Ensuring the Right Fit

If we need measurable results from anything we do to develop our leaders, and I can’t think of any reason for doing it if those results don’t matter, who delivers the initial training and how they go about it is critical! If they can’t earn credibility with our team or they’re just spewing something out that they read from a book on the way there, the juice won’t likely be worth the squeeze. But that’s not all we need to consider to make sure any leadership training we provide our folks is important, giving them tools they can actually use…

I’ve been through more training over the last two decades than anyone I know; a fair amount of that related to safety and human resources but enough focused on leadership and communication to choke a goat! I often share about the expectation the manager I worked for had of me to show a tangible return from any training he allowed me to participate in. Couple that with the fact that I paid for nearly all of the leadership and communication training I attended out of my own pocket, I’ve always made sure I could pull something very specific from every single session - even if it was something I should never do when I shared material with an audience…

Through all that, I’ve seen some truly dynamic presenters who get the crowd so hyped up that they’re jumping and screaming. All too often though, I’ve walked away from those sessions with a high level of excitement but absolutely nothing that I can apply in my own area of responsibility. I’ve also sat through DAYS of consecutive sessions covering some of the most useful ideas you could imagine, but by the time I got back to my desk I had so many things piled up that could barely breathe. And then there’s the ones where I was able to write down all kinds of impressive statistics and powerful quotes, then struggled to translate any of it to the workload I was faced with.

Don’t get me wrong, I think most of that has a place. That Forbes article I’ve referenced a few times leading up to this point cited a study from 2012 that “found that American companies spend almost $14 billion annually on leadership development training” and I can only assume that the number has increased quite a bit since - simply from the 7.5% inflation…

Here’s where I need you to pay close attention… If we want any of the investment we make into developing the people on our teams with leadership responsibility, or anyone we’d like to see accept that responsibility in the future, we need to make sure we’re providing something that they can digest and apply in a way that leads to real behavioral change rather than just some notes on a sheet of paper. We’ve also got to be sure that it fits reasonably well with all the other demands we’ve placed on them. And that’s just the starting point!

As we move forward, we’ll work through some of the specific steps we can take to do this and we’ll look at how we can expect to see the results show up in our organization’s bottom line…