Out of the Ugliness of War...Comes a Useful Metaphor for Trainers

For the six weeks of the Persian Gulf War, and for quite some time during its build up, military experts on every television station and in every newspaper touted the United States military as the best-trained in the world. And no matter what your stance was on Gulf policy, you had to admit the military lived up to the public relations in the process of meeting objectives and ending the conflict. That speaks well for the people who trained them. And it presents a standard by which we might all consider measuring our own performance as trainers.

In an all-volunteer army, military trainers are able to stress the importance of training with this maxim: Lives depend on it. During training and “on the job,” lives depend on how well military trainees remember and perform the tasks they are trained to do. An Army drill instructor recently told me has seen recruits pull the pins on grenades and freeze, literally too scared to throw away the object endangering their lives and the lives of those around them.  “And I’m responsible for all those lives,” he said. “I have to let people know why they need to perform flawlessly or get people like that out of there.”

Steve Zelnak, president of Martin Marietta Aggregates in Raleigh, NC, was an Army trainer for three years. He taught his recruits how to deactivate bombs – high-risk training with little margin for error. Zelnak admitted at a conference for training directors to painful experience of having trainees killed in the process.

Though those cases may be extreme, I believe there’s a lesson for trainers coming out of the ugliness of war and war preparation. How well do we communicate to our trainees why they are in the classroom? How well do they understand the importance of the goals? To what extent do they know that a meeting or falling short of those goals will be a measure of success not only for themselves, but often for their department or company?

Given Zelnak’s experience, it comes as no surprise that he sees precise and thorough training of personnel as a key to organizational success, whether it be in the military or corporate America. So perhaps there’s also a marketing argument to be made for corporate training by holding up the military as an example. For years, military experts lobbied for money to better train and develop soldiers. Now they say objectives were met in the Persian Gulf because of the extensive training. To reach our own objectives we’ve got to understand individual and organizational needs, and make learning objectives relevant, and clear. If we do, we can convince management that precise, thorough training is well worth the investment.

Bob Pike is chairman emeritus and founder of The Bob Pike Group, a leader in trainer training seminars and resources.

This article was re-uploaded from our internal archive.

Never miss a post! Get blogs and more delivered directly to your inbox.

arrow-right Sign Up