I've been a professional speaker/trainer on the platform one short year, but I've lived in the world just over 60, most of which I've worked for myself and had very few J.O.B.s where someone else took the risk and responsibility. Throughout my life I've attended literally hundreds of training conferences in different professions and have noticed that most trainers, in an effort to emphasize the importance of their information, have a list of 5, 7, 10, or even 101 tips to be successful at whatever they're teaching.

The question is how many tips on the list are thrown in to make the desired number and how many are tips the speaker genuinely believes are helpful? How much of the information we spout from the platform do we really believe and how much is stuff we heard someone else say and think it couldn't hurt to throw it in? The problem for our audiences is that they don't know the difference between what we know to be true and what we think might-maybe-could possibly work.

When I started in the real estate business the first training I attended was about cold calling. The trainer swore that cold-calling was the way to instant wealth and success. He taught scripts and even had his audiences memorize them and role-play. He taught with such conviction that I believed him and since I'm fairly glib, I knew it would work for me. The sales manager had attended the same training and set up a designated time each week where he brought in pizza on "cold calling night". It was 20 years ago, and even though it didn't produce a dollar's worth of business, I continued cold calling the next seven years at a great sacrifice of my time and self-confidence. You could say here that I needed more training or was not good at talking on the telephone and I'd probably throw in with you - if 99% of the other people hadn't had the same experience. Here's the crime: Many good people were fed baloney, believed it, took action on it - and failed. These people's lives were adversely affected because of the bad advice of a trainer. Don't be that trainer.

If you're uncomfortable with something you advocate, don't do it. Unless we know something is true we shouldn't repeat it, let alone teach it. As speakers and trainers people trust us to give them straight, useful information that we believe, not just a bunch of dreck that sounds good. We need to honor their trust, which is hard to get and impossible to recover once we betray it.

Two important people are hurt when we teach something we don't really believe or don't know to be true and helpful. The first who are hurt are us when people take our bad advice and fail. Our punishment is that we are discredited and the sentence lasts a lifetime. Our credibility is forever destroyed with that customer.

The second and most serious punishment doesn't happen to us. This punishment hurts the people who take action based on what we teach them. When our audience takes an action we advocate and fails, the consequences are potentially disastrous for them and their business.

We all try out new material on audiences - and we should, but when we give out unproven strategies we need to identify them as such and not preach them as if they were Gospel.

Tell it like you see it, but make sure it's real meat - not baloney.

Bob Walker - bobwalker4@cox.net
Problem Salvaging Mastery
"Helping organizations discover their unique treasures - one gold nugget at a time."

Copyright 2008 Bob Walker - Salvage Master Productions LLC