Unlock the Value of Your Training with Coaching

Add Coaching to your Learning & Development for ongoing results

We have all been there before. You have to attend a mandatory training for all employees regarding a change in your organization.

When I’m in these situations, I often imagine the amount of money per hour the company is paying not only for the training but in the employee wages. The hundreds of thousands of dollars roll like a slot machine hitting jackpot. The problem is, those dollars are often not producing wins but taking away value in employee engagement and productivity.

Here are four simple steps to ensure your training is not a waste and actually achieves a return on investment.

1. Communicate the Desired Results

   A learning and development trainer must determine the beliefs, knowledge and skills necessary to produce enduring change in the organization. Unless these are explicit and measurable in some way, you are going through the motions. When a trainer steps into a room, they have to be aware that there will be some cynicism. Authentic communication in the first 5-minutes will position the importance of the training – Yes, you will first have to sell the training.

   1. What is the problem – If this training isn’t going to solve anything, it’s a waste. You will engage everyone immediately if you clearly define a real problem around culture, process and results.

   2. What are the stakes? – If the training doesn’t happen what are the potential downfalls. Try to put a number on employee engagement or dollars wasted. When you can create a quotients you are well on your way to achieving results.

   3. What will the training achieve? – Often facilitators evaluate the training – this is cutting the learning short. James and Wendy Kirkpatrick define the four levels of results that need to be articulated:

      1. Level 1: Reaction – Experience: How do participants place value on the learning event?

      2. Level 2: Learning – Design Learning: What knowledge, skills and beliefs need to be adopted?

      3. Level 3: Behaviour – Critical Behaviours: What is expected from participants on the job?

      4. Level 4: Results – Organizational Mission: How will our vision and mission be enhanced? How will they be measured and supported with coaching?

   4. How will the training and its results be evaluated? – If the training is just a one off workshop without follow up and support, the return on investment is greatly diminished. Define how the company will include the knowledge and skills in coaching and performance evaluation. What are the leading indicators such as employee retention, customer service or product quality that will be tracked? What intrinsic and external rewards will apply to the training? Finally, define what the future could look like for someone who really excels in this area – This creates internal champions who can build momentum.

2. Create a Safe & Brave Environment

   For learning to be effective, it has to authentically relate to the context of the workplace. In adult learning, we recognize that the answers are not at the front of the room but in the knowledge and experiences of the participants. Inviting someone to speak out in front of the whole room is possible, you likely have a few candidates who love to hear their thoughts resonate with their colleagues. To maximize everyone’s value, use facilitation techniques to unlock teamwork and ideas. However, even the best facilitation os for nought without a safe and brave environment. Try this:

   1. Safeguard your culture and values – Ensure that your training aligns with your company’s culture and values – brainstorm how participants expect each other to share and behave by giving examples of each value should play out during the training.

   2. Create an emotionally safe place to learn – If it isn’t already explicit, you will want to survey the group for what they need for emotional safety. A good question to ask is, “How can we safely disagree and exchange different points of view today?” Give permission for participants to take a break or whatever they need to contribute their best to the group and its learning.

   3. Foster creativity and innovation – I like to break out the marshmallow challenge invented by Peter Skillman of Palm, Inc. and popularized by Tom Wujec of Autodesk. It’s a wonderful way to practice group norms and expectations for the day. Teams have 18 minutes to build the largest tower with a package of spaghetti, string, some marshmallows and tape. Surprisingly, Kindergarten students perform better than business school graduates. A quick debrief around experimentation, ideas and being willing to test and fail can set the stage for a fun day.

3. Review and Celebrate Each Participant

   Learning is actualized with what each person places value on the experience and their intention to employ it in their job. Simply debriefing and having each person share their learning with a post-it or in a sharing circle can facilitate this. The two questions I like to use are: 1) What was most helpful for you in today’s experience? 2) What will you carry forward to experiment and learn in your leadership? Sharing with others in teams and as a large group enables participants to hold each other capable.

   Finally, follow up. Often this takes the form of a survey, but pause on getting your data and first, write an email or even better – a physical letter thanking the participants for how they showed up. You can provide a learning summary from the group contributions to celebrate what was achieved in the learning. If you are a great learning designer, you might have had the time to make a little note about each participant that day. If you did that – great! Add one sentence, hand-written to show that each person was seen, heard and understood. This will go a long way in establishing a follow up relationship for coaching and checkin in on the four levels of learning design.

   Like all good communication – you’ll have a call to action. I like to reinforce the learning – After having some time after our learning, what is something from our training that you can celebrate today? If your organization has incentives or rewards, ensure your responses are captured and each person gets their free coffee or digital badge by sharing a response to this question. It ties the external motives to their intrinsic learning which will help your organization move forward.

   Bring it Home

   Facilitation techniques are essential for unlocking teamwork and ideas, but only if it establishes a safe environment to continue implementing on the job application.

   Coaching is a necessary addition to learning and development because when behaviours and skills are not picked up – it has very little to do with the training but rather that there is something in the workplace that happens. Evaluation of the learning needs to involve “critical management support after the training event” (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2010, p. 38).

   “Very little time and attention is being given to the critical on-the-job application environment for new knowledge and skills,” Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick inform, “To create maximum Return On Expectations, it is essential that learning professionals do everything possible to partner with supervisors to support on-the-job behaviours and executing the required drivers.” (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, p. 37).

   Development programs can install coaching sessions with questions to support each learning outcome to support leaders. Companies can track key learnings and adaptations their organization faces when implementing learning in actual cases. Without support, it is like giving a student one piano lesson and asking them to show up to the recital at Christmas. Good luck!

   Ongoing coaching allows for reflection, adaptation, encouragement, focus and celebrating forward momentum in Learning and Development. Add peer or internal coaching to your organizational development to build lasting change and increased capabilities.

   References

   Kirkpatrick, J.D. & Kirkpatrick, W.K. (2010). ROE’s Rising Star. T+D, 64(8), 34-38.

   “Return on expectations (ROE) is rapidly sweeping the learning and development industry. The reason is quite simple: when used properly, it never fails to show the value of training in the terms desired by key stakeholders. This is because ROE is designed and executed in partnership with the people who will determine learning’s value.”