Should a Trainer Evaluate His Participants?
Sanjay Goel
Soft Skills, Behavioural and Leadership trainer, Outbound training, DiSC trainer, Coach, Author, NLP and Hypnosis Practitioner, Customised Content Design and Delivery, Learning Consultancy
In my experience of seventeen years of training, participants have evaluated my sessions. But I have also delivered sessions where HR wanted me to evaluate the participants and give my feedback about them. In most of the cases, I have refused. In some projects where I found difficult to refuse for commercial reasons, I would evaluate all the participants almost at the same level.
Is it right to evaluate the participants during training? My answer would be a big No. I really don’t know where the concept of trainer evaluating the participants came from? Trainer’s job is to transfer knowledge and not to evaluate them. In schools, teacher evaluates her students because she is with them almost for the entire year. She takes tests and interact with them on regular basis. Yet she can make mistakes in her evaluation. Moreover, Marathi teacher may find some students good whereas maths teacher would find another set of students good. Whom would you believe? In colleges, professors would find it impossible to evaluate their students individually. He comes for two-hour lecture for a class of seventy plus students communicating one way most of the time. He would carry positive impression about some of the students but they may not necessarily the best.
If I am conducting an eight-hour session, I would be actually delivering less than seven hours if you take out lunch time and tea breaks. If I have twenty participants (that’s minimum), I will be spending less than twenty minutes per participant at an average. How can I evaluate the participant and on what parameters? If the participants are technical guys, I am non-technical in their field. If I have to measure on the basis of his interaction, then if a participant is asking few questions don’t mean he is not learning. If I am evaluating on the basis of questions he asks and quality of sharing, then again, I can be wrong.
Trainings should be an open platform where participants should be free to share. They should be allowed to speak their mind out even if it means sharing the present burning issues and pain points. When the sharing is real and honest, there will be learning. If participants by any chance suspect that trainer will evaluate them and share feedback with the management, most of the participants will not speak or ask questions fearing the evaluation. It will destroy the whole training. Also, It will be loss of trust. Also, if the trainer is focused on evaluating his participants, how will he focus on his subject. That takes away lot of his energy. Learning sessions are not assessment centres where you will evaluate the participants based on their involvement.
When I give feedback to the management about the discussions, I make it a point not to disclose the names of the participant so they don’t have to face the backlash for being open in the session. As a counsellor and a coach, I have learnt to keep sharing by my client with me. At no point of time, I would share it with anyone. That would be a breach of trust. If I have to do it, I will inform the participants about the disclaimer ‘your statement can be used against you in the court of law’. ??
Participant’s supervisor could be the best person to evaluate them. They are working with him and interacting throughout their working hours. Evaluation by immediate boss can be more accurate. He would know their strengths and areas of improvement. For a manager or a supervisor, their subordinates can evaluate him on leadership skills, somewhat on technical skills. Manager’s boss can evaluate him on performance and technical skills. ?
Finally, true human potential is subjective and cannot be measured accurately.
I am happy being a trainer and being evaluated by the participants. I don’t have skills to evaluate my participants. I will leave it to their bosses and their subordinates.
Thank you for reading.
Note: Evaluating participants for training effectiveness is a good practice. L&D/HR can do it. I am talking about evaluating participants potential based on their interaction during the workshop.
Performance Coach, Trainer, Author and Business Consultant
1 年Ratan Tata sir told someone that , he accepts people as they are. i think we need to follow him and if we are going to evaluate other members or our participants, they also can and should evaluate us
Learning & Development professional I a keen communicator I Language Coach I Facilitator I HR Consultant I Coach and a Mentor I Passionate mum to two beautiful biological babies and eight super cute fur babies I
1 年Totally appreciate your thoughts ,however when a facilitator has taken some time.out before the delivery for a pre assessment on fixed parameters and the topics of delivery are in sync with the assessment parameters ,it does make sense to evaluate the participants and show a needle movement from pre to post the intervention.
Leading, Managing & Delivering the training & development initiatives to achieve current & future business objectives...
1 年Appreciate your views, but my view is yes, evaluation is necessary for progress. The basic premise of management is "Anything which cannot be measured" such activities should not be taken". It's understandable that you may feel uncomfortable with evaluating participants as it may create a power dynamic that could potentially be counterproductive to the learning experience. Evaluation of participants is necessary to assess the effectiveness of the training and to provide valuable feedback for their professional development. It depends on what type of training & @ which level you're doing. This is a subjective matter.