AchieveGlobal's blog

Final Thoughts: Does Training Rely Too Much on Coaching by Managers?

By Craig Perrin This is the last segment of my discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development, on problems associated with coaching by managers. This week we return to the original question: “Does training rely too much on coaching by managers?” KIM: Craig, you say yes, we over-rely on coaching and we need to get off that drug, so to speak. At the same time, I think you agree that classroom training, which I call effective training, requires coaching if you want a return on your training investment. To reinforce that point, I’ll quote Broad and Newstrom from their classic book, Transfer of Training:

A frequently overlooked factor is management's involvement in the training process... [R]esponsibility for improving transfer of training must be shared by managers and trainees, as well as trainers.

Newstrom's research at the University of Minnesota clearly identified the manager as the most important force both before and after training to reinforce concepts and skills. As Sharon [AchieveGlobal CEO Sharon Daniels] said in her Selling Power interview, “Play chess with your people, not checkers.” To leverage the unique strengths of their people, managers will always need to coach employees as they learn and apply new skills. So, does training rely too much on coaching by managers? I think not. CRAIG: That all makes sense to me, on paper. Unless organizations start making a big effort to support regular coaching – highly unlikely in the current economic climate – we can expect coaching to remain low-priority. What’s needed is a much easier kind of change. Not of the whole organization, but of training. The pieces and also the desire for this change are already in place.  We need to make much better use of the available technologies. We need to leverage the intense social needs of younger workers – witness Facebook and MySpace among Millennials, even Linkedin among older workers. Of course people want to learn, but they want to learn in new ways. You might call it the Google-ization of corporate training: find what you need, now, use it immediately to solve a problem, and move on. These big societal and technological trends will drive training in the 21st century, with intense, continuing interaction among learners. According to AT&T, my 18-year-old sent or received 1100 text messages last month. I’m not saying that constitutes peer coaching – who knows what the heck he was talking about – but it points the direction that training needs to follow. We need to leverage all these forces, all these available technologies; we need to abandon outdated forms of training that rely on big events and follow-on coaching by managers; and, I believe, we need to stop shaming managers by lecturing them on their failure to do what their own managers don’t often do – and frankly don’t often require.

How Can You Prepare Managers to Support Training?

By Craig Perrin This is the fourth of my five-part discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development. This week we ask, “How can you prepare managers to support training?” CRAIG: If we want managers to support training, we have to stop shaming them. Instead, we should reduce their coaching responsibilities by changing the way we train. Rather than big training events followed by inconsistent or short-lived coaching, we need shorter increments of training over longer periods. Instead of a two-day employee workshop every six months, what if we had a one-hour session with an immediate application assignment and ongoing collaboration with peers, every week for two months? What if we leveraged all the technology now available – Internet, intranet, YouTube-type video, online social networking? What if trainers helped peers to coach each other? What if we developed dedicated coaches – people who like to coach, with the time to observe, provide feedback, and recognize employees? This kind of training isn’t idle fantasy. It’s already here in many organizations, functioning very well, and taking this pressure off managers to be everything to every employee. KIM: That’s one approach, yet it’s not always realistic. For better or worse – and I think it’s better – most organizations will continue to deliver traditional classroom training. As a long-time former trainer and director of training, I’ve seen the power of classroom learning. The classroom remains the number one place where skill development takes place. Larry Bossidy, author of Execution, says “Every leader and supervisor needs to be a teacher; classroom learning should be about giving [both managers and employees] the tools that they need.” People are worth the effort it takes to develop them through formal classroom training and skilled coaching. Dofasco Steel’s tag line is: “Our product is steel. Our strength is people.” In my view, the best way to improve human performance is to prepare managers to coach and then to measure how well they coach. That’s also the best way to reduce turnover and move toward key business goals. I’ll leave you with this thought: The main way employees – whether managers or individual contributors – learn new skills is through training, and the main way they grow and develop is through coaching.