Train the Trainer · TT
Train the Trainer
What is Train the Trainer?
- Developing people who teach
- Building training capability in-house with internal instructors
- Build capability across many instructors, not just one
What Train the Trainer (TT) really changes is not 'teaching well' but turning the tacit knowledge in an expert’s head into a lesson plan. Ask someone with 20 years of experience, "How do you do it?" and the usual answer is, "You just do it." TT breaks that 'just' down into three learning objectives, two exercises, and a one-page checklist. That is why the real output of TT is not a certified instructor but the lesson plan that remains.
In practice, TT falls into three types: a short 2–3 day format focused on teaching skills, a 4–8 week content format that also includes developing course materials, and a certification format with demonstration assessments and pass criteria. Bringing one instructor up to a level where they can actually be deployed typically takes 40–60 hours in total, covering training, material development, and demonstrations. TT also differs from OJT instructors and mentors. OJT is one-on-one coaching on the job and works even without course materials, but TT requires the ability to deliver the same content repeatedly in front of a group. For the certification format, set the demonstration pass mark (e.g., 80 points) and the number of allowed retakes in advance, or certification becomes a formality.
The most common failure is stopping at selection and training and never giving instructors time to teach. Add teaching on top of a 100% day job, and teaching is the first thing dropped during peak season or review cycles. A year later you have an in-house instructor pool with zero active instructors. The assumption that "good performers will naturally teach well" often fails too: the more expert people are, the less they remember where beginners get stuck, so they just push through the material. Leaving ownership and revision of course materials undefined is also risky. When an instructor leaves the company, the entire course can disappear with them, and this really happens.
Anna ChoExpert in organizational culture, coaching, emotion management, and CS consulting
John KimInstructor John Kim, CEO of Nanum Consulting and author of B2B Marketing DesignThis approach grew out of companies’ need to bring training in-house, and it has become an established strategy for spreading training through internal instructors.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, an auto parts manufacturer with 850 employees, outsourced all of its production engineering training and spent KRW 280 million (≈ US$209,500) a year. The problem was that the instructors did not know the company’s own equipment. When people on the shop floor started saying, "They just talk about textbook equipment and leave," the HR development team launched a 6-month in-house instructor development program.
- Ms. Kim, a manager on the HR development team, had 14 technical staff with 15+ years of experience recommended, one or more per process. But in the first round of interviews, 5 dropped out saying, "I’m not a good speaker, so I can’t do it," and the program started with 9.
- The program ran 4 hours a week for 8 weeks, and each participant wrote a course draft for their own process from scratch. Park, a deputy manager on the production engineering team, said, "I planned to spend 3 hours explaining the equipment, but once I cut the learning objectives down to 3, trainees actually remembered more."
- Each candidate gave two 20-minute demonstrations, with the in-house certification bar set at 80 points. In the first round only 4 of 9 passed. Of the 5 who failed, 3 passed a re-demonstration two weeks later, so 7 were certified in the end.
- Right after certification, operating conditions were added. Teaching counts as working hours for up to 40 hours a year, with an allowance of KRW 50,000 (≈ US$37) per hour and bonus points in performance reviews, and the plant manager made it firm: "On teaching days, put replacement staff on the line."
- A year later, 7 internal instructors had run 42 sessions totaling 168 hours, and outsourcing costs fell from KRW 280 million (≈ US$209,500) to KRW 160 million (≈ US$119,700). Training satisfaction rose from 3.8 to 4.4 (out of 5), and 6 of the 7 were still teaching in their second year.