I know just how much my delegates love their training from all the positive feedback at get at the end of each day, however by the time we get to the end of the week I always ask them: “how are you feeling?” As excited as they all are, 9/10 delegates will say to me “I just can’t ever imagine being as good as you, you’re so confident with all the knowledge.” As flattered as I am, I remind them that it is my job as a trainer to be this confident in what I teach and instead of being intimidated by my competence they should be inspired, because I too was once just like them; nervous to have my first client, fearful of not being good enough, worried I’d put my clients in the wrong colour scheme or body shape or worse never find them anything to buy whilst shopping with them.
This is the main reason why I started to include mentoring post training. I remind them that the training doesn’t stop after the theory, this is when the real work actually starts. Imagine learning to drive a car, we would never just read a manual on how to drive or watch others drive and say we are confident drivers so why would we possibly call ourselves personal stylists until we’ve actually got out there and practiced the theory. How does anyone learn anything if not by practising all of the time? I am an amazingly confident stylist because I’ve probably done around a thousand colour analysis sessions and 500 personal shopping sessions and wardrobe edits. I’ve put in the hours! I know of course there was some natural talent but it’s the practice that really honed-in my skillset.
When I mentor my delegates, I give them real case studies (usually their friends) and I ask them to do their colours, wardrobe and shopping as if they were actually paying them £500 for their services, I ask them to get honest feedback and then we discuss how they could have improved that session no matter how good or bad it went. I feedback how I would carried it out and they usually hanging on my every last word because they want to learn. We learn by practice and we learn quicker when we have to.