Be the Best Presenter in Your Company

(Create good office buzz about you and create learners with these train the trainer tips.)

By Karen Porter

The Administrative Professional
Job Performance and Career Success Coach
Assisting Administrative Support Professionals Since 2004

How often do you get to participate in the role of presenter or trainer, whether it's to an informal small group of volunteers or a large class of your colleagues? At work you might be asked to train your peers to use a new customer database. Or you might do a presentation about business form completion and updates and changes to existing business forms. You might lead a refresher course on telephone skills. Or you might train new volunteers to field questions during telephone calls.

After business hours, you might belong to an association where you're asked to host a workshop to train others about one of your key knowledge areas. And if you're not asked to lead any of these training sessions, you can always become the subject expert and then initiate the idea with your boss that you lead a session on the topic if it's needed.

Get Good Buzz Going
Leading presentation and training sessions gives you an opportunity to gain recognition on the job and among your colleagues. If you do it well, you'll start a good buzz that's about you. Plus an indirect benefit is more people will know your name and who you are; and naturally, when you encounter more people in life, you encounter more opportunities and open doors. You may even change your image from that quiet "secretary" in Joe's office to that lady or man who does the fabulous training sessions on what's usually boring or confusing topics for some people (e.g. computer database training; forms completion/changes).

Good Presentation and Training Skills are:
1) something that can make you stand out among your peers in your current job and to your current employer.

2) something that you can put on your resume to attract or impress other potential employers.

3) something that could even be turned into your own entrepreneurial business.

Good Trainers Don't Want to be Heard
A good presenter or trainer causes buzz and engages people in learning.

"Do you want your audience to hear it or do you want them to learn it?" asks Sharon Bowman of Bowperson Publishing and Training in Nevada (www.bowperson.com). Bowman has been training the trainers as a corporate trainer for 12 years and altogether has worked as a trainer and classroom teacher for both kids and adults for more than 30 years. She has seven books on the subject of training. When she talks, people don't just listen---they learn....
 

...This complete article is available in "The Gold" eBook in the VAAP membership packet available here.