Tim James
Title
Training Project Manager
Organization
CCA Global Partners
Location
Melrose, Massachusetts
linkedin.com/in/timothydjames
Education
Bachelor's degree in history and political science (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts)
Favorite Quote
"Emotions are contagious." —Daniel Goleman
Tim James has traveled to more than 1,000 flooring showrooms in the US to facilitate sales, product, and program training workshops. In his current role, James develops interactive multimedia training programs such as the Retail 2.0 onboarding program and Fast Start, a week-long flooring sales boot camp for new sales professionals.
How does learning contribute to your success as the training project manager?
A primary responsibility in my job is to educate myself on a variety of subjects relevant to initiatives in my organization and distill what I learn into training content that's easily consumed by others. As a result, some of my most important work is talking to subject matter experts, reading source material, and doing hands-on training. The more effectively I learn the details, the better equipped I am to curate them in our training.
Can you describe the Retail 2.0 onboarding program and how you developed it?
We needed to train a lot of stores across North America simultaneously. Knowing that the training would need to take place within a strictly timed roll-out schedule, we opted for a training-in-a-box approach that could be shipped to stores.
The training kits include everything the managers need to run a 2.5-hour training meeting for their sales teams, including poster-sized learning maps, workbooks, job aids, a role-playing card game, and step-by-step instructions on how to run the training.
How do you incorporate feedback into the development process?
In Retail 2.0, for example, we developed a prototype training that was given to stores that were piloting the new showroom designs. Then, we collected feedback on the training as we simultaneously collected feedback on the new showroom components. We then delivered a refined version of the training to small focus groups of corporate and store employees. Within the training itself, there are two opportunities for learners to provide feedback and ask questions through an online form. Much of the core training content is hosted online, which allows us to update and add to it throughout the process.
What personal interests do you have outside of training and development?
I spend as much time as I can with my wife, Christine, and our one-year-old son, Andrew. Andrew is at a very fun age where we make a lot of animal noises and play in the leaves, so I'm really enjoying that.
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