Building Credibility

When working with adult learners, credibility is a huge piece of establishing trust between them and yourself as the trainer.

After you’ve captured the attention of your learners, spend some time discussing their work responsibilities and goals. This conversation should demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and that you’re qualified to teach the materials.

Remember, your credibility also relies on tying the content covered in the training session to how it’ll be applied in the real world.

The other piece of credibility is making sure that participants feel that you value their feedback. And this really shouldn’t be difficult if you do value their feedback.

And why wouldn’t you anyway? They’re the ones who are performing their duties day and day out. Their feedback is incredibly important!

You can also accomplish this by asking expert questions to acknowledge the participants who are confident in their roles.

For example, if you’re teaching a forklift operator certification course, you can ask the participants about what might happen if someone were to not place their load far enough onto their forks.

Chances are that several participants will start giving actual examples of when this has happened to them, and what the outcome was.  You could then acknowledge their expertise and real-life experiences, and this would also be a great way to lead into a discussion about forklift stability and capacity.