National Clothesline

T raining new employees is a manager’s biggest challenge. I have had employees who were excellent at their jobs, but poor trainers. I can remember some that deplored training others.

I am not sure why. It’s probably something psychological, but whatever the reason, we all need to train new people. It’s not just about shirts, either. The pointers that I will give you this month apply to every type of presser, and the basic guidelines apply to every job in the plant.

Judy is assigned the task of training the new kid, Sally, on how to press shirts. Remember, you can pretend that Fred is training George on how to press pants, or assemble orders or mop the floor. It doesn’t matter. This is how it usually goes:

Fred presses a couple of _____s while carefully explaining what he is doing to George. Then he says, “Ok, George, now you try it.”

George jumps in and begins to press his first ______. Fred corrects him on a couple of points and George pretends to understand. He may even apologize. George stumbles through the pressing of his first ______ and finally finishes.

Fred inspects it and finds a flaw and shows it to his trainee. Fred fixes the pressing flaw, tells George that he did well and then leaves George on his own. Fred goes back to his regular job, but assures George that he can summon him if he has any questions.

Does this sound at least a little bit familiar? Be honest. I have seen this exact scenario so many times that I am willing to bet that it has happened in every plant.

Training is a hard job. I am not trying to make it seem simple. But difficulty aside, what it really requires is a particular skill set. It is that skill set that I am trying to bring to you now. Please forgive me for going over the last paragraph and picking it apart.

“Fred presses a couple of _____s while carefully explaining what he is doing to George.”

Many, many trainers that I have seen are very poor communicators. I witness them putting together nonsensical, incoherent sentences that they expect a trainee to understand. They say things like, “You take it like this, and bring it over and, uh, well sometimes you can’t cuz its too small and then you clamp here but sometimes you gotta overlap that — Joe said he fixed that handle thingy — and then you gotta straighten it out, we can’t have any wrinkles and then you adjust it over here and over here and back there. Then you push the buttons. That’s it.”

I’m not trying to be funny and I am not trying to be a jerk either. George, the trainee, pretends to understand. He doesn’t want to speak up and sound like an idiot. In his mind, he must be saying to himself, “What in the world are you talking about?”

I have heard many trainers speak exactly like this. I know how to press shirts, but if someone was trying to train me, speaking like that, I feel certain that I would forget everything that I know. I am serious.

We generally take our best presser and assign that person to be the trainer. That is flawed from conception. If a good presser is a poor communicator, the skills that this person possesses cannot be conveyed. A fair presser that is a great communicator will teach the trainee more.

“OK, George, now you try it.” George jumps in and begins to press his first ______. Fred corrects him on a couple of points and George pretends to understand. He may even apologize. George stumbles through the pressing of his first ______ and finally finishes.

Invariably, the training session starts off on the wrong foot. The trainer will not have begun at the beginning. This does not necessarily mean that the trainer put Step 2 before Step 1. It means that the trainer failed to give the trainee a tour of the equipment that he or she will be using and the trainer failed to make the trainee feel comfortable.

And how thorough was the training session? Referring to the quote above “…Fred corrects him on a couple of points and George pretends to understand…”, very often George is corrected on something that was not even mentioned during the training session.

This is because the trainer failed to foresee what could happen and therefore did not plan on it. This is very frustrating to George. When he is corrected on a particular training point, he either thinks to himself, “I don’t think that I was told that before”, or “This is more complicated than I thought. I am not getting this at all.” It is far too early to get frustrated, but George is already there.

So what’s wrong with all this? And what is the right way?

I took a management class many years ago. An exercise in training was demonstrated one day. This was over 30 years ago, but the lesson was very powerful and has stuck with me since then.

The instructor was trying to show how hard it is to train someone. There was a two-sided blackboard at the front of the class. On one side stood the trainer and on the other side stood the trainee. The trainee was blind-folded. The trainer had to train his student how to draw a simple figure, say a triangle.

The trainer, of course, trying to simulate the training of a task that the trainee knows nothing about, cannot say, “Hey kid, go over there and draw a triangle on the board.” That would not simulate a training session. The trainee already knows how to draw a triangle.

Alternately, you could tell the trainee to go over to the blackboard and draw a trapezoid. I am pretty sure that that is a real word and is something that I learned about in high school geometry, but I have no idea what a trapezoid looks like. I need to be trained. I am so sure that I don’t know what a trapezoid is that I cannot use it to explain how to train. How could I? The trainer does not know, therefore the trainer cannot teach. You have heard that referred to as “the blind leading the blind.”

So the trainer wants to train his student how to draw a triangle on a blackboard. Remember, the trainee does not know anything. All he knows is that his eyes are covered. Think about that and you will agree that this is a perfect metaphor for a trainee. The trainee is in the dark. So they stand facing each other, separated by a blackboard. The trainer says:

“Draw a line on the board.”

“With what?” responds the trainee.

You may think that I am exaggerating here, but I am not. The average person might feel around the tray below the blackboard and locate something that feels like a piece of chalk, but that is being presumptuous. Your trainee knows nothing.

If you told your janitor trainee to mop the floor, would you assume that he knew where you stored the mop? Where the janitorial supplies are? You would have to train him.

So assuming that you did not forget Step 1, the orientation, the trainee draws a line on the blackboard.

Now what? There are more steps to drawing a triangle, just like there are more steps to pressing a shirt. The trainer forgot to say something like “without removing the chalk from the blackboard, draw another line.”

Absent that, the second line that the trainee draws will be nothing like what the trainer is picturing. The training session is doomed. There will be no pressed shirt, I mean triangle, on that blackboard. Why? The trainee was not trained. It’s that simple.

But the training itself is not simple. The trainer must put himself in the shoes of the trainee.

The trainee knows nothing about anything. You may want to point out that the trainee is not that ignorant, but I will counter with this: assume that they know nothing and allow them to show the trainer what they do know. “So you know where we keep the mop? Great! One less thing I gotta show you.”

So how should someone be trained to draw a triangle on a blackboard? I will show you, but just to be a show off, I will show you how to train someone to draw a triangle with three different colored sides!

Oh, one more thing before we start. Let’s say that you want to play this game with your trainers. Absent a two-sided blackboard, you would have to blindfold the trainer too! This is critical.

To illustrate, let’s say that you want to “train” someone on how to drive to your house. It could be simple. “Get out of the parking lot, take a left, then, at your fifth light, right. It’s the white house on the left.”

That is quite easy. Most things are not anywhere that easy. A better metaphor would be to say, “Get out of the parking lot, take a left, then, proceed down the long and winding road for exactly 1573.68 meters. Be careful, there are many, many possible turns, twists and forks.”

Let’s assume that you took the correct right turn, which is a heck of an assumption because you have heard of a meter and you understand basically what it is, but you have never been asked to make important decisions based entirely on that limited knowledge. More likely, you will make a mistake

But if you are with your trainer and he can see what you’re doing and where you went wrong, the trainer will modify the procedure, modify the instructions that he gives you, in order to compensate for your mistake.

So now, the directions to drive to your house are altered and they go like this: “Get out of the parking lot, take a left, then, your fifth light, then right. Oops, you took the sixth right turn instead of the fifth one. Continue on this path for a while until you can make a u-turn and go back the way you came. You can’t take a left here, so you must take a right and take a left a little while later. Now turn left here.”

You see, what is happening here is that the trainer is modifying the procedures, step by step in accordance with the trainee’s reactions. This trainee will not learn how to get to your house this way.

So all of that means that trainer must be in the dark too. Not because he doesn’t know anything, but because his lesson cannot be influenced by the trainee’s lack of understanding , lack of co-operation or the trainer’s vague or inaccurate instructions.

If the trainer says, “Take a left,” but the trainee does not understand English and takes a right, the trainer can say, “That’s OK. No worries. Take your next three left turns and then try that right turn again. It will look a little different because we will be coming from another direction, but it’s the same thing.”

We consider this to be the mannerisms of a good trainer because the trainer did not say, “What are you doing? Are you stupid? I said take a right turn.” That is how our lousy trainer would do it.

Neither trainee has learned much more than the following:

• I like/love/dislike/despise my trainer.

• I know that getting to your house (or pressing a shirt, or whatever) is possible.

• There is more than one way to do it.

• It doesn’t make that much difference which way you go.

• It can take longer.

• By the way, do I get paid by the number of times I drive to your house, or by the hour?

The correct way to do this is something like this: “This is not the most efficient way, nor is it the correct way, to drive to my house. Rather than send you some convoluted way, let’s go back to the beginning and start again. I will try to give clearer directions this time.”

The trainee will be taught the correct way first, without all of the confusion of a myriad of options. The trainee will not be left to figure out the shortcuts on his own later. This is the difference between showing someone how to press shirts slowly while accepting it because they are still learning and training someone correctly the first time.

In no time, because the trainee has been trained properly, the trainee will be driving to your house as quickly and efficiently as you do. The trainee has already been trained and will take that tricky right turn at the 1573.68 meter mark every time, unless he has not been paying attention. Oh, there is a different result if he is not paying attention. Perhaps we should not swirl into that vortex today.

Just to use an example that more closely mirrors the relative complexities of teaching someone how to press shirts, press pants, assemble shirt orders or inspect drycleaning, I will not teach you how thoroughly you have to be to train someone to simply draw a triangle, I will demonstrate the complexities of training someone to draw a triangle in which all three sides of the triangle are a specific color! Ready?

Here we go. Sally is the trainee. I am the trainer. I know that I said that the trainer should assume that Sally knows nothing. I am going to tweak that a bit. She knows nothing about the task at hand. She does know what a blackboard is, and chalk. She knows her colors. She has motor skills. I hired a human being, not a radish.

The first part of my job is preparation. I make sure that Sally has all the tools that she needs. Sally’s area is organized. It is neat. More on what I really had to do later.

“Good morning Sally. Today we are going to show you how to &@liul%nvyey#.” (That’s not a misprint. Remember, if you say “We are going to train you to scrape the still, or assemble or blow-down the boiler, it just may sound like &@liul%nvyey# to Sally. It doesn’t matter that it makes sense to you.)

Sally is already blindfolded because she came into this job not knowing how to &@liul%nvyey# and nothing has changed — yet.

“Sally, come with me and I will show you where you will be working.”

You take Sally by the hand. “By the hand” is not literal. Sally simply follows you. She is blindfolded as far as &@liul%nvyey# goes, but she is not blind and she does know how to walk and follow a person. It’s referring to someone who you need to carefully show something to, “ya gotta take ‘em by the hand.”

You lead Sally into the shirt unit, er, sorry, to the blackboard and she now occupies her new work space.

“Sally, this is where you will be &@liul%nvyey# today.”

“Sally, I want to introduce you to the equipment that you will be working with. In front of you, as though it were a wall or a closed door high above your head, is what we call a blackboard. The blackboard covers a significant area in front of you. At the bottom of the blackboard is an important tool that I need to make you aware of. Visualize, if you will Sally, familiar objects such as a kitchen countertop, the topmost surface of a bedside stand or surface on which you would place and collect books on a wall.”

You seek and obtain Sally’s understanding.

“Got it!” she says.

It is important to only use words that the trainee is likely to understand and then verify that they do. If you want to act like a big-shot and throw around words like, perc, still, low-boy or buck, you will find that you are wasting valuable training time. Those words do not mean what you think that they mean to a newbie.

“OK Sally, we have a tool that is similar in shape and function to those familiar items that I have described. We call it a tray,” you continue.

“For your convenience, I have placed on this tray another tool that you need to be familiar with. Please find this tool on the tray. I have placed it where you can find it near your right hand. Locate it, but leave it on the tray for now while I tell you more about this new tool.”

I am now going to ask Sally questions that seem completely unrelated to what we are doing. There is a reason that I ask. I have carefully thought out my training session. I know where I am going with this.

“Hey, Sally. Do you like mountain climbing?”

“No,” she responds.

“What about skiing?”

“Well, not water-skiing, if that’s what you mean, but I am an avid snow skier.”

I say, “Sounds like fun. I think that I’d break my legs, though.”

Sally starts to feel a bit more comfortable, for she truly needs it. Everything around her is so new and unfamiliar. But that is not why I wanted to find out if she knows about snow-skiing. It is just a peripheral benefit that it makes her more comfortable. The real reason will come later.

“OK, Sally. This new tool, we call it a box, is meant only to contain and organize other tools. You are probably familiar with a carton of milk in your refrigerator. The carton contains the milk. That is its only useful function. The new tool, the box, is similar in function.”

Before we go on, remember that these are metaphors. I am not speaking to Sally like a child. I am trying to correlate something unfamiliar with something that is familiar to the trainee. It is important that she be led safely through the minefield.

You cannot say, “You just put it on, clamp the collar, hit the pedal, straighten it out and send it in.” If you think that you are going to get a perfectly pressed shirt with that kind of instruction, you are out of your mind.

“Sally, before you pick up the box, I want you to become a bit more familiar with the tool inside the box. There are actually four tools in this one box. Sally ,do you know what a correlation is?”

Sally responds, “No, I don’t think so.”

This is an important question. As we progress through our training session we must constantly be reassured that we are getting through to our trainee.

We must check to be certain that we are using metaphors, comparisons, examples and correlations that make sense to the trainee.

You can’t say something like, “It feels like the clutch pedal on a Ferrari,” because the trainee probably is not going to know what a clutch pedal on a Ferrari feels like. (I don’t know what that means, either.)

So Sally doesn’t know what a correlation is. I need to teach her that so that I can then teach her what the four tools in the box do. “Sally, you probably do know what a correlation is, but are simply unfamiliar with the word. Necklace is to neck, as ring is to what?”

Sally responds, “Finger?”

“Absolutely! That is a correlation. I am trying to get you to understand what the four new tools in the box do. The tools are called chalk. A correlation to help you understand their role: pencil is to paper as chalk is to blackboard. Got it?”

“Yeah! I do understand!”

“Perfect! The chalk is able to leave its mark in different colors. This is determined by the ingredients used in the manufacturing process. We want to use three different colors to make our &@liul%nvyey# today. (Remember, Sally cannot see.) Sally, there are four different colors of chalk in the box. There is a white one, a green one, a yellow one and a blue one.

“To help train you to &@liul%nvyey#, I have arranged the pieces of chalk in a particular way. I could have simply put them in the box alphabetically, but that plan has a fatal flaw. So I have prepared your training tools differently, in a more mistake-proof manner.”

This is very important. If I put the chalk in alphabetical order (blue, green, white, yellow) and the trainee opened the box backwards or upside down, the result would be completely different.

So I found an easier way to train. This is an important point. If the trainee opens the box upside down and as a direct result draws the triangle in all the wrong colors, who’s fault is it?

The trainer failed to understand the trainee and assumed that what seems indescribably simple and obvious to the experienced person may not be to an inexperienced one.

“Sally, think about the four colors blue, green, white and yellow. I have arranged them in the box in this order. As an easy way to remember that order, I want you to note that this is alphabetical order by the first letter of the color — B,G,W,Y.

“Rather than trying to make this training more complex than it needs to be (!) and explain the need to open the box a certain way, I have made it simple for you, Sally. I have arranged the chalk pieces by size and alphabetically. That means that blue is the shortest piece, the green chalk is noticeably longer, white is next in size and, finally, yellow is the biggest piece.”

We haven’t pressed a shirt yet. We haven’t assembled a drycleaning order. But we have laid out the ground work by thoroughly explaining the equipment and the tools needed to do the job. With this done, we can give Sally our first instruction.

“Sally, when I tell you to begin, get the box of chalk from the tray and remove the four pieces of chalk. Set the chalk down on the tray in alphabetical order so that you can locate them quickly and without making a mistake. Put the blue chalk on the far left of the tray, then the green one to the right side of it, then the white one to the right of the green one, and then finally the yellow one on the right. Begin now”

Evaluate the trainer

Now is when the trainer evaluates himself. How Sally did is a reflection how well she was trained.

Admittedly, her ability to comprehend plays a part, but not explaining yourself well enough adversely affects how well or how poorly you are understood.

If Sally drops the ball on any of the procedures, the trainer must first look in the mirror and ask: “Did I cover this aspect? Did I explain it properly? Was I clear, thorough and explicit?”

If my observations are any indication at all, all too often the answer will be a resounding “No!” to all three questions.

If a trainer is not thorough and as a result constantly needs to back track (“Oh, sorry, forgot to show you that.”), the trainee, consciously or subconsciously questions the quality of training that she is receiving.

Assuming that this thought is subconscious, it causes the trainee to get frustrated and/or doubt herself. This will cause the training session to fail or it will yield a sub-par employee who is excused by management because he or she is “just learning.”

Remember this and don’t forget. This column is full of metaphors that serve to demonstrate how thorough you need to be in order to upload your brain into someone else’s. This is not easy.

If I were to train someone to press a shirt on a three-piece conventional single buck shirt unit, the first thing that I would do is to go over each machine in the order that it will be used, then revisit that when we actually use the equipment.

For example, let’s pretend I am going to train Sally to press shirt sleeves on a Unipress ABS sleeve press.

A complete tour of the equipment is essential. Often the training goes like this: “You grab a shirt, put it on, clamp it like this, straighten it out, hit the pedal, line this up with this and then send it in.”

The trainee has learned just slightly more than “The sleeves are hot when they come outta there.” Really.

Touring the workstation

A tour of the equipment doesn’t take long. I’ll give you a “tour” of the sleever in a minute, but first I want to explain why it is so important. The tour gives the employee an overview of what is in store. Without it, the trainee’s mind changes about how simple or complex the task at hand is.

The trainee, when first shown Step 1 (grab a shirt):

“That’s easy”

Then you put it on…

“Oh, so that’s what that’s for.”

Clamp it…

“Hmmm. Missed that. It’s probably obvious. I’ll get it.”

Straighten it out…

“What was that?”

Hit the pedal…

“What pedal? Geez, there’s stuff on the floor!”

Line this up with this and then send it in…

”How many more freakin’ steps are there?”

It is extremely important to keep a trainee’s mind on the training. The overview keeps her from thinking. “Hmmm, I wonder what’s next?” or “That’s no challenge. Anybody can do that” or “Yeah, so what, get me to the meat of it.”

I think that many trainees expect that the task that you are training them on is basically easy and all they need to learn is that one big secret. They wait for that one key ingredient that makes it all easy. “Oh! So that’s it?!”

This causes them to not pay much complete attention to the little details — the superfluous stuff — waiting for that key ingredient that causes it to all make sense. That won’t happen.

The overview, or the careful and thorough introduction to the tools and the equipment, is crucial because the trainee knows what he or she is up against. The thought doesn’t move from “That’s easy” to “What was that again” to “There’s a pedal?” to “How many more freakin’ steps are there?” to “There’s a lot more to this than I thought!” The trainee knows what is in store. Nothing is a surprise. She knows the starting point and the end game.

So, if I want to train an employee how to press sleeves, (let’s say it is a Unipress ABS sleever) I will first show her everything:

• The sleeve measuring arm. This device is so familiar to many of us, but is often neglected in basic equipment introduction. We use it unconsciously, but a trainee needs to understand its purpose and know of its existence.

• What that little light is for. Make sure that the light — and the entire machine, for that matter — is working properly. A training session could be on a collision course if the trainer needs to say things like “It’s supposed to do this, but it’s busted. They don’t fix stuff that’s broken around here.” I cringe just typing that.

• The indexing buttons. I explain the two-handed control concept and why it is important for safety. I demonstrate how they must be tapped simultaneously. And I show that if they are not actuated in synchronicity, the machine doesn’t work.

Demonstrations like this are very important. If a trainee doesn’t know the functions of a two-handed controller, she will not guess how it works, but will simply conclude that you need to press both buttons.

Later, when it’s her turn to try, she will be disappointed that the machine doesn’t work immediately. And her confidence level will drop a notch.

We want her confidence to go up, not down. The trainer will then say something like, “You gotta press both together!”

But sometimes the trainer doesn’t even know that if you press one transfer button and then the other, the machine will not operate. The trainer is simply accustomed to tapping them together.

We do not want trainees to question the equipment’s condition. We don’t want them to conclude that the equipment isn’t working correctly. The trainee’s attitude and frame of mind is critical to a successful training session.

• The pedal on the floor. This inflates the airbags. Demonstrate that this is a momentary switch, which means that you must keep the pedal depressed in order to maintain air flow to the bags.

Need I go on? The idea is to give the trainee confidence. She is there to learn and, assuming that the trainer is qualified to thoroughly explain the equipment, the trainee will begin using the equipment feeling that she has already learned something. I cannot stress enough that the trainer must instill confidence in the trainee’s mind.

Now, let’s check on Sally at the blackboard.

There we are about to train her to &@liul%nvyey#. We commonly refer to that as drawing a triangle with three different colored sides while blind-folded.

Sally is clueless, but we have done our best to familiarize her with her new surroundings and the equipment needed to &@liul%nvyey#.

We have tried to help her understand &@liul%nvyey# by correlating parts of &@liul%nvyey# with things that she already knows. She likes to ski, we have learned. We have walked her through the steps of laying out her equipment in a manner that does not require her to know the first thing about &@liul%nvyey#, because she does not know the first thing about &@liul%nvyey#.

Remember that I asked you to evaluate how Sally did laying out the caulk in alphabetical order by size and color? This is a critical part of the training because it is a measure of how well you are communicating with Sally. You need to learn how well you are conveying your message and how well she comprehends.

It is most important to do that now because you have yet to mix in any tasks that require new knowledge. Everything that you have shown Sally is based on things that she already knew. Remember, we hired someone with no knowledge of &@liul%nvyey#, but we did check for the existence of a brain. We did not hire a radish.

If Sally fails to lay out the chalk correctly on the tray, you must consider that you were not clear. It is possible, of course, that you were perfectly clear and Sally is simply nervous. Getting her to feel comfortable is very important and building her confidence is a key to getting her to overcome the jitters.

If she has failed to lay out the chalk correctly, you are doing a poor job of training if you say, “You did it wrong. Switch the position of the third and fourth pieces of chalk and you will be all set.”

If Sally did it wrong, why? The correct way is to put the chalk back into the box and retrain Sally. Pay close attention to what Sally does so that you can learn what Sally is having a problem with.

Now that Sally is familiar with her surroundings and knows about the equipment that she will need, &@liul%nvyey# will be fairly easy. I don’t expect it to be perfect, but pretty darn good for a first try.

Thinking it through

Sally will be slower at &@liul%nvyey# than your current &@liul%nvyey#-er, but she isn’t slow because she was shown a slow way.

In fact, she will be shown all of the short-cuts. She will be slower because she needs to think in between steps.

This is very important to understand. When your pants presser is at work, he doesn’t stop in between each step and say to himself, “Ok, I did that step, now what’s next?”

The pause to collect thoughts can be mere seconds, but that is the difference between a new person and someone with experience.

I see this every day when I train someone to assemble orders using Tailwind System procedures. On Day One, they think too much, but do reasonably well. On the second day, the thinking is absent and they do so well that it is hard to believe that they only have one day of experience.

The new person is trained with all of the time-saving nuances built in, but the occasional or even frequent pauses to think are the reason that she is slower. The need to think is normal. I will show you how to deal with that later.

Sally is about to draw a triangle on the blackboard using three different colored pieces of chalk while blind-folded. It is important to note just how thorough I need to be in order to get my message across.

Sally doesn’t understand precisely what the goal is, but will recognize it when she sees the completed job. As far as she is concerned, it is all Greek to her. When we say that we want her to learn how to assemble shirt orders, she hears &@liul%nvyey#.

“OK, Sally, you are in front of the blackboard and I have explained all of the equipment that you will need to &@liul%nvyey#. Here is what I want you to do. Please listen carefully.

“Take the blue chalk in your right hand, assuming that you are right-handed, use your left hand if you are left-handed.” (This is foresight. We have to consider that Sally may have a surprise waiting for us. We want to be prepared.)

Sally feels around on the tray for a second and finds the leftmost chalk. She takes the blue chalk into her right hand.

“OK Sally, It is very important that you listen carefully as I explain the next step. Don’t start until I am through explaining, OK?

“OK.”

“When I ask you to begin, I want you to place the blue chalk that is in your right hand onto the blackboard at about the height and placement of your own chin. All the while maintaining the chalk in contact with the blackboard, move the chalk to the right. The distance that we are looking for is about the distance that you would move your hand in order to open a desk drawer. Once you have completed that step, it is most important that you keep the chalk in contact with the blackboard at the very spot that you stopped. Do you understand?”

“I do,” responds Sally.

“Excellent. Begin now.”

Sally takes the chalk, places it on the blackboard and draws a straight line, parallel to the floor six inches long. She stops and keeps her chalk in contact with the blackboard.

“Perfect! Now I want you to be holding the chalk with your left hand instead of your right hand, so without removing the chalk from the blackboard, bring your left hand to the chalk, joining your right hand momentarily and grab the chalk with your left hand and let go of the chalk with your right hand. The goal is to have the chalk at the very same place on the blackboard, but now in your left hand rather than your right hand. Do you understand?”

“Yep, I just gotta switch hands, right?”

“Exactly!”

Sally switches hands and the chalk is still on the blackboard at the same place as it was.

“Now, Sally, I don’t want you to use the blue chalk any more. I need you to replace the blue one with the yellow one. I want you to place the yellow chalk at precisely the same spot on the blackboard as the blue one is now.

“In order to do that, you will need to pick up the yellow chalk with your right hand and place it on the blackboard where your left hand is currently holding the blue. It is wise to replace the blue chalk back on the tray where it goes so that you can use it again later. Sally, do you remember where the yellow chalk is and where the blue one is stored?”

“Sure. The blue one goes on the left and the yellow one on the right.”

“Perfect! You may begin now.”

Sally picks up the yellow chalk with her right hand, places it on the blackboard at the same spot where her left hand is holding the blue one and promptly removes the blue chalk and places it on the tray to the left of the two remaining pieces of chalk. Confidence is really starting to set in.

“Sally, you told me that you like to ski. That will help you with the next step. Think about riding a ski lift and then skiing down the slope on the opposite side. Think of the symmetry. I want you to think about other objects that slope up to a peak like a teepee and a Christmas tree. The teepee is especially similar to what we are trying to accomplish. Thinking about that shape, and pretending to ride up a ski lift, move the yellow chalk upwards and towards the left as you try to simulate part of the shape of a teepee. It is very important that you not remove your chalk from the blackboard once you have stopped moving the chalk on the blackboard because you will need to swap out the yellow chalk for the green chalk. When you are moving your chalk, pretend that you are opening a desk drawer again. Do you understand what I need you to do, Sally?”

“Yes! I understand perfectly!”

Sally is beginning to understand what we are trying to accomplish beyond this step. It’s coming together in her mind.

Do you remember how you swap the colors of chalk?

“Yes.”

“Do you remember where the green chalk is?”

“It’s the second one from the left, isn’t it?”

“Exactly! Now thinking about that teepee and riding a ski lift, complete your assignment and then swap out the chalk for the green one. And don’t lose your place on the blackboard.”

Here, Sally has the opportunity to draw on the skills that she has already learned (swapping out the colors), but she is not being babied. She is being asked to remember and think. That makes her feel like she is contributing her talents to the success of the training session.

Sally draws the right side of the triangle in yellow chalk, switches hands, grabs the green chalk with her right hand and replaces the yellow chalk on the blackboard with this green one. She puts the yellow one away on the right hand side of the tray. Her hand remains on the blackboard.

“Now Sally, we have nearly completed our &@liul%nvyey#. Thinking about that teepee again and imagining skiing down a slope, complete the project and then release your chalk from the blackboard and place the chalk in its appropriate place.”

Sally does exactly that and right on cue, her blindfold, like magic disappears from in front of her eyes.

“Wow! That’s beautiful! I’ve seen something like that before.”

“Sally, we call this a triangle.”

Sally has drawn a triangle on the blackboard because she has been given careful and complete instructions.

Is it perfect? Actually, no. The first and second lines — the bottom — don’t exactly touch. This is because the points of the chalk are not sharp and placing one exactly on the same spot is more or less a “shot in the dark.”

Visual clues are quite helpful. The same is true for the peak angle, the lines don’t quite touch. And the first and the third lines have a bit more of a gap between them. This is because Sally could not quite visualize the symmetry while totally in the dark.

We briefly discuss the defects in the first triangle that we have trained Sally to draw. Now we ask Sally to draw a triangle on the blackboard with three different colored sides. She is no longer in the dark. She draws one perfectly, in no time.

Remember, this column is full of metaphors. Surely you don’t need to train a new employee how to draw a triangle. You need to train a shirt presser or some other job in your plant, so let’s see how this example translates into a real life training session.

Remember that the key components of a successful training session are to be thorough, explicit and to follow-up. Showing somebody the basics for 15 minutes and then leaving her on her own to “get better at it” will not yield a qualified employee.

I trained a shirt presser recently who had no experience whatsoever in our industry. I spent four full hours with her before I left her side and then I watched her from a distance.

Too often, we are so desperate to fill a job station that we skimp on the training in a very big way. I do not mean to trivialize that unfortunate situation, but my awareness of this paradox is not going to change the basic training methods nor will it change basic management philosophy.

If you need a shirt presser and your pants presser is the person most qualified to train the new employee, I know that you still need to have someone pressing pants, so you are all too eager to get the trainer back to his or her regular station.

I honestly do not have a magic answer for this situation, but I am sure that skimping on training will not remedy the long term — the need for a shirt presser.

Given the information that we have discussed using the metaphors previously laid out, this is how you should train a shirt presser on a single buck machine.

Let’s pretend that it is a Unipress NT. I think that this is a good choice because it is a popular new machine and it is similar to Sankosha’s single buck machine as well as Itsumi’s and perhaps a few others.

Also, the need to train newbies on this machine exists because those that switch to one of these types of machines from a conventional three-piece single-buck unit have a complicated culture change to deal with because the machine is entirely different in every way.

If you told a new employee that he has to run this NT while doing a perfect job and 60 of them per hour, this new employee will become very discouraged very rapidly.

This is not a good place to begin a training session. Remember, we want to build confidence not destroy it.

Some argue that instilling production at the beginning of a training session is wrong. I disagree vehemently because productivity is just as important as quality and service. Remember that we do all this in order to make a fair profit, not to gainfully employ people.

To be successful in this business, you must have quality plus productivity. If you train for one first and the other later, there will be some re-training and unlearning involved, perhaps a great deal.

If a presser is trained to do a good job slowly, she will become very good at being slow. If later the task at hand is to train that same presser to go faster, quality is likely to suffer because the presser was never shown the time-saving techniques.

Now she needs to unlearn the slower methods that she was originally taught and learn the new time-saving techniques, all the while maintaining quality. You are almost back at Step One.

The only thing that remains the same is the environment. The employee is familiar with the equipment and what it’s like to work in a drycleaning plant. That’s all. All sorts of pressure to speed up is not likely to accomplish much because the initial training was flawed.

To remedy this, I remove the thought that productivity is not possible from the trainee’s mind immediately. I have often recommended that the first thing that a new trainee should see is the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute’s (formerly IFI) Shirt Pressing Video. This features Brian Johnson pressing shirts at a production rate of 60 shirts per hour. This proves that it can be done.

This video is best when you are training someone to press on an Ajax single buck unit. The NT is so different that the video’s value is diminished. To work around that, and this method works for any job station, this is what I do:

I explain that after introducing the trainee to the equipment, I will press shirts on the unit by myself and say nothing and afterwards I will begin the training session and slow down and explain everything very carefully and slowly.

The introduction to the machine should be complete. This is what the machine does, this is what the buttons do, and the pedals, and all of the safety features. This will seem unnecessary to some trainers, but it is important to the trainee. It makes her feel comfortable and a lot less clueless.

Seeing the machine for the first time can be very intimidating to a new employee. Explain the function of the transfer buttons. Explain how the pedals have multiple functions; first it activates the collar clamp, then it operates the cuff clamps and then the vacuum.

I don’t think that you can afford to skip this equipment introduction phase. I believe that it is vital.

Avoid going off on a tangent though, by explaining irrelevant things like what other trainees did or failed to do and what the other machine would do. The trainee does not extract useable information from this banter. Stick to the relevant stuff.

The training session begins when I demonstrate the machine as an experienced operator pressing shirts at normal speed and maximum quality. This proves to the trainee that productivity combined with quality is certainly attainable.

After I have pressed perhaps a dozen or so shirts, the training session changes course. Now I will slow down dramatically and carefully explain everything that I am doing thoroughly.

If I did this first, it would suggest that pressing shirts is a tedious process that takes a long time. We do not want to convey this message. After we have pressed a few shirts like this, I allow the presser to give it a try.

This is an important learning experience for the trainer because at this point the trainer will learn first how well the trainee absorbs information and should extract information about how well he or she is uploading knowledge.

For example, I have a thick New England accent. Because of that, I have learned that I must speak slowly and annunciate to avoid saying everything twice.

Additionally the trainer must note what the trainee is doing correctly and also where the hang-ups are.

The trainer must not modify procedures to accommodate the trainee’s idiosyncrasies. Doing so is like training someone to drive to your house. If that tricky fifth right turn is missed, that is perfectly acceptable. All you need to do is take the next right and then four left turns. It takes longer, but it accomplishes the same thing.

This is wrong. It is important to commend the trainee for the procedures that she did grasp and to retrain her at the tasks that she is struggling with.

My recent trainee was being trained on a Unipress NT. She did very well at most procedures, but struggled with three. Dressing the cuffs on the collar and cuff machine took far too long, as did buttoning the top button on the shirt while loading the collar cone and unloading the collar cone onto a hanger.

We take these procedures for granted. It is possible that this was the first day that she was ever asked to button a button on a man’s dress shirt. So the solution is really not that complicated, but it does take time.

You may conclude that if those are the only three problems, this trainee just needs some experience and leaving her alone will solve the issues.

The problem with that thought process is that unloading the collar cone, for example, is not repetitive enough and all of the other procedures interfere with the learning process.

The remedy is to have the trainee do only that procedure until she gets the hang of it while I do everything else. This is very effective.

So in the real-life training session, I pressed shirts while the trainee did nothing but unload the collar cone and slip in a hanger.

The result was miraculous. She was doing it like a pro within 15 shirts. If I had allowed her to do everything — and don’t forget that she was struggling with two other procedures slowing her down even more — she would have had the opportunity to unload the collar cone once every two or three minutes, all the while doing a mere 20 to 30 shirts per hour.

This would result in a very frustrated employee, generated thoughts like “Gee, how can I be struggling with such an easy thing? I am not getting this at all.”

My method built confidence. One struggle down, two to go.

The next step was to gain experience buttoning the top button. You can already guess the remedy. I did everything other than that. When I unloaded the buck, I handed the shirt to my trainee and she loaded the collar cone. She struggled at first, but did not feel pressured.

There is a big difference. She felt like she was being trained, not shoved into a sink or swim situation. Loading the collar machine was the last hurdle, and you don’t need to be told how I worked on that.

Loading a collar machine that has a sleeve pleater is an acquired skill. Once the trainee is comfortable with all aspects of the job, I back out of the shirt unit and observe.

Stay with the trainee

Note that I have never left the training session to go and press pants. All the while I am monitoring quality as well as speed and adherence to procedure. This is when a trainer really demonstrates skill as a teacher.

When a quality flaw is noted, the trainer must know why this flaw exists. If the trainer does not know why, serious questions about the trainer’s qualifications surface.

For example, on the Unipress NT, a common pressing defect is a wrinkled area, about the size of a small fist, on the back near the shirt’s right armpit.

An unqualified trainer could say “That’s the cut of the shirt” or “This machine does that” or “the shirt is too dry.”

These conclusions are all incorrect. I assure you that if you blame the shirt or the machine, that will stick to the trainee like super-glue. She will always blame the shirt or the equipment and they will never learn to press a shirt correctly.

It happens that on the NT, something that experienced pressers have been taught for years is no longer correct.

Remember that “inverted V” that we always were taught to make with the front of the shirt? You don’t do that with a Unipress NT. You want to bring the panels of the shirt close together and have the button band and the button-hole band nearer to parallel.

This is just an illustration of cause and effect. The trainer must know these causes and remedies.

Finally, it is important to never make a one-person job appear to be a two-person job. This is easier to illustrate with something other than pressing shirts.

Let’s say that you are training somebody to assemble drycleaning orders. When the trainer is doing something, the trainee does nothing but observe. I tell them to cross their arms.

The inverse situation is true. When the trainee is working the trainer observes and comments and corrects, but does not do actual work.

If the trainer did “help” the trainee, it would be impossible to evaluate the trainee because the trainee would not be doing the entire job.

Furthermore, the trainee gets what can be described as a false sense of confidence, thinking that they are doing better than they really are because they have a helper that will not be part of their usual job.

Training new employees is something that we all need to do. It takes time and effort. My management mentor said years ago “You never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over.” You will have to retrain an employee if you don’t put in the valiant effort at the onset.

“If you do what you’ve always did, you’ll get what you always got.”