Fat Aunt Ellen: and other obstacles to learning

Abstract

It seems that training is moving from the training department into the realms of day‐to‐day management. More and more I meet trainers who tell me that the present emphasis is on getting managers to train—“coach” is the jargon term—their subordinates by day‐to‐day contact. The least honourable motive for doing this is to allow the training department to wither and die; more honourable motives are based on the assumption that, while the trainer may be an expert in learning theory, nobody knows the job like the man doing it; so let's use the trainers' expertise by getting them to help managers to transmit their insights to their subordinates. Whatever the motives, many people who had previously thought that training was something you sent people away for, now have to treat training as a day‐to‐day management job like any other. For them, and for the trainers who have to help managers to act as coaches, I would like to point out one or two aspects of their problem which can cause a good deal of wasted effort.

Citation

Stewart (1977), "Fat Aunt Ellen: and other obstacles to learning", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 22-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb014142