Every company with employees wants to have the most productive, efficient, and collaborative team possible. Great teams can do great things and can take a workplace to another level, no matter what industry you operate in. While there are many different factors that must be present to assemble and build dream teams, great teachers are one element that is absolutely essential.
Great teachers help team members to become self sufficient. They show employees how to work efficiently and sometimes even think outside of the box to make improvements. Unfortunately, great teachers and great workers or leaders are not the same thing and many workplaces make the mistake of thinking that if someone is a great worker or leader they are automatically a great teacher.
How Can You Identify Great Teachers?
There are several characteristics that all of the best teachers share: patience, flexibility, reliability, competency, and compassion. This list can be used like a checklist, because if any of these elements are missing a teacher will not be as effective. Watching your employees’ interactions with each other, with managers, and with customers will help you to identify the essential characteristics.
Why Are These Characteristics Necessary?
Competency and reliability are essential, as your trainer must know your company and be able to actually perform before they can start showing others how to operate. Patience and compassion are required in order to get the message across to trainees with any degree of effectiveness. Flexibility is a necessary virtue, as your trainer must be able to quickly adapt to changes so that this behavior can be modeled to the new employees.
Make the Workplace Conducive to Learning
After the best teachers of the bunch have been identified, it is necessary to make sure they have the needed tools and environment to be able to show their stuff and get to work creating your dream team. These factors may vary greatly between workplaces, with a quiet and secluded environment being optimal for some and a realistic on-the-job environment that is noisy or fast paced being optimal for others. If you don’t know what environment and tools work best, talk to your trainers to find out.
Give Teachers Time to Teach
One of the biggest complaints from both trainers and trainees in many companies is that ample time was not devoted to training. Sending employees unprepared into the fire can be disastrous for the workplace and the employee-and can create an ideal environment for high turnover immediately after training. To make sure that adequate time is given, check in with the teacher and trainee frequently throughout the training program and find out what the trainee knows at each stage.
Count Your Teachers’ Skills as an Asset
Great teachers are a valuable asset to your company, so be sure to get the most from their skills. The best teachers are not just good at teaching trainees, they also have a knack for simplifying things and may be able to teach even veteran employees and managers when rolling out new systems or products. Great teachers form the backbone of companies, helping teams to continually get stronger.