Page 107 - DMGT518_TRAINING_AND_DEVELOPMENT_SYSTEM

Training and Development System

Notes (c) Perceived relationships.
(a) Instructor’s concern for the trainee’s learning: A factor that needs the instructor’s
recognition is the trainee’s feeling of anxiety about his participation in the classroom.
The subject is new, he is expected to learn it and take his learning back to his job. He
has to evaluate and observe the relevance, to his own work, of what is being taught.
This anxiety often curtails him from understanding the possibilities of new concepts
and their exploration.

The trainer has to minimise this anxiety. One way is to allow the participant to
explore what is already familiar to him and to encourage him to rearrange his data
so as to discover new perspectives. He would be less anxious, and learn more, if the
instructor approached the subject from specific to subsequent generalisation.
(b) Distortions in communications: In training as much in any other activity, distortions
in communications occur. Language: A mention of controls conjures up images varying
from an autocrat who directs every movement of his subordinates, to a “good boss”
who exercises general controls through performance results of his subordinates.
Language as a means of communication has many shortcomings; the meaning
attached to words by people are interpreted by trainees according to their own
association with it. The instructor has to be sensitive to differences in meaning and
the differences in interpretation of concepts even by trainees coming from different
fields of work in the same organisation.
The organisation of teaching material, making it experience based, is a powerful
antidote for anxiety. If the trainee feels that he is discovering new concepts and
achieving new goals, he feels less anxious about the training situation. A positive
relationship between him and the instructor and the other trainees is also a great aid
towards establishing confidence.

(c) Perceived relationships: The direction, amount and content of communication in a
group depends upon the perceived power of a professional in a group. If engineers
in a company are perceived to have more power than others, people will communicate
mostly with engineers and ignore the others. If, in a company, there is hostility
between two departments, say, production and sales, trainees would tend to project
the hostility in the classroom and distort communication.

Notes Two other significant factors that enhance learning are:
 A feeling that the instructor is sympathetic to the trainee’s learning efforts;

 Experimentation with new concepts.
(iii) The Climate of Training: The effectiveness of group discussions, or working in teams or on
projects, would be seriously reduced if the sub-groups continued to carry forward their
differences in the training situation. The instructor would be able to handle these in the
following possible ways:

 By himself being aware of these differences and making the trainees recognise the
underlying factors that inhibit communications between them or factors that induce
formation of sub-groups.

 By his own behaviour in dealing with the trainees in such a manner that he does not
sanction such behaviour on the part of the trainees.

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