Unsurprisingly most organisations think: Good salesperson? Make them the trainer! Excellent Customer Service Rep? They should train others! This guy could program in his sleep – he should lead the system conversion training! There are a number of reasons why your star performer should not be your trainer, here are a few:
A number of years ago someone coined the term edutainment. Although it may sound very cheesy, it does ring true. Easily 50% of the job of a trainer is to keep the trainees’ attention and keep them engaged in the learning. This skill does not come naturally to a lot of people.
People who are good, technically, at what they do, tend to embrace the technicalities of what they do. To put it bluntly, they bore their audience. Good trainers have a well-honed skill for separating what is a “need to know,” from what is “nice to know.” Techies believe everything is important. Since the trainees are new, they can’t make the differentiation between need-to-know and nice-to-know either, resulting in information overload.
Just because someone in your business is a spreadsheet wizard don’t assume they are the best person to train your team.