Terry Godfrey is a seasoned professional with over 30 years of experience in designing comprehensive training strategies across diverse sectors such as chemicals, distribution, bio-diesel fuels, natural gas, and fertilizers. He has created a broad array of training materials and has an exceptional understanding of adult learning theories, leadership training, and employee development.
Terry excels at communication, often leading training initiatives and conducting presentations across all organizational levels, compliance, and regulatory agencies. His expertise extends to training needs assessment, job-task analysis, and the ADDIE process.
Skilled in Instructional Design, Terry has developed everything from student workbooks to educational curriculums. His career highlights include initiating and executing numerous seminars and workshops at both local and corporate business levels. Terry has developed and implemented diverse educational and certification training materials aligning with operational standards. He has also contributed significantly to the development of Self-Managed Learning (SML) Modules and other self-study materials for technical staff qualification.
Luis Malbas
Hello, everybody, welcome to the training learning and development community. Happy Friday to you. Thanks for joining us. Let's say I do see that Dolores is here and we've got a few other people registered. So maybe we'll have a few questions coming in from the audience. And, and I have 10 questions here for our guests, Terry Godfrey, who is a member of T LDC and a longtime, l&d professional, I guess you've been around for doing this, this kind of work for like 30 plus years.
Terry L Godfrey
Yeah, started in 1991.
Luis Malbas
Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. And I love talking to people like you because you just have a wealth of information, just lots of lots of tips, things that I know would benefit a lot of our newer members, people that are just entering entering this industry. And I think that being able to, to get that kind of information from people like you is really, really important. So let's just start out with some basic questions. 30 plus years doing this, when did you get started or and where
Terry L Godfrey
I grew up in the southern part of West Virginia, in the coalfields, so my ticket out of there was an education in football. So my goal was to become an elementary phys ed teacher and a football coach. And so I was able to do that and graduated in 83. So I was taught elementary phys ed, and was an assistant football coach for approximately three years little right at three years. Locally, here, there's a there's a chemical plant, not much left. But I left after that to go in as a chemical process operator, it was strictly a financial move. But I did get to do what I wanted to do coming out of high school. They had just recently started a Training Department at this particular field facility, it was about 2000 people there. And so I went in as an operator, about three and a half, four years later, they asked me an opportunity to get into their training and development team. And I took advantage of that. And a lot of it had to do with getting off shift work. So but I was young, and I was there for approximately about 15 years. We managed all of the operator training and all of the safety training. In 2006, after 20 total years was downsized, which was a really good thing. It's a little scary when you're 45 years old when that occurs. From there, I did a little bit of consulting for about a year. And then went to work for an oil and gas company based out of Pittsburgh, that had operations here in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. And so there I was a technical trainer, who actually taught compressor operation skills, designed training for it compared corrosion measurement. Wow. So I was in the field, turning wrenches with mechanics. And then I would take that little bit of knowledge and put it together in training. And then left there in I want to say 2016, I guess and came over. As an instructional designer, I kind of I had been enticed by a lot of individuals to pursue the instructional design because that was something that I could just totally enjoy, and really enjoyed it. And according to a lot of people was fairly decent at it as well. So moved over to Columbia pipeline as strictly as an instructional designer. One year later, the company I work for now purchased them. And that's where I'm at right now. Our parent company is out of Calgary, Canada. I'm now classified as we just had a re kind of a reorg in our HR group. I'm now a training developer. There's five of us. And then they've created some training strategist roles. So this is where I'm at now. And literally in the last 1/3 of my life is I call it having the time of my life. Totally enjoy it. But I've been a corporate l&d person my whole entire career.
Luis Malbas
Nice. Well, Kara seems to be a fan Terry rocks who puts in chat here. But well, so from the from the get go you were in education?
Terry L Godfrey
Yes, yes. Yeah. Like I said it was my family. I think I was the first one In my family to graduate with a college degree, or actually go to college, but it was something that I had an interest in. I think it was more. So I knew I had to teach school if I wanted to coach football. So my second degree is in physics or is in science, I'm sorry. And, but I didn't want to teach the science side of it. But I was I was really enjoying myself, met my future wife. The first day the student body was on campus in September 1977. And we will celebrate 39 years here in November. And she is a she's a retiree administrator with 33 years, so she left. Yes.
Luis Malbas
That's amazing. Yeah, congrats. It's so cool. Um, so this background, you have like, you know, chemical, chemical distribution, biodiesel fuels, natural gas fertilizing. So that part of lnd being able there, and, you know, it seems like manufacturing to maybe what, what have you seen l&d evolve through?
Terry L Godfrey
Yeah, the guy I work with, day to day, he's in our group. I think he's 34. But I shared with him stories. When I got into it, it was pretty much PowerPoint. And that was that I broke in on a program called CorelDRAW. When it when it first came out. And the the PowerPoint side of it was just trying to make things interesting enough, we were not into the bells and whistles with the whooshing sounds and all of that. But we did a lot of in stand up instruction. I mean, it was a lot of going out into facilities and sharing safety topics. And then in about 1995, my manager, put this little box of material on my desk, and she said, get this installed on our servers. And let's try to get online with with some training in the following year. And so that's where I got started with the computer side of the LMS. We it wasn't really an LMS. And so we put that in into the system and started folding in some of our training topics. But I was looking at a magazine in the office way back in 1993, or 94. And they were talking about computer based training and talking about graphics and everything. And I just told the guys I was working with I said that's the future. I mean, this is where this is going. And I think three of us kind of grabbed that and ran with it. But in my situation I've just been a really active learner. I totally enjoy it in tried to keep up with it. But yeah, it's yes. It's evolved from, you know, the PowerPoint. I think the advancements in technology is unbelievable. You just can't keep up with going from the stand up instruction to the digital and online, the blended approaches, and something that I have an interest in right now that we're actually rolling out into this industry as AR and VR. So those are things that evolved into.
Luis Malbas
Yeah, no, I love it. Terry, it's great that you're that you're actually evolving with it, you know, and being able to grow with it. Kim has a great question she just dropped in here. It seems like not many of our younger l&d folk are drawn to technical training. I'm trying to think of ways to help it be less off putting to them. Do you have any ideas?
Terry L Godfrey
Equal training in what what is meant by tech, the technical training?
Luis Malbas
It's the I'll take a look here to see if Kim answers with that. With technical training. Here, I'm sure she'll post a thing as technical as in machinery chemical.
Terry L Godfrey
Okay. Yeah. I mean, you know, the people that we deal with, I like to refer to myself as a blue collar l&d. And so I relate really good with with the boots on the ground type individuals. And I think getting them involved with with that technical training, but we get a lot of people into this industry that are just good workers. You know, they may only have a high school education. And, you know, we do bombard him with a lot of online training but they have a lot of certification. We are highly regulated industry. So A lot of the training that they go through the technical side of it is for the different roles or the different jobs, they have like compressor technicians, corrosion technicians, that sort of thing. And it's a part of their scope of being in that role. So it's not a matter of choosing where they want it. But in order for them to succeed and advance within that particular role, we have different grade levels from one through four in so that that's the interesting, I think, from my standpoint of developing is, I think it's the relevancy of the training that we put out there that that adds value and not just gives them information.
Luis Malbas
Do you do you have any younger people in any of the teams that you work with? Do you mentor, any younger?
Terry L Godfrey
You have? JB I don't mind mentioned his name. He, he and I are the only two in in, in the US. So he's 34. And I'm 63. The rest of them? I think we have one guy out in Calgary. He's probably in his late 40s. The other ones are in their late 30s, early 30s. So yeah, we I'm kind of like the grandfather of the whole entire group. So
Luis Malbas
and they must be like, so you know, you're working in energy now. Right? So, you know, these these younger teammates that you might have have like an interest in in that particular industry? Or is it something that they just jumped into,
Terry L Godfrey
I think they had more of an interest in the in the learning and development side of it. And then I mean, for instance, JB my co worker, he absolutely had no oil and gas background. But he had a pretty good background in video development, photography, learning and development, online training. And so with that, in a very positive attitude to learn. Plus, he was right there with me, not that, but I, he was probably the only one that I've had an opportunity to, to mentor in. But we mentor each other. He pushes me into directions of learning to fly drones and take video with drones. And I kind of push him into the storyline and and rise in some of the other software that we are using.
Luis Malbas
Very interesting. So you know, like Kim was saying loves that the term what was it the blue collar? Blue Collar? lnd? Yeah. When it comes to say, like training needs assessment, job task analysis, you have, you know, a lot of experience with that, how, as a blue collar, l&d person, how do you actually go about conducting, finding like specific glue learning needs within an organization,
Terry L Godfrey
we get a lot of requests, we have a quote unquote, formal process to where they put in a request for some type of service. Unfortunately, in most l&d individuals are very familiar with when I'm getting ready to study, probably 80 to 90%, they're wanting a course, an online course. And so, you know, that's the request. And so I approach it from the standpoint of getting that, that initial contact, and I set up a discovery type call in within that discovery type call with this, normally, the requester, which is, a lot of times the subject matter expert, I do not talk about any type of modality that we're going to use, I just want to find out if there truly is a need. Now unfortunately, being in a corporate setting, it's about 50% of what we have to do is pretty much order taking. Because it's regulatory, there's a lot of development that we have to do. But once we determine there's some type of need, then we then we work very closely with them to do some type of training analysis and determine who our audience is going to be, what the roles are, what areas are they in, etc. And then we from there prioritize the different types of avenues that we can go to address this particular need. And then we meet back with the SM E and we go from there and determine, you know, our paths forward, but we probably don't do a very good job of doing a formal needs assessment. I think it's more of workflow that we do. And it's kind of built into that. I think one of the things that, that I've tried I'd educate myself and some of my teammates is the difference between a needs assessment and in a training analysis. I think we kind of interrelate those a little too much. And we start analyzing, you know, doing an analysis first. And a part of the analysis is determining the modality we're going to use to train and not necessarily a name, we just assume there's a need, because this SMA approach this, so
Luis Malbas
yeah, yeah. And I know, you know, a lot about learning theories, methodologies, for the types of industries that you've worked in. I mean, how do you tailor your training programs to fit the needs of, of the learners that you're serving?
Terry L Godfrey
I'm being very honest, a lot of it. And I don't like using the terminology, but it's almost one size fits all. Now, you know, we we kind of look in and do the analysis to determine is this more on the awareness level? Or is this more specific to a particular task that they are involved with. So it's, it's some time that we have to spend with the SMA, one of the things that I've been doing along with with my co worker here in West Virginia, is beginning to spend more time with the users, the individuals that it's going into effect directly and getting some of their input being located in a field office, we have that access to those individuals, a lot easier than someone up in our Charleston office, which does not have any of our field employees reporting out of some,
Luis Malbas
okay. Um, you know, I used to work in manufacturing. So I, I actually kind of love this kind of this type of stuff. But do you have a good story or like a success story that you might have about something that you did, that you can share?
Terry L Godfrey
I was thinking that one of your questions when we became TC energy or Trans Canada, I had pretty much lived in Articulate Storyline for 10 years, and really loved it. And unfortunately, they used Captivate and I know, some people, they there's just kind of a debate over which one is which. But I had never been in Captivate and was given the responsibility to create a 1227 course curriculum on gas storage, working directly with the the director of the gas facility, or the gas storage facility who helped write the sense of rules. And so that was, that was a really eye opening paradigm shift in in course development, especially when you get 27 PowerPoints that this individual had put together. And the minimum, I think, looking back now was probably 70 slides. Oh, my gosh, yes, it was. But everything worked out, I just had to take a step back, it really challenged me to one make something that pretty much is pretty boring, it's regulatory, but to try to make it interesting enough to pull the people in. And so I'm a real big fan of finding out what is actually needed, versus what they want. And so we decided, without going into great detail, is that everything on the slide would be what they need it anything that they want, it would be off the slide. So he sent the presentations that way. And so we just created or I created the opportunity, we hit the high points. And then if they wanted to further investigate what the additional information we had access to that for each slide, but it was a toughy especially when we had I think it was done in eight months, by myself.
Luis Malbas
Wow, I was gonna ask that. How did you say you built it in Captivate?
Terry L Godfrey
There, all of it was in Captivate, which I had never been in Captivate and had no choice because we didn't have story. We didn't have storyline. So I would sit with three monitors, one monitor would have tutorial videos on how to do things because I was trying to make it interactive and a little bit engaging, which those two things are a little different to begin with. Yeah, but I just didn't want the next button over and over. And so I put together part of my workflow is putting together some type of workflow, prototype that I can get to the SME pretty quick. deleted, kind of give them an idea of where something's going and get a thumbs up or a thumbs down before we get too deep into something like that. And that seems to work really well in this industry. Because I think one of the big things that I do want to point out is that my background from the chemical industry, I'm going to say, what four year apprenticeship program as an operator learning about all kinds of equipment, regulators, instrumentation, compressors, pumps, valves, as a operator. And then over at the other gas company, I actually taught classes on compressor Tech's how to operate a compressor or dehydration system, how to change out the house. Same thing with measurement and correct. So I had that background. And once my relationship was established with my smees, even today, they feel comfortable enough, once I give them that prototype, that I know what I'm doing. And they really trust but I think I'm reading Karen Nourse book on experience. And she has used the phrase a couple of times relational equity, which just jumped off the page does that mean and and I'm really big on that is forming some type of relationship with my subject matter experts. And I think the trust factor of them, knowing that I'm going to deliver something, one on time, and then also something that's going to add value, not just, you know, fill their heads with knowledge.
Luis Malbas
So having having that that for years, and then that the the compressor knowledge that you have, I mean, that must have just completely helped with that relational equity, that you're talking about just being able to talk to other SMEs. And you having a background in some of these, these concepts.
Terry L Godfrey
Yeah, and established, once they, you know, got to know me and everything and found out about that in a lot of times, it's a little difficult for myself to kind of toot your own horn for lack of better words. But when we became trains Canada, people didn't know me. I mean, we were brand new coming over from another organization. And so they, they just, they thought I was an instructional designer that was sitting in an office in St. Albans putting together training material. And so once again, I had to kind of do some marketing, personal marketing with the individuals out there. But I think over the course of the last six years or so to seven years, I think, the production of product that myself and my co worker, and whole entire team that that I work with, has brought on their idea that, hey, we've got an internal group that can actually really do good work, there's really no need for us to begin looking outside the company. And they still do. But we've actually taken on some responsibility, some projects from a couple of consulting groups that were scheduled, and once they found out that we could do they cancelled those and came to us and we were able to take those on. So
Luis Malbas
that's fantastic. Let me ask you, I this really interested me, when I was going through your LinkedIn profile you've done, you've done stuff for you have experienced in both operations and distribution. Any difference in in in how you build your training for for those two?
Terry L Godfrey
Well, right, right now, we, you know, again, we support the corporate side from from HR standpoint, I mean, we do the cybersecurity we do the health safety and environmental type training. You know, we do specialized development for other types of soft skills, etc. We don't we do not do a lot of the instructor led training development. Normally those are developed internally in the business units. But as far as the distribution side of it, that was more so in the chemical plant that I worked in, so you had to the distribution of drumming and packaging, and then you had the operation of where they moved the chemicals around. A huge difference. Most in the type of worker that was was in both of those positions. The distribution side was a very repetitive daily thing saying over and over and over the operations. There may be a facility there may have been a facility that had four or five or even six does Different jobs within that facility that had different skills. The wonderful thing about in the chemical is I got a good start in this industry, because they were really big on doing job task analysis on everything. And they worked with the hourly personnel supervision, the union excetera, for a couple years, and I was involved with that, in determining what, what are the jobs? What are the tasks involved with it? And what are the different skills that are associated? So we had some really good foundational information for us to build training on. Wow,
Luis Malbas
amazing, amazing, um, time has just flown by here. So I've just got a couple more questions. I think I can ask you, um, let's see leadership training and development. You've done that right.
Terry L Godfrey
I did. When I was at the chemical plant. And I know I'm going all the way back so many years, but but they are I got involved with was was selected and went out in and actually taught the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey, was certified in that, as far as leadership training. Now, now we do support. Actually, I was working with a couple individuals out of Calgary. But most of it, as far as leadership training is third party type activities. I like to think that I lead upwards, for lack of a better word. So one of the things and I'll tell you a very quick story, not take a lot of time, but I asked my wife after about 25 years, I said, Am I ready to be a training manager? And now let's ask him someone that had been an administrator for 33 years? And she said, I don't think that's the question you need to ask. And I said, What is it? She said, are you ready not to be? Because you may not. That's may not be where you need to be and where your passion is located. And now it's into the 30 years. And obviously, that was true. And I'm perfectly content with where a man have no desire to manage, I think we can manage people and not have the title, just as well.
Luis Malbas
Nice. Nice. All right. Couple more questions. I just want to hear about this, because you just have a wealth of experience, most challenging training project,
Terry L Godfrey
I think it has to go back to that. I kind of jumped ahead that gas story. That was a pretty big challenge. The other the other one I would mention is that they had commented our company had contracted out for these courses, that was 72 courses to be built in two years. And I was the review those as they come in and set up review periods in the company where they were working with ended up having something like five instructional designers and three developers and I just really got bombarded with all of this. So we ended up breaking the contract and taking all of that on ourselves. And so in to two years ago, I committed to working on these courses, which was working with our internal trainers who I knew personally had lunch with dinner with, etc. And so we were able to develop 46 courses in a year and a half, that were related directly to corrosion compression measurement, and kind of took that business away, but into that saving the company somewhere between 300 to $400,000. I just I just wish I'd got a hold of that particular contract when they first signed it because I wouldn't be on the phone with you. I mean, that was but it was a tough one. But again, those are things when you when you get to do what you enjoy, you make a living at it. You look at it differently. Believe it or not, it's kind of a stress reliever for me to learn something new and try it out. Storyline. My big thing now is the virtual reality and getting some of our 360 degree images into Oculus headsets to where our technicians can visit a compressor station way back in the mountains. And they might be 100 miles away. And they can feel as if they're standing in the gravels of this compressor tech compressor station with a headset on and yeah, we are we are getting really deep into that And we've got some people that are just really expecting some good things, because one of the things that we're working on is that they invested about $600,000 in a training facility out of Calgary in, so we went up and took a whole entire tour of that facility with our 360 camera, and so we're putting something together. So they can see it not only on a computer, but they can put it in a headset, and we're going to turn, we're going to give it to the individuals in Calgary who have never been there, but they financed it. So they will get to see the facility that they find against without getting on a plane and traveling all the way down to West Virginia to see it. So the VR is really really picking up in our industry. In in where we're located. We're promoting and showing some people some things that we can do. And it's really equipment. It's, it's a real piece of machinery that you're standing next to, they may not be able to control it or anything. But there's ways of educating them with video and so forth. So there's some things that we're working on. And I have kind of learned how to do that within the last six months. I had never been in a headset until about four months ago.
Luis Malbas
Are you actually building some of the simulations yourself?
Terry L Godfrey
Yes, yes. Yeah, we're, I bought cameras, myself from you know, just because I have an interest in it. But we're integrating drone video footage. Video, three 60 degree video, we're doing hotspots, risk assessment that where they go around it, where else. So there's, there's a lot of things that just work wherever your creative mind can lead you. And I follow some really good people out there on online. Especially, I have no idea of how to do JavaScript, but there's quite a few people out there that are sharing some things that that we're integrating into some of our training. And people seem to pick up on that quite as well.
Luis Malbas
It's great. Gosh, Jerry, it has been wonderful talking to just, you know it, you can definitely tell that you love what you do. Oh,
Terry L Godfrey
totally enjoy
Luis Malbas
making. That's one of the reasons why time has gone by so fast. But I do want to ask well, actually, I have two questions. One quick one. Do you still use Captivate?
Terry L Godfrey
We have courses developed in Captivate. So we don't have a choice but not to use Captivate. Now we do a lot of conversions. So if we have to go in and do a pretty major revision, we'll convert it. But yeah, I still have. Well, the company pays for all the license. I think I'm the only one in our group that still has a license. Everybody else is like, I don't want anything to do with it now.
Luis Malbas
You must be good at it, though. You must be Oh, I don't know. And then last question, if you weren't an l&d professional or instructional designer, what do you think you would be?
Terry L Godfrey
Well, I wrote that down. I thought, well, maybe this was not the right end. But I'm probably retired right now where I'm at. But if I had to do something, I spent about two years. I think it's been two years ago, maybe three, I spent two years doing volunteer work for a men's homeless shelter in Charleston, on Saturday mornings, teaching life skills to the homeless, and then going over and spending two hours with their attendees in a recovery group that were there for drug addiction and different things. And just so changed my life. I just had a blast. So I would probably have maybe ended up going in that direction. Later on in life, I would have probably been, I was working on becoming an administrator. So I had an idea of maybe being a high school principal, or maybe even an elementary principal. You know, the money back in the early 80s, mid 80s. It's hard to turn down a pretty hefty pay raise going through teaching to the chemical industry but but this time of my life, it would probably be getting into more of the volunteer work with the shelter really enjoyed. It was just you know, eye opening, and you meet all kinds of people and you find out about why people were addicted. My big question with those individuals was Why did you vote Why did you come to get recover? And most of the most of the Meet well all the meeting because that's who I worked with. I would say well over 70% of them said the reason they chose It was because they started stealing from their mother. And so they didn't care if they stole from their father, but from their mother, that dad just turned the tables on him. And so I still stay in contact with a couple of the guys that the recovery really stuck with him. One, one individual is working on a master's degree in counseling. His wife is working on a master's, and she was she's a recovering addict, as well. So, but very fortunate, very blessed. I didn't go down that road. Never had a desire to go down that road. So we I don't know what it's like to have to quit that level of addiction. But they were they were quick to point out and let you know, though.
Luis Malbas
Wow, Terry, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that that is really, really says a lot about you. And I feel privileged that this conversation, will you Jerry, thank you so much. All right, everybody. That's it for today. We've got a couple more showcases next week. And of course, the the accessible and inclusive design conferences coming up in in a couple of weeks in August. I guess it was August 14 through the 18th. So make sure you go to the AI dc.com to sign up for that if you're interested in attending that one. And with that, Terry, I'm going to wrap it up. Thanks again. I thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, like, like Kim is saying thank you so much for being here today, Terry, and really appreciate your time. All right. And that's it. Have a great weekend, everybody and and we'll see you next time.
Terry L Godfrey
All right. Thank you.
Luis Malbas
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
