Should you be building capacity of others to facilitate learning for adults across your organization, network and community. YES.

The best way to do that is to design a “Train-the-Trainer” or “TTT” session that uses your existing content, workshop materials or lesson plans and teaches other people how to facilitate them for adult learners.

Those learners will be people who go out and facilitate the workshops, lessons, sessions on your behalf. They are like ambassadors. So you want to make sure theyhave the approach and principles down.

In an effective train-the-trainer, you will provide all the materials your trainers will need in order to effectively facilitate the sessions for others. That means:

• Facilitation Agendas

• Slide Decks

• Handouts

• Participant Agendas

• Any other specialized equipment if needed

Your TTT session must help facilitators feel comfortable and confident with the content they are to facilitate so a good chunk of the time will be spent with them practicing the material—probably co-presenting with a peer or just facilitating one part of the larger agenda.

Make sure not to skip the special sauce ingredients that will differentiate your TTT from others.

1) Get all the trainers on board with what it means to represent your organization/project. Guiding principles help here. Discuss what your principles look like in action and make sure trainers know how you want participants to feel once they leave a training session. This helps the facilitator know what to prioritize when it comes to the actual sessions they instruct.

Do you want participants to leave feeling:

• Inspired

• Motivated

• Energized

• Confident

• Appreciative

• Empowered

• Focused

• Curious

• Rejuvenated

• Supported

• Prepared

  Yes, tempting to agree to all of those! But, it’s important that you choose your TOP priority. This helps the facilitator know how to act, where to put more time or less energy. So, choose your top focus and communicate that with your trainers.

2) Establish a safe space. Develop community agreements with the group and have them written down and visible throughout the TTT session. If it’s over multiple days, make sure to repost the chart paper or slide and revisit at the beginning of each day. This practice not only reaffirms the safety and belonging of this group, but also mirrors and models for them how to interact with their soon-to-be training participants. For our mini-course on community agreements visit: https://learn.developmentwithoutlimits.org/course/community-agreements

3) Spend time inviting them to consider their own identities and discuss how that influences how they show up as facilitators.

We like to do a session that invites people to share their multiple social identities in a safe, anonymous way. You post 11 chart papers around the room, each labeled with a social identity:

• Body Type

• Race / Ethnicity

• Class

• Gender Identity

• Sexual Orientation

• Hidden Invisible

• Political Beliefs

• Religious beliefs

• Relationship Status

• Household structure / family

• Ability Health

Then, invite participants to write on post-it notes, how they identify in each category. Have them go around the room and place their post-its on the appropriate chart.

As the group mills around through the chart papers, invite them to pause. Ask volunteers to read off some of the identities on each chart.

Ask people to pair off to discuss: How did it feel to write down these identities and have them seen by the group?

You can continue this activity by facilitating a discussion on which identities have been most influential in their lives, in their leadership and in their facilitation.

Wrap up by asking the group to consider: How do your social identities influence how you show up as a trainer? What do you need to be more aware of? Why is that important?

4) Get into Youth Development and Adult Learning

If your work is centered on young people, make sure a part of your TTT hones in on Ages and Stages of Youth Development. Find this as part of our mini-course, Positive Culture and Climate. Trainers need to feel confident in discussing the needs of the young people their trainees will be supporting.

If your content is more focused on adult development, make sure you spend time with your trainers on the Basics of Adult Learning. Consider taking our course, Facilitating Adult Learning if you need to brush up on your own knowledge about facilitation, how adults learn, how to build belonging, and how to motivate adult learners.

5) Plan to Have Fun Growing

Remember that the trainers in your TTT are not blank slates! They come with skills, knowledge, passions, expertise and eagerness. Tap into the strengths in the room by leaving plenty of time for discussion, sharing, practice and feedback. Invite trainers to facilitate part of the agenda and then invite other participants to offer 4 W feedback to them, choosing one statement from these 4 starters:

• “I wish…”,

• “I wonder…”,

• “My ‘wow’ moment was…” or

• Wild Card (say what you need to say).

Get started planning your live Train the Trainer session using this easy-to-edit template. Make sure your trainers are ready with youth-centered learning, adult learning principles and equity.

Feel free to call if this is more than you want to do on your own. Otherwise, let us know how it goes! ❤️