Get Management to Back Training
What makes the difference between a successful training implementation and a failed one? Frankly, it's whether your management team is behind the effort and visibly supports, reinforces, and champions the skills being taught. Our most successful clients (companies like Spheris, Rewards Network, Blistex, and Sterling Savings Bank) understand that you can't offer training in a vacuum. It has to be linked to the organization's most important objectives and have the active involvement of management.
In a recent NetSpeed Leadership newsletter, we included an article by Patsy Svare, veteran Master Trainer and certified NetSpeed Leadership consultant based in Chicago, entitled “Proven Strategies to Get Management Behind Your Training.” Here are three of her key points:
- Show the Bottom-line Impact of Training
- Tie Your Training Initiative to a Strategic Business Goal
- Make Training Their Idea
Patsy recommends asking thoughtful, provocative questions that encourage management to identify training as one way of building the skills people need to help the organization achieve its goals.
Robert Brinkerhoff's excellent book, Telling Training's Story, includes the conclusion that training rarely fails because of flaws in the training itself. Rather, training fails because the factors are not in place to encourage success on the part of the participants. Trainees who actually apply critical skills that impact the organization's performance consistently report that they:
- Applied the learning soon after training
- Had a realistic expectation of training and identified at least one application
- Were prepared and supported by the manager
- Received incentives, rewards, and encouragement
- Engaged in training close to a pressing need
- Were given tools and resources to apply learning
Brinkerhoff also points out that absent these success factors, organizations will not see the impact of training that they expect.
Unfortunately these are both self-reinforcing cycles! The more you are able to engage management, build in rewards and incentives, provide reinforcement tools, and ensure that training is relevant to success on the job, the greater likelihood that you will receive management support for your current and future efforts. And, of course, the less engaged your management team, the fewer tangible and intangible rewards offered, the less resources available for post-class tools, and the less perceived relevance of your training programs, the less management support you can expect in future.
No matter how your organization has approached management training, customer service training, sales training, or any other training initiative, in the past, the leverage point for your next training initiative is clear: engage your management team in a discussion of the organization's strategic goals and thoughtfully help them consider what skills people need to help them achieve those objectives.
