The People Formula: part 11 – learning and development

There are easier and more effective ways to develop your people, than train them in a classroom setting, says Jane Sunley

Learning and development is a huge and ambiguous subject; there are countless methods for the transfer of knowledge and skills. It follows, therefore, that many organisations spend their HR budget in those areas.

And, of course, acquiring the ‘tools to do the job’ is  important. However, I believe that if you develop the right attitudes and behaviours, people will  acquire the skills they need or come to you and ask for them.

Most of the traditional methods of knowledge/ skills transfer were developed pre-internet. While no doubt some of this stuff still rings true (and/or has been adapted to meet current needs) there are easier ways to gain it than to sit in a classroom.

Millennials and learning

Millennials:

• don’t want to sit in a classroom

• want you to tell them what you expect of them and how their progress will be measured

• want to know what knowledge they’ll need to deliver – then they’ll go off and acquire it

• want coaching and mentoring as and when they need it

• expect to use technology as a first port of call

• love feedback and are open to finding out how they can ‘do it better’

• like simple, clear information and don’t have patience to wade through swathes of information to find what they need

• are used to visuals – stuff they can access on their phone while waiting for the bus.

Non-millennials generally like simple, clear visuals too. If people are highly engaged in their work,  they’re unlikely to want to take significant amounts of time out unless the experience is:

• fantastic

• life-changing

• something they couldn’t acquire just as easily on their phone

There are various statistics to show how little people actually retain from classroom training. This will obviously depend on the circumstances, though will be significantly increased by the facilitator using a skilled approach to involve the learner, for example embedding the learning by working through a practical business problem together. One study concluded that people forgot as little as 0%  of what they had been taught and remembered as much as 94%!

So if you’re going down the classroom route – make it the very best quality possible. One-to-group development still has a role to play; for example for some leadership development or for specific subjects such as conflict management – where participants can learn from one another as well as the expert facilitator. It’s vital, though, that learning is participant-led. This means that the facilitator is interacting with the learners at the start of the session or beforehand to find out a number of things about the topic they’ll be tackling.

A good format for kicking off a session

Discuss:

• what group members’ experiences are

• what they know about this subject already

• how they’d rate their competence

• how it works for them within their role

• what they’d like to improve
  
• any specific examples they’d like to cover.

The subsequent session can then draw upon:

• the facilitator’s own relevant knowledge of the subject

• the knowledge and experiences of the group

• current business issues that need to be fixed.

Putting people together will provide a stimulating  and interactive session, which will allow them to see, hear and experience their learning.

It might be that you can reduce the amount of formal classroom L&D, reinvesting some (or all) of the savings in ensuring people’s behaviours, attitudes and habits are aligned with your culture. And setting up some of the lower-cost, no-cost ways to provide development. As a result, you won’t have such a hard time attempting to measure the ROI on your budget.

If you don’t have a budget, look at some of the low-cost, no-cost resources, taking a little time out to structure how you and your people could use them to best effect.

Getting learning materials and formats right will partly be down to good communication and knowing where to go to find the information they need ‘just in time’.

Herein lies a challenge.

If you Google ‘how to…’ there will be many different opinions and ways of doing things – who knows which is the best fit for your organisation? People could become very confused by all the options; one person could follow one approach, another something else entirely. So it makes sense to have a central resource of ‘approved’ company methods, perhaps via a cool internal ‘wiki’ type resource  that stores information in  a variety of forms for people to access easily, as and when they need to.

Attitude

So much for skills, the really challenging part is attitude. Of course, if you hire for attitude and then develop the skills, that is far easier than trying to reprogramme someone’s attitude.

Attitude is absolutely the responsibility of the individual. Make this clear at interview stage and again during induction. People need to be very clear that:

• you want them to be happy with you and do well

• if at any time they start to feel negative, or something is preventing them from fulfilling their commitment to you, they must raise it immediately so they can get help to resolve it as soon as possible

• you expect positive, emotionally intelligent behaviours (which, in any case, you should be identifying at selection stage).

Of course, people don’t always feel they can do this, so leaders need to listen to ‘gut feel’ to pick up on any unresolved conflict and/or negative behaviours.

Sometimes, leaders choose to ignore negative body language because they want to avoid conflict. In this case, work with them to understand that some conflict is healthy and show them how to deal with it. It’s a key skill in this uncertain world. This is where assertiveness, support and empathy come in, as well as believing that people are basically good and want to do well.

Skills and knowledge

You’ll be covering the basics during the induction period. This might be achieved through one-to-one work with a colleague or by more formal means.

The important thing is to avoid ‘sheep-dipping’ people through the same skills-based learning. Find out what they know and fill in the gaps. By auditing skills against the requirements of the role, individual development plans can be created for each individual. Then it must become their responsibility to drive and complete the plan. This is very important. Technology is a great help in enabling everyone to keep track.

You’ll need to make sure resources are available. People learn in different ways, therefore learning plans have to be different. If they are attending classroom sessions, there will need to be a mix of learning styles provided. If they are learning on an individual basis, the great thing is that you can vary the ways in which they learn. Here are some options – as you will see, many of these are ‘low cost’, or ’no cost’ and may therefore, as mentioned previously, be preferable to traditional learning and development programmes when it comes to skills transfer:

• reading books and journals (in-house learning library, virtual or otherwise)

• intranet or internal ‘wiki’

• textbooks and technical guides

• internet search – there’s loads of free stuff out there

• learning groups

• podcasts

• webinars

• online learning (though traditional elearning is in decline with low take-up)

• distance learning

• in-house guides and other learning resources

• professional factsheets

• job swaps

• secondments

• work shadowing

• projects

• experiences such as competitor visit

• interviewing colleagues

• coaching

• mentoring (a fantastic and definitely under- exploited way to learn).

Whatever the delivery method, learning should be:

• appropriate for the individual

• appropriate for the role

• planned

• discussed beforehand to agree goals and outcomes

• well executed

• reviewed and outcomes checked both after the learning and again later to track the business benefit.

The art of mentoring

Mentoring is nothing new. To keep things simple, mentoring is where one person with more experience, knowledge or specialist expertise guides another. It is a wonderful, largely untapped, resource for learning and passing on all sorts of good stuff.

It’s not so much about occasional advice, but a relationship, which builds over time (either ongoing or for a set period). Ideally, both parties will learn from each other. It is different form coaching. A coach is normally a paid professional, whereas a mentor is usually free. A coach works with an individual or group to identify a specific goal or goals and frames the discussion so as to identify how these goals can be reached. The coach will not necessarily have relevant, specific knowledge and experience.

It does make complete sense to equip your leaders, future or otherwise, with good coaching  skills.

People might use different mentors at different times. For example, when starting in a new role, they might have a buddy mentor to help them settle in and learn the ropes. Or someone on a fast-track leadership programme might be mentored by a senior leader.

The important thing is to figure out how mentoring will work in your organisation. You might even invest in some clever software to help you manage it.

The 10 top tips for mentors

1. Only commit to the  responsibility  of becoming a mentor if you are serious about it.
2. Build rapport towards a confidential relationship in which trust is key.
3. Do what you say you will, never over-promise and always follow up.
4. Believe in your mentee.
5. Ask great questions – and allow people to ask you ‘stupid’ ones.
6. Listen well.
7. Be patient and kind.
8. Be a role model, always.
9. You might not have all the answers, so work through the options.
10. Remember your mentee is not you and times change; there’s more than one way to do something.

I find the mentor often learns as much from the mentee as the reverse. This is very desirable and equitable arrangement and is why there must be a trusting, equal and respectful relationship.