t happen but time was managed extremely well due to the division. Each group had enough time to make their presentation and discuss feedback at length.

Final word: I can safely recommend the TTT at Dale Carnegie since it truly lives up to its name.