Category Archives: training

How to Be an Even Better Leader

How to Be an Even Better Leader

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If you want to be a better leader, get curious about what you might still be able to learn.

We recently had a very senior leader join a live-online leadership training he had hired us to do with his team. Not in a “watch from the sidelines” kind of way as sometimes happens. He was all in.

He actively participated in the breakout conversations and completed his action learning assignments and reported them in the learning lab.

In addition to providing this training for his team, he was curious about what he could do to be a better leader.

In debriefing his experience after the final session, he shared.

This was interesting for me to slow down and really think about HOW I’m leading. I spend so much time on strategic issues, it was helpful to try some new approaches and tools. Ha, I can’t help but think that it might be helpful for my boss to take this class too  😉

4 Approaches to Help You Become an (Even Better) Leader

Once you get to “expert” level, it’s easy to put all your leadership development energy into your team. After all, it’s your job to grow leaders. You want to invest in your team as others have invested in you.

Perfect. There’s no better way to get your team focused on being better leaders than to show that you too are working to be a better leader. Experts are continual students.

Here are a few approaches that can help.

1. Slow down and revisit the fundamentals.

I (Karin) am a decent skier. Most of the time, I can get down the expert slopes without doing too much harm to myself or others.

But the trouble is, my form isn’t always the most efficient, or graceful. AND, I’ve been skiing pretty much the same way for the last decade.

This past week, over Christmas break, I did something I haven’t done in a really long time. In the mornings I watched some really basic Youtube videos which included some skiing drills. And then, I spent part of each day skiing the easy stuff and really paying attention to my form—before I headed back to the blacks.

Shocker—I got better.

What if you took a moment to really think about how you’re approaching the foundational leadership activities that come naturally for you and consider your technique? Look around. Read a new book. Notice what your peers are doing that might be worth a try.

2. Become a Leader Teacher.

One of the best ways to continue to refine your leadership skills is to teach leadership. In many of our long-term leadership programs, we incorporate a “leader as teacher” approach. In addition to more senior leaders participating in the program along with their teams, we prepare them to be “leader teachers” to reinforce the concepts and discuss application in-between sessions in small challenger groups.

There’s no better way to master a new skill than to teach it. And when leaders know they will be facilitating conversations about a new approach, they’re much more likely to try it themselves first so they can speak from first-hand experience.

You can do this on your own too.

Talk with your team about some strategic areas they’re focused on to become better leaders this year. Perhaps it’s getting better at leading virtual meetings. Or building a more robust virtual communication strategy. Stretch yourself to learn some new approaches, teach them to your direct reports, and then schedule some time to debrief how it went and what everyone learned.

3. Avoid S.A.S.R.N.T. syndrome.

When you’re a strong leader, and you stumble across a new leadership approach or tool, it’s easy to fall into S.A.S.R.N.T. syndrome. (So and So Really Needs This).

You think you know who needs this … my boss, or my peer, or my spouse, and you run off and immediately share it with them.

Of course, when you do that, you miss the opportunity to become a better leader yourself.

There’s no better way to get your team to notice a new approach than to first model it yourself. As you take the journey, then you can invite others to join you.

4. Involve your team in your development.

The start of the year is the perfect time to work on leadership development plans … not just for your team, but for yourself as well.

Start with a courageous question. “This year, one focus I have is working to become a better leader for you and the rest of the team. What’s one specific area you think I can work on that would have the biggest impact?”

Of course, when your team sees you investing time and energy to become a better leader, they’re more likely to make it a priority for themselves as well.

Your turn.

What would you add? What has worked for you to take your leadership to the next level?

Courageous CulturesAnd if you’re looking for an advanced leadership book to read with your team this year, check out Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovator’s Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates (and download the FREE Executive Strategy Guide) to facilitate a “leaders as teachers” conversation with your team.

make training work - every leader's a teacher

How to Make Training Work: Every Leader’s a Teacher

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Make Training Work by Involving Leaders at Every Level

Do you get frustrated with training that wastes time and money, but doesn’t change behavior? Yeah, us too. Your leadership development (or any type of training) should be practical, focused on your business, and get results. But how do you make training work and achieve a good return on your investment?

3 Common Training Mistakes

We’ve worked with organizations around the world and have seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to high-ROI training programs. When it doesn’t work, you’ll often encounter one of these critical mistakes.

1. Lack of Executive Sponsorship

This is one of the most common problems with training initiatives. A well-intentioned executive asks their OD or HR team to find or provide training for a particular issue. But then the executive doesn’t engage with the training, doesn’t model it, and soon concludes that it was bad training – or worse, that all training is a waste of money.

The poor results were entirely predictable. Everyone watches what senior leaders actually do. This is the core of your culture. Telling everyone it’s important, but then ignoring it, is a guaranteed path to wasted time and money.

2. Outsourcing Training to HR

We have worked with incredible human resource professionals who ensure that their people are equipped to do transformative work. But no matter how exceptional your team might be, you can’t outsource training to HR and expect it to stick.

Your HR team isn’t in the meeting with clients, following up on the new procedure, or watching your leaders coach in a one-on-one. They can ensure that skills are taught, but that’s only the beginning. Observation and accountability for how and when people use those skills are critical to make training stick.

3. Using Training to Address Broken Systems

Another common problem that sabotages training before it begins is using training as a fix-all for other problems. A common example is when two department leaders have competing KPIs that affect their team’s compensation. Conflict is guaranteed as each department’s leadership team squares off to defend their people and paycheck.

Frustrated executives complain that their people can’t get along and need training.

But no amount of communication training will fix the broken system. The leaders might get the message that senior leadership doesn’t appreciate their conflict and they might even keep quiet for a bit, but the underlying dysfunction is still there. It’s just a matter of time before it erupts again.

Include Leaders to Make Training Work

One solution to make training work and address all three of these common training mistakes is to incorporate leaders at every level as teachers and sponsors of your training initiatives.

This doesn’t mean that every team leader must literally teach a unit (though in some cases, that might be a great idea.) Rather, the principle of leaders as teachers means that:

  1. Every leader models, reinforces, and helps trainees succeed with the training.  Participants need to hear their leaders say “This is important. Here’s why this matters and how it works.” Then trainees need to see those words lived out in leaders’ daily actions. This is the most critical aspect of leaders as teachers. To go further and ensure success, the leaders as teachers principle also means that:
  2. The training program has an appropriate level leadership sponsor who commits to partnering with your OD / HR team or external partner to develop the content.
  3. The sponsor either attends the training or, if already versed, commits to modeling key behaviors and reinforcing through their 5×5 communication.
  4. Sponsors look for, highlight, and celebrate successful implementation of trained behaviors (you get more of what you encourage and celebrate!)
  5. Leaders facilitate action learning activities.
  6. And, they consistently follow up with trainees on what they’re learning and how they’re using it.
  7. Leaders facilitate learning discussions. Your leaders may not have the skills to teach or train effectively, but they can facilitate discussions, ask participants about their experiences, how they’re using what they’ve learned, and share their own insights about how to make it work in daily practice.
  8. Leaders celebrate success and hold their team accountable for lack of follow-through.

Your Turn

When training lasts and becomes a sustaining part of the culture, leaders at every level invariably embrace, use, and expect others to use the learning.

We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a comment and share how you incorporate leaders to make training work in your organization.

For more information about our leadership development programs and how we work with leaders as teachers, contact us at info@letsgrowleaders.com or give us a call at 443.750.1249.

how to build a better live online leadership development program

How to Build a Better Live Online Leadership Development Program

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10 Things to Look for in Your Live Online Leadership Development

If your business is faced with a newly-remote workforce, you know how vital it is to have strong leaders in place to get everyone the support they need, nimbly respond to dozens of competing priorities, and keep strategic initiatives moving. But what if your leaders are struggling with this new challenge?

As social distancing has caused huge swaths of the workforce to work-from-home, the number of virtual and remote leadership development programs has proliferated with varying degrees of quality.

How do you sort through these offerings to avoid the time and money-wasters to find the most effective resources to help your leaders build productive teams?

Game-Changing


Whenever we ask leaders about the best leadership development programs, we consistently hear that the best leadership development:

  • Happens over time, not in one day
  • Closely aligns with strategic business goals
  • Inspires managers with new ideas and practical ways to improve the business
  • Creates lasting change in individual behaviors and positively impacts business results.

Your online leadership development needs to achieve the same game-changing outcomes.

10 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Live Online Leadership Development Program

Every leadership program, whether online or in-person, will be more effective when you’re able to answer these questions.

1. What should change as a result of this program?

Don’t start training until you have a strong vision of what will be different as a result. What behaviors do you want to shift? How will that affect your MIT (Most Important Thing—strategic goals)? Don’t stop at “We need better team leaders.” What does that mean? What will they do differently? Get specific. Work with a training partner who understands your business and who will build a program to get you exactly what you need.

2. How will we include the participant’s leaders?

Training doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You’ll need real buy-in from your participants’ managers or you’ll get a minimal return on your investment. Conceptual support isn’t enough. Managers need insights and specifics about what their people are learning and how they can best support it.  This is important when participant’s managers are not sitting nearby. Ask for an executive briefing session before the program begins, so leaders understand the ROI, prepare strategic questions for their participants, and have a clear path to support their teams’ learning and application. Be sure you have the commitment from participant’s managers to give them the time they need to participate fully in the program.

3. How will participants apply what they’ve learned with their teams?

No one wants to feel like an experiment as their manager comes back from training and tries four new ideas without any explanation. You’ve probably lived through a manager who tried a new idea, did it for a week, then forgot about it. That frustrates the team, and the manager’s credibility suffers. Does this program include a process for re-entry? Will your managers get tools to communicate what they’ve learned and to transfer their knowledge? (e.g. if they come back eager to improve accountability, how do they start to hold people accountable if they never have before?)

4. How will we sustain learning over time?

A single half-day workshop doesn’t produce game-changing leaders. Even if you have a limited budget, find creative ways to build live-online programs that combine learning with practice, reflection, and feedback. How will this leadership development program provide daily and weekly reinforcement of key behaviors? How will we know what’s working and where managers are struggling?

5. How will this program provoke new ideas and critical thinking to improve our business?

The best leadership training will fire up your managers with new ideas. Will the program leave them empowered and excited to execute, or frustrated about great ideas that “will never happen around here”? Work with a leadership development partner who understands your culture and how things get done. The best leadership programs don’t just teach skills, they create chances to apply learning and improve the business.

These next five questions are specific to your live online leadership development program.

6. Does the program feature real-time interaction with facilitators and other participants?

There’s no need to settle for a passive, webinar-style training program where people’s attention can drift and multitasking erodes the value. The best online leadership development features live engagement with your facilitators and real-time participant discussions with one another and the facilitators.

7. Does our training partner have experience with live online leadership development?

Online facilitation is different than working in-person. It requires different preparation, different ways of engaging participants, and confidence to work through problems that technology inevitably presents. Participants know when they’re working with a rookie and will quickly lose interest and engagement. Make sure your leadership development partner has ample experience in training and leading remotely.

8. Can our people take part via video?

Video isn’t the same as being face-to-face, but for online leadership development, you’ll want your participants to see one another and the facilitators. When everyone can see one another, it maintains attention, lessens multi-tasking, and gives facilitators and participants the opportunity to respond to confusion, enthusiasm, and questions. Make sure your participants can appear on camera and be heard well. For more tech recommendations, check out How to Take Charge of Your Remote Meetings.

9. Will our online leadership development program leverage technology beyond traditional classrooms?

One of the common mistakes with online meeting technology is to replicate a traditional classroom training environment. For instance, in a traditional face-to-face program, only one person can speak at a time. But when you leverage online meeting tools, you can have small groups meeting simultaneously and sharing their findings, questions, and incorporate with other groups’ feedback in real-time via chat and whiteboards, in ways that would lead to chaos in an in-person situation.

Remote learning also gives you the opportunity to break up your day-long training programs into smaller 60-90 minute sessions over several days or weeks, and increase the amount of application and leadership activity participants can do between sessions. Spaced learning over time with guided application between sessions is ideal for changing behavior, but more difficult when you’re limited to a single day of training. Leverage technology to help your leaders make the most of their training.

10. How will we create the head-space for people to focus on their live online leadership development?

When your manager physically goes to another location for training, it’s obvious that they’re gone. But with online leadership development, those boundaries can blur. Does their Slack messenger still show them as available? What are the expectations for answering phone calls, emails, and instant messages?

To give your leaders the best experience, work with your partner to create best practices in how participants notify their peers, colleagues, team (and remind their boss) that they’re attending the training. You can create a consistent set of guideline reminders for every session that will help people to focus (eg: turn off your email, social media, office messenger – everything but the one way someone would contact you in an emergency).

Your Turn

Live online leadership development gives you a chance to maintain your momentum and equip your leaders with the tools they need to build their teams and transform results – whether your leaders work around the globe or from home. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a comment and share: What’s one of your best live online learning experiences?

Learn More About Our Live-Online leadership Development Programs

how to prevent training from wasting time and money

How to Prevent Training From Wasting Time and Money

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A Manager’s Guide to Reinforcing Training When People Get Back to Work

Your employees go to training. Hopefully, they come back fired up and excited about what they’ve learned and what they can do with it. Two weeks later though, they’re back to their old habits.

Now, all those behaviors that worked well in the role-plays are a distant memory.

What happened?

Assuming you’ve picked the right training and avoided these big mistakes, if the learning doesn’t stick, you might need to work on your reinforcement strategy.

6 Ways Managers Can Reinforce Learning and  Application

1. Know Before They Go

Be sure you know exactly what your employees are there to learn. If you can’t articulate what your employees will know or do differently, don’t waste their time until you’re sure. Ask HR or your training partner for specific learning outcomes.

2. Connect What to Why

Now it’s time to make sure your people know how the training will help them. It’s tragic to see a room full of employees shuffle in with no clue why they are there.

3. Define Success

Set measurable objectives for your employee. For example:

  • “I expect this training should help you close an additional five deals per month.”
  • “We will measure the effectiveness of this leadership training in your Great Place to Work survey scores and attrition rates.”
  • “Our goal is to achieve 100% on-time delivery with the techniques you’ll receive in this course.”
4. Each One Teach One

Here’s your chance for a BOGO (buy one get one free).

Ask your returning trainee to teach one concept they’ve learned to the rest of the team. If the team went together, have everyone share their favorite. You’ll leverage the investment, reinforce the training, and spread the best practices.

5. Ask for feedback

Great training gets better with good feedback. Ask for candid feedback on what was most helpful and ways to make it better. Use the feedback make the next time better.

6. Schedule a Review of Results

As the training concludes, schedule a meeting 4 to 6 weeks out with the employees who attended. The agenda for the meeting will be for them to show how they implemented a key concept, behavior, or results they achieved.

How Managers Can Reinforce Training

5 Frustrating Mistakes That Will Derail Your Leadership Training

5 Frustrating Mistakes That Will Derail Your Leadership Training

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Have you ever spent money on leadership training that was a colossal waste of time?

We feel you. We have too over the years. It’s incredibly disappointing to invest time and money in a training program that doesn’t change behavior.

Do know what’s also frustrating? Pouring your heart and soul into designing and delivering training that doesn’t stick. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it breaks our hearts.

We would hate for this to happen to you. No one should have to waste time or money on a leadership development program that doesn’t work.

5 Signs You’re Not Ready To Launch a Leadership Training Program

If you want leadership training that changes behavior avoid these common mistakes.

1. You don’t commit to staying the course

There’s never a good time to take people away from day-to-day work for leadership training. Something will happen that makes the time you’ve scheduled inconvenient. You’ll wonder, “How can we be doing leadership development at a time like this?”

The other question could be, “How can we NOT do leadership development at a time like this?”

We had one client who came to us saying that “leadership development was their most important strategic imperative.” The business was changing and turbulent. They worried that their middle managers needed new skills to make better strategic decisions, to think critically and develop a cadence of accountability with their teams. They needed their managers to learn practical tools and approaches they could apply to real business problems and daily execution with their teams.

The senior team carefully selected the participants. The CEO joined the first session explaining how vitally important this program was. Everyone was excited and left jazzed to apply their new learning. They picked action learning projects that would help them tackle some of the biggest strategic challenges of the business and worked on them with their teams.

But just as the program was gaining traction, the problems that had inspired them to start the program were becoming more obvious – partially because the senior team was now having more visibility to the program participants. They put the program on indefinite hold until things calmed down. You guessed it, they’re still waiting for the storm to pass.

And guess what’s still an unaddressed strategic priority? Leadership bench strength.

Interestingly, during this same time, we had another client who also faced a major strategic challenge right before we were coming to do a two-day leadership strategic off-site. He also needed all hands on deck to support the business. Given what had just happened, we asked if he wanted to postpone.

He responded, “Are you kidding me? Nothing is more important than this!” They stayed focused despite the chaos and had a remarkably productive two days, made several critical decisions, built a solid execution plan, and identified quick fixes that would stabilize the business. He was right, nothing was more important than how they spent those two days.

2. You need to check a box.

If you’re just looking to “go get these managers some training,” and are looking for the fastest, cheapest solution you can find, you’re probably wasting your time. Better to slow down and figure out what must be different because of the training, and how you will measure impact, then look for a strategic partner who will build a program to meet your needs.

3. Field managers aren’t supportive.

Sometimes, we find HR is pushing programs that people didn’t ask for, or don’t think they need.

Training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do. If you want your managers to lead differently, they need encouragement and feedback. If your participant’s supervisors are resentful for the time out of the office or are unwilling to support and reinforce behaviors, you may be focusing your leadership development program at the wrong level.

4. You’re trying to train your way out of a deeper problem.

Training can’t fix bad systems. Sometimes people ask us to deliver conflict and collaboration training or team building for a team that just can’t get along. But after a short conversation, it’s clear that the real issue is a siloed organization, conflicting performance objectives, or a wonky compensation structure. Don’t waste your time or money on training, until you’ve taken care of the systems that cause the dysfunction. Your leadership development partner should help you address these concerns and think more holistically about your business.

5. You don’t have a good way to reinforce learning and behavior.

When you’re talking to your leadership training partner, be sure you ask them how they build in application and reinforcement into the design – between sessions and after completion. Don’t send managers to training until you know how they will apply, measure and demonstrate what they’ve learned.

See Also: 5 Powerful Ways to Ensure Your Leadership Training Sticks

Why Employee Training Fails and How to Prevent It In Your Organization

action learning

5 Tragic Mistakes that Will Derail Your Action Learning Projects

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Done well, action learning projects, where groups work together to address real business problems, can provide an immediate ROI that more than pays for your training investment.

But let’s face it. Sometimes they can also be a colossal, frustrating waste of time.

What makes the difference?

Done well, action learning projects are great because:

  • You hear new ideas from fresh perspectives.
  • Real work gets done.
  • Learning is contextual.
  • It doesn’t feel like training.
  • Participants must manage through complex situations and team dynamics.
  • It’s a terrific opportunity to showcase talent to the executive team.
  • They provide a safe testing ground for high-potential talent.

And, yet, poorly executed, action learning projects waste time and frustrate everyone involved.

So how do you ensure your action learning projects are worth the time?

Avoid these five common mistakes.

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing Action Learning Projects

1. Floundering: “Crap, how were we supposed to know that?” 

Participants get REALLY excited about their project and pour their heart, soul, and many long hours into making it happen. But they’re oblivious to the political dynamics or bigger strategic picture.

They don’t have access to the right people or all the information, and when they go to present their findings, they’re met with a scowl, “Didn’t you consider…?” “Why didn’t you talk to…” “Don’t you know so and so has already been working on this for three years?”

You’ve now had your high-potential employees spinning their wheels, killing themselves on top of their day job, and all this time they’ve been climbing rocky terrain in an unfamiliar land.

Sure, learning to stakeholder is all part of the learning but if the mountain is gnarly, a knowledgeable sherpa is only fair.

2. Fuzzy Guidelines: “What are we supposed to be doing anyway?”

Be clear on big rules, resources, and other parameters. If the real deal is they must solve the problem with no funding or other limitations up front, say so.

You want the best ROI on these projects and most strategic thinking. The companies we work with who do this best, spend solid time up front defining the projects and thinking through what’s in scope and communicating any resource constraints.

If you want your team to think more strategically, giving them as much context as possible to think strategically.

3. The Wrong Players: “We thought this guy was high-potential?”

Action learning projects give participants exposure to executives.

Not all exposure is good exposure.

Be sure you pick the right talent who are ready for this experience.

Yes, stretch, but don’t send them into the deep end the first day they learn to swim. We’ve seen people’s careers seriously damaged from being pushed into such programs before they’re ready.

4. Lack of Boss Support: “Yeah, no… I need you focused here.”

Sure, one sign of a high-potential leader is that they can do THIS and THAT, meaning they pull off the work on this project while doing their day job.

But it’s important for supervisors to understand the investment necessary in such programs.

If they consistently get in the way of participants attending meetings or doing their fair share, the high-potential participant can become very stressed worrying about balancing their relationship with their boss and preserving their reputation with their action learning team.

5. Failure to Execute: “Well, it seemed like such a good idea…”

Typically action learning programs result in recommendations with an assumed handoff to the appropriate team or department for implementation.

Be sure to secure the appropriate commitments. Nothing’s worse than the “Whatever happened to that project?” feeling. A few false starts, and your action learning program will lose all credibility.

Done well, it’s hard to top action learning for leadership development. Be sure your design is well-thought through.

Your Turn

We would love to hear your experiences. Leave us a comment and share: what leads to a breakthrough (or even successful) action learning project, and what gets in the way?

See Also:

Critical Thinking: 5 Ways to Increase Your Team’s Capacity to Think

5 Powerful Ways to Ensure Your Leadership Training Sticks

 

5 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Action Learning Project

 

5 Questions to Ask Before Launching a Leadership Development Program

How To Build a Better Leadership Development Program

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Don’t launch a leadership development program until you ask yourself these important questions.

If you’ve been a manager for more than a minute, chances are you’ve gone to a lousy leadership development program.

We’ll pause here to let you vent your frustrations. It was terrible because___________ .

We get it. Been there ourselves. Got the certificate.

And, if you’re a manager of managers, we imagine you’ve experienced the challenge of sacrificing “productive time” to send your managers to a leadership development program, only to find yourself scratching your head about what they learned and how they will apply it.

As soon as people find out we’re in the leadership development game, the stories fly. And if we get our friends into their second beer, the stories can be tragically comical.

Of course, it’s not always that way.

We truly hope you’ve had the opposite experience. That you’ve attended a game-changing leadership training that gave you useful skills to achieve breakthrough results and gain more influence. That kind of program is priceless.

What Makes the Difference Between Game-Changing and Frustrating?

When we talk to managers who’ve attended a great leadership development program, this is what we hear.

  • A great leadership program is a process, not an event.
  • A great leadership program is closely aligned with strategic business initiatives.
  • A great leadership program inspires managers with new ideas and tangible ways to improve the business.
  • A great leadership program creates long-term change in individual behavior and business results.

So how do ensure that’s what you’re getting?

Ask These 5 Questions Before Launching a Leadership Development Program

  1. What do I want to be different as a result of this program?
    Don’t start training until you have a strong vision of what will be different as a result. What behaviors are you looking to change? How will that impact your MIT (Most Important Thing– strategic goals)? Don’t stop at “We need stronger team leaders.” Go deeper. Get specific. Work with a training partner who understands your business and who can build a program to achieve exactly what you need.
  2. How will we include the participant’s managers?
    Training doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Be sure you have real buy-in from the level above. You don’t just want conceptual support. Managers need insights and specifics about what is being trained and how they can best support it. Ask for an executive briefing session before the program begins so leaders understand the ROI, are prepared with strategic questions and have a clear path to support their teams’ learning and application. Be sure you have the commitment from participant’s managers to provide them the time needed to fully participate in the program.
  3. How will managers apply what they’ve learned with their teams?
    It’s scary for people to have their managers go off to training and then come back and feel like an experiment as the manager implements four new ideas without any explanation. You’ve probably lived through a manager who brought back a new idea, used it for a week, then forgot about it. That’s frustrating for the team and the manager loses credibility. Does this program include a process for re-entry? Will you managers be equipped to communicate what they’ve learned and to transfer their knowledge? (e.g. if they come back fired up about accountability, how do they do they begin holding people accountable if they never have before?)
  4. How will we build sustained learning over time?
    You can’t learn to lead in one half-day workshop. Even if you have a limited budget, find creative ways to build programs that combine learning with practice, reflection, and feedback. How will this program provide daily and weekly reinforcement of key behaviors? How will we know what’s working and where managers are struggling?
  5. How will this program stir up new ideas and critical thinking to improve the business?
    Great leadership training is bound to get your managers fired up with new ideas. Will the program leave them feeling empowered and excited to execute, or frustrated about great ideas that “will never happen around here”? Work with a leadership development partner who understands your culture and how things get done. The best leadership programs don’t just teach skills, they provide opportunities for application to improve the business.

If you’re looking for a way to continue this conversation with your team, print this guide as a conversation starter.

5 Questions to Ask When Lau

Your turn.

We would love to hear from you. What additional questions would you add for leaders considering building a new leadership development program?

Innovative Leadership Training Leadership Development

Leadership Training ROI Karin Hurt and David Dye

5 Powerful Ways to Ensure Leadership Training Sticks

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You’ve invested in leadership training. Now how do you ensure the ROI?

“Don’t bother me with this crap. I don’t believe in leadership training. It’s a complete waste of time. It’s nothing against you as the new Training Director. I get that I have to work with you in some way. If you MUST talk training, please work through Joe (one of my directors), he’s the most touchy-feely of my direct reports, I’m sure he’ll be nice to you.”

Yikes. Those were the words I heard from Beth, one of the Presidents I was asked to support, in my new role as training director at Verizon.

The truth is, I appreciated her candor. She’s not alone. A lot of senior leaders are skeptical of training ROI.

“You want me to take my people out of the field, where they could be serving customers and bringing in new business for theory and games? No thank you.”

And I get it. No one wants that kind of training. I’ve certainly been to my fair share of flavor-of-the-month training, and have my own bookshelf of binders full of good ideas, not implemented.

I’ve also attended great training that helped me change the game.

I imagine you have too. What makes the difference?

5 Ways to Make Leadership Training Stick and Increase ROI

Training is only valuable when it leads to sustained behavior change and improved business results.

Great leadership training is a process, not an event.

Great leadership training is closely aligned with strategic business initiatives.

Great leadership training inspires managers with new ideas and tangible ways to improve the business.

Great leadership training creates long-term change in individual behavior and business results.

I’m grateful for Beth’s challenge in the first few weeks of a job that what was to become a formative role, both in my Verizon career and now, running my own leadership development company.

I was sure that Beth couldn’t hate training that truly made her people and results stronger. She just hated bad training. Who doesn’t? (P.S. Beth later promoted me into my most significant operations role at Verizon where I reported directly to her).

Here are 5 ways to ensure a stronger ROI and to make training stick:

  1. Design the training on business outcomes.
    Don’t start training until you have a strong vision of what will be different as a result. What behaviors are you looking to change? How will that impact your MIT (Most Important Thing– strategic goals)? Don’t stop at “We need stronger team leaders.” Go deeper. Get specific. Work with a training partner who understands your business and who can build a program to achieve exactly what you need.
  2. Build programs that include the participant’s manager.
    Training doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Be sure you have real buy-in from the level above. You don’t just want conceptual support. Managers need insights and specifics about what is being trained and how they can best support it. We love to do an executive briefing session before our programs so leaders understand the ROI, are prepared with strategic questions and have a clear path to support their teams’ learning and application.
  3. Include teams in implementation.
    It’s scary for people to have their managers go off to training and then come back and feel like an experiment as the manager implements four new ideas without any explanation. You’ve probably lived through a manager who brought back a new idea, used it for a week, then forgot about it. That’s frustrating for the team and the manager loses credibility. Be sure your managers know how to talk with their teams about what they are doing differently and why. The best leadership training has an ROI that cascades beyond the manager being trained.
  4. Deliver training in digestible learning over time.
    You can’t learn to lead in one half-day workshop. Even if you have a limited budget, find creative ways to build programs that combine learning with practice, reflection, and feedback. We love to leverage new technology that incorporates simple micro-learning push-technology to learners’ phones via text message between sessions to inspire and reinforce real-world application.
  5. Welcome new ideas, insights, and help them take the next step
    Great leadership training is bound to get your managers fired up with new ideas. Listen to their insights and find ways say “Yes” to what might happen next. When they come back with ideas to improve the business, listen. If it’s something you’ve tried before, invite them to the next step. Rather than “We tried that, it doesn’t work” you might try: “In the past when we’ve tried that, we ran into an issue with X. I’d love for you to think about how we might overcome that and implement your idea.”

Your Turn

How do you ensure your leadership training create real behavior change and lasting results?leadership development Karin Hurt and David Dye