What Makes For A Unique Training Experience?

It has been a challenge to describe the unique distinctive of the Leadership Matters Course. With so many courses being advertised as leadership training, as graduates of LMC, we need to be able to describe what is different.

If we were to simply give an outline of the materials covered in the LMC curriculum, there may seem to be little that is different to other leadership training courses. The question needs to be answered "What is unique about LMC?"

Many courses that are advertised as training are, in reality, lectures that are given in a teaching mode, rather than a training mode. ‘Teaching’, while very significant, tends to focus on the delivery of prescribed content in a lecture format. But in our context ‘training’ is focused on developing the participant’s skills and doing it in such a practiced way that they will remember the principles.

Participants will remember far more because they have had the opportunity to actually practice the new skill, or apply the new insight, than if they only have a record of it in a handbook.

There are a number of things in the presentation of LMC that make it unique. Four very significant aspects are:

1) The amount of time the participant is actually ‘doing’ and ‘practicing’ the material rather than passively ‘listening’. Each of the trainers is motivated by the phrase ‘Participants will not remember so much what WE say, but they will remember what THEY do’.

2) Participants are asked to practice a new skill only after the trainer has first modeled it.

3) While the trainers do introduce new material, they are committed wherever possible to help the participant discover the answers themselves. Participants do this by sharing their combined knowledge in a very interactive environment.

4) There is a carefully planned structure to the progression of the training which follows a Biblical emphasis.
a. Firstly, we help the trainees recognize their own worth and gifting in God’s eyes as the essential reality for them.
b. This is followed by developing an understanding of Gods concern for them to be loving and caring for other people.
c. With these two in their rightful place we then focus on the situations that as leaders they will need to address.
Being able to guide the discussions and insights from the participants; and balancing the introduction of new content with that, is what necessitates the specialized training given to all the trainers.

Given this background, another helpful way to show the differences between LMC and the many other training courses is to state the outcomes that the graduates can expect when they actively apply the training. The ongoing relevance of the course will be directly related to the ability of the participant to apply it to their own situation.

Warmly in Him,
David Cummings