As safety professionals, we are required to do training. OSHA Hazard Communication, forklift safety, lockout/tagout, scaffolding, fall protection, Bloodborne pathogens, etc., etc. If you have responsibility for environmental, transportation, radiation, or mine safety compliance, your list goes on and on.
We are required to do it, but we, ourselves haven't been trained in training techniques. If you were one of the lucky ones, maybe you took speech class or were on the debating team in school. If so, that gave you some practice and now, you can stand up in front of a group of people without too many of the butterflies, in your stomach, going haywire. For the rest of you, it may not be so easy.
Let's see by a show of hands. How many of you have had a course in public speaking? How many of you were ever on the debating team? And finally, how many of you are deathly afraid to get up and speak in public?
You are the ones that when you get up in front of the group and you grab a hold of that podium or lectern with white-knuckle fever. Your notes start to go fuzzy in front of your eyes, you heart begins pounding, your breathing is short and labored and you begin sweating. That's the fear reaction taking hold of you. What are you going to do?
Douglas Adams said in his book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Don't Panic!" Your objective is to get the butterflies in your stomach going in the same direction.
If that is your objective, you are going to be very glad you came here today. For the rest of you who are comfortable in speaking to a group, my goal for you is to take away from this presentation a few tips or techniques that will help you make great presentation and deliver wonderful training courses. And you too, will be very glad you came here today.
For a number of years, the Green Bay Packers were one of the winningest football teams in the United States. They were that good because of their coach, Vince Lombardi.
Mr. Lombardi had a special technique in training his team. He would get all the men around him on that first training session of the season and he would hold up a football and say, "Gentlemen, this is a football." Why did he do that? Some of those men had played football with him for many years. They played football in college and in high school. You would think by now that they knew that this oval, pigskin object is a football, wouldn't you?
