Leadership – By Rich Baron
Involving leaders helps you avoid The Training Trap
As trainers or training leaders, we have all fallen into “The Training Trap.” The trap is when the business either asks (or orders) us to deliver training around a certain skill
(perhaps specific selling skills, communication or leadership). They ask for a workshop and perhaps some reinforcement components. So, we come back to them with a learning journey, which includes some prework, the training session(s) and then some follow-up reinforcement. We execute the initiative, and our internal stakeholders are very happy.
And then what?
The skills never get fully adopted. Six months later, or the following year, we get asked for reinforcement training or perhaps even to repeat the training. At some point, the stakeholders may start to question whether we trained them on the right things or if the quality of the training was good enough.
This situation describes The Training Trap, which many training professionals, including myself, have experienced.
Training vs. Development
So why does this happen? Why don’t the skills that we train on get adopted, especially if everyone seemed to walk out of the training experience with a clear understanding of the skill?
The simple answer is because we are talking about behavior change and changing behaviors is hard. If it were so simple to do, every company would be incredibly successful in changing their customers’ behaviors to start using their products versus the competition.
If you break it down, the role of training is to introduce the learner to new knowledge or skills and get them to a point of nominal proficiency so that they can start using the skill on their own (not well, but at least they can start).
Think about it like taking your first piano lesson. After the lesson you understand what to do to play the piano, but you are not good at it. Becoming a better piano player is about practice (application), continued reinforcement (coaching and feedback) and continuing to expand your skills (ongoing learning).
Now, we’re not talking simply about training any more. We’re talking about development.
As opposed to training, development is what happens after you leave the training class (although it could be argued that development in totality includes training).
While training provides employees with the necessary skills and knowledge for their current roles, development focuses on adopting these skills and then developing proficiency.
However, the journey from training to development is not merely a transition in terminology; it’s about driving behavior change. This means a fundamental shift in
mindset (motivation to make the change and discipline to stick with it).
At the heart of this transformation lies the indispensable role of leadership.
The Role of Leadership
Why is leadership so critical to driving development? After all, most companies spend a great deal of time promoting the concept of accountability, that the employee is accountable for their development. This is true. If an employee has no accountability to their own development, then they simply won’t develop (my guess is you may have a performance management issue here).
That said, changing behaviors is hard. It’s about letting go of old habits and having the discipline to implement new ones even though it takes a lot of energy and is hard. If changing behaviors were easy, everyone would eat healthy and exercise frequently.
So where does leadership fall within this? When we think of the leader’s No. 1 remit, it is to create the circumstances for their employees to perform at the top of their game. One aspect of that is to help ensure their teams have the right skills to succeed and then work with them to hone those skills and become excellent with them.
To break it down, there are four components that the best leaders do well to drive behavior change with their team members, helping them adopt and grow new skills:
- They set clear expectations.
- They are continually selling the “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM).
- They provide ongoing feedback and coaching.
- They utilize recognition and rewards to reward effort.
The Four Leadership Behaviors
Employees pay attention to what their leaders say and how they behave. If a leader sends their employee to be trained on a new skill but then does very little to follow up and ensure adoption and development, they are sending the message that this is not important.
Leaders must be bought-in both to the value of the skill to be adopted and their role in driving that adoption and development. Great leaders employ these four behaviors (as well as other core leadership behaviors) to drive the development of their team members:
Setting Clear Expectations:
Great leaders are strong communicators. It is a leader’s job to frame the work for their people. This means setting clear expectations around the work to be done and, most importantly, what it looks like when it is done well. When a leader can clearly communicate specifically what they want to see from their employees around adopting the skills that were just learned in training, the message is clear around expectations.
This also creates accountability and drives the ability to measure. Also, this is not something that is done only once. It is communicated frequently to reinforce that this is something important that needs to be addressed.
Selling the WIIFM:
Nobody will apply the effort to make any changes unless they are motivated to do so. While a leader cannot create motivation, they can create the environment for motivation (like framing the work) and also communicate the value of what will be gained through this development.
We often talk about the WIIFM in training. Trainers can state the WIIFM, but it carries much more weight when it comes from the employee’s direct supervisor (and above). This must be communicated repeatedly because applying something new is hard and people get demotivated when it does not go well. Leaders need to continue to remind their employees of why this effort will benefit them in the long run.
Providing Ongoing Feedback and Coaching:
Part of helping people develop is to provide feedback and coaching. These terms can often get conflated, but make no mistake, they are quite different.
As a leader, you need to invest the time to watch your people doing their job. This way you can see their application of skills and can provide them with feedback around what you have witnessed.
“With the customer today, she was explaining the challenges she is facing, and I watched you patiently listening, maintaining eye contact and recapping what she said. It was a great job of active listening, and you could tell that the customer felt like you cared about her. You have really developed this skill well. Please keep doing exactly this and I guarantee you will build incredible trust with your customers.”
This is giving feedback. If you are working with someone who is developing this skill (of active listening) and has done it well before but seems to be struggling, you want to coach them. This means asking them to describe what it looks like when it is done well, talk about what is occurring, remind them of their past successes and the use of good questions to get them to identify what they could try moving forward to get back on course.
Coaching is an ongoing process (hopefully consistently focused on a few core skills over time) to grow and develop that employee, while feedback is episodic. Both are critical to driving behavior change.
Think back to learning the piano. You would never just take one lesson. The teacher’s job is to provide ongoing coaching and feedback to help you develop the skill.
Recognizing and Rewarding Effort:
Incentives are an important part of driving behavior. We give many of our sales teams commissions and other forms of incentives to motivate them to drive sales. Incentives are not always about rewards (like commissions or bonuses).
Sometimes it can simply be recognition.
People are motivated by different things. As a leader, it’s important to learn about your employees and understand what motivates them. If it’s rewards, perhaps a special prize or bonus. If it is recognition, perhaps it is a callout that copies the team or the senior leader. The key is not to reward/recognize the accomplishment, but rather, the effort.
Your goal as a leader is to create a growth mindset where your team members are constantly striving to learn and get better. Therefore, you want to showcase people who are trying (this includes those trying and winning and those trying and losing). Remember that behavior change is hard. Incentivize the effort.
Incorporating Leadership Into Training Design
So as trainers or training leaders, how do we avoid “The Training Trap?” If the answer is leadership, what does this mean for us?
It means incorporating leadership into your training design. This means first ensuring that leadership has bought into the value and importance of their people becoming good with these skills. Once that is established, ideally, the leaders would participate in the training so that they are better prepared to establish expectations around what good looks like.
Next, include components of the training that are just for the leaders (establishing their role, providing them the tools to coach their people, teaching them what they need to do). You may need to teach your leaders how to develop their people the same way you are teaching your employees new skills.
Many times, we teach our leaders basic management skills. We need to ensure we are approaching this holistically and also teaching our leaders how to be great coaches and teachers.
This is an investment that will pay dividends, because once they know what to do, new skills will be adopted, employees will develop, and that has a very positive impact both on business outcomes and company culture.
Rich Baron is principal of Framework Leadership. Email Rich at rich@frameworkleaders.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/richbaron1.
