MYTHS AND TRUTHS OF TRAINING

• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Collection: Declassified Articles from Studies in Intelligence: The IC’s Journal for the Intelligence Professional
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0000621382
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Release Date: July 30, 2014
• Case Number: F-2013-02322
• Publication Date: September 1, 1990

TITLE:AUTHOR:VOLUME:Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Myths and Truths of Training(b)(3)(c)34 ISSUE: Fall YEAR: 1990Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382STUDIES ININTELLIGENCEA collection of articles on the historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of intelligence.All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those ofthe authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the CentralIntelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in thecontents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of anarticle's factual statements and interpretations.Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Educational experiencesMyths and TruthsOf Training(b)(3)(c)  My time in training. .. Setting aside experi-ences before the Agency, it started withoccasional lecturing at the Office ofTraining and Education (OTE) and the ForeignService Institute (FSI), mostly on economic devel-opment and South Vietnam. Then a tour as thefaculty economist at the National War College,with related work-in the economics department ofthe Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Fouryears, on and off, of back and forth to teach atWest Point. More OTE lecturing. Seven months inOTE as a course director. A year in FSI's SeniorSeminar, in which, though a student, I helped withvarious course designs. A little over two years asOTE's Deputy Director for Curriculum.Having had more than the average amount ofexposure to training in my 28 years with theAgency, I feel free to put down a word or two onthe principal fictions and non-fictions that sur-round it, especially in our culture. But I hasten tonote that I make no claim to being a professionaltrainer. Rather, I can relate to trainers as a base-ball commentator relates to players: I recognize agood stance and swing, but I make no claim that Ican hit the ball.Some MythsThe most remarkable thing about training myths istheir resistance to contravening fact. They are a bitlike the concept of the miasma in premodernmedicine. Even if they have little or no explana-tory power, people will die to defend them.Myth 1: Training can cure almost all organiza-tional problems.Who would say such a thing? Just about anyonewho has ever conducted a study on what is wrong15withwith our components, facilities, people, or prod-uct. Inevitably, studies by the Inspector General orthe Product Evaluation Staff contain at least somereference to training, primarily because most peo-ple do not understand what can and cannot betaught. And because training is an easy answer in anation that expects a lot from formal education.As one veteran OTE trainer puts it:Training becomes a solution when taking onthe hard issues is too difficult. For example,send supervisors to management trainingwhen the real problem is the lack of a clearlyarticulated system for management of peopleand programs. Or, if we train managers onalcoholism, we will fix the problem when, infact, the problem is good management (knowyour people).But there is a second, and substantial, reason whywe look to training to do so much: people neitherunderstand how resistant entrenched behavior isto change nor how adults absorb new information.Specialists on adult eduction recognize, for exam-ple, that most of what a worker needs to knowabout his or her job is learned at the worksite, notin the classroom. The layman has an entirelydifferent outlook on this issue. He looks back onyears of formal education before he took a lob, andhe is not about to view those years as wasted.But there are key times when the adult needs totake on new blocks of information, and these areperiods in which the putative student is receptiveto information and the development of skills.Even then, however, the going can be rough. Thereprobably is no area in which training is moredifficult than in the teaching of management skills.A new manager presumably would be eager toApproved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382ConfidontialApproved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Confidentialacquire skills and avoid pitfalls. The fact is thatmost new managers have accumulated strongopinions on what was wrong with the managers forwhom they worked. Consequently, they are pre-pared to manage with a "style" that is reactive totheir past rather than constructive toward theircurrent environment and the future.As a result of this complex of interacting factors,the trainers often have to begin with the formida-ble task of clearing away some of the clutter fromthe minds of new managers. It is such a consistentpattern that trainers have labeled this the "unfree-zing" stage of training. Although it is particularlycharacteristic of managerial training, it is certainlynot unique to this discipline. It parallels the sameproblems that sports professionals have in trainingthe neophyte who has learned a set of skills "on hisown." The pro first has to help the student "un-learn" bad habits. Managers who try through theirbest feedback methods to improve the perform-ance of subordinates and are consistently unsuc-cessful will also recognize this phenomenon.I am not saying that training cannot have a sub-stantial positive impact on people or organiza-tions. We just need to understand that training ismost effective with adults when they want it andthen learn what is most appropriate to their needs.OTE's experience with management training overthe past few years provides a classic example.When I was a course director in the IntelligenceTraining Division in 1986, the OTE ManagementSchool was undergoing some serious problems ofadaptation. It was clear to OTE's director that,with some exceptions, the students were not en-thusiastic about the courses being offered. Aftersome soul-searching, OTE decided to stop teach-ing most management courses until it could do azero-based assessment of the real needs of Agencymanagers.This process produced course designs that weresubmitted to the Agency's Training SteeringGroup (the Associate Deputy Directors and arepresentative of the DCI area) and, in two in-stances, approved as mandatory for Agency man-agers. The Management Training Division of OTEConfidentialTraininghas since gone through repeated re-evaluations ofthe core courses, now contained in one course,"Managing and Leading in CIA," to assure thatthe students' needs are met . This course has beensupplemented with "Managers in Residence"(people on rotation from their organization) and"Managers in the Classroom" (on loan for a par-ticular course running) to assure the job-relevanceof the training material. In April 1990, OTEmanagement trainers again refocused their effortsby reaching agreement with the Directorate ofIntelligence to conduct the "modern" equivalentof the earlier-required two mandatory courses plus"Supervision of Analysis" and "Counseling Skillsfor Managers," supplemented by its "Multicultur-al Management."Myth 2: Any intelligent person can train others, ifhe or she understands the relevant substantive is-sues or skills.This is first cousin to that old saw, "Those whocan, do; those who can't, teach." The underlyingconcept is that a good education and the accumu-lation of knowledge are necessary and sufficientconditions to produce a competent trainer. Neces-sary, yes. Sufficient, no. But we are led to believethis by the fact that our universities hire peoplewith PhDs to teach who have never been trainedto train, and they do just fine. Or do they? Whohas never had a teacher who made an hour seemlike an eternity, without adding anything to whatwas contained in the textbook?We forget that higher education in most of Ameri-ca is based on the concept that the students arechildren. And once the child-student is liberatedfrom the high school or university, he or she is notabout to go back to being treated as a captive. Atthis stage, you have to be able to show studentsthat their efforts in the classroom will enhancetheir lives.People who teach adults regularly have to betrained how to do it. In serious recognition of this,OTE conducts "Train the Trainers" courses. Someparts of the Agency that have long presentedlectures and workshops on component-specific is-sues have discovered that they can benefit from16Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382TrainingOTE training in this area, and it has become agrowth industry. In my recollection, the highest-ranked student we ever had in this course was anoffice director bound for a rotational assignmentoutside the Agency. To his everlasting credit, hehad the good sense to come to OTE to find outhow he could do his best in the classroom. He wasthe star pupil of his particular running of "Trainthe Trainers."? Effective trainers in the private sector learn abouttheir audiences before they settle on how they aregoing to present their material, even if they havealready run a course many times. They tailor whatthey say to the audience's goals and interests.Every word is intended to hold the attention oftheir audience. They emphasize a limited numberof key points because they understand that youcan only communicate about three substantialissues to an adult in an hour. They pepper theirpresentations with specifics on how the studentwill be able to use the material back on the job.And they stick to the day's schedule because theyrecognize the importance of the audience's time.I once asked a truly superb commercial trainerwhy his industry's best trainers did so well. Hisexplanation was simple: "There are a lot of us whowant to do this work. You screw up once, they fireyou." As Samuel Johnson said, "Nothing so clari-fies the mind as the imminent prospect of hangingin the morning."Myth 3: The most important part of teachingadults is knowing the key facts they have to learn.I cannot recall a supervisor I have ever beenfonder of than a former commandant of the Na-tional War College. A bomber jockey by training,he was completely out of his element at the college.His great contributions to his staff and facultywere his 'unswerving support, his humility, and hiswillingness to stay out of our way so that we coulddo the job. On the few occasions that he intruded,he would end up saying, "Know your stuff, andthat is everything." He was dead wrong. Havingcommand of a set of facts is not the same as beingable to convey them?or skills and techniques?toan audience.17ConfidentialMore than a few recommendations from seniormanagers for training are built around the ideathat a set of facts has to be passed on to thestudents. There are many instances in which stu-dents need to absorb certain facts, but an audiencewill tune you out fast if you firehose it with facts.Good students come to the classroom to discussconcepts and to challenge the ideas of others.One of my most dismal moments in OTE camewhen I reviewed a videotape that was to be used intraining in another part of the Agency. The othercomponent had taken the lead in drafting thescript, even though it had no experience inscriptwriting. The initial product was a 10-minutevideo rich in facts that could charitably be de-scribed as a talking Agency regulation. The tworepresentatives from the component, who had avital interest in its success, fell asleep almostimmediately at the first running of the video.Fortunately, they agreed to turn the project over toOTE media folks who knew how to write scriptsand make video lively.Myth 4: The teacher is the focal point of learningin the classroom.This classic misconception can as easily be attrib-uted to some trainers as to students. I have askedtrainers many time how their students reacted to acourse and been told that it went over like gang-busters. But the student evaluations were theequivalent of burlesque's "Give 'em the hook."What is happening here? The trainer becomesenamored of his own voice and forgets the stu-dents, who conclude that they are not going to beable to intrude on this bout of theatrical narcis-sism and thus tune out the trainer. They emergefrom their comatose state only when it is time tofill out the evaluation.In fairness, I suspect that this bacterium infects alltrainers at one time or another. I remember ad-dressing a class in an overheated room late in along day. I decided to do the students a favor byspeeding up my lecture to get them out early.When I finished, I got two polite questions, both ofwhich were crafted to ensure that my answersApproved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382ConfidentialApproved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Cons entialcould only be monosyllabic. The best evaluation Igot for that unit read: "Nice suit."The best trainers understand that a successfulcourse is often one in which the students talk asmuch or more to the teacher and to each other asthe trainer talks to them. This concept is at least asold as Socrates.Myth 5: The best way to assess a course is to askyour employees about it as soon as they are back onthe job.Trainers in OTE and elsewhere have sufferedmore needless grief on this avenue of sorrows thanany other. I am constantly amazed at what usuallydiscerning managers or colleagues will take asuseful input from the recently returned trainee onthe value of training. Training has to meet theneeds of the employee, and one of the few ways tomeasure this is to ask the students how a coursehelped. It is beyond me, however, why supervisors,after telling trainers that they know Charlie or Sueis unreliable, not very bright or skilled, and maynot be at the Agency much longer, will not ques-tion their negative evaluations. For some critics,"didn't like the course" is a complete answer.For a variety of reasons, the National SecurityAgency has to depend on extensive and continu-ous training over the course of its officers' careers.Unlike in our Agency, NSA trainers have a gooddeal of power over the students and their manag-ers. Certain courses have to be completed forpromotion and advancement. Both the studentand his or her manager have to complete evalua-tions of the course; the manager's is based onwhether the student has demonstrated the requi-site skills on the job. Until the two forms aresubmitted, the student cannot be certified to pro-motion panels as having met the requirements.In this system, evaluation techniques have to beabove reproach. NSA has the largest course evalu-ation staff in the Intelligence Community. The - -evaluators agree that time has to pass before thesupervisor can evaluate what impact training hashad. - -?TrainingMyth 6: A tour in training constitutes a simple flowof service and knowledge from the person on rota-tion to the training component.Almost uniformly, people who do tours in trainingsay several things when they are over.? They understand their own field better thanthey did before, (Try, as I did,teaching begin-ning economics Co 35- to 45-year-old fieldgrade officers, mostly trained in engineering,and see if you can fake your way around theparts of your own discipline on which you werea bit fuzzy. It does not work.)? They have a better grasp of where training canand cannot be helpful to their own employees.(Trainers are mostly extroverted or havelearned to behave as extroverts. You learn a lotabout other trainers' programs when you areamong them.)? They have a better appreciation of the Agen-cy's mission and what other parts of the organi-zation do than they did going in. (No matterwhat you teach, if it entails contacts with newemployees, they are going to force you to learnenough about the Agency to help them under-stand better. And, as is often the case, classesthat mix people from several Agency compo-nents provide ample opportunity for lateraltransmission of data.)In recognition of these and other facts, the FederalBureau of Investigation regards assignment totraining as a sign that the employee is a comer. Infact, the Bureau uses training assignments at vari-ous career stages as a way to size people up forincreased responsibility. (It is no coincidence thatJames Greenleaf, who was briefly head of theAgency's Office of Public Affairs, passed throughCIA from a position as the FBI's director oftraining to one as the FBI equivalent of our ownDeputy Director for Administration.)_ -I have been equally bemused by what I see as a? remarkable lack of understanding Agency-wide. about what goes on in training in our organization:_ -18Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382TrainingTruth 1: CIA invests a lot of time in training.Most Agency employees know that OTE has a hostof courses on a variety of topics. In fact, itconducts about 250 separate courses, many ofthem multiple times a year. It and the variousother Agency components also support a prodi-gious amount of external training. Most funding ofexternal training now comes from the sponsoringAgency components, while most of the logistics ofprocessing the requests and entering course com-pletion data in the records falls to OTE.In FY1990 there were som(b, )(3)(C)itudent-in-stances of external training ranging from one-dayworkshops to full ye? -* ?demic institutions.(b)(3)(c)  This compares with ?..ach instances in FY1985. Full-time aeademic training is grnwinaidly, too. In FY1990 there were rouehll(b)(3)(C).pie taking such training; there v(b)(3)(C) FY1985.A lot of other Agency components also conducttraining. Several different parts of the Directorateof Operations (DO), for example, conduct surveil-lance training. The Office of Communications hasits own substantial training program, both internaland external. The Directorate of Science & Tech-nology conducts some directorate-wide trainingand supports training efforts in its own compo-nents and in OTE. The National PhotographicInterpretation Center trains its people in a varietyof component-specific skills. The Office of Securi-ty and the Counterintelligence Center have train-ing components, as does the Office of InformationTechnology. The Office of Technical Services hasa wide range of specialized skills in which it has toinstruct its employees. At one time or another,almost all of us have been exposed to presenta-tions by the Office of Medical Services on healthissues.To keep track of this array of programs, theAgency has soi(b)(3)(C)Lning officers dottedamong its ranks. Add to this the dozen or sopeople in OTE who register folks for their internalprograms and a plethora of external programs.Truth 2: OTE spends a lot of time and troubletrying to design courses that are relevant and usefulfor the Agency population.19ntial"If OTE would only listen to our needs" is one ofthe oft-heard canards in this area. Having seen thisone from the inside, I would be royally upset as ataxpayer if OTE paid more attention to coursedesign and tailoring its product to fit needs than itnow does. Unfortunately, most of the Agency doesnot know the process that OTE goes through inputting new courses together.Before a new OTE course design leaves the draw-ing board the first time, it typically has been vettedwith those parts of the Agency most likely to beinterested in it. Then it has to be defended beforethe Curriculum Committee, a body made up of allof OTE's division chiefs and chaired by the Depu-ty Director for Curriculum. If it survives thisprocess reasonably intact, it is presented to theSenior Training Officers, a group made up ofsingle representatives from each directorate andthe DCI's Executive Staff. If the program is sub-stantial in scope, it will probably go before theTraining Steering Group. Once it clears this hur-dle, it can be run in the classroom. Each running ofthe course includes completion of standardizedevaluation sheets, which become the basis of fur-ther redesign and retunings.Truth 3: There are some kinds of training that theAgency does that have no real parallels in otherorganizations, and this training is admired by otherUS Government trainers.When I first joined OTE, I expected that I wouldlearn that the really exotic stuff was what we did intraining in tradecraft, science and technology, andadvanced analytic methods. Some remarkable thingshave been produced in these areas, such as advancedtradecraft training for officers going to dangerousareas, work to familiarize our staff with new direc-tions/ (boo) and acourse that is highly regarded byother components of the Intelligence Community.But there are rough analogs for all these things inat least some other organizations. Some of theglitter of uniqueness of the first-rate Career Train-ing Program, for example, was diminished for mewhen I looked at aspects of the FBI training forSpecial Agents or visited West Point to see how itsstaff developed a sense of belonging and mission.Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382entialApproved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382ConfidentialOne type of training that we do particularly well?and extensively?is secretarial training. Othercourses that have no clear analogs in the rest of thegovernment are the ones in our "Working withPeople" program, which focuses on interpersonalskills. Moreover, few if any other US Governmentagencies would be willing to tackle a trainingchallenge like our "Counterintelligence AwarenessProgram" that every employee will take.Truth 4: Since the mid-1980s, OTE has made andcontinues to make every effort to deliver training ina way that reduces the employee's loss of time onthe job in taking it.To get training to the customer, OTE?amongother things?uses: classrooms in both headquar-ters buildings; the courses presented over Head-quarter's rid; learning centers, i includ-ing(103n)ing one n)( )( a flood of self-studymaterials and training teams that go overseas,(b)(3)(n)One of the really touching experiences in my touras Deputy Director for Curriculum was looking at \------valuations from such places as]  (b that said that the secretaries who hadbeen trained in the field were delighted that some-one in Washington thought enough of them toConfidentialTrainingrecognize they were a part of the Agency team.Some claimed that, from their perspective, thiswas the first real recognition from Headquarters inwhat had been long careers with us.In addition to facilitating access to courses as away to save the employee's time, OTE has sincethe mid-1980s worked hard to shorten coursedesigns. In part, the position of Deputy Directorfor Curriculum became a "supergrade" slot inrecognition of the need to put as much muscle aspossible behind the review of course designs.The net effect has been to reduce consistentlycourse lengths to less than a week whereverpossible. I suspect no single question has passedthe lips of the four successive Deputy Directorsfor Curriculum more often than, "Can't weshorten this?"Truth 5: Each employee can have an impact onhow training is conducted in the Agency.The network of training officers works up as wellas down in seeking ideas for new training. If youbelieve you have a good idea for useful training, itis a part of their job to help get your messageacross. Tell them what is on your mind.This article is classified CONFIDENTIAL.20Approved for Release: 2014/07/29 000621382