When I was in college, I took a fencing class. I had never tried it before, and it sounded like an interesting way to fulfill a physical education requirement. We spent the semester learning how to parry, thrust, and lunge.
The instructor was a super nice guy who had once been in the running to represent the US in the Olympics. He was a fantastic fencer, but students really struggled with his teaching. When you went up to spar with him in practice, he would defeat you so fast that his foil seemed to be a blur. He would parry and score a touch, then say, “See what I did?” But nobody did. He was so good and so fast that none of us beginners could even begin to catch on.
This story is the example I always use when talking about subject matter experts and their ability to train beginners on that subject. You see it a lot in the working world – someone who is so knowledgeable about a subject is put at the front of a room, and they open a firehose of their expertise onto a bunch of people who are new to the subject.
But with the right mindset and habits in place, Subject Matter Experts can be mind-blowing trainers. This article is going to cover some of the reasons why Subject Matter Experts can struggle with being a trainer, but also how they can be some of your organization’s greatest assets in your learning culture.
Here are Some Cautions about Having a Subject Matter Expert as a Trainer:
They’ve Forgotten What It’s Like to be New to the Subject
Subject Matter Experts are usually the experts because they have years of experience, which makes for great work output, but can sometimes alienate them from beginners. They have so much knowledge now, that they’ve forgotten just how much knowledge a beginner lacks. (You can see more about this in this video on the four levels of competence)
You’ll see this play out at the start of a training session with a SME, and it often goes, “You all know about X already, right?” And they’re met with blank stares. “No?” They ask, “Well you know about Y, yeah?” And more blank stares. The subject matter expert has known this subject for so long that they have lost the memory of NOT knowing it.
They Have Too Much Knowledge
Being an expert at something means you have a large breadth of knowledge. An expert not only can see when something in their field has gone wrong and knows how to fix it, they can predict when it’s ABOUT to go wrong. This is great in the field, but can translate poorly to a classroom.
Ask a Subject Matter expert what should be included in a day-long training on their field of expertise, and they’ll likely say, “All of it.” A lot of training struggles under the pressure of trying to fit too much into too little time to cover as much as absolutely possible. The SME’s goal is get as much of their expertise across to new learners, and the instinct is to put TOO much knowledge into a set amount of time.
The Subject Comes Natural To Them
Again, this is a characteristic you WANT in a SME, but it can really get in the way of training others. The more you do a skill without thinking about it, the harder it becomes to explain to others.
This ties in with being far-removed from beginners. Parts of the field are second-nature to a SME, and it can be difficult to talk someone through them from there. Have you ever had to give someone a phone number, and you couldn’t relay it until you acted out pushing the buttons with your finger? If there’s a skill we’ve gotten so good at that we do it automatically, it can be difficult to break those steps down for beginners.
So I just spent a lot of time criticizing subject matter experts, but the fact is, with the right guidance, they can be the perfect trainer on the subject of their expertise.
Here are some reasons that subject matter experts can make the best trainers:
They are Way “Closer to the Ground”
We trainers like to think we have a good handle on how things work outside of the classroom, but the truth is, your subject matter experts will understand the learners far more about their situation and what their day-to-day is like.
One of the most important aspects of learning is empathy for the learner. When you fully understand where the learner is coming from, you can design learning experiences catered uniquely to them. No one can do this better than your SME, who is on the ground with them and fully aware of what their needs are. They’ll be able to truly tell what a beginner will need to be successful with the material being covered.
They Have So Much Knowledge
Yep, one of the reasons they can struggle with training is also one of the reasons they can excel at it. Trainers like myself are able to answer a lot of questions from learners, but not all. Subject Matter Experts can answer just about any question a learner throws at them.
Promising a learner that you’ll check on something and get back to them is good customer service, but a learner who receives an answer at the moment they’re curious about the answer will make the information stick better in their memory. Having a SME to answer questions immediately will keep learners’ curiosity engaged, which makes for a more memorable learning experience.
They Have Way More Practical Experience
We trainers like to think we have a good handle on what’s truly important to a learner, and a lot of the time we do, but no one is going to be able to convey what’s TRULY important to a learner more than a Subject Matter Expert. They have their hands in the content every day, and they’re going to know better than anyone what parts the learners are going to use every day and what they’ll only touch every so often.
If I’m teaching how to run sales orders on a new point-of-sale system, I can run through every button on the screen and what it does, but someone who has been out in the field running sales will be able to tell learners ways the process can go wrong, how to optimize and save time, or even trouble SKUs to look out for when ringing up items. This is the kind of knowledge that can only be gained out in the real world, and is invaluable to the new learner.
With the right guidance, a SME can avoid the pitfalls I’ve listed, and can become an incredible learning resource for an organization. So how can we make Subject Matter Experts the best trainers they can be? Here are some skills that can turn Subject Matter Experts into the absolute best trainers:
Meet Learners Where They’re At, Not Where They Think They’re At
If SMEs can truly understand where beginners are, they can help upskill learners that much faster.
This is best handled by assessing where learners are prior to any sort of learning event, and with lots of questions during the session. “What do you all know about X?” “How familiar are you with Y?” If you ask a question to a group of learners about what they know, and you get a round of blank stares, that’s a good cue to back it up even further. “Okay, how about Z? Are any of you familiar? No? Okay, let’s start with…” This way, we can make sure learners are being guided through the skill from the best possible starting point for them, not the starting point we THINK is good for them.
Give Learners Context
If I’m explaining Candyland to someone, I’m not going to start by saying, “Lollipop Woods is close to the middle of the track.” That doesn’t mean anything to the person I’m speaking with if I don’t start with some context. “The goal of the game is to get to Candy Castle. You do that by moving your piece along this multi-colored track.” Then you can start to introduce the more nuanced points of the game.
Julie Dirksen had a great metaphor in her book “Design for How People Learn.” If my learner has an empty closet, and I hand them a piece of clothing, they have nowhere to put it. Same for learning. If I haven’t given my learner any context, and I give them a random piece of information, they don’t know what to do with it. We need to “build shelves” for them so that new information has an organized place for it to go.
Be Patient with Learners
When someone is a complete beginner with a subject, they are bound to have apprehensions about learning it. Often, learners can have memories of their schooling experience that can color every interaction you have with them in a classroom. We want to make sure they feel safe making mistakes while they’re learning.
Treat every mistake as a learning experience, rather than a hindrance that’s holding things up. When learners don’t immediately grasp something, remind them it’s okay, and that they’re learning. And tell them it’s okay when they make the same mistake again. And again. And again. Throw in a “We’re gonna get you there!” and you’ll be golden.
So what should we do next? The best practice is to pair subject matter experts with learning and development professionals to design learning experiences. The subject matter expert can provide the subject matter, and the LnD team can help shape the content into a learner-centered format, and can help the subject matter expert in their interactions with learners. When subject matter experts are given every opportunity to set their learners up for success, they are unstoppable.
Incidentally, if your organization would like some help getting a partnership like this off of the ground, contact us today to talk about it!