“I have nothing against you, but if I ever want to attend a Train-The-Trainer course, I would like to attend one with the master trainer that has more years of experience than me.”
Well, I have nothing against people who have years upon years of experience. I totally respect that. I also respect people’s choices. I believe that adults have choice and preferences, and they will choose whoever they prefer.
However, I do believe that where one lacks experience, one can compensate it with exposure.
My late father was a trainer in the 90s. He was a teacher before becoming a lecturer, and later transitioned to be a trainer. I have seen him lecture and train people since I was in my early teens – I know some “training techniques” that trainers inherit and still use until today that desperately needs a dire upgrade. So, I share that in my Train-The-Trainer sessions.
I didn’t want to follow my father’s footsteps, being the typical teenager that I was. So, I pursued my studies in Computer Engineering in Japan. I came back and worked in a Japanese company in the R&D department. These were the years that I learned about systems and the systematic approach in doing things. Because I could speak Japanese, my colleagues asked me to teach them basic Japanese language. Since I was not trained to be a Japanese language “sensei”, I had to reverse-engineer how I learn the language to come up with my own training materials. One of my students managed to pass JLPT Level 3 – the language proficiency level required to enter a college in Japan.
After a few years of teaching Japanese language, I thought of trying out new pastures and sought a career in training. I was rejected by most companies due to lack of field experience. During this time, I wrote a manuscript for a management book and a local publisher picked it up for publication. With this book, the Managing Director of a training provider company offered me a post as a training consultant. I worked my way up until I became a trainer. The last position I held there was the Director for one of their subsidiary companies.
I left the company to become a full-time freelance trainer in hopes of having more time to spend with my kids. After a few years, I realised that my time and income as a freelance trainer was highly dependent on the training schedule of the various training providers (TP) that I associated myself with. I thought to myself, I need to set up my own TP to have a better control of my own time and destiny.
After setting up my own TP company, I asked myself, “What’s next?”. So, we tried to go for the HRDF Star Rating. In 2017, our company was rated 4-Star. We didn’t get the full 5-Star because we didn’t have any “certification course”. I tried going to MQA to find out how we could qualify our training programmes for “certification”, but they said that only higher education providers can offer such courses. I went back to HRDF and one of their officers suggested that I try to apply to become one of their Train-The-Trainer vendors.
So here I am now, about 70 cohorts of Certified Trainers later. I may not have 30 years of training experience, but I know how it was to start with no content and no guidance. I have been an employee that was asked to train my colleagues. I have been an employed trainer of a training provider company and I have also been a full-time freelance trainer with several training provider companies. I also have been running my own training business for close to a decade with employees who came in with only SPM qualifications but now organising training courses as the training coordinator for my TTT graduates.
If you feel like you can relate to any of my situations above, and ready for me to transfer my knowledge and skills to you, than by all means please sign up for my next HRD Corp Train-The-Trainer Certification Course by Access Ideas Malaysia. I will try my best to make your 5-days experience worthwhile.
