Please read this blog post from Seth Godin first and then continue with my post. He does raise some good points. Does the teacher sound like you? I know that many of us are bound (or are we) by the systems that we must work within. In doing this do with stiffle real learning, do we snuff out creativity, fun, learning for enjoyment. Watch this clip and you can see that Ken Robinson is essentially talking about the same thing.
What I started to wonder about is what does success mean to a trainer. In business success will typically mean running a profitable business. Is it the same for trainers? Maybe it is for contract trainers. What about the government trainer/teacher?
Is success in this profession based on how much you earn, how many people pass your course, how many people graduate or some other very personal measure of success. The more I thought about it the more I realised that success for me was unfortunately a rare, fleeting and generally brief event that despite the fact that it is never measured, quantified or has any relation to what I am paid was the most important thing to me, the thing that excited and motivated me as a trainer and the thing that I would call success. Success to me is when I can get an individual or group to finally understand or learn something that up until that moment they couldn’t see, couldn’t grasp or just plain didn’t realise existed or happened that way. If I have enough of those moments by the end of my career I believe that I will say that I was a successful trainer. So what is success for you? I am really interested in what you have to say. I am really intrigued as to the way you will measure your success and why. If you are struggling for inspiration here is a digest of success quotes. Which ones do you identify with?
Leave a Reply