Training

How many times have you heard of a company stress how great their training is? The question that I would ask is how do you quantify the training that you are giving to people? Is there a direct impact that can be seen after the training, (ex. increase in sales, leadership development, morale boost) and who is held accountable for delivering the training. It is my opinion most people that end up as internal trainers were not successful in their previous roles and have elected to take a path with less demands. This is why in most organizations you will find trainers that have a very long tenure with a company. Thus begging the question what are their minimum standards and how are they measured to improve each year?

I strongly feel as a leader this is a core competency that has to be present. I would say it also can be one of the areas that leaders fail to address and are not effective. A quick way to analyze if you are effective is to try a unique approach the next time you deliver training. Rather than having the employee fill out a survey at the end of the training ask them to send you everything that they learned in the training session. This can be in the form of an email or on a piece of paper. As you gather the responses you will find you might have covered 70 pages of material however the employee only retained 5% of the information. At this point it is time to redefine the training approach and material as it is not the employees fault. To put it into common sense terms we do not ask children to get on a bike and ride with showing them how to sit, balance, pedal, etc. Training should take the same approach.

Sure there are going to be some that are more advanced for the training and might not see a value to attend. In these cases I would argue if the person is not interested in the training to begin they should not attend. Life is full of choices and each person has to make a decision on how they want to spend their time. There is one guarantee if the trainer is effective regardless of the material you will find the training classes will fill up in advance.