What makes technical training actually work? Not the slides, not the credentials of the trainer, and not the size of the room. According to Don Gillis, HVACR Technical Trainer at HARDI, it comes down to tone, trust, and whether the person delivering the material has genuinely thought about what the audience needs to retain.

Don has spent more than three decades in the HVACR industry, starting in the field before moving into service management and eventually into national technical training roles at Copeland, Emerson, and now HARDI. In this episode, he and host Sannah Vinding talk about the leadership side of technical teaching: how tone changes what people retain, how to handle wrong answers without shutting people down, and why trust in a training room is not a nice-to-have, it is the precondition for any learning to happen.

Don also shares the leadership lesson that took him the longest to learn, what it means to read the room in a technical training context, and how he designs programs that do not leave retention to chance.

In this episode, you will learn:

Why tone matters more than the words you choose when delivering technical content
How to handle wrong answers in a classroom without shutting people down
What listening as a leadership skill looks like under real pressure
How to design training with retention built in from the beginning
Why the difference between a good training session and a sales pitch is who the trainer is thinking about
What the football coach analogy teaches about reading the people in front of you
How Don built curriculum skills outside his job description through curiosity and persistence

About the guest: Don Gillis is an HVACR Technical Trainer at HARDI with more than 30 years of experience across field work, service management, and technical education. He has built training programs designed for real retention, not just coverage, for distribution counter sales, technicians, and OEM networks.

Hosted by Sannah Vinding, engineer and go-to-market leader, the Leadership in Manufacturing Podcast brings real conversations to leaders across manufacturing, distribution, electronics, and supply chain.

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