Not Just Any Training Will Do…

To this point, we’ve looked at a number of profitability killers that are affecting nearly every business. Through this process, I’ve been intentional about making a case for how effective leadership - while often viewed as something soft or intangible - can make an immediate and measurable impact on each. And while I’ve provided some practical steps that we can each take individually to begin capturing the profit that’s being killed, we can’t afford to stop with just what we do personally; we need to be able to train each key team member with any level of leadership responsibility to get the same kind of results as we do if we want to achieve sustainable gains on our bottom line.

Over the course of my career, I’ve been involved with filling more than a thousand positions. Many of those were positions where we hired external candidates to become part of an organization but quite a few were done through internal job postings. The one constant I’ve seen, across organizations and industries, has been how rarely the individual filling the role already has all of the skills they’ll need to be successful long term. I realize that’s a strong statement, but let’s take it one step farther by making it a bit more personal… I’m confident that YOU don’t have all the skills you need to be as successful as you could be in your role - and neither do I!!!

Just in case I haven’t offended you enough, I’ll also add that I’m not sure we ever really will. I heard that the only thing we can count on to stay the same is that there will be constant change around us. If we have any hope of keeping up with that change and avoiding lost profitability in the process, ongoing and focused development has to happen; for our new teams members to get up to speed, for our existing team members to keep up with the industry we’re a part of, for ourselves to ensure we can continue leading effectively.

When we build training and development into our business model, we send a very specific message to anyone we provide that for. That said, talking about providing that training but never doing sends a very clear message too… When we invest our time and resources into helping someone develop a skill, they generally feel more valued. This can imply that we believe enough in their ability that they’re worth this investment - and who doesn’t want to feel valued? And whether it was when I was in a human resources role or now through the work that Cindy and I do for organizations across the United States, I’ve never been willing to allow this message to only be implied. I’ve told each individual I’ve helped access training and every group we’ve provided training for that it’s an investment into them, and I’ve also been very clear about the measurable return the organization should be receiving on that investment.

I’ve always believed that investing into a team member by providing them with the training and development they need to become more effective in their role yields multiple benefits. In fact, I’ve heard John Maxwell say that the only thing worse than training someone that may someday leave the organization is not training someone and they stay! To confirm my own theory though, I found an article from Ottawa University called Why is Training and Development Important? that detailed what the author referred to as “the 5 benefits of training and development.” I won’t go into each here but they suggested that training our team members impacts each of the following areas:

• Employee Retention
• Developing Future Leaders
• Empowering Employees
• Boosting Workplace Engagement
• Building Workplace Relationship

I don’t think I have to ask you how closely these tie to the profitability killers we’ve been working to address here… That said, we can’t start throwing mud against the wall and hope some will stick. To get real, measurable results that produce long term profitability, not just any training will do! We’ll need to take the approach of a specialist rather than that of a general practitioner so next time we’ll dig into how much money is wasted by doing this wrong…