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Training Skills

24/7/2013

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I'm writing a book about training skills, or sketching it out anyway. I've put my 10,000 hours in after all and, as you know, fancy myself as a writer. I had a feeling there was a gap in the market. When I did my teacher training back in 1984 at Goldsmith's College, South London, the best book I read was called "Craft in the Classroom" by Michael Marland. It was a slim, simple book but, I believe, more than anything else, made the difference between success and failure.  I hope to do something similar for learner trainers. 

I was doing some marketing research on Amazon for similar titles and came across "Tales from the Front" by Byron Kalies. It's not quite in my space but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I particularly loved this bit:  
Training (like stand-up comedy) is a job most people - especially mangers and especially senior managers - deep down think they could do better than I can. But they can't. Trust me - this is what I do. Trust me - I'm a trainer. 


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An Even Break

2/7/2013

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I was planning a half year review as to progress. I was going to post a separate update on each of the three streams of my portfolio life. Then I read one of the entries in my book The Northern Line to Shropshire and realised that it said it all - even though it was written in 2011. 
Gamblers have a uneasy relationship with luck. After all, we're hard-headed mathematicians spanking the arses of mis-estimated probabilities and systematic pricing errors. Strange that we're also a neurotic mass of wine stains, gibbering through the glass darkly about hubris and the gambling gods.

And naturally this spills into our real lives. On the one hand I know how privileged and advantaged I am, yet, on the other, can't help thinking we've had the most awful run of luck since we moved to Shropshire (for which incidentally we still entirely blame my sister-in-law and a broken mirror).

However, the last couple of months I've had that feeling, that all gamblers know, of being able to see the end of the losing run - glimpsing the sunlit uplands of a successful Cheltenham meeting say, reaching out and touching the joy of that life-changing win treble.

And I'm not talking about gambling, except as a metaphor. After all, sadly that's only a small stakes hobby these days. I'm talking about the world of work. I've been struggling to find any work this year. It's been one long frustration. But lately there have been glimmers, hints, possibilities. Hope.

And it was in such a mood yesterday that I was slathering my toast, when it fell from my grasp and somersaulted to the ground. And landed butter side up. I bent down to pick it up and said out loud: “There. See. Told you.” The world back in kilter. The deck reshuffled. The wheel in spin.

And then somehow, I've no idea how, I dropped the toast again. Butter side down. That's the thing about the gambling gods. They hate dreamers.        



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    A self-employed training consultant muses on the world of work. 





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