Trainer Competencies
Developed by Jim Burruss for Hay/McBer
Accurate Empathy
Presents material to participants without dialogue.
Invites participants’ comments and opinions.
Encourages participants to express their opinions completely.
Acknowledges participants’ insights and opinions.
Uses paraphrasing and restatements to clarify participants’ ideas.
Explicitly checks the accuracy of one’s interpretation of participant’s behavior.
Shares personal experiences that facilitate the learning process for participants.
Identifies primary concerns of others.
References specific comments or behaviors of participants to illustrate a point.
Acknowledges the link between what people are saying/doing/and meaning/ feelings.
Conceptual Flexibility
Presentation of information is confusing or inaccurate.
Presentation of material is clear and accurate.
Explains concepts in the language of the audience.
Generates concrete examples to illustrate abstract concepts.
Asks participants for specific data to support their assertions.
Uses specific participant data to support one’s assertions.
Summarizes key themes in group discussions to give them closure.
Uses analogies or metaphors to clarify a concept or principle.
Identifies causal links in the immediate data that is presented.
Cultural Sensitivity
Process or timing of one’s intervention is apparently disruptive
Acknowledges people as unique individuals rather than stereotyped categories
Invites participants to challenge each others’ assertions.
Challenges participants to support their assertions with specific data.
Invites participants to offer suggestions that reconcile differences in opinions.
Acknowledges the functional basis for expressed opinions/ behavior of participants.
Presents own views as an alternative paradigm for addressing participants’ issues
Invites participants to challenge one’s own assertions.
Checks out one’s assertions against specific experiences of participants.
Offers specific suggestions that reconcile apparently different opinions.
Acknowledges new information that would change one’s stated opinion.