If you had told me, when I joined JCI London in 2008, that I would become a JCI Trainer traveling the world giving training courses and becoming as passionate about training as I have become, I would have looked at you as if you came from outer space (that goes for a lot of things I've done through JCI btw, but that's for other blog posts).

First of all, the JCI Trainer courses are not only for those that aspire to become trainers.

The first course on the training ladder, JCI Presenter, is for anyone who wants to learn more about presenting and being more confident when speaking in front of people. People pay buckets of money for these kind of courses from private providers and through JCI you get a brilliant course for next to nothing. And there's no doubt learning presentation skills will benefit your career. If you can talk about topics confidently, present your arguments without faltering, you stand better chances to be promoted and noticed positively in your job.

The second course, JCI Trainer, is for those who have graduated from JCI Presenter. Again you do not have to want to be a trainer in order to benefit from JCI Trainer. JCI Trainer is great for anyone who want to learn more about how to present things, how to structure a presentation so that it makes sense, how to work with different personality types and how these different personality types take in information. It's a two day course, very interactive and lots of fun.

Start with a friend
After graduating from JCI Trainer you can start giving training courses yourself. There's many ways to do this. I started working with a friend, Sarah Beckwith, and we developed a couple of courses together. Starting out with a friend is great as you don't have to stand there all on your own, you have someone to feed back on your training ideas and you learn and grow together .JCI London also offer Train the Trainer evenings where you can learn and meet other trainers.

Choose a passion!
When it comes to choosing what to train, there's so many options its hard to choose. Though the techniques we learn as JCI trainers makes us able to train any course, in reality it is good to pick a topic you have knowledge about, feel confident in and can speak freely about. JCI has a number of ready made training courses with manuals and slides all waiting for you. Its a good idea to start out with one of those to get a feeling for how a training course is structured and to get some experience.

Read! Study!
If you want to really become a trainer, nothing beats going to other trainers' sessions and seeing how they do things. Use your time smartly at World Congress and European Conference to see the ITFs (International Training Fellow) and IGs (International Graduates) do their courses and learn from what they do. Take notes. What did you enjoy and what did you not enjoy?

There are also a lot of books out there with good tips and advice. I particularly favour a book called "The Trainer's Toolkit", but there are also many free resources online for things like ice breakers, time outs and more.

Get hours!
To advance in the JCI training system you need to count your hours, and log your hours on the JCI.cc website. Only hours trained under JCI counts, not hours trained for say your company or other organisations.

You can get hours by approaching the JCI London Training Director, ask nearby chambers if they would like you to come train, and do like me, when you go on holiday somewhere you talk to the local JCI chambers and ask if they want some training to. If you don't know how to get in touch with people, just talk to your local President or Training Director.

It never harms to ask, but make sure you are specific. Be as helpful as you can. Provide information about yourself, what you have trained, what you can train, and when it would be possible for you to come. It might sound helpful to try to be as open as possible, but that leaves very little for a Chamber to act on.

The JCI Training Ladder
JCI Trainer course + 25 JCI hours trained = Certified Local Trainer (CLT)
CLT means that you can start being assistant trainer for courses such as JCI Presenter, JCI Achieve and JCI Admin (but not JCI Trainer)

CLT + 25 JCI hours trainer + graduation from JCI Designer Course = Certified National Trainer
CNT means that you can be assistant trainer for JCI Trainer and you can start working on your international trainer career

CNT + Head Trainer Course = Head Trainer
This means that you can become Head Trainer for JCI official courses you have trained sufficient times

CNT + 25 international hours + written 1 hour training course incl manual, slides etc = International Graduate (IG)

IG + 25 international hours + written half day training course incl manual, slides etc = International Training Fellow

Please note that none of the advancements from one level to the next is automatic. Your advancement will be reviewed by the JCI Training Commission and either approved or rejected. Therefore it is important that you are diligent when filling in hours and give information also about who the course was open for if that is not self explanatory in the course name.

The JCI Training Commission puts a lot of importance on their perception of your understanding of JCI and how your training helps develop our organisation. The purpose of JCI Training is to help us develop our organisation and it is important to keep this in mind when giving training sessions and developing training courses.