what works in training!

7/25/2019 What Works in Training!

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Sarang Yandes Thoughts on The Profession of Training

What Works in Training

Myths & Ideas Discussed by

S a r a n g Y a n d e

F o u n d e r L e a d T r a i n e r

Will n Skil l

Mumbai, India

March 13, 2013

I started training by accident when I had to return from Bengaluru to Mumbai upon learning

that my father had suffered an attack of epilepsy and my friends informed me about it. Hurt

that I was, I was even more amazed at the steel hearted approach of my parents not to inform

me as they did not intend to upset my rising career graph in Bengaluru where I worked as

Quality Control Team Leader at an international contact center.

The contact center business had begun at the turn of the millennium in India and by 2005 it

had peaked with dozens of American , British and Australasian brands setting foot on Indian

soil investing in voice and accent, process training and transitioning business over.

I quit my Quality Control profile and moved home to Mumbai. Doors were closed for the

same profile and every H.R round I was asked for a minimum of a year of experience in a

leadership role. I had to place a heavy rock on my heart and hesitantly joined Convergys, a

pioneer in the contact center business. Headquartered at Cincinnati, Ohio and employing

almost 70,000 heads in 2005, Convergys hired me as a contact center staff for servicing an

Australian internet and telephony client by taking calls. Fortunately my quality control and

leadership experience proved vital and I was offered a role of an in-team trainer! Salil Samant

was our process trainer and I owe a lot in my career to this gentleman. After a series of tough

auditions and scrutiny I attended the Facilitation Skills Workshop conducted by our Senior

Training Expert Pankaj Bharadwaj who was flown in from Delhi. Learning was immense,

boundless and exciting! Every concept was brand new, transparent and non-exhaustive. I was

put through rigorous facilitation demonstrations with a pre and post video recording. The jury

was the on board trainers and experts in the company whose elite presence I would enjoy in

some days after clearing the hurdles in certification.

I got certified as facilitation expert and moved on to the nitty-gritties of training. Conducted by

none other than the clients the Australian training team! I went through a brain numbing 30

days of Train The Trainer Workshop. To date that month has been the best and the most

invaluable in my work life. Explaining concepts, sticking to the Leaders Guide, familiarizing

with the Participants Guide, conducting activities successfully, showing videos, pictures and

audio files, delivering using Power Point, playing with different options on a projector,

conducting systems based training (live and training server), training with live customer calls,

offering objective feedback, evaluation methods, dealing with difficult participants and


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conducting role plays and scenarios were among the chief components of this workshop. I

cannot thank enough trainers Stuart Deer and Tom W (cant recollect his last name), training

manager Laura Kenny and National Training Head Annette Finck. Trainer Annie Appleton is

equally responsible for my success today!

The Australians bowled me over literally with their profound knowledge of the subject, the

knick knacks and in-depth understanding of the concept of training delivery. I would rate their

training method as supreme and at the top of the list among a plethora of options available

today in the world of train the trainerworkshops.

The next entire month was going to be a gruesome challenge, a test of my knowledge-

application transition and my potential was going to be discovered. By my evaluator. By me.

I trained my first batch starting a week before New Years eve 2005 and the batch was taking

calls by the end of the first month in 2006. This was the perfect examination for me after years

and I realized my press-me-to-the-wall-and-I-fight-back attitude! Stuart Deer and I spent hours

on feedback sessions after 9 hours of training delivery. I used to hardly find time to eat and lost

almost 15 kilos during this month. Coffee, eggs and juice at the cafeteria became my staple diet.

The feedback brought me tears sometimes when Stuart stung me on schedule adherence,

content adherence and participant discipline. I realized training was an entirely different

business concept and it molded me into a professional. Discipline, timeliness, handling difficult

participants, breaking groups, focusing on poor performers, offering constructive feedback,

handling criticism, maintaining credibility, delivering technical training to engineers while being

from a hotel management educational background were important take aways of this period in

my life. It was the period of enlightenment Convergys was my Bodhisattva! And I soaked inthe glory, the intrigue, the passion and the commitment of being a trainer. Hard core, to-the-

point and smooth. Laura Kenny, client training manager had coined the nick name Mr.

Smooth for me! I remember the accolades showered on me when she had walked into one of

my sessions during situation handling and was delighted to see me focusing a lot on

communication skills and cultural sensitivity despite being a process trainer. This was a rarity

and most process trainers were in the old league of traditional technical concept delivery

without throwing any light on communication skills.

I had a different approach. Participants coming to my class would attend pre-process training

which would gear them up for communication skills, language and cultural awareness of the

client and end users calling them. Post that they would attend a 30 day process training batch

which ended in evaluation, fish bowling and finally call taking. I always apprehended the gap

between pre-process training and call taking and thought of including communication skills and

cultural awareness in situation handling, role plays and scenarios during process training.

It works


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In a team of a dozen trainers I found myself on the ascending path of glory, earning respect,

fondness and fame among participants who passed my batch and also team leaders and

operation heads. They started trusting my work and my personal commitment. I became a

name to reckon with. People recommended my expertise in handling challenging participants

or poor performers. Team leaders ganged up for having Sarangs batch as their team members.

The feeling was superb, satisfying and spell bounding! It prodded me to diversify my training

style by including elements like live call barging inside the training room (for better

understanding of customer accent and issues faced), scenarios involving difficult customers by

using actual call simulations (by exposing trainees to their would-be colleagues on the floor and

the issues faced, hold and transfer procedures and escalations involved), participants using live

servers for call logging (with due leeway from the technical team!) and trainees using the

technical help desk application extensively in the classroom environment. These were the key

success elements that made me a class apart from other technical trainers. That gave me theedge. Einsteins thought of imagination being unlimited while knowledge limited rocked!

It Works

Mid-2006 I found myself at the gate of IHM Mumbai also fondly referred to as Dadar Catering

College or Catcol by the old timers! This premier institute is a Government of India facility

started in the 60s as the first hotel management and catering technology college in the country.

I passed my 3 year diploma from this Mecca of Hotel Management in 2000. I was nervous as I

was meeting my favorite professor Asit Mishra for his advice on my career move. Prof Mishra

is an eternal source of inspiration and learning for his oceanic wisdom and never-ending ability

to mix teaching with humor and at times satire, black comedy, imitation and tremendous sense

of generosity in knowledge sharing. This meeting with Prof Mishra was a turning point in my

career and he suggested I move to hotels as a training manager. I had the professional

qualification, international exposure in Hong Kong onboard Star Cruises as a Barperson for a

year working with 30 nationalities among 1000 staff catering to around 1500 passengers every

evening. I had acquired the business acumen and the grit required to train adults and handle

most situations and the ever-motivating professor goaded me on to change industries and move

on to a bigger playground. Discussing your dreams and clarifying vision statements with people

who you trust would offer an unbiased feedback works! Especially if you are experiencing a

plateau in your career graph.

It Works


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My first job as a training manager at the Sun n Sand Hotel Juhu Beach Mumbai was my first

job as a manager. The best part of this role was to set up a training department. To start from

writing the job description, job specification, key result areas and devise a performance

appraisal matrix of a training manager. Soon I found myself writing standard operating

procedures, audit procedures, key result areas and performance appraisal matrices of all

department heads! I found a new sense of recognition, the ability to connect with senior

management and prove to be a vital go-to point in the whole management system. My boss

the General Manager Mr. Gulshan Arora, now VP, was a beacon in the path of new found

progress, unlearning and relearning. Getting the department heads buy-in, putting across

learning needs of staff before immediate supervisors and scheduling training slots in the midst

of peak and slack hotel operations were all new concepts to me and I was quickly mastering

those along with balancing the top managements vision and matching the training departments

vision with it. The constant endeavor to unlearn-learn-relearn worked!

It Works

Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai was in pre-opening when Leonora DSouza called me if I wished

to try for the Learning & Development Manager position there. Leonora was a professional

hotel recruiter operating from her home office and renowned for helping hotel owners and

managers find the right fitment for mid-management and top management vacancies. She

shared Ranjith Premrajs email address and I sent my resume for their perusal! Four Seasons

Hotel is a part of the super luxury hotel chain started in 1961 by a Canadian visionary, Isadore

Sharp that competes with the Ritz-Carlton globally. The Mumbai hotel was built at a whoppingcost of 100 Million U.S Dollars that boasted of 202 pompous rooms with imported beds, twin

vanity counters, LOccitane toiletries, BMW 7 series limousines for airport pick and drop, an

opening price of Rs. 20,500/- for a standard room and Rs. 2,71,000 for our Presidential Suite

and a 30 U.S Dollar breakfast menu that sent eye brows up all over Mumbai! The interview

rounds gave me another deep revelation that common-place techniques were pass and the

recruitment team at Four Seasons had Behavior-based Interviews. Situation based, making one

think logically and it challenged my imagination that never-failing quality in me! I got selected

in the final round as I conducted a 30 minute training session before Armando Kraenzlin - the

Swiss General Manager, Uday Rao the Indo American Hotel Manager, Grace Moore the

Irish H.R Director and my would-be boss and Laura Laugiere, the Carribean dynamite a

task force training manager flown in from the Maldives to assist me in setting up systems,

processes and launching new programs in learning & development. I was feeling like being

thrown in a hot saucepan with live crabs for company and the temperature rising every minute!

What helped me survive is adjusting myself constantly to the new environment, my keenness to

soak in the new learning and the ability to CHANGEsometimes every day! It worked!

It Works

Learning & Development is a world in itself. Working as a trainer and heading the department

are like heaven and earth! Completely different yet offering the opportunity to bridge the gap


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between the two by constantly balancing priorities. Changing perspective also helps. A training

manager is successful as a trainer when he loses himself completely during delivery. He does

not assume the role of a manager and a department head and has little authority in the

management chain while training junior, mid-level, managerial and senior managerial

employees. When he delivers unabashedly. Without inhibitions. With conviction. Infusingpride and the sense of achievement during induction for new joiners. Matching talent and

company vision during supervisory training. Gaining experience and putting down training

needs during managerial training. And seeking knowledge and matching planning committee

broad vision and the annual training plan during senior managerial sessions.

A trainer is successful as a training manager when he assumes the role of a department head

and delegates tasks effectively to training coordinators, monitors and reviews performance

regularly, briefs-guides-mentors interns and apprentices and effectively relays training needs

from Planning Committee to HR Director to Department Heads and prepares training content

and plans delivery in accordance to peak and slack periods in hotel operations. Most ofStephen Coveys Quadrant II stuff works! Planning, Preparation, Prevention, Recreation

doing that what is not urgentbut important works!

It Works

The training function is not a real department if you ask me! Purists would argue here and Im

certain they would at most nuances of my story, but then again this is a journey experienced

from my eyes and is not a claimed benchmark at all. I profusely faced the fact that each time I

had to go through the labyrinth of Human Resources to voice my departments concerns to

Planning Committee. Getting sanctions for spending on training room equipment, trainingprops and staff recreation was proving to be too time consuming and my morale was dipping

down. I wanted a department. I wanted total control. I wanted to perform as a department

head and make things happen. For the organizations benefit. To my own as well. I wanted to

be a Human Resources head.

Four Points by Sheraton Navi Mumbai was in pre-opening phase when I learned how big a

hotel chain was Starwood. At the time when Four Seasons was 83 hotels strong, Starwood was

servicing its diverse and dignified market by dishing out 9 hotel brands and a spa brand. This

giant had 1000 hotels globally when I gave my interview for training manager for a higher salary

and hoping for a better profile. Opportunity soon knocked my door when the spot for Human

Resources Manager was vacant and I proposed my idea of handling a dual role of Training and

HR Manager to my boss Sumit Kant, now VP and GM, in the elevator as we descended from

Level One to Lobby! We exchanged surprised glanceshe, perhaps at my daring and Icoyly

thinking of not broaching the topic in another six months or so! But the idea stuck. He

expressed apprehension at the fact that I was not a management graduate in HR the erstwhile

standard of becoming a HR Manager and that I didnt possess any informal know-how in the

technical aspect of the department with respect to administration, provident fund, employees

state insurance, medical insurance, policy making, grievance handling, unionization and other

industrial relations functions. I wasnt a straight jacket HR Manager. But I was convinced that Ihad connected with my 320 staff so well in my stint as Training Manager that I would be able to


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lead them, retain them, motivate them and help achieve their potential. Isnt that what HR

Managers are ultimately paid fortaking off the straight jacket and peeking into the very

existence of a HR professional? My conviction worked. My risk-taking paid off. My shameless

proposal delivered results. My self-belief rewarded me. I got what I wanted. I was heading HR

and Training functions of a five star deluxe hotel in the Mumbai area. 150 luxury businesshotel rooms. International spa. Largest gym in hotels in the region. Club Lounge. Open Air

Grill. International branding on my resume. My pursuit of excellence worked!

It Works

Retirement at 30! Not wanting a boss after 30 years on this planet. Crazy dream. Over

ambitious move. I stuck to it. I had gathered a fine exposureI repeat exposurenot donkeys

years of experience. Star Cruises, Hong Kong; Convergys; Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai; Four

Points by Sheraton Navi Mumbai. All international brands. All leaders in their segment of

business. Unique in their vision. Challenging in my career. An exposure that only I could have

lived to tell. At 30 I felt complete. I drove an automatic Honda Accord then. I managed two

loans that ripped me off each month of 30,000 rupees. I smiled at my situation. I could do it. I

could jump on. July 3, 2010 was my last day of work under a boss. Four days before my 31st

birthday. Who was I kidding! The same month I got my first assignment as an independent

training professional. Whoa! I was a young entrepreneur. Many scorned. Most laughed. While

others were jealous they couldnt jump while they were my age. There was no comparison. No

competition. And I let the world be. I moved on.

Two years and eight months later today I find myself on a new level. 27 clients. Half of

them repeat clients. 2 international training trips. One client offering to join them as CEO. Oneclient offering to join them as National Training Head. All loans paid off early! The market was

speaking for me. I was living my Convergys days again. People were recommending me in their

network. I felt like coming full circle. From the start of my training career in December 2005 to

March 2013 I had managed the journey purely on intrinsic motivation. Talking to my parents

helped immensely. They gave me the power beneath my wings. Freedom to play with my ideas.

And the maturity of not diluting my passionate advancement with their personal issues health

wise or financially. Im blessed to be born to angels. Connecting with no one but parents

worked! Many of us dont. Believe me it works!

It Works

what works in training!

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