To Train Or Not To Train?

I was talking recently with a client’s General Manager about the skill sets which that company’s middle management possessed.

The General Manager was unhappy with some of the performance of his managers and was at the point where he felt some wholesale changes were needed.

This led me to start questioning the extent to which the underperforming managers had received any formal management training.

I am a big fan of promoting from within however it is an entirely different skill set to operate as the manager of a department as opposed to simply a highly performing member of that same department.

Unless we provide training for that new skill set then we can hardly expect performance at that new skill set level.

A clean broom sweeps clean

The general manager was thinking that a clean broom may have been the answer.

He was asking me what I thought about replacing the underperforming team members.

Again, I had to question the extent to which they had received training.

When we went through the process and we looked at what was going to be involved by way of investment in time, resources and money in developing training programs for required skills, it prompted the General Manager to pose the question “What if I spend all this time and money and they leave?”

Obviously, he was concerned that the next employer would then receive the benefit of all of the time and money he had put into training these particular team members.

My answer to that was swift but simple and I said to him “I understand your concern that you may put in all this effort and money and they may leave but what if you don’t put in all this effort and they stay?”

This is a dilemma which as employers we will all face at some stage in the operation of our business.

If you have a team member performing poorly the first question you need to ask is “Am I able to improve their performance with training?”

Remember, it may seem easier to simply replace that team member but if the circumstances and the processes within your business remain the same then your run the very real risk that you may simply be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

In other words, it’s a most ineffectual solution to the presenting problem.

There are some aspects which of course can’t be trained

Personality traits which people possess is not something that you can easily train someone out of unless it is a personality trait that they are unhappy with themselves.  But in most cases poor performance comes from a lack of knowledge and or a lack of confidence rather than any ingrained longstanding personality trait.

If you have team members who are not performing to the standard you require then ask yourself whether or not they have ever actually been shown what is required of them with respect to the totality of their role.

Let’s look at a very simple example

If you are in a retail environment and you have somebody in a customer service role then many retail environments will train people on how to operate the cash register, how to process EFTPOS payments and maybe some limited training on product knowledge in relation to stock but what about how to actually make a customer feel welcome and valued?

What about how to deal with a customer who is uncertain as to what they are looking for?  Or a customer who is simply having a bad day or perhaps a customer who is for whatever reason unhappy?

If we don’t present training on the totality of the role then were really are selling ourselves short, we’re selling our team members short and equally importantly we are selling our customers short.

Because in essence what we are saying is that they are not important enough to us that we would be prepared to spend time, resources and money in making sure the people that they deal with in our business are as efficient and effective as they possible can be.

It is a part of basic human psychology to seek fulfilment in our lives

One of the greatest assets that you can give your team members is to afford them the opportunity to achieve fulfilment in their workplace.

Research from all over the world shows that employees are far more likely to stay committed to a business, to their role and to developing their own skills if the job they are doing affords them an opportunity to seek fulfilment.

Fulfilment comes with having a high level of confidence and it’s difficult for your team to be confident about what they are doing if they haven’t been given all of the skills they need to properly perform their job.