No one ever says it out loud, but we all know it's true: most training seminars on their own are pretty much useless. You might be shocked to hear that coming from a company focused on talent development, but how many times have you seen people attend training but then never put what they "learned" into practice to improve their work? It happens far too often. Companies bring in training in hopes of effecting culture change, and they are routinely disappointed.
There are two necessary elements to making learning stick and positively changing behaviors for the long run: practice with feedback, and expectation-setting. Sadly, these essential aspects of culture change are frequently ignored.
First, training seminars should always be accompanied by exercises, and even better, putting the new skills to use in real-world situations under the guidance of a mentor or coach. To reinforce learning, students must synthesize using the new skills - but practice without feedback is a recipe for developing (and reinforcing) bad habits. Practice under the direction of an expert is essential to mastery. (In a related post back on Sept. 12th, we elaborated on the quote "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." (which, incidentally, we misattributed to Confucius -- in fact, the quote is from a different Chinese philosopher, Xunzi, and a more faithful translation is "Those who heard of something know better than those who never heard of it. Those who have seen it know better than those who only heard of it. And those who've practiced know better than those who saw it.". Thanks to our friend @Guanshi Li for the correction.))
Second, management plays an essential role in embedding learning from training into regular practice. Managers must become familiar with the skills and tools being taught, and then consistently ask for evidence of their use for the months and years following the training event. Fail to do this and you’ve wasted your training budget. Until the best practice taught at the training becomes the standard practice used day-in-day-out, you won’t see a penny of ROI from your training expense.
At CÆDENCE, facilitating your success is our only job. We work hands-on with your team to help you tackle your toughest project management, new product development, issue resolution, and quality challenges. We also want to ensure your problems don't recur – we develop teams and systems using skills workshops combined with expert mentoring to accelerate your team’s performance to excellence. We partner with your management team and provide the tools and support required to help them engrain skills into the company culture.