Do you remember that fable – one of Aesop’s, maybe – about the
Emperor who wore no clothes, and the nice young man that paid
the ultimate price for audaciously pointing that out?
Now, let’s fast-forward a few millennia, and recast this fable
in a 21st century look and feel. To make things as simple as
possible, let’s just go ahead and assume that the entire world
of training is one big Emperor, and the multitudes of people who
experience that training are, collectively, that Nice Young Man.
But this is where the similarities between these two tales
should stop.
In the old-fashioned version, as you know, that exasperated
young man – a kind of early ancestor to the whistle blower --
pointed out that the Emperor wore no clothes; and he suffered
dearly for it. Eventually, however, other folks caught on –
Knights and Dukes and Lady’s and other important regal people –
and things turned out okay in the end. The Emperor was
dethroned; or at least, given a bathrobe.
In our modern version, however, things are not unfolding with
such bold, visible steps. Today’s Nice Young Employee – which,
as noted above, is the collective mass of modern trainees –
isn’t saying a word. Not even coughing. S/he isn’t even excusing
himself from the training room right before the ice breaker, and
returning seven and a half hours later during evaluations.
No, s/he’s doing something altogether more devastating than his
ancestor who merely inspired a revolution. S/he’s detaching
himself from your company, bit by evil bit, second by agonizing
second.
I agree with you.
It really doesn’t get sadder – or more ironic -- for training
and HR professionals than this. Here you are investing in
someone, spending time to develop their skills and increase
their capacity, and there they are, playing hangman on the
handouts, mentally crafting the opening lines of their next
cover letter, and popping red-striped mints every 15 minutes to
maintain a sugar sustained semi-wakeful state that will
invariably lead to collapse by about 2:15pm.
Future historians will reflect upon this phenomenon as “an
interesting development in the early 21st century”.
Current Sales Managers (and those who love them), however,
choose a somewhat different approach to summarize this, and it
goes like this: AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Why so many H’s?
Because Sales Pros know – better than they deserve to – that
there is an ironic wisdom emerging here that goes like this: if
your staff is not effectively trained, then they might leave
your company. But what happens if your staff isn’t effectively
trained, and they don’t leave your company? They’ll become an
albatross to themselves and to your sales success.
So you lose on both ends. Something must be done. And quick!
The Problem, The Hatred, and the Blame
So what’s the problem? Why do your employees fear training? Is
it your fault?
These are important questions, and they can all be answered in a
row: the problem is that your trainees aren’t approaching the
training with the right perspective; your employees hate
training because of this same reason; it’s not your fault at
all.
At least, it’s not intentionally your fault.
And there’s another really good question that many will ask: can
it be fixed?
The answer: yes, absolutely!
Your task is to get the biggest bang for your training dollar;
and for that, most of you will look outside your company walls.
This is perfectly normal and largely successful (when it’s
successful), because people who know how to train are invariably
going to be in a better position to do it than those who don’t.
So far, so good.
But how to you actually go creating the most effective training
experience? Here’s how.
The 4 MOST IMPORTANT Factors in a Successful Training Experience
1. You must enable trainee buy-in.
Psychiatrists have been telling us for years (er…or they’ve been
telling a good friend of ours…yeah…a friend…) that a patient has
to want help before help can be provided. Fair enough. The same
axiom holds true in the training world. You must provide your
trainees with the right training framework. And what is the
right training framework? Easy: they must want to be trained.
If it’s going to help them increase sales, convince them of how
wonderful this will be. If it’s going to increase their capacity
to earn more commission, tell them. Work with your outsourced
trainer before the actual training event and promote these
benefits.
Remember, please: negative expectations from trainees will
pollute even the most well designed training, just as the
world’s best psychiatrist can’t help our… friend…overcome his
fear of circus clowns.
2. You must know what the problem is, and what the solution will
be.
This one sounds too simple to be true. But you’d be amazed to
see how often this factor is overlooked. Do you know what needs
to be fixed? Is it deal-closing, or relationship building? Do
you want to improve ROI? Motivate? Cut down on process
redundancy? Align communication from different units, functions;
heck, even cubicles and floors? If you don’t know what’s wrong,
you won’t know how to solve it.
Or worse (and yes, there is a worse here), you might actually
create problems by trying to solve the wrong thing. Scary, yes,
but it happens. If you’re trying to solve a team-building
problem by promoting individual accomplishment in your training,
then you’re actually making things worse. And on top of that:
you’re paying for it! AHHHHH!
3. Measure and monitor your sales metrics. All of the training
in our solar system is regrettably not going to improve your
sales metrics if you don’t know what those metrics are, what
they should be, and whether or not you’re moving in the right
direction. You want to measure before and after the training to
gauge effectiveness.
4. Who’ll own post-training?
One of the greatest advancements in the language of business is
that people are now told that they own certain tasks. So who in
your company will own the essential task of post-training?
What?
Post-training. You may have successfully taken care of #1, #2,
and #3 above, but what happens a week, a month, or a year after
the training ends? Who will ensure that its legacy lives beyond
the actual training experience? Memories fade, and enthusiasm
wanes. You must elect someone capable of this ownership task,
and empower her/him to do what is necessary to ensure that
post-training gains are achieved over the long-term.
Training is not a 4-Letter Word
Please remember: as a decision-maker and training change agent,
the problems that we’re solving here aren’t your fault. The
perception of training has changed dramatically in the last
decade; and it’s something that more and more people –
especially skilled/knowledge workers – are disliking; even
resenting.
Yet what hasn’t changed, and what will never change regardless
of how dramatic things get, is that training is an essential
part of a successful enterprise. The strategy is therefore not
to fly the white flag of human resource surrender, but to
approach training with total success in mind. Implementing the
four steps noted above will firmly put you on the right track,
and head you in the right long-term direction.
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