The 1 Thing an Employee Training Won't Change

If you are an HR professional or key decision-maker, please note, "a simple training day" is not going to fix this. Yet many times, that's the choice that's made.

In my experience there are 2 main reasons why: 

1. Key leaders, decision-makers do not understand or appreciate the "human experience" in the work environment.

2. There is a disconnect between how behavior (the human experience) impacts revenue. Therefore the "cheapest" prescription is chosen without being clear on the need and the best remedy to meet it. I call that the spray and pray decision. Let's spray out a bunch of information in a "training seminar" and pray it sticks and fixes things. 

I've said in previous posts, when dealing with employee performance problems, many decision-makers want a bandaid, when surgery is what is really needed. A bandaid seems to be much cheaper... really? And by the way, this is beyond an HR problem as some like to direct it...it is overall a leadership and management problem.

Read full text here: https://www.joanncorleyspeaks.com/2016/02/the-one-thing-employee-training-cant-fix.html

The Cheapest Employee Training Ever

Focus: Employee Training, Management Success

Audio: 3 mins. 31 secs.

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2. Read along with the transcript below or print and read for later

3. Right click the MP3 FILE link  MP3 File to download and "save as" to your hard drive for continuous listening or to transfer to your mobile device.

For additional lessons use the Search Box (top left).

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Cheapest Training Ever                                                                      

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Transcript - print now

Welcome to another bite-size audio lesson on how to be a more effective manager. If you haven’t listened to the T equals F equals B audio I encourage you to do that first, as this particular bite-size lesson is a follow-up to that audio. 

As promised, I was going to give you an audio clip on the Cheapest Training You Could Ever Get for 50 Bucks. You know I had a colleague who was very frustrated with his team and very frustrated with the training within his organization and he wanted to have more of an impact on the performance of his team. First thing we talked about is shifting his attitude and feelings about training.

It’s my belief, and it’s very obvious, that the true trainers of an organization are actually the managers, not necessarily the corporate trainers. The corporate trainers in my view are the corporate educators. The day-to-day supervisors are actually the true trainers of an organization.

Well, once he accepted that responsibility then we talked about the T F B formula. That thinking impacts feelings impacts behavior. We talked about ways of influencing the thinking of his team and one way I suggested was to get them to start reading books, reading materials that directly impact their thinking. I happen to be a training partner to Rockhurst University, which I’m very grateful for, and they have these really cool, what we call “skinny” books, or 60-minute learning series. They are very thin, we call them “Starbucks Books” because you can read them over a “latte”.

I gave him a list of those books and asked him to pick a title that he though his team would be interested in reading and so he picked out the “skinny” book about goal-setting. He bought one book for each of his team members. Now ironically, those books are very inexpensive, between 10 and 12 dollars each, and so he was able to acquire five books for around 50 bucks.

He distributed the books to his team and he asked his team to take the time within the next month to read it and then asked someone to volunteer to give a book report and they would do that at the staff meeting. A month went by and they all got together in the staff meeting and several people volunteered to share what they got out of the book.

As a collective team, my friend facilitated what were all the things that they learned from reading the book and they came up with a top five list and then he asked them, okay, of the elements that you learned of the top five which one would you as a team like to put into practice over the next month or two. They all collectively identified one top learning principle from goal-setting that they all put into practice and then they tracked their performance over the next three months. Ironically, with just that little input his team’s performance went up exponentially. He was shocked!

Total cost of that training?...around 50 bucks. It ended up being the most effective training that he could ever done. And why was that? Because the thinking was influenced along with the fact that he did use what I call collaborative peer pressure to impact performance. But that’s for another audio bite-size tip. For now it’s about understanding that we do have to impact thinking to impact performance or behavior and that’s just a great and very simple example and a very cost effective example of how to improve the performance of your team.

T=F=B

Focus: Employee Training, Employee Motivation, Performance Management, Management Success

Audio duration: 4 mins. 13 secs.

1. Double click arrow to LISTEN NOW:

2. Read along with the transcript below or print and read for later.

3. Right click the MP3 FILE link MP3 File to download and "save as" to your hard drive to access off-line for continuous listening or to transfer to your mobile device for portable learning.

4. For additional lessons use the Search Box (top left).

5. Remember, the audios are loosely scripted to sound more natural.
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T=F=B

Transcript - print now

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As we continue with laying a strong foundation for being a successful and effective manager, it’s important to understand that what will help you be so is learning about you operate and in that continuing to commit to your own personal development and self management. 

Also, all the lessons included in this management training series through out the year hinges on your understanding of the concept I am now about to introduce to you.

The concept is T = F = B and I’ll explain in the context of what I call reverse management training.

It’s been my observation that in many management training programs there has been taught a reverse way of how to train, manage and develop employees. Now what do I mean by that? 

In general when most people go to a management training they go to learn how to impact, modify or develop the behavior of their team so that they can get different and hopefully better outcomes. What’s interesting about that is when you understand how the brain works and you understand human behavior, talking about and only talking about impacting behavior is actually reversed.

Here’s what we should be thinking, in fact if you have a sheet of paper I want to encourage you to write down this formula. The formula begins with the letter T, T impacts F impacts B. So it’s T as in Tom, F as in Frank, B as in Boy. So what does the formula stand for? The T stands for think, the F stands for feel and B stands for behavior. In reality, this is how we operate.

When we experience an event, the first thing that happens both on a conscious level and on a sub-conscious level is we generate thinking around that event and that thinking usually is an interpretation of the event or experience that we have. Whatever we think then generates feelings about that event and depending on our personality types, the intensity of those feelings are on a scale of 1 to 10. Then those feelings shape, influence and dictate how we behave or how we will respond to the event.

In most management training, that formula is not taught and additionally very little is taught about how to address the beginning of that formula. How many times have you been to a management training and there’s been some time really focused on how to influence the thinking of an employee. Actually that’s in a way what makes management “kinda” hard; we’re trying to work with the end of the formula rather than address the beginning. I submit to you that if we spent more time cultivating the thinking of our team members that there would be a direct impact on their performance or their behavior. 

And that brings us back to you. It’s essential that you understand this is how you work also and that’s why we will be spending the next few lessons and will continue to have lessons under the theme of The Management Mindset to help you developing thinking like a manager. That needs to be a conscious transition in order to ensure your success and competence!

Action: Use this formula as a coaching tool for yourself and your team members. With it, you’ll be able to manage your thinking and emotions to ensure the outcomes you want and to be able to identify any counterproductive activity that’s undermining what you really want to occur