How old are you and where do you work?
I’m a young 50. I work for NCR, a communications and IT company, across all of its Europe, Middle East and Africa division: from Moscow in the north to Johannesburg in the south across to the Middle-East and sometimes even further such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay). I am ‘virtual’, and based at Saffron Walden in Essex.
What does your job involve?
We offer a true blended learning environment so I do everything in a trainer’s job description: training needs analyses, workshop development, creating e-learning courses, delivering training, and coaching and consulting.
What types of courses/events do you organise?
If it isn’t a ‘nuts and bolts’ programme, such as technical learning, then its mine. This includes all soft skills in leadership, management, sales, admin and customer service.
How did you get into training?
I answered a job ad in a national newspaper. So thank-you Ron Coleman – he was managing director of Invicta Training, where my training career started.
What course or programme are you working on now?
Advanced presentation – PowerPoint is forbidden.
How and why did you get into training?
Because of the cliche mid-life crisis. I’d had enough of directly managing people and dealing with directors who couldn’t.
Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
Only working two days a week but earning twice as much as I do now.
What’s the best training event you have attended?
The very first consultative selling skills workshop that I sat in. It opened my eyes to all the things I’d done wrong for too many years.
And the worst?
Finance for non-financial managers – I fell asleep.
How do you measure the impact of the training you deliver/organise?
Increasingly with all four of Kirkpatrick’s levels, plus the fifth level of return on investment (ROI). Last year, I achieved a very respectable 49:1 ROI on one particular programme.
When you were young what did you want to be?
An actor.
What’s your biggest bugbear in life?
Getting a level of customer service, particularly in hotels, which is below acceptable.
What advice would you give to someone setting out on a career in training/L&D?
Don’t even think about it until you pass 40. You won’t have the depth of experience that a truly great trainer needs. All the great trainers I have seen or worked with have been over 40.
Keith Phillips, learning and development consultant
