Is it better to have just one or two trainers - people who know the material inside and out and are good at getting it across to others - or to have lots of different people responsible for training-so that training is more readily available and so that many people have the benefit of reaching the "4th Level of Learning"?

You won't be surprised to hear that I don't believe there is one perfect answer. But I do think there are a few key criteria that can help you decide how many trainers make sense:

1) How standardized is the training content?
If the material that will be taught is new and/or just being organized it makes sense to keep the number of trainers small. With just a couple of trainers (this may be one trainer for small organizations), it is easier to modify and update the training materials as you teach, find out what works and make adjustments accordingly. Once you have a good outline of what to cover and know how long the training takes, you're ready to train other trainers. To figure out how many and who they should be, consider the other two criteria.

2) Does the content require particular expertise?
In some cases, the background of the trainer plays a bigger than usual role. For example, Zingerman's basic orientation class, "Welcome to the ZCoB," is taught by only Ari or Paul. The perspective that they bring is unique, and we believe that meeting one of the organization's founders is an important element of the class that cannot be duplicated by other trainers. Likewise, content expertise (product knowledge, baking skill, etc.) may be a pre-requisite for certain training positions. In these cases, increasing the number of trainers may require that you first increase the number of content experts on staff.

3) How often will the training be offered?
Classes that are required for all new hires usually need to be taught more frequently than classes that are more specialized. And new hire classes should be taught more often during your peak hiring periods (for us that is right now - in early fall as we experience the school year turnover of a university town and then in late fall as the businesses, Zingerman's Mail Order in particular, gear up for the holidays). The more trainers you have, the more classes you can offer, the more easily trainees can complete their training. If you think in terms of how often you want to offer the training and how often you'd like each trainer to teach, you'll come up with a good estimate of how many trainers you need.

4) Do you view teaching as an important leadership skill?
If your answer to this question is yes, then you'll want to spread the responsibility for training around among current and up-and-coming leaders in your organization, rather than designating just a few people as full-time trainers. At Zingerman's, actively teaching (together with actively learning) is an expectations of all managers - and becoming certified to teach a class is a concrete demonstration of leadership. We have no full-time trainers in the organization.

Once you've got an idea how many trainers you need, you'll want a process for certifying them. Our recipes for certifying trainers - and for maintaining that certification - are included as ZingTools in this website. Just click on the links to the right to view the other pages!