If you are looking for a practical, systematic guide on how to transfer knowledge within your company, Teach What You Know, is the perfect book for you. This how-to manual will guide you through a framework that you can customize and make your own.

Author Steve Trautman covers everything from roles and responsibilities to implementing a peer-mentoring program. Chapter one begins with defining the roles of manager, peer mentor, and apprentice. The book is hard to put down as the chapters flow from one right into the next: roles in peer mentoring, managing time and communication, focusing on the most important information, developing a training plan, teaching what you know., leveraging learning styles, assessing knowledge transfer, giving and getting peer-appropriate feedback, peer mentoring from a distance, and peer mentoring in practice.

Trautman sets his readers up for success. For example, clipboard icons throughout the book notate a “tool,” which can be a checklist, template, worksheet, or standards that you can use to improve communication and knowledge transfer. Each chapter has at least one tool. In addition, at the conclusion of each chapter there is a chapter summary and apprentice and manager sidebars. These sidebars provide a direct message to each role that relates the information from the chapter to each unique perspective. Regardless of your role, these will help reinforce the concepts presented in the chapters.

One of my favorite sections is in chapter seven, Assessing Knowledge Transfer, called “Beware of the Nod and Smile.” Trautman shares his experience in kindergarten and how he was able to master the smile and nod to fool his teacher into thinking he was paying attention. He recommends that instead of trusting body language, we should use open-ended assessment questions. Then there is a tool icon and a list of sample assessment questions. This is just one example of how the author ensures that the reader can relate to the concept, learn it, and then apply it.

Whether you are thinking about starting a peer-mentoring program for your company, or you are informally providing peer mentoring to people inside and outside of your workplace, Teach What You Know, is an exceptional, practical guide.

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