Cynthia Clay's Blog
Achieving Flawless Training Implementation
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Beth was a Training Director for a large real estate company with multiple regions. She was tasked by her boss with rolling out a leadership development program to improve the skills of first-level leaders. She selected a tested program, trained internal trainers, and carefully planned the training rollout, scheduling workshops in all five regions. As she communicated the leadership training plan, she began to have some concerns about two of the regional directors. They didn't take the process seriously, complained that the training would eat into their supervisors' valuable time, and indicated that they saw the leadership training initiative as a low priority in the coming year. Convinced that they would come around because the leadership training initiative was sponsored by her boss in Human Resources, Beth proceeded with her plans. The training workshops in these regions were poorly attended and roundly criticized.
As she reviewed the course evaluations at the end of the year, it became increasingly clear that in the three regions that had regional director support, the supervisors attended eagerly, participated actively, completed follow-up assignments, and reported substantial behavior change. In the regions with uncommitted regional directors, the training initiative was widely viewed as a failure - a waste of time and resources.
Unable to regain the support of these regional directors, Beth left the organization the following year.
Lesson Learned:
A flawless implementation must include actively gaining the support of senior management who recognize the positive impact that specific, practical training will achieve. Beth and her boss, the Human Resources Administrator, needed to build a business case demonstrating the value of building the skills of those first-level leaders. As the first step in planning the launch of the program, they should have gained the buy-in of the CEO based on the impact that skilled leaders would have on achieving the organization's strategic objectives.
For the Next Training Initiative:
- Identify the business reasons driving the need for training.
- Ensure that skills and behaviors developed by training directly support on-the-job performance.
- Build an impact map to communicate the link between these skills and behaviors, improved on-the-job performance, and valued business results.
- Identify key indicators. Gather evidence to report the positive impact of training on key indicators that affect business results.
- Communicate the impact of these business results on the organization's strategic priorities.
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Posted by Cynthia Clay at 10:55 am
