The Master Trainer Institute started life in early 1995.
John Townsend, who founded the Institute, had been training independently for 10 years under the company name “Interaction”, concentrating more and more on workshops for trainers – a profession whose own training and development seemed to have been neglected in Europe. By the early 90’s, these workshops, along with John’s best-selling series of Train-the-Trainer pocketbooks, were beginning to create a demand for an “A to Z” public seminar for full time professional trainers, based on accelerated learning techniques and providing straightforward, simple models for training design and delivery
In response to this demand and with some friendly pushing and help from John’s friend and academic alter ego Paul Donovan of the Irish Management Institute, the very first Master Trainer Programme was organised in 1995 at a hotel on the French-Swiss border near Geneva. It ran for 6 days starting on a Sunday morning!
Paul’s job was to help facilitate on the programme as well as to find 100 ways of improving each session. Although feedback from participants was excellent Paul always managed to find at least 150 new ideas!
The philosophy behind the Master Trainer Programme was that serious learning should be interactive and fun rather than lecture-driven and boring. Training should be linked closely to organizational goals and not delivered in a vacuum. Training should be tightly designed according to adult learning principles so that only the people who need the skills are trained and can practice with relevant exercises in a resource-rich environment
In 1996, after four sessions of the programme had been run, 300 square metres of office space were located in Ferney-Voltaire (5 minutes from Geneva International Airport) and John set about designing a participant-friendly training centre which was baptised the ‘Master Trainer Institute’.
The vision was for an international centre of trainer excellence at the hub of Europe.
The Institute’s mission was drawn up and states:
We aim to meet our participants’ individual development needs by organizing learning opportunities which:
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Are fast-moving, well-structured and…..fun! |
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Teach tested take-away tools and techniques |
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Provide ready-to-use methods and checklists for each phase of the people developer’s job |
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Are at least 50% participant-led |
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Are reinforced with user-friendly reference material |
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Take place in a creative open and modular environment |
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Encourage international networking and benchmarking |
The original Master Trainer Programme was streamlined to its present 4,5 days and two new public programmes were added to the Institute’s catalogue. The 3 day Transforming the Trainer workshop was designed for the part-time, subject matter expert trainer and The Master Facilitator catered to the growing need for managers and trainers to develop facilitation skills
During this time, international customer demand was increasing for workshops designed for line managers (Professional Manager workshop) to help them with their responsibilities as people developers notably in areas like leadership, interpersonal communication skills and especially team building. So the decision was taken to expand the Institute’s product range, and these offerings were added to the burgeoning in-company ‘event’ portion of the Institute’s international business.
Establishing long-term customer relationships and refining the processes have all helped the Institute become one of the world’s preferred suppliers of people development workshops
In 2000 Richard Bradley attended the Master Trainer Programme with the aim of building on his successful management and entrepreneurial skills and experience to become a master trainer. In no time at all he was running the Institute’s new Powerful Presentations workshop! Along with his other responsibilities outside the institute. Richard’s pragmatic and business-like approach soon led to him starting to consult internally in companies to help design and position their training programmes for both the global and local organization.
Richard’s passion for training gradually led to him taking over more and more of the training at the Institute, adding his creative touch to both content and delivery, and in 2006 he took over the Master Trainer Institute and its continued growth.
We look forward with confidence and interest as the market changes, our team gets stronger, and we continue to travel and spread the word of the Master Trainer Institute.
