In the first part of this series, we outlined what is required to make for a successful training program (be it sales or otherwise). In this final portion of the series, we’ll discuss those methods with the goal of creating an overall training and development culture in your organization for a longer-term approach to employee and skills growth.
The training itself, which we discussed in Part 1, should focus on both matching the correct skills to the correct employees, but also imparting mastery of those skills onto the trainees and then fostering skill retention through follow-up testing and refreshment. This builds not only the skills themselves, as well as mastery retention, but also begins the process of creating a training culture within your corporation to better maintain that growth attitude.
Employees should be encouraged to self-assess their success with the new skills learned as they’re used on the job. Some skills may be honed, tweaked, or modified to better suit both the specific job’s needs as well as the employee’s personality and core strengths and weaknesses. If given the chance, most employees will be self-motivators in this regard and can often work with management and trainers to better themselves quickly.
Outside testing, meaning someone other than the trainee checking skill levels, can be done as well and should be an integral part of your overall growth strategy. This helps identify problem areas that employees and management may not see for themselves and also builds confidence as successes begin to accrue.
Quite often, success lies in changing small behaviours that may not be obvious to those directly involved, but are easy to note by an objective observer.
These assessments should go hand-in-hand and become encouragement for employees and management to self-assess and work towards higher and loftier goals for themselves.
Finally, these assessments should be all-encompassing and should include management, new employees, long time employees, and anyone else involved in the overall processes of the business. Peer reinforcement and continual re-learning and skill mastery should be the norm, not the exception, in your organization.
Managers should have three primary goals in this regard: their own skill mastery, coaching and reinforcement of that mastery to their employees, and an eye on the overall big picture to act as a guide. Unlike most employees, management, by their very nature, is not as concerned with the day-to-day and thus can more easily keep an eye on overall progress and the bigger picture.
While employees can easily get caught up in the practical aspects of the job, management can take a broader, longer-term view and keep employees on track with that perspective. Management should not become so over-focused on that broad view they lose sight of the work being done and forget how to do it themselves.
For this reason, managers should have the same skills as their employees and be able to utilize them. This means they must occasionally exercise those skills and take part in the same training their employees undertake.
By doing so, management creates their own inner culture of training and development, which will then be passed on to employees by example.