The Labeled & The Not Labeled

When we started working on Electives , we were stuck on an important question: why is corporate training a notoriously boring industry?

If you ask employees to consider the word ‘training’, especially externally-led training, it’s typically not an eyes-light-up-hold-back-my-smile type of conversation.?

But why was this the case? Did it stem from the sea of pre-recorded content that is impossible to finish? The little quizzes that block your advancement until you score an 80%? Well, yes, both of those are problematic, but there was something else right under our noses.

A massively flawed assumption that looked something like this:

Corporate Training = something delivered by a “Corporate Trainer”

Let’s go deeper.?

I’m a company and I need corporate training. What’s my next step? Well, I suppose I should run a search on LinkedIn for “Corporate Trainers.” That sounds pretty intuitive, right?

If I need to recruit a Head of Marketing or a Full Stack Engineer, I would search on LinkedIn for “Marketing” or “Engineer.” Why wouldn’t this work when searching for “Corporate Trainers”?

Well, there are two flaws inherent in the training market - the labeled and the not labeled.

1. The Labeled - When you search for “Corporate Trainers” on Google or LinkedIn, you quickly discover tens of thousands of people who have labeled themselves as Corporate Trainers. And some of them are AWESOME corporate trainers.?Others might take the billboard approach, with a LinkedIn tagline that reads, “CORPORATE TRAINER. KEYNOTE SPEAKER. BEST SELLING AUTHOR. I TURN SALES FROM $0 TO $1 BILLION IN 6 WEEKS.” Whoa. I feel like that person should be more famous if all those things were true! You get my point though. In the “labeled” search of corporate trainers, good trainers are completely washed away in the noise of everyone else, leaving an overwhelmed and confused employer trying to navigate this mess.?
2. The Not Labeled - Let’s think of all the people who do not label themselves corporate trainers. There are so many amazing people in this world. Most do not roll out of bed in the morning identifying themselves as “corporate trainers.” Here’s an exercise: think of three people you know who are incredible teachers, mentors, or thought leaders. Would any of them introduce themselves at a dinner party as a corporate trainer? This is the fundamental flaw! We must think beyond the label to understand the universe of people we are able to learn from.?

If I search LinkedIn for a “Mentor” or “Friend,” I won’t find what I’m looking for. The same holds true for amazing teachers and instructors. We need to turn the flawed formula above into something like:

Corporate Training = something delivered by an Amazing Human.

It’s easy to slap a label on your LinkedIn profile, but if everyone does that, we all lose. We’ll never know who is truly effective.?

The harder thing to do is discover the world of inputs that make a great teacher: attributes that are not publicly available - an ability to engage learners, lived experiences, unique knowledge on a given subject, and teaching skills!?

So, let’s change the inputs, continuously measure them, and let’s redefine what it means to be a great corporate trainer.