How to ensure impact training?

The top 9...

1. Leverage and blend training with organisational and operational management, strategy and change management
2. Rigorously examine 6 key factors when benchmarking training partners
3. Focus first on 30 core practices – according to which managers are often underperforming – then beyond
4. Insist on the difference between knowledgeable presenter and trainer
5. Demand the wisdom and practice of ‘learning by doing’
6. Ensure that your trainees’ different learning styles and preferences are taken into account
7. Ensure the blocking thoughts of your trainees are identified and transcended
8. Meaning, motivation and skills – ensure these vital pre-conditions for a training process are met
9. Reinforce training through assessment and coaching and investigate e-modules

Choosing an external trainer

6 questions can help you benchmark training organisations:

1. Philosophy

• What are their driving principles?
• How diligently will they challenge you, uncovering real needs?
• How pragmatic are their solutions?
• How insistent are they upon the transfer of learning into action?
• What is the fit with your culture? With the ages and learning styles of participants?

2. Impact measurement

• How will they set and meet measurement criteria, impact level agreements, return on investment?

3. Delivery

• How will they engineer a complex and multi-dimensional intervention throughout your business, nonetheless ensuring consistency?
• How will they ensure the right trainers are active, in terms of seniority and specialism?
• How will they help you secure the commitment of key stakeholders?
• What quality control mechanisms are in place?
• What about the training and coaching of key players and target audiences?

4. Customisation

• What is the fit with your specific challenge/sector? A ‘one size fits all’ approach or an eclectic application of ‘what works for you’?

5. Symbiosis

• How will they integrate solutions with your existing ones?
• How well do they collaborate with other specialists?
• Do they bring out the best of your key-players or do they try to ‘steal the show’?

6. Risk

• What is their track record, their financial security?
• What is their back-up system in case of emergency?

The combination of these factors is your best guarantee of success.

Einstein said:
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

So the trainer is somehow an energising force - stimulating the transformation of knowledge (knowing) into new behaviour – (doing).
So how should he or she achieve this?

Roles and responsibilities of the trainer

Like a play, the success of a training rests on the quality of the script, the staging, the acting, and the involvement of the audience. 
If any one of these four elements falls short, the play will lack impact and credibility. 
From this analogy, four roles and responsibilities arise.

1. Trainer-playwright: content creation (or adaptation)
2. Trainer-director: production and staging
3. Trainer-actor: animation of the lines
4. Trainer-interactor: Interaction with the audience

The trainer-playwright: in developing content – or ‘script’, a trainer most often draws upon existing scenarios and modules. Objectives, content, and delivery must seamlessly interrelate - reviews may be needed.
The trainer decides which elements to juxtapose, remove, shorten or add, ensuring a natural flow, perhaps judiciously replacing or reinforcing modules by audio-video resources or e-learning.
Finally, programme material is created or adapted. In all cases, participants’ existing strengths should be built upon, options for improvement discovered. Krauthammer recommend a three-phased design
- uniting tools, models, practical exercises and role plays.

The trainer-producer: a producer uses costumes, lighting and movement. The trainer alternates between teaching techniques – theory and practice, didactic and interactive transmission. As props, he or she can modulate between flipchart, tablet PC and beamer slides, supported by illustrations, diagrams and examples – and knowing the limits of each. Customised and function-specific training demands exercises and cases with which the audience can identify – whilst preserving the core messages. (The Krauthammer ‘train the trainer’ programme proposes over 30 production and staging techniques).
A good trainer-producer skilfully ensures that the training is supported by these resources, rather than vice versa, continually emphasising the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’.

The trainer-actor: to meet expectations, yet remain flexible and authoritative, the trainer‘learns the lines well’ understanding their context and intention. This is key for subtle concepts which s/he must build from the floor up, step by step, with an audience
liable to question or divert from the flow – and from the trainer’s concentration. The trainer masters his or her voice, its flow and intonation, adding dramatisation, gestures – creating dynamism without the pitfall of over-dramatisation. (A skilful trainer-actor can read the phone directory in an exciting way!).

The trainer-interactor: The trainer compassionately engages, confronts and challenges, considering the ‘audience’ as paid-up cast members, asking; ‘how can I productively ensure all are participating – and interacting? How can I handle questions, objections, troublemakers? How can I expertly use questions? When should the participants NOT be involved?

3 check questions before training

Before training, check questions related to three ‘filters’ concerning meaning, willingness, and ability must be answered by manager/coach, by participant and, if the intervention is large-scale, by all stakeholders.

- Meaning.

• ‘Do I know and understand the aim of this?’
  As in the case of a GPS system, an aim requires a point of departure. Most difficult to evaluate is behavioural competence. Many tools can help here (see ‘Evaluation’ for three examples)

- Willingness.

• ‘Do we really want this to work?...’
• ‘…do we value the benefits?’
  Supporting ‘wanting’ is also ‘enjoyment’. Training should be an inspiring co-production!

- Ability.

• ‘Can we do it?...’
• ‘…do we have all the means?’
• Are manager/coaches truly available to give critical support?
• And finally the trainee asks: ‘Am I able to change?’

3 'non-negotiables' steps to ensure the success of a training

Step 1

Raise participants’ selfawareness regarding their work.
Using confrontational role plays and personal feedback, identify specific behaviours to focus upon.
Formal evaluation tools can support this in a neutral and objective way.

Step 2

Get participants to practice in their work environment.
3 to 5 weeks between training modules are essential to allow participants to fully integrate learning, new attitudes and behaviours.

Step 3

Ask participants to reflect upon learning, share achievements and identify obstacles to further learning.
This is the basis for a new action plan, focussing the participant on new outcomes.

More detail about these 3 steps here

Blended learning

Reinforcing a training programme with evaluation mechanisms, coaching, and e-learning, in the form of ‘blended learning’ is increasingly seen by practitioners as intensifying impact.

Evaluation.

Identifying a point of departure, mapping the strong points of behaviour and points for improvement helps core stakeholders focus attention, identify gains and take remedial action.
361° analysis is recommended and offered by Krauthammer.
Furthermore, ‘4LS evaluation’ benchmarks the observable behaviour of training participants in terms of 64 management and leadership competencies.
Each is declined into 4 descriptions according to 4 levels of functionality – ‘disqualifying’, ‘penalising’, ‘operable’ and ‘exemplary’.
Finally the Krauthammer assessment centre, (English, French and Dutch), is a live observation platform conducted at Krauthammer premises, using situational scenarios.

Coaching.

Krauthammer defines coaching – (specifically referring to observable behaviour) - as ‘personalised guidance, usually face-to-face’.
The objective - to boost personal performance and growth.
A ‘no escape’ relationship is installed with a guide who diligently confronts, stimulates, irritates and challenges.
The priority - to build on strengths and create meaningful results.
Mounting evidence suggests that training blended with coaching delivers higher impact.
Read more about coaching...

E-modules.

“For behavioural training, E-modules are interesting in three ways,” says Thijs Westerkamp, Head of ‘Web-Lab’ at Krauthammer (e-learning, online surveys, and other web applications).
“Firstly, in preparing participants for classroom learning. Secondly, in facilitating distance learning. Thirdly, in extending the learning experience and attitude."

With CrossKnowledge we are automating knowledge-driven, conceptual material that we can integrate into training. And e-learning has limits.
Interacting with others, being observed and confronted demands live experience.
For example, e-learning can teach a manager the importance of performance management and its technical steps. (Target setting, evolution sessions, harvesting, punishment, reward). Yet managers need ‘live’ training on the behavioural approach to conducting an evolution session.
Knowing the theory doesn’t turn a manager into a coach, or help you to actually do the job.