The next generation of training

The next generation of training

Training of any kind is undertaken against a set of desired outcomes both for the individual and for management. I’m now going to talk specifically about what the ‘next generation’ of training looks like.

The ‘tick and flick’ days are gone. Businesses paying good money should not put up with the familiar training scenario: 20 people in dissimilar roles with vastly different skill sets, experience and motivation piled into a room and taught the same thing. In a group like this, there might be five or more identifiable clusters of similarity across the categories I’ve mentioned; if such identification occurs at all it is done informally and once training is underway – when it’s too late to make anything but ad hoc adjustments. RTOs (registered training organisations) that want to stay in the game have got to identify these clusters first, design courses for each one and conduct training sessions limited to suitable people.

How to begin?

The process begins well before a client gets near a seminar room.

The best corporate trainers interact with clients online and over the phone, using industry-standard profiling instruments designed to give accurate assessments of a subject’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas of greatest potential and limitations. They share results with both the individual and with management. In the process they learn more about the former and helping to navigate the latter to the most practicable desired training outcomes.

A needs analysis

The next step is to undertake a needs analysis for each person based on the data that have been compiled so far. The expectations of management must be given equal weight to the experience, motivation and desires of the individual. You see, when management does not play this role in strategic planning, when they feel like they’re just ticking a human-resources box by sending someone off to generic training, then they are unlikely to give that training – even if it’s good – full support back at the workplace. Very quickly, any benefits have evaporated.

By the same token, training that does not satisfy the skills, experience, potential and motivation of the individuals who undertake it is equally ephemeral.

If you want to understand a person, you’ve got to know their ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’. 

If you want to understand a person, you’ve got to know their ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’. Their ‘what’ is what they do, the job they’re in or, more broadly, their career. People see this as the most important thing about their working life.

Much more important is their ‘why’ – I call it the ‘why factor’. Why do they do what they do? What’s driving them? It’s more than just money: it may be security, self-esteem, their children’s futures. I’ve always said that if you’re going to take on a high-profile or high-stress job, your ‘why’ factor had better be strong enough to make you cry – if not, you’re in trouble. An RTO has got to get to an individual’s ‘why’ factor.

Because the ‘how’ is – you guessed it – their training, their professional development and, yes, their personal development. It is the pathway to desired outcomes; you can’t design the right ‘how’ without clarity about ‘why’.

Achieving the desired outcomes

This is the essence of individualised training. To maximise targeted outcomes for companies, you’ve got to achieve the person’s desired outcomes. Good managers know this. Trainers have to get to know people first; they must design individual programs based on detailed training-needs analysis; they must be working towards well-structured outcomes developed with significant input from management.

When this formula is followed, training is no longer generic. It is directed, useful and practicable. The seminar room is a place of discovery where small groups of people who have been carefully placed together do real and beneficial work.

This is not the end, of course, because the best RTOs follow up. They continue to coach; they continue to mentor. ‘How’ and ‘why’ do not end when they turn out the lights in the training room.

Mark Garbelotto, CEO, Australian Academy of Sales

aasales.com.au