Eight modules

Emotional intelligence is the foundation of strategic training, because every other technique runs through it. Before you can question well, position yourself well, or hand ownership to a learner, you have to be able to read the room and read yourself. This module covers self-awareness, reading others, and the two ideas that do the most work in practice — Hooks and Triggers.

A room of individuals who happen to be enrolled in the same course is not a team, and it will not learn like one. This module covers the three things you establish before content — vision, expectation, commitment — plus the group stages every cohort moves through and the 70/20/10 rule that governs how much of the session should be yours.

Coach, Mentor, Facilitate, Train. This is the centre of the whole approach, and the order matters more than any individual technique in it. Each step transfers a little more ownership of the outcome to the learner — and training, the thing most people think the job is, comes last and only when everything else has been exhausted.

Facilitating runs on questions, and most questions trainers ask are closed ones that produce a yes and no thinking. This module covers wide-open questions, the discipline of pausing, beginning with the end in mind, and the short set of follow-ups that will get you further than any other technique here.

The most overlooked lever in training is physical. Where you stand relative to the learner determines who owns the task; what your body does while they work determines whether they keep going. This module covers the control zone, the difference between traditional and strategic positioning, and pattern interrupts.

Everything above this point is about how you train. This module is about what you are training to. Competence has three parts, and there are two benchmarks in play at once — the national one and your organisation's. Knowing which is which is the difference between a defensible training program and an expensive one.

The delivery process is six steps, and the ones people cut under time pressure — the introduction and the debrief — are the ones carrying the load. This module also covers learning styles, the internal and external barriers your learners bring, and reasonable adjustment.

Assessment is where training either holds up or doesn't. This module covers validation against the benchmark, the four principles of assessment, the four rules of evidence, the dimensions of competence, and how to plan and conduct an assessment that produces a decision you can defend.