Beware the bogus trainer

The Life: Leadership training is big business these days. But not everyone who offers it is qualified to do so. Experts discuss the scale of the problem and how trainers can best protect their programmes.

Triptta Neb of Qiyada, who trains people to optimise their potentials, says illegal copycats in the UAE pose threats. Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

By all accounts Triptta Neb should be doing very well in the Emirates. After all, she says she is the only person in the whole of the GCC licensed to offer a particular type of leadership training.

But that does not mean she is the only one delivering it.

"I know for a fact that a leading hotel chain over here (was offering situational leadership training), because we were talking to them, and they said 'we are doing this'," says Ms Neb, who is the director of Qiyada, a consultancy based in the UAE.

Ms Neb says she told the hotel management they were not allowed to deliver the training unless they were licensed. However, she says, when it comes to others using intellectual property without permission "people tend to feel that they can do it".

It would be easy to downplay or even dismiss Ms Neb's complaint because she clearly has a vested interest. But a leading intellectual property lawyer shares her concerns about the quality of leadership training on offer in the UAE.

Joycia Young, a partner at Clyde & Co, says the problem is worse than many people realise.

"About half the spam I receive on my BlackBerry is offering training or certification of some sort," says Ms Young. "There's been a real surge of training opportunities in the market. My guess is that not all of them will be authorised or properly licensed."

The growth of bogus trainers is partly due to a push by companies to improve employee productivity in the challenging economic environment.

Unqualified teachers generally fall into two categories. The first is made up of people who think they are qualified to train others because they have worked in middle management and attended a training course. "Just because you went to school doesn't make you a teacher," says Ms Young.

"It's not about the experience. It's about the ability to transfer the knowledge and there are methodologies and measurement processes that people like this do not know."

The second type of bogus trainer rips off theories and models developed by experts.

But there are methodologies that trainers must learn to transfer the knowledge. Reading a book or researching the topic on the internet does not make someone an expert. "Companies might feel that they're saving money but in the long-run they're wasting it," says Ms Neb.

She says she received feedback from a leading hotel chain, which had been training its staff in situational leadership illegally. The bogus trainer focused on leadership styles. However, the programme concentrates on assessing how ready people are for the task at hand.

"If you can't assess the readiness levels of your people, whatever style you use is immaterial. You're not going to achieve results," Ms Neb says.

Leadership trainers should be able to provide details of their certification.

But how do trainers best protect their programmes?

There are a number of things they can do, including registering their trademark and making everyone who takes a course sign a confidentiality agreement.

Trainers in the UAE can also deposit their copyright with the Ministry of Economy to have their ownership rights recorded. "This is very helpful if the copyright is later infringed and they want to try and enforce those rights," says Ms Young.

But companies also have a responsibility to check the credentials of trainers they are considering using. "There are very easy ways of doing that," says Ms Neb. "You can go online to the intellectual property holders' website and they [often] have all the affiliates listed, giving the territories."