Leading for a Change: The Training of Trainer’s (TOT) Chicago

I’m writing tonight from my hotel room at the River Rock Inn in Rockland, Ontario, Canada. For those of you who are not familiar with the area, it is a bilingual (French & English) community of around 9,000 located about 25 km west of Ottawa.

Today through Thursday, I’m working with the staff, supervisors, and agency administrators of Prescott-Russell Services to Children and Adults. The goal? Introduce the latest “cutting-edge” research on “what works” in behavioral health and initiate a system transformation project for this group that provides child protection, mental health, family violence, and development services in the area. The time spent with the first cohort of 125 direct services providers and supervisors went by, as they say, in “the blink of an eye.” Tomorrow, I’ll be repeating the same training for the rest of the crew. On Wednesday and Thursday I’ll meet with supervisors and administrators. Suffice it to say, it’s an incredible opportunity for me to take part in such a large and well executed service improvement project. In these lean economic times, I’m inspired by both the time and resources being directed at improving services offered to this area’s most needy. By the end of the week, I hope to have interviews posted with some of the providers and leaders working in the project.

While on the subject of training, let me share the brochure for this year’s “Training of Trainers” event in Chicago, Illinois during the second week of August. As in prior years, professionals from all over the world will be joining me and the state-of-the-art faculty for four intensive days of training on feedback-informed treatment (FIT). Please note: this is not an “advanced training” in FIT where time is spent reviewing the basics or covering content. Rather, the TOT curriculum has been designed to prepare participants to train others. Every day of the training, you will learn specific skills for training others, have an opportunity to practice those skills, and then receive detailed feedback from ICCE Senior Associates and Trainers Rob Axsen, Cynthia Maeschalck, and Jason Seidel. Anyway, read for yourself. Agencies both public and private, in the U.S. and abroad, are sending staff to the event to learn the skills necessary to lead transformation projects. Space is already limited so register soon.