All About SMEs: Building a Successful Partnership

If you’re an L&D professional, you need your subject matter experts (SMEs), and your subject matter experts need you. You rely on SMEs to provide content for your courses, and SMEs rely on you to build courses that make the content understandable and actionable. But the relationship between L&D professionals and SMEs isn’t always smooth sailing.

All About SMEs: Building a Successful Partnership, a TD at Work collection, is designed to help you build a positive relationship with your SMEs so that, together, you can create learning experiences that benefit everyone, from the SMEs with knowledge to share to the learners who need it.

Need help choosing a SME? “Secrets to Successful SME Projects” includes sample SME profiles to help you match your project with the right expert. That issue is also filled with advice for how to keep your project on track if your SME has difficulty seeing the forest for the trees.

Facing a personality conflict? The “Designer-SME Collaboration” profiles different types of SMEs and suggests how to approach your relationship with them.

Is your SME new to training? Use “Basic Training for Trainers” to help them get up to speed on what’s involved in creating a great course.

Does your SME have to lead the training? Share the tips and tricks in “Great Presentations” so they’ll have a successful session.

Other TD at Work and Infoline issues in this collection include:

·         “Teaching SMEs to Train”

·         “Trainer for a Day”

·         “The Learner-Centered Classroom”

·         “Managing Difficult Participants”

·         “5 Questions for Great Presentation Visuals.”

Together, these issues form a valuable toolkit to help you and your SME create and conduct memorable training experiences together. Help your SME help you with guidance from TD at Work.