The other day a business contact of mine said “ Don’t you get bored training folk in the same stuff time after time?”. He might as well have asked whether a stage actor gets bored doing the same role night after night on a long run. Every day it is a new audience. In our case it is usually also in a new location and business context.
For me, as for any committed educator, it is that moment when you see the dawning of understanding that makes the experience one well worth repeating. Maybe that is the equivalent of applause for an actor. In both cases, it is recognition of a job well done.
Then again there is the variety of audience – engineers who are rarely in the office, technologists, office staff and production teams from the factory floor. They all bring different needs, experiences, levels of knowledge and personalities. Each time there is a different group dynamic.
Perhaps most rewarding is to see the transformation in someone who clearly doesn’t think they should be on the course but has been told to attend into someone who is excited to realise that there are things he or she does not know and would like to know more about.
So my answer is “No, boring is far from the reality. Delivering a course effectively is a performance art and the transfer of knowledge is too important to be idly dismissed.”
