A lot of trainer will say the same, one of the major problem when training adults is to connect with them and make them feel accepted so you can set a safe and efficient learning environment.

Here are some tricks and tips on how to setup this safe learning environment.

1 – Be early.

You have to be the first one coming in the classroom, at least on the first day so you can spend at least a few seconds with each attendee. If like me you get groups of 5 to 10 participants, it is not impossible to have a little word with them as they enter. It is very seldom when they all come at the same time. Remember that you have only one chance of making a first impression. If the first impression of you is being late you are starting pretty bad.

2 – Meet and greet everyone.

Meet and greet each and every attendee personally. Shake hand, say hi. No need to say too much yet. The purpose is not to start a lenghty conversation because you have other people coming too. Of course that all depends on the time and the country. This week in India I couldn’t start my course before 1030 although the official start time was 1000. That is because most could not come before but some of them could. So I got a lot of time to get more acquainted with the early ones and I put my focus on the other ones later on.

3 – Be interested in them.

What is the favorite subject of conversation of everyone? Me myself and I. So be interested in your trainees. Not only on a professional point of view but also on a personal level. If one of them is arriving earlier than the others, ask him how he came to the meeting room and how long it took and how early did he have to wake up. Did he have to fly this morning? Is he coming straight from the airport?

4 – The handshake.

Everybody likes a good handshake. Show your appreciation of the situation by acknowledging the attendees with a firm and strong handshake. No need to tear their arm though, you still need them. One trick I have tried and approve, when you shake a hand and you want to make sure the impression stays, when you want to make you are going to connect, try to put a finger on the pulse of the other person. Just make sure it is done in a natural and not forced way otherwise it will really look awkward.

5 – Look into my eyes, look into my eyes…

Too often salesmen, public speakers and basically anyone else make the mistake of having a vague undetermined boring look in their eye. That is because they are not really looking at you. Try the following exercise next time you have to engage with someone. Look them for no more than 3 seconds and try to get the following characteristics. Precise eye color (blue or green doesn’t count, make it more precise), short or long eye lashes, wearing glasses or not, what shape of glasses? Is he/she wearing eye contact, does that make his/her eyes clearer or darker? Are the eyes close to each other or far? Is he/she blinking a lot? How many blinks? With a bit of practice you will develop a hability to catch these things very fast which will give you a dense profound and interesting look. People will want to look into your eyes. You are interested in them and they are interested in that.

This summer I finished a partial rewrite of the FM (Fault Management) module of the NetAct OSS ADM3 Troubleshooting class.
I have been compiling lots of troubleshooting guides and troubleshooting techniques into this course and applied it to all the FM processes of a regional cluster.

It has now been tried several times and it seems people are liking it.
If you want to follow this course, contact your local NSN solution manager or go to the academy website if you’re an NSN internal and enroll for the course OS9033 (customers) or OS9034 (internals)
https://networks-academy.nokiasiemensnetworks.com
or
https://networks-academy.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/nsninternet/beschreibung1.jsp?Course=BAABLBM

Objectives of the FM module: 

• Describe the major Alarm Handling steps throughout NetAct
• List the most commonly used protocols and their matching network elements and versions
• Find and apply procedures on how to turn on the trace mode for mediation and adaptation processes in OSSCORE, OSSCORE2 and MVI
• Find and apply procedures on how to turn on the trace mode for NWW FM processes
• Perform simple SQL queries on the FX_ALARM table and find statistics about alarms using the Alarm history
• Identify bottlenecks and problematic network elements using the system self monitoring or FM reports.
• Use the clean-up processes related to FM data.
• Configure and perform troubleshooting of FM processes for exporting alarms.

Outline of the FM module:

• Fault Management Overview
• Alarm Collection
• Alarm Processing
• Storage
• Alarm Forwarding

Bloom is categorizing action verbs in 6 groups:

Knowledge: acquire, attend, choose, collect, complete, copy, define, describe, detect, differentiate, distinguish, duplicate, find, identify, imitate, indicate, isolate, label, list, mark, match, name, order, outline, place, recall, recognize, reproduce, select, state, underline

Comprehension: arrange, categorize, change, chart, cite, circle, classify, compile, conclude, convert, defend, demonstrate, determine, diagram, differentiate, distinguish, document, draw, edit, estimate, explain, extend, extrapolate, fill in, follow, formulate, gather, generalize, give example, give in own, words, illustrate, infer, interpolate, interpret, itemize, locate, make, organize, paraphrase, predict, prepare, quote, read, rearrange, record, relate, reorder, rephrase, represent, restate, rewrite, summarize, translate, update
Application: apply, calculate, change, choose, classify, compute, conduct, construct, demonstrate, develop, discover, employ, generalize, manipulate, modify, operate, organize, predict, prepare, produce, relate, restructure, show, solve, transfer, use

Analysis: analyze, appraise, break down, categorize, classify, combine, compare, conclude, contrast, criticize, deduce, defend, detect, diagram, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, evaluate, formulate, generate, identify, illustrate, induce, infer, outline, paraphrase, plan, point out, present, question, recognize, relate, save, select, separate, shorten, structure, subdivide

Synthesis: alter, calculate, categorize, change, classify, combine, compile, compose, conduct, constitute, construct, create, deduce, derive, design, devise, develop, discover, discuss, document, expand, explain, formulate, generalize, generate, modify, organize, originate, paraphrase, plan, predict, produce, propose, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise, rewrite, signify, simplify, specify, summarize, synthesize, systematize, tell, transmit

Evaluation: appraise, argue, assess, compare, conclude, consider, contrast, critique, decide, describe, discriminate, explain, interpret, judge, justify, recommend, relate, standardize, summarize, validate

Today I got an interesting call from my boss. I am going to become an assessor for other trainers at Nokia Siemens Networks. This means that I will have to assess the training capabilities of my peers.
Since I have been a respectable trainer for the past 5 years I have indeed accumulated a good experience.
I feel very proud that my efforts are rewarded with this opportunity.

Assessing the training capabilities means that I will have to make sure that the training mix of our trainers are going the right way for a maximum customer satisfaction and a maximum efficiency.

Training is a difficult job for many reasons.
– Adapting to very different cultures and habits, or even timing. Training in Spain, in the US, in Finland or in Egypt means adapting to the way people start their day, eat lunch, when they are the most effective. Unfortunately with short 5 day trainings this means that I have to trust some of the stereotypes and make some assumptions.
As an example, here is a typical day as I experienced it in Madrid, Spain:
Training starts at 8:30. At 10:30 we have a 30 minutes break for breakfast… then we go on with the course until 14:00 and we have a lunch break. Then the trainees disapeared. Some went for a siesta…
In Finland:
Training starts at 9:00 but everyone is there at 8:50 and usually asking if we can start earlier. Lunch is between 11:00 and 12:00. End of the day at 16:00 but if we can finish earlier at 15:00 then would be happier.
In Egypt:
First of all the week starts on Sunday. In Cairo, the traffic is so bad and public transport are almost non-existentat the time I am writing this that we need to leave from hotels and go to the training center around 7:50 to be there at 8:45 and get ready to start at 9:00. The lunch break can be anywhere between 12:00 and 14:30 for an hour. Our training center was far away from everything so we needed to order food for delivery and with the traffic, anything goes… It’s tough to keep the class happy in these conditions! But we need to stay positive

– Then trainers usually need to adapt to many ways of learning:
Visual learners, show it to me! I need written material, keywords on the whiteboard, I want visuals, ask me to the be the scribe of the group.
Auditory learners, tell me! Explain that concept to me, ask me to describe it with my own words,
Kinesthesic learners, prove it to me! Demonstrate how this principle works, let me practice the technique, I need hands-on, real life situations, I need to be involved physically.
Providing a mix of those is important in order to make sure you can reach out to all the different types of learners.
In that sense Confusius is a bit wrong when he says:
"Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand!" He just described HIS way of learning.

– Another thing that trainers need to adapt to is the general type of persons.
The bored
The confused
The introvert
The skeptic
The domineering
The know it all
The elder
The socializer
The late comer
The sleeper
…

My job for these assignment will be to qualify or report what needs to be done by our trainers in order to get better at delivering our training in the best possible way, without turning them off and also keeping in mind that if there are many types of trainees, there are many types of trainers as well…