Later in my career as an instructor and course designer for (ISC)^2 (and I have instructed, and produced materials, as I did for (ISC)^2, for other companies as well) I was sent to situations that were problematic. Very often they didn't tell me what the problem was. On one occasion, I was being sent to Germany, and got on the phone with the person who was running the local venue. I had a very terse conversation with him, in which he sounded quite cold. I got on the plane, and, apparently, while I was on the plane, this person looked me up on the Internet. When I landed in Germany, and got to the venue, I was greeted with quite a different reaction. He was very pleased to see me, having researched me, and seen the amount of work that I had both published, and published on the Internet itself. Apparently the training office had sent a completely unqualified instructor previous to sending me.
I was also sent, on occasion, to co-teach with instructors who were, themselves, on probation. In one case, apparently they were about to terminate this one particular instructor. He and I got along great. We would talk about his experiences, which were extensive, in law enforcement, and he had a fund of stories to tell, and a great deal of experience that was very valuable.
But in front of a class, I could understand why he was on probation. You know the old joke about how do you tell if you're talking to an extroverted programmer? He's the one who looks at *your* feet when he's talking to you. Yes, this person could have been the origin of that joke. He looked at his feet when he talked to you, he mumbled, he was unsure of himself, in front of a crowd. It got to the point where a number of the candidates from the seminar were coming to me and saying they wanted me to teach everything, and they didn't want him to teach anything anymore. I told them that he had a great deal of experience that was very valuable to them, and that they should try and extract as much of his knowledge as they could.
And then we had a talk, ourselves. And I told him that I knew he had always been told that you had to make eye contact with the people in the seminar, that you had to speak up, that you had to project a forceful presence, in order to deliver material in this type of seminar.
I told him to forget all of that.
I told him that the next day he was going to deliver the domain about law and investigations. This was his field, and he knew it cold. And not to worry about how he looked, or how he sounded, or making eye contact. Just talk.
So, the next day, he did. He mumbled, he looked at his shoes, and the seminar candidates were absolutely riveted.
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