Tips to get the most from your corporate training

Training is most certainly an investment… an investment in your people, an investment in productivity and an investment in the future of your business. Executed properly – by both the trainer and the trainees – it gives a significant boost to all these things.

With this in mind, today I bring you some tips from the coalface. I spoke with four of our seasoned trainers about what advice they have for getting maximum benefit from a training session or whole course. They each had so many ideas that I’ve just pulled out a few for you, but if you ever want to talk with any of us about the courses we offer or the way we deliver them, we’d be happy to discuss at length!

How should people prepare for a training session?

Margaret Kinvig (MK) – Know why their manager wants them to be there and consider some of the things they may be able to get from the training. It helps them engage with the program and get the most out of it.

Steve McLean (SM) – If someone can be a backup for you while you are at training, then you can reduce you interruptions and focus more on your training.

Rebecca Potter (RP) – Think about the training before you get to the training… think about what you want to take away from the training, where the current gaps are in your skills or ability in relation to the topic being trained, think about what you need to take to the training.

And get to bed early the night before the training! A superb training session can draw upon not only your current knowledge, but may challenge you to look deep inside and make changes on how you do things. This takes mental power and can be draining if you turn up to the session already exhausted from lack of sleep.

Amanda Breen  (AB) – Ensure (where possible) that someone has been organised to attend to any urgent work issues that may arise during the training.

How can they get the most out of the experience?

MK – Participate in discussion, volunteer their experience and ask questions.

RP – Have a plan of what you want to get out of the training. Communicate these outcomes with the trainer/facilitator and work together on getting the most out of the experience.

SM – Decide that you have come as an adult learner, and you will use your initiative to learn as much as you can.

AB – By bringing a positive attitude, being open minded, being willing to step out of the comfort zone and try new things, being prepared to have fun and not think they are too ‘cool’ to participate in training games and activities – and by laughing!

Rebecca Potter

Can you remember anyone coming along who brought something with him or her, either experience or a question or something physical, which really enhanced the learning experience?

AB – Nothing physical, but when people have the courage to share things about themselves or their own experiences relating to where they may have not been very successful and how they have learned from this, it always enhances the learning experience.

Plus any form of baked goods always enhances the session!

What should people leave behind when they enter the room?

SM – Assumptions like ‘I already know everything about this’ or ‘This is too hard for me.’

AB – Negativity and resistance to change.

What can managers do to help their staff members get the most from training?

RP – Take away the burden. Lessen the anxiety levels of the staff member attending training by providing back up, so they won’t be snowed under when they return to work.

SM – Support their training by asking them what they have learnt and how they will apply it in their workplace. Give feedback to the trainer so that the training aligns with the business needs.

MK – Talk about it afterwards – more than once. Give trainees a space to debrief the experience and bounce new ideas around. Give them space and opportunity to put some of the things they have learnt into practice with support and ongoing guidance.

AB – Don’t pull them out of training just before or during the session, follow up with employees about what they learnt from the session and provide support with any difficulties they may be having with assignments. It’s also powerful to acknowledge milestones throughout the course – i.e. successful completions of assignments, high quality and standards of work.

Margaret Kinvig

What can people do to keep their training ‘alive’ long after it has finished?

RP – Implement what they have learnt as soon as they return to the workplace. Get excited about doing things differently or improving on ways that things are currently being done. Have a positive attitude. Make changes and practice, practice, practice. Continue to talk about the training and pass on to others the knowledge taken from the training.

MK – Keep talking about it. I know I’ve delivered an effective training session when I’m sitting outside the room while the students fill in their feedback forms and I can hear them talking and joking while using the language and concepts we have just been discussing.

SM – Write a brief action plan to implement after training ends. Decide to implement your action plan immediately, because you will be hit with a truckload of work when you return to your workplace. If you delay, you might never get around to it.

AB – Put your hand up to coach and mentor new employees, get involved in committees at work and ask for feedback.

Steve McLean

What can companies or managers do after the training to make sure maximum benefit is reached?

RP – Use the same language both in the training room and in day-to-day roles. Discuss the training and content in team meetings and ask questions of the staff about how they have implemented some of the learnings from the course. If they haven’t done so yet, provide them with examples of where it can be done and encourage them to do so.

MK – Ensure participants are there voluntarily (not only for the benefit of the individual, but also the entire group). Debrief it, discuss the behavioural change that should stem from the training, provide feedback on whether that behavioural change is happening and hold the participant accountable for applying their learning.

If they can then formally teach the rest of the team, that can be very powerful too. I learn more every time I teach something – far more than if I was just engaged in the learning side of the desk.

AB – Take on feedback (even if it is uncomfortable or creates additional work) about issues discussed in training sessions that employees may not be happy with in their teams/ other departments/technology/processes/organisation.

Take the time to observe employees in the week after the training session, looking specifically for the content areas covered in training and providing feedback on this – both affirming and adjusting feedback.

What is your ‘golden rule’ of training?

MK – Yeah but/Yeah and (this is the idea that we are very good at responding with “yeah but…” and that is ok with training, but at the same time you have to also challenge yourself to ask “Yeah, and…”. That way you won’t dismiss something that could be valuable to you with just a little stretching in a particular direction.)

AB- If nothing changes, nothing changes – i.e. everyone, no matter who you are can always learn more about themselves and become a better person, manager, employee, partner, friend.

RP – My golden rule has been borrowed and adapted from Zig Ziglar’s book “Over the Top”… Right attitude + specific skills + character = success

SM – You are an adult learner. You will surprise yourself with what you can do.

Open for business

A guide to help adults open up to learning

Open minds for learning

Some adults have shut up shop when it comes to learning. Perhaps not consciously, and for a wide variety of reasons.

There are the senior managers who are accustomed to leading and so used to being experts that it takes a big adjustment to learn from someone else. There are people who are about to change their life in some way, people who struggled in formal learning environments in the past, people who believe they are too busy at work and training is a waste of their valuable time.

And then there are people who are scared to learn, to not know, in front of their colleagues.

What does this mean for your training efforts? Sometimes it means you have someone who doesn’t get much out of a training program. Or worse, it can mean one participant’s negativity can bring others down.

But it certainly does not have to be that way.

HR Managers can help

If you know you are placing potentially reluctant people into a course, have a chat with your trainer about it ahead of time.

There are some great ways trainers can help turn people around, open their minds to the experience, and a discussion ahead of time can help them plan for this. Together, you may even decide that there is a better learning strategy for that person… one-on-one coaching perhaps, but in most cases, forewarned is forearmed.

Trainer strategies for reluctant learners

In a nutshell, the strategy depends on the person and the reason for their reluctance. One thing you must ensure is an experienced trainer.

Strategies used can be quite simple, but must be executed with skill. These are just a few:

1)    The opening words from the trainer set the tone for the whole session. They must establish their credibility, the reason they can guide others in their subject. However, an acknowledgement of the experience in the room goes a long way with experienced people – a ‘we can learn from each other’ message.

2)    Catering for the busy and deadline driven, a trainer should let participants know that there will be regular breaks for catching up with any urgent work issues. This seems to visibly relax some people

3)    A gentle reminder that participants’ managers have prioritised their training (signing off on their temporary absence) should also help some people realise that their full attention is the only way to maximise the value of their time on the program.

4)    Perhaps the simplest of all, one of our trainers says he always starts by finding out what each and every person wants to achieve from being there. Sure he might get a multitude of very different responses, but he knows exactly where he stands in helping each person meet their goals. After all, knowledge is power.

A ‘frank’ case study

Most reluctant learners are quietly reluctant but sometimes you get someone like (let’s call him) Frank.

Frank told one of our trainers in the first five minutes of session one, “I was made to come. I’m about to retire. If I hate you, don’t take it personally.”

Whoompa. What’s a trainer to do?

Well, actually he discovered that Frank loved mentoring the younger trainees, so made sure there was a peer-mentoring component to each session.

Frank blossomed and, instead of disrupting his colleagues with his attitude, actually helped them to learn.

At the end of the program he said, “You know I didn’t want to be here, but this wasn’t bad really.” His manager later told our trainers that this was a huge compliment from Frank.

Lifelong learning

Luckily, most trainees are excited to learn and share the academy philosophy that lifelong learning leads to a rewarding life and career, but should you encounter someone who does not; there are certainly ways to help them. I’d love to hear about any strategies you may have used (or seen used).

Sales: Going in cold

Cold calling is a tough job. I’m certainly not the first person to tell a story like this… just as I was sitting down to dinner last night the phone rang. Sure enough it was someone trying to get me to buy resort accommodation and, in my rush to get off the phone, I actually found myself saying ‘No, I don’t like holidays’.  (No, I don’t know where that came from either.)

My point is that it was such an interruption that I would do, or say, anything to get off the phone.

It’s worth reflecting that this is what you are doing to people in a work context too. You are interrupting them from whatever it was they were doing… adjusting a budget, dealing with a team member’s issue, meeting with someone, all the day-to-day things that make up a manager’s role.

So, should you – or your sales team – ever cold call?

I think yes, but only under certain conditions, with proper training into a wide variety of listening and sales techniques, and only if all the existing warm leads are in the ‘pipeline’.

What are those certain conditions?

1)   Have something of value to offer immediately, a white paper you could email, a conversation starter… you have 30 seconds to grab attention, if that…

2)   Find out the person’s name and job title beforehand, and a little background information (without stalking!) – LinkedIn may be useful for this

3)   Make sure you are calling the decision maker

Even though a phone call interrupts more than an email, I believe a person speaking with a person is still going to have more impact than an easy-to-delete note.

The goal in that first sales call is to open dialogue.

There’s no closing anything going to happen, and you need to be philosophical if you get nowhere at all.  But if you believe your product or service can solve a problem for, or help, the person you are calling, it’s worth trying to start a new relationship.

For the record, I do like holidays, I am one of the decision makers in my house, but, like many, I don’t respond well to people reading scripts at me.  Make your connection real.

Australia’s next MasterManager

Adriano Zumbo's V8 cake: Perfect teamwork

As a manager you have to hope your team is not going to be as hard for you to wrangle as an Adriano Zumbo creation is for an aspiring MasterChef.

Did you see that angelic-looking V8 cake on the show last night? For those of you who did not, it was eight thin layers of cake heaven (well, Adriano’s was, anyway!)… eight layers of vanilla used in different ways, with more than 140 ingredients and four hours of cooking.  The picture is to the left and the recipe link is here.

The reason the cake is such a showstopper is that each layer builds on a theme and is very different from the others, but (and it’s a big but*), they are perfectly complementary and would not work nearly so well without the others. Hang on… isn’t that how a team should be?

It really made me think… if managers (and I am one) put as much effort and passion into understanding the ingredients of their teams, how they work together and how they work as a whole, many businesses may just be in even better shape.

I certainly can’t tell you how to do that in one blog post, it takes different combinations of training, personal development, mentoring and coaching, passion and plain old hard work, for different people. But if we think of Adriano Zumbo as manager and cake as team, we can better understand how important care and attention to each element is when you are creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

* Madly trying to avoid a joke about eating too much cake here

A farmer in the office

Are you an education 'farmer'?

And no, I’m not talking about the person sitting in the cubicle across the way sneaking in a game of FarmVille on Facebook.

I have just watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk titled ‘Bring on the learning revolution!’ and I was struck with his plea for complete educational transformation. Not evolution. Revolution.

Sir Ken is discussing the way we educate our children and I couldn’t agree more.  However, I think his points apply equally well to how we cultivate talent and creativity in adults too.

I heartily recommend you watch the video link posted below. Sir Ken is both elegant and eloquent as he makes his points. But for those of you in a rush, the guts of the argument is that we need to move from systems of industrial education (the manufacturing or industrial model) where we churn people in a linear progression from Kindergarten through to university – to an agricultural model.

Agriculture. It’s a funny word when applied to education. But Sir Ken argues that human flourishing is organic. We need to cultivate the conditions under which it thrives… just like a farmer.

If you are an HR professional, you are in a prime seat to help customise education and training for the people in your organisation. You can be the company farmer. (Like me, I’m sure you’ve been called a few things in your time, but ‘farmer’ is probably a first!)

Please have a look at, and listen to, Sir Ken’s talk. I’m sure you will get something out of it. For me, it’s realising that all our efforts to deliver customised and exciting training to our students are worth it. By harnessing and directing our own passion for learning, we can effect wonderful change in people’s lives.

What does Scooby Doo have to do with leadership?

Have you had a 'Scooby Doo' moment?

Probably the funniest moment of a great speech I recently heard, was when Tyrone Pitsis told an ATA NSW Chapter executive luncheon gathering about his ‘Scooby Doo’ moment. If you’re wondering what he meant by that, the look on Scooby’s face above should give you a clue! To see more, you’ll need to catch Tyrone in full flight some time… something I highly recommend.

While Tyrone was having a laugh about a hiccough along his own leadership journey, I think the overall points he was making are extremely important ones. First, great leaders – and even good ones – make mistakes, dust themselves off, learn from it and keep moving towards their personal and organisational goals. And second, often, if something is worth doing it may not come easily.

Tyrone himself has had a colourful life, filled with challenges and what you might have considered mistakes (at the time). But each of those difficult times and so-called mistakes has contributed to his happy and stimulating life and career choices.

As a result of his own experiences and also his professional research into leadership and management, Tyrone shared with us his 6 key elements of leadership. I found myself nodding all the way through. You can see them either by clicking on the link or I’ll list them at the bottom of this post.

Leadership is so personal and great leadership is hard to define. But I believe it’s one of the most important traits to strive for.  Not everyone is born a leader, but – if you want to – everyone can develop leadership skills that will smooth the way in life and in business.

I’d love to know if you agree with Tyrone and, if you don’t, what you think is instrumental to visionary leadership. How do you define good leadership?

PS – You can read all about Tyrone’s leadership journey here – his tale takes us from life as a young Greek Australian in the rough Newtown and St Marys of the 70s, all the way through to his current role as Executive Educator and Researcher at the Centre for Management & Organisation Studies at UTS.

6 key elements of leadership

1. Lead how you would like to be led
   1. Respect others
   2. Be compassionate
   3. Be passionate, in key roles always surround yourself with passionate people and avoid the ‘yes men and women’
2. Keep your reputation (that is the only thing in your control)
   1. We live in unparalleled conditions of uncertainty, risk and ambiguity. It’s easy to compromise your values, don’t do it, it’s not worth it. Never compromise your values
3. Be liked, be feared but most of all be respected
   1. Create a positive environment to work
   2. Ask powerful questions
      1. Germany has a job title, ‘Director Powerful Questions’; Australia does not
         1. A question: “What service do we provide?”
         2. A powerful question: “What service do our customers want?”
         3. A really powerful question: “What services can we create with our customers both for now and the future?”
   3. Challenge common sense and the structures that lead to it
      1. Just because the world may look flat from where we are standing, it doesn’t mean it is
4. Celebrate ideas, and most of all, people with ideas
5. Invest in knowledge, development and education
   1. Break this Australian propensity to view academic ideas as ‘purely’ academic. The greatest organisations (especially those in Northern Europe), collaborate and involve universities and educational institutions heavily (be it Google with Stanford, Imperial College London, and so on)
   2. What’s worse in your eyes “spending money on people’s development with the risk they might leave”, or “not spending money on people’s development, and have them stay?”
   3. People are not your most important asset, talented people are
      1. The leader develops talent
6. Network (beyond just business networks), and collaborate

How to Recognize an Effective Leader

How do you recognize an effective leader? This is a question asked over and over again, because leadership is always at the core of great historical moments. Leaders have led thousands during war, managed countries, and become heroes during times of disaster. Leaders have turned failing companies around and taken other companies to new heights of success.

But leaders are not always people performing acts recognized by the world. Instead they are often ordinary people able to motivate and inspire those around them to do their best. This is just one way you can recognize an effective leader. Many quietly do their job with self-assurance and the result is their departments, units or companies are successful through the efforts of staff working as a team.

Empowering and Inspiring

There are two kinds of power: formal and informal. Formal power is authority that has been assigned to a person. Informal power is authority which someone earns through their actions and is recognized by others but is not backed up formal authority.

In the business world, what this means is that a leader can be the designated manager or a member of a project team who has no formal power. Effective leaders can be found at every level of a staff structure. There are many common qualities and traits leaders possess innately, but they are developed and refined through training.

One of the first things you notice about a leader is their ability to empower others. An effective leader is able to motivate others to perform to the best of their abilities. A good leader understands the principles of delegation, and once a job is completed, gives the person respect for their accomplishments.

An effective leader will have most, if not all, of the following qualities.

• Able to provide clear direction
• Recognizes good ideas
• Holds people accountable while providing direction
• Able to delegate responsibility to most qualified people
• Gives feedback and encouragement
• Engages others in getting work done in a way they take responsibility
• Inspires others
• Able to handle conflict
• Able to see short and long-term
• Has integrity
• Good listener
• Able to problem solve

Long Term Leadership

It almost sounds as if an effective leader is a near perfect human being, but that’s not true. Leaders make mistakes and make wrong decisions. But the difference between a leader that has the cohesive interest of the organization in mind at all times, and a manager who worries more about personal consequences, lies in the fact a leader accepts responsibility and learns from the mistake. An effective leader then uses the mistake to teach others so they can learn to be the leaders of the future. An effective leader puts mistakes behind him or her.

Effective leadership involves several principles. A leader must be able to strategically plan. A leader must be able to handle change which is always a quality in any enterprise. And a leader must be able to adapt changes in accordance with the strategic plan. In other words, an effective leader will keep staff and operations on course for a long term successful future.

Effective leaders within a company are best developed through training. A well designed training program can prepare the true leaders within an organization for a successful future within a business.