Why bother having external speakers for your training courses? Well, there are many reasons and it depends on what the course is trying to achieve, but a couple of obvious reasons spring easily to mind. Firstly, by bringing in someone who has real life experience of the course subject matter they can provide some reality to the theory and scenarios covered by the course material. Secondly, and some people may disagree with this, it gives the students a break from the trainer who is running the course and in that way provides a different style of delivery thus preventing over familiarity with one trainer and their way of working, no matter how good they are.
But to make sure you get the most out of your guest speaker, who may well be a volunteer or in some cases has been volunteered for the role, they need to understand what on earth is expected of them so that they can suitably prepare. Remember that they may or may not be comfortable with talking to groups large or small, it’s their experience and expertise you want them to impart so you need to help them understand what’s required of them up front. Using the following few items as a checklist ought to help ensure external guest speakers are as well prepared as possible.
Session Brief
Speakers brought into courses can often deliver material that is at odds or even seem irrelevant to the content of the rest of the course. This is usually because they have been inadequately briefed on what the whole course is covering or more often than not, not briefed at all. It doesn’t have to be much, course objectives and outcomes, a course timetable and overview of how the course operates (mostly presentations or very interactive with lots of group sessions). Most importantly, what should the students get out of the session of the visiting speaker?
Group Description
Demographics, whether the students are fresh out of school or college or have significant work experience together with gender and geographic mix are all important considerations for any speaker. Is the course of an academic or more of a training nature? Is it part of a wider series of courses (and if so what are those subject areas?) and have the students paid for this course themselves or is it part of an employer paid course? Do any of the students have particular disabilities that need to be accommodated e.g. hearing or visual? Do any of the students require translation or if you are presenting in a language which isn’t the first language of some of the students then you may have to keep the pace to a level that allows everyone to be able to follow what is being said. Providing answers to all of these questions can really assist an external speaker appreciate where the students are coming from and enable them to better pitch their session.
Logistics
Even if the background information isn’t provided any visiting speaker can provide something for a group on a training course – it may not match what students are expecting but it will be something more or less along the lines of the session title. Far from ideal of course but what can really cause problems is assuming that the visiting speaker understands the training venue and how it operates as well as ‘a local.’ Each training venue, company premises or conference centre has its own way of working and for even the most competent visiting speaker it can be these ‘basics’ that cause the most problems. Make sure you provide directions, instructions for how to get into buildings and rooms, a point of contact with phone number and how the training room or area is likely to be set out. Also, ensure you ask what they need by way of facilities such as projectors audio/visual, break-out rooms, flip-charts, hand-outs and anything else they might want. Not everything may be available and some venues can be quite restrictive in what they allow but better to have that conversation well in advance rather than having to deal with a crisis with 10 minutes to go before things start.
Using an external speaker on a course of any description is almost always a benefit as it adds a different perspective to that of the main trainer/presenter. To get the most out of it though it’s important that the external gets as much information about the course, the group of students and how the venue operates to give them the best possible chance of providing something that meets the students’ needs.
Copyright © 2010 Paul Slater
