Customer Service Quote #1

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care - about them and their problems." Robert Cavett

Choosing the right trainer in Singapore

How To Choose A Good Trainer That Best Fit Your Employees' Learning Needs? "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu A good trainer should stimulate hearts and minds of the employees' by fulfilling their learning needs and making them more productive at their work.

He or she would be responsible for preparing objectives, defining content, selecting and sequencing activities for a specific programme. A good trainer can not only help others learn about managing their knowledge and skills individually but also learn how to work as a team. But a good trainer also has a role of selling training and development viewpoints, learning packages, programme and services to target audiences. Hence, there are some areas HR should look out for when selecting a trainer.

The question of identifying a good trainer would depend on some of the following effective qualities: He or she should set the stage and create an environment conducive for learning so that is non-threatening. The trainer should provide clear focus and clear objectives before the start of the workshop. He or she should be able to draw out the best and trigger enthusiasm in the participants. Sometimes trainers that have a back of metaphors, stories, acronyms, quotes, ice breakers and energisers would keep the engagement and audience involvement.

The trainer should also relate with the participants using real and practical experiences and examples. There should be a two-way communication that allows a dialogue session and stimulates an interactive community. He should be accountable and be able to engage participative learning and taking into consideration the relevance to their needs.

Why is it important to pick a good reliable trainer? The benefit of rendering the services of a good reliable trainer would be closing up the gap in achieving the desired outcome of the organisation. One of the biggest advantages is how much closer to the productivity target the organisation would be. After just a few weeks of applying the trainer's ideas and strategies, you should find your organisation transforming into a "masterpiece of muscular dimensions". This is something you can't achieve by working on your own within the organisation. Some areas to consider include: The reputation of the training provider: if a training provider hires the services of a trainer with a bad reputation, the institution hiring his services and the human resource manager would get a bad name for not being diligent in their selection process or even by association with that trainer.

 The human resource manager or the training provider should do a thorough check on the trainer or ask for testimonies before engaging their services. Some participants seek training as a stress reliever and a bad training session would leave a bitter taste, resulting in no interest or reluctance in attending. This would reduce overall productivity within the organisation. Types of trainers you should look out for and stay away from: There are many types of trainers ranging from old, young, experienced, inexperienced, serious, funny, generalist and the specialist.

One of crucial factors a good trainer should have is the ability to build rapport with the audience and not trigger a hostile or aggressive environment. However, some trainers make the mistake of having a lack of knowledge of the participants' needs, including any special requirements. Other ineffective qualities of trainers include being power hungry and very authoritative. Trainers should not force or obligate participants to participate in the activities such as group presentation or threaten to penalize them or make them incompetent in their exams should they fail to contribute ideas in the class discussions. The trainer should not use his power to control the audience, where there is only a one-way instruction and no questions are allowed. Beware of trainers who deal with the training in a highly theoretical approach.

Training has to be fun and it is important to draw out the learning objectives for participants. A trainer who has a habit of utilising the word "I" instead of "We" might seem very individualistic versus the more collective approach. A trainer also needs to take pride and professionalism in what he does. You could see this through his investments in training equipment or any self-development such as upgrading himself taking up course that could improve his work in training. Researching for the best trainers The most cost-effective way to find out about a trainer would be simply searching his or her profile on the internet e.g. Google, twitter, ezine articles, YouTube, Facebook. You can get some of their past testimonies or completed training evaluation forms or even past training videos.

 Another effective way of researching a trainer's background is through an interview, or asking the trainer to do a mock-up presentation. The trainer could, through a role-play in your interview session, market a course to the training provider. A guideline would be getting them to highlight the problem or the concern that requires a training programme. So he or she could list out the objectives, benefits, cost, teaching methodology and some learning outcomes for your company and you could decide on the best trainer for your employees' needs.

But should HR pick a freelance trainer or one who is contracted to a training consultancy? This would be very subjective as some trainers would prefer stability and security. However, the freelance trainer would always be on his or her toes as the importance for him or he to be in peak performance would be extremely higher. They would not want to have any mistakes that could jeopardise their career.

It is more ideal to find trainers with a lot of passion and who are able to and willing to share instead. But there could be situations such as freelance trainers who might not give their 100% during workshops because they were not well-remunerated by the training providers. However, this is a rare occurrence.

How to tell when a trainer is overcharging? What is the standard fee? Trainers fees are very subjective. It would depend on the demand of that trainer. With regards to overcharging if the training provider finds the trainers fees unreasonable and if he is easily replaceable, they could always source for other trainers. The range of fees for 8 hour work for an average trainer could be from $40/hr to even $500/hr. Essentially, it is about investing HR's training dollars wisely when selecting the most suitable training partner for the company's needs as it is important for every organisation to increase their sales and reducing their cost in strive for increasing the wealth of the shareholders.

Singapore Motivational Speaker, A to Z in Success

A to Z in Success

Santhanaram Jayaram, Singapore

7 Tips On How to Make Choices

7 Tips On How to Make Choices

Olga Hermans

1. Realize That You Have a Free Will

Many times people think that circumstances determine the direction of their life, but that is not so true. Have you ever thought about how those circumstances were created in your life? It is how we respond to the things that happen in our life that has a much greater impact and sets us up for the good or for the bad.

One thing that is given to all of us is a free will; we have to exercise that aspect of our life. If we don’t, impulses take over and fear and anxiety will develop our habits and habits develop our character and character develops our destiny. We are able to choose to act in a different way or at least learn to act differently and make choices toward life, love, peace and be filled with joy.

2. Realize That It Is You Who Has To Take Action

Make a decision and connect with that decision as much as possible. You can do that by writing things down. And then the most important part is to choose to take action. Not taking action is also a choice. You don’t have to do anything. Every action or non-action has consequences. Exercising our will gives you the power and the freedom to choose where we are in life and what we will do. That is when life changes from an obligation to a blessed opportunity.

3. Realize That You Can Take The Path of Life.

When we are influenced by outside forces, we might make the decision to give in and take the path of least resistance. If we go for immediate gratification we usually end up in mediocre conditions and we feel less fulfilled than that we had hoped for. Every choice that we make leads us either away from our destiny or right into our destiny where we will experience life to the fullest.

You determine what you are going to do. Don’t let another man’s weakness determine what you’re going to do. That can mess up your life and steer you off course in life.

4. Realize That Your Commitment is Very Important.

Commitment to yourself is very important; if you don’t care for yourself, you betray yourself and in the long run even punish yourself. You have to be able to commit yourself to make good choices, whatever it takes. Don’t let your impulses just run wild and make you a slave to yourself. Only when you have sufficient self-worth to choose whether to end something of value to you, you can fully commit to it.

Only when you learn to commit to yourself will you stop your self-sabotaging behaviour. Unless you realize you have the power to say no, you can never really say yes. Not to your relationships, not to your work, not to your life, not to anything.  If you realize what it means to say no to something, you also will realize what it means to say yes to something.

5. Realize that your choices affect the world around you.

So, look further. Your family will be influenced by big choices and sometimes also smaller choices. Take that in consideration. Remember: good choices will bring good things and bad choices will bring not such good things.

Steve D’Annunzio says it this way: “Fear-driven people constantly fight, desire-driven people constantly want, pride-driven people constantly manipulate, mission-driven people constantly learn and teach, love-driven people constantly serve and enlighten…it’s always your/my choice” – What drives you?

6. Realize that when you make choices for others you have to be careful.

Your intention can be good, but assuming too much responsibility for others deprives them of the lessons that arise from the choices they have made. People like your input, but nobody wants their life to be ruled by others. Remember, we have been given a free will.

7. Realize that you have the power to change your destiny.

I don’t have to know you to know that God has created a part for you on earth, it is a part that only you can play, a suit/or dress that only you can fit and a divine destiny that only you can fulfill.

Forget about trying to fit someone else’s mould. Keep your thoughts and emotions free of those kinds of obstacles by accepting yourself and the unique destiny that God has pre-ordained for you!

Use your emotions for the purpose God gave them, and don’t let the devil use them for his purpose. Embrace life with passion and use your emotions wisely. God wants to use them to help you enjoy your life, but the devil wants to use them to prevent you from enjoying life. The good news is the choice is up to you.