Is your training relevant?

Summary:  In order for training to be relevant to your employees they must understand the big picture and fit in with their personal motivation.

Here in my neck of the woods, school has started. The annual ritual of buying new clothes, shoes, supplies and backpacks. It is also the time where kids are either dreading or looking foward to seeing teachers, classmates and learning more.  This got me thinking…what do school and business share?  My first reaction was school gets people ready to enter the workforce – well if you have hired recent gradutes, you sometimes wonder.

In the bigger picture there is a commonality – skills preparation.  School teaches students to read, write, do math, understand science, and how all this applies to the world around them.  In business we should also be focusing on the skills of our employees.

While most employees (like students) don’t always look forward to training – it is up to us to make it relevant.  For example:  remember learning algebra and thinking “I will never use this”. In business, I like to remind people that the algebra class they hated has come back to haunt them as excel.

When we are teaching/coaching our people it is important to make it relevant at that time (and not like the example above several years later).  How do you do this?

• Start with the big picture
• Drill down on the details
• Take it step by step
• Ensure understanding before moving on
• Return to the big picture

It’s important you explain the overall reason for the training because without it, they may be able to do the steps – it won’t be consistent.

To really take training/coaching one step further – make it important to them. In other words, know what their motivation is for doing good work and phrase the training to match their motivation. For example: A person who wants everthing to be fair would be more interested in a training session on “The equality of customer service” than “How to be pleasant on the phone”. I know it sounds corny but you get the meaning.

In the end – make training relevant and give it meaning to your people.

Share how this has worked for you below in the comments.