As companies continue to invest in the training of their employees there still seems to be some key elements missing to insure there is a meaningful return on investment. The key employee training component that impacts several other key components is this – a learning rhythm.

Consider the definition of rhythm: a regularly recurrent quantitative change. Rhythm implies ongoing, consistent, and reliable.

In reflecting on these three qualities, ask yourself does your own professional learning include those qualities?  Additionally, does any employee training or management training contain those qualities?  The answer for many companies is no!

Professional development to be truly effective, to get real results must have these components.  Here are some practical considerations:

1. At the beginning of each week, decide on your focus for the week.

2. Determine what resource(s) you will use to add to your current knowledge around the area of focus. A resource could be a book, audio, blog post, or article.

3. Set aside and commit to a certain time each day (this a secondary rhythm) that you give attention to the area.  The good news, it doesn’t have to be that much time.  Even 5 minutes is useful.

4. In that time, take in new information and think about times, ways, situations to which you can apply what you’re learning. You can also decide on key information that you repeatedly review everyday. Repetition, particularly spaced repetition is also a necessary component in adult learning and employee training.

5. Keep a learning notebook.  There is something about writing that helps to reinforce the learning experience.

So why is rhythm necessary and powerful?  Rhythm helps to engage the brain in such a way as to create a complete sensory experience engaging us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  That repeated multiple sensory experience begins to build sensory memory which accelerates development towards the desire behavior change. This ultimately builds a habit.  A habit, as we know, is permanent behavior change and isn’t that what training is really all about?….turning knowledge into know how?… and isn’t know how tangible behavior?

Coaching Question: Can you identify tangible outcomes from the learning your experiencing?  Whether it’s from a book or seminar how are you practically integrating what you’re learning into your real time experience?

Two areas of changes to look for: change in thought and/or change in behavior – one precedes the other.

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Expand Your Understanding of This Post – you can access additional learning bites at the links provided.

1. Thought impacts behavior – http://joanncorleyspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/11/tfb.html

2. The Power of Focus – focus-article

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The Answer is YES! – Call It C.I.T. and… it’s a refreshing alternative to management training seminars.

In fact, more and more companies are putting corporate coaches on retainer.

You know corporate coaching has been around for a long time, mostly confined to the context of executive coaching, but now it comes in the form of time management coaching, communication coaching, performance coaching, leadership coaching, success coaching, and the ever popular personal life coaching. It can be whatever you need it to be and that’s the point!

In a climate that calls for smarter use of training dollars than ever before, companies are beginning to look not only to a more blended learning strategy that includes e-learning, webinars and tele-conferences, but also one-on-one delivery and help.

Coaching is a customized version of training, particularly when you couple it with targeted learning, which is the model I use. In fact I call it C.I.T. – customized individual training. It is a way to gain the highest level of return on investment for every training dollar spent.

Here’s a couple of questions and answers to expanded our understanding of coaching and its value.

What is Coaching?
What is a coaching relationship (short-term or long)?
A partnership
A committed alliance

What is a Coach?
An objective, key relationship who listens to what you are saying, helps you to set priorities and acts as a sort of “compass” to steer you on whatever course you choose; a facilitator of change.
Can be described as:
Sounding board
Advocate
Partner
Believer
Supporter
Informer
Resource

What Does Coaching Offer?
…a structured time and safe place to address specific situations

…working with goals by setting, planning and evaluating the process of meeting them and problem solving to name a few.

… A synergy that fuels your will, mind and heart to accomplish/ attain what you desire.

In the case of career coaching, it is working through a planning model to map out a desired career track. It’s a time to get honest and objective feedback from someone who does not have an “agenda” for you, but is committed to supporting your agenda.

Coaching additionally provides:
structure to the development process
insight
measured outcomes
accountability
encouragement, affirmation, support
clarity
focus
unleashing passion
discovering & breaking down mental barriers
unlocking potential
uncovering deep desires
sorting through thoughts feelings and emotions
goal creation
life plan design

Key Advantages
o    Specific and Directed Attention -you bring up the issues most critical to you at that moment.
o    Time Usage-this most valuable commodity is used exactly how you wish.
o    Scheduling Flexibility (the times are arranged at your convenience.  If a change needs to occur, it can be done without affecting a group or any sessions being missed.)
o    Sustained Momentum – through consistent contact and action you are able to keep your goals in front of you because there are so many other legitimate needs clamoring for your attention as well.
o    Results – through coaching goal setting and planned action is discussed thereby achieving measurable progress towards your desired results.
o    Current Information – I bring the skills of research and resourcefulness to this collaboration to compliment your efforts.
o    Confidence- planning & action breeds confidence and clarity.

Coaching Tip: Evaluate your learning strategy.  Ask yourself, “Am I learning efficiently and effectively?” “How is that impacting my return on investment for the training dollars I’m using?”

If this post has prompted you to want to learn more, don’t hesitate to contact me for a quick chat.  You can so so at: joann@joanncorley.com

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Consider recent statistics regarding alarming educational trends impacting the readiness of todays incoming workforce.  This information is provided from a article entitled - Employers High Demand for Students and Workers With an Informational and Technical Education in the Emerging 21st Century. You can click the link to read the entire article.

This is the excerpt of note:

“Employers complain that many college graduates are not prepared for the marketplace and lack the new set of skills necessary for successful employment and continuous career growth. Only 6 percent of todays jobs do not require at least completion of high school, which means for a student without the adequate skills, he/she will not be eligible to even apply for 94 percent of job openings. The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts that by 2012 the U.S. economy will have the largest workforce in the nation’s history culminating to more than 162 million people. However, it will not be enough to fill the 2 million job openings projected to be available. In order words, millions of jobs are expected to go unfilled because workers lack the specialized skills required to fill them. Alarming, the U.S. government predictions show a shortage of more than 10 million skilled workers by 2012.”

Here’s an important question…Does this information imply that companies will be forced to take on more of an “education role” in it’s employee training and development strategy, take on the development of more fundamental skills such as writing and math? We might have to reframe what we’re doing and call it “education and training.”

This reminds me of a current fundamental mishap in our hiring and management and that is the practice of gross assumptions of the fundamental capabilities of those we hire.  I’ve witnessed this just in the simple thing of thinking through a challenge to generate multiple solutions.  Just the act of thinking something through seems to be missing!

Coaching Tip: It’s three fold for this post…

1. Become more mindful or your assumptionns with those you lead and those you are hiring related to these kind of capabilities.

2. Assess the funding and offerings of your training plan.  It may need to include more classes on fundamentals (math, writing, grammar, communication.) or accommodate more blended learning offerings to meet the unique needs of each employee that can be embedded in the everyday work experience.

3. Evaluate your hiring protocol.  You may want to include testing to expose these capability gaps.

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I was conducting a management training seminar last week in the Carolinas that dealt with unacceptable employee behavior. I had the opportunity to have a sidebar chat with one of the attendees regarding her unique challenges.

As she shared her story, such a sadness came over me as I realized that it would be very challenging for her to successfully implement what she was learning that day; in fact what her company had paid for her to learn.

Why?…upper level management and the company culture was not in place (at least from what she had observed) to support and encourage the change. In fact it was quite the opposite. In her view, there was NO support for addressing the challenges and you could see the discouragement on her face. Part of her question to me was what could she do about the piece. You could see her desire to make a difference …to constructively address the problem. Yet I could see how tough it was going to be.

My question…why do companies send employees to trainings such as public seminars, when there is not the management support back at the office to implement what’s being learned. To me…that is cruel!…and very sad.

Even sadder?… many decision makers are not aware of the disconnect and the waste of money to them in not having the atmosphere in place to successfully leverage what they are paying for their employees to learn AND how hurtful, frustrating, and discouraging it is to the employee.

Back to the attendee…I encouraged her to have courage, to entertain the possibility she might have to set the example with her new found knowledge and be the leader in this context…leading by example and hopefully results. Positive outcomes…results speaks volumes!

Here’s a plea from someone who conducts public seminars, management trainings and teaches updated management concepts: for those of you who are responsible for training budgets and/or sending your staff to trainings (public seminars and workshops), please ask yourself this question, “What’s in place back at the office to help support the implementation of what my team members will be learning, so that the cost of the seminar will not go to waste…..AND they will not be discouraged from learning, growing and leading?”

And…question #2 – what are the intended messages that are being communicated to an employee when the support is not in place?

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Ever wondered what it takes to effectively help adults learn and translate what they’ve learned into meaningful behavior? It’s been said many times that kids learn quicker and easier than adults and in my experience I’ve seen that to be true.  They are sponges, absorbing everything around them – good or bad! They model and imitate behavior fluidly with little filtering…they haven’t developed those yet.

As adults, we develop filters or biases from previous learning and experiences.  Anything new we are exposed to actually goes through those filters both on a conscious and unconscious level.  Those filters can be both useful and not so useful, depending on the outcomes we desire.

For example, let’s say an employee has been working for a company for some time that discourages creative thinking to the point that he/she is penalized when they present an idea.  On a subconscious level, the message they are receiving is creative thinking is not useful or it is bad.

This employee now has recently moved into new employment with a progressive, forward thinking company, committed to using the intellectual capital of its employees and encourages creative thinking.  How will this new employee behave? Well, I suggest this employee may have some initial struggles allowing himself to be creative. Why? Because he has an internal, subconscious filter that tells him coming up with and offering ideas is bad.

In addition to filters, as we age, unless there is a concerted effort to keep our brains alive and functioning at a decent capacity, (ever heard of the phrase “we only use 10% of our brains?”), our brains go flat…they actually under function.  Critical thinking skills go by the wayside, generating ideas become almost nonexistent: in essence developing new neuropathways, which needs to happen to keep our brains vibrant, ceases to occur.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER IN STAFF DEVELOPMENT?
Hopefully, you are already answering this question.  If you look at the most common approaches to how employees are trained (if they are at all….believe it or not, there are still some companies that have NOT made the connection between staff training and development and profits), you’ll see that in most cases the “throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks approach” is being used. Another way I look at is the “band-aid approach” – we’ve got a problem, so let’s do a training class and that’ll fix it!

IF ANYONE IS YOUR OGRANIZATION thinks this way….THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND what it takes for adults to not only learn, but fully integrate new principles that create new behaviors or habits.

SO WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR AN ADULT TO CHANGE A BEHAVIOR?
There are several different approaches to adult behavior change, both from a conscious level and a subconscious.  To go from conscious competence, meaning I have to purposefully think and act out this new behavior I’m trying to create, to I don’t have to think about it anymore because its become so automatic, takes at its optimum, the incorporating of the  4 Adult Learning Principles in ALL staff training and development planning!

So….here they are… and as you read through these, apply them to your current staff training experience.

1. REPETITION
An adult needs to hear something 6-8 times to get it…(and you thought that was just your kids!)  That’s right – there has to be REPETITION OF THE CONCEPTS A MINIMUM of 6-8 times.  This helps the concept to be integrated or installed on a subconscious level….so the principle can “come to mind” in situations where is can be applied. 
Of course most of you have already experienced this….how many of you as you read the following can actually hear the tunes in your head or see the picture:
–“plop, plop, fizz, fizz – oh what a relief it is….”
–“Where’s the beef?”
–“have it your way”
–“I’m loving it”
–“just do it”
I bet you could name the commercial or company those sayings or slogans represent …why?  REPETITION!!!

In order to accommodate this need, adults must have ready, easy, and ongoing access to the information.

2. REAL FELT PRESSURE TO CHANGE
The reality is that people are MORE LIKELY to move away from PAIN… FASTER than they will move towards gain.  So, in order for people to be motivated to actually learn – that is take on and accept the concept – there has to be a COMPELLING REASON which creates the DESIRE to learn and apply it.

Please know that the level of pressure to change is directly related to the desire or motivation for learning and implementation!!

3. REAL–TIME APPLICATION
Once someone learns a principle to apply, so a new behavior can be created, there has to be a real situation in which they can apply it to – over and over again – until they understand it, get it, see the value in it’s use AND continue to apply until it becomes automatic translating in to a habit.

4. There’s got to be a strong W.I.I.F.M.
Ever heard of that acronym?  It’s everyone’s favorite broadcast radio station, “what’s in it for me”….or in the lyrics of singing legend James Brown, “THE BIG PAY BACK!”  For adults to be truly motivated to learn, the other necessary component that absolutely needs to be present is a strong sense that SOMETHING IS IN IT FOR THEM…..that in fact there will be a BIG PAY OFF! For sure the bigger the payoff – the stronger the motivation to learn and apply.

Think for a moment about all the training done in corporate America where employees are “forced” to go to trainings.  Think of the money wasted.

When making a decision about the use of training dollar, whether for yourself or your team, please keep these 4 principles in mind.

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One common element of employee training has become clear. There is a significant imbalance in the training strategy of many companies and I’m using the word strategy loosely by the way.

There is an inordinate amount of time and financial resources spent on designing and delivering “training” without a plan to effectively translate that training into meaningful changes that impact a company’s bottom line

An example of this is the emergence of e-learning.  There is a lot of attention and dollars being given to its use in delivering training…and rightly so. There is a compelling need for variety in corporate learning. There is software available that’s pretty easy to use.  But to use it takes time and attention, particularly when training is developed from scratch.

With that in mind what is the value when there is no meaningful follow up or plan in place to implement what’s being learned? Is that a significant waste of time, energy, and money?

I’ll leave that question for you to ponder. In the spirit of effective use of your most precious training dollars, consider the balance of resources spent to deliver and resources spent to integrate and translate the learning into desired outcomes on the back end.

In these economic times, some companies may be tempted to cut back on employee training.  I suggest an alternative course of action, use the same dollars and train smarter instead.  You can start by accessing your ratio of delivery plan vs. implementation plan and tracking your real return on investment.

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