Teams are crying out for training yet time and time again members of NBT Nation report receiving no or minimal support.
Let's explore why leaders can have a poor view of training and continue to throw people into the fray unprepared for success
This is not a "bang on leadership" whinge session.
They may intuitively think that training and development is important, but time and time again their actions speak volumes.
By understanding their view of training as a performance management tool you can begin to address, educate and shape a more productive headspace on the topic.
So what are some reasons why leaders sometimes do not support training?
They didn't have training themselves.
I've seen the "I figured it out" mentality translate into the leader believing everybody else should figure it out as they go too.
Obviously a wildly inefficient approach if people stick it out and a costly one when they quickly exit the company.
Their leadership is good enough
Just do what I say, follow my direction and everything will be great. Why should I train you? I'll just tell you what to do.
This is a one way ticket to stifled innovation, micromanagement and the leader being the bottleneck as the team awaits their next instruction.
That's assuming the team member isn't one of the 40% of workers that will eject from the organization instead.
Fear
I've heard leaders express a fear of investing the time, energy and money into a team member only to have them leave the company.
At first glance its potentially understandable, especially when resources are limited, but clearly this is a short sighted and self limiting approach.
Training is disruptive to operations
There's no denying there is a cost to be paid when you pull somebody offline so they can attend or complete trainings.
Somebody else needs to fill in. There's a disruption to the rota. It may require paying the team overtime or asking them to sacrifice personal time.
If not careful, training professionals themselves can foster a leaders poor view of training
Training Doesn't Work
It just seems like a complete waste of time to them.
They haven't seen training actually accomplish much. Skills don't increase, behaviors don't change.
Training quickly becomes viewed as an expense.
Not tied to business goals
The training is outdated, not practical, or focused on topics that do not effect business outcomes.
Either the trainers aren't paying attention to actual business needs or they are separated from the overarching strategy of the firm.
And you cannot divorce those two things.
Training is too costly and too complicated
We can sometimes promote that mentality because we over-complicate the process and don't know how to speak to leaders.
We use too many buzz words and aren't asking the right questions to understand the actual needs. And our complex recommendations are hard to grasp leave alone implement.
If their eye glaze over the second we start talking about cognitive loads and scaffolding we've missed the mark.
7 possible explanations why someone in a leadership capacity may have a dim view of using learning & development to enrich their teams and strengthen their firms.
Armed with this information you can begin to build trust and demonstrate that good old fashioned, honest to goodness training can move the dial on metrics that matter.
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