I have spent my entire life hoarding random knowledge the way a squirrel hoards acorns for a Game of Thrones winter.
This sounds more deliberately methodical than it is. The truth is the habit formed when I was a bored kid with nothing better to do than thumb through every page of my Junior Britannica Encyclopaedia. Not because of some noble aspiration to be a top student but because there were only two TV channels growing up.
The habit stuck. When I am not fully engaged with something that is taking up my attention, some factoid is getting stored. Toilet? The Economist on why America’s submarine dominance is under threat. Driving? A podcast on the Malaccan Sultanate’s political structure in the 15th century. Waiting for someone? YouTube shorts on the latest Pentagon UFO files. (FYI: I’ll never call them UAPs.)
None of this information has ever helped me in any meaningful way. I have not once been in a situation where knowing the Malaccan Sultanate’s trade routes saved the day.
But I remain prepared.
So it was with genuine excitement that I attended the HRDC Train-the-Trainer program last week. It is a course covering how to conduct effective trainings for adults. There is the theoretical part, which I enjoyed. But there is also the practical part. In order to pass the training, we were required to perform a short graded training to prove we had absorbed it all.
For my assignment, I briefly considered teaching AI transformation. Then I remembered fifteen minutes is insufficient to even cover the evolving definition of “AI”.
So I went into my cerebral squirrel vault. Somewhere between where “how Hawaii was stolen” and “ten things to do first in a zombie apocalypse” are filed sat a rubber band illusion David Copperfield performed in his Great Wall of China television special.
Even to teach something this simple, applying training theory was not straightforward. I have spent most of my career presenting to rooms of people who are paid to look engaged. I believe that I do this reasonably well, if being good means a Matrix-like ability to dodge difficult questions.
But being a good presenter does not make one a good trainer automatically. When one presents, one performs. When one trains, one facilitates something happening in the room without one being there. A training is not a TED talk. The goal is to make sure Teddy in the back row understands and leaves knowing how to apply it on Monday.
In the end, this squirrel with the overstuffed vault learned something it hadn’t hoarded before: knowing things and teaching things are two very different skills. One fills a room with information. The other fills a room with understanding.
I’ve been doing the first one for years. I’m only just learning the second.