10 Rights You Should Demand From Your Trainers

The Learner’s Bill of Rights began as an answer to the question, “how do we approach the adults we are teaching?”

So simple it’s often overlooked.

Too many of us focus on the content. The delivery is an afterthought. It’s automatic. And so how we learn at work is often a reflection of how we learned as children or young adults in college, and sadly, these formats have little place in the work place.

For a great example of adult education, look at the workbooks from Starbucks diversity training that are refreshingly free of cutesy videos, intimidating warnings, and erudite lectures. They engage their learners as thoughtful adults. They set clear expectations with maturity. They show trust and respect for their learners.

For a bad example, just think of the cheesiest orientation video or painfully awkward sexual harassment training you’ve ever sat through.

Chances are those bad courses could have been restored by considering you and your rights as a learner, listed below in the The Learner’s Bill of Rights.

We the learners, in classrooms and offices, in person and distanced, in sync and in parallel, require of our teachers, coaches, mentors, managers, supervisors, supporters, and facilitators, of our agents of shaping knowledge, skills, and attitudes with an interest in the outcomes of our own behaviors, that the time we commit to your requirements be met with this listed series of requirements of our own:

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

1. The right to context so it is clear to us the intent of training, why it is important, and where it will take us
2. The right to relevance of learning material that is directly applicable to our success and is considerate of our time
3. The right to be challenged by our learning and to exceed its expectations
4. The right to practice in a safe environment, learn by recoverable failure, and exercise skills either in the course or the flow of our work
5. The right to prioritize comprehension over completion
6. The right to share feedback directly to those who sponsored, created, and delivered the training
7. The right to contribute our own understanding and experience to the material even if it disagrees with the learning objective
8. The right to connect with other learners and teachers of the same material
9. The right to fair and timely feedback directly from the person responsible for rating our performance, whether it be a leader who is capable of teaching or a teacher who is capable of coaching
10. The right to own our learning pathways and curate our own solutions in service of applying them to moments that matter to the goals set forth by our leaders, our organization and our purpose

About the author: Stewart Wolfe is a learning professional with a background in marketing who has taught in consumer-facing, fast-growing companies from beer to fast food to phones. He lives in Denver with his wife and son and cat.