The Most Important Element Managers Forget When Training Employees

“Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.” 

– Peter Drucker

Recently, I’ve been working with a group in the LA area that wanted to reassess the way they train their employees, particularly their management team. I asked what types of training do they give their employees and the response was “we train them on what they are supposed to do.” I asked to see any materials that they use, any slides, modules or outline but none was present. I also asked the organization if they believe their trainings were effective and they responded with mixed results. I finally asked why they felt they needed additional training from me. The company just thought more training meant more sales.

Depending on where you work, there might be a negative or positive feeling when you hear the word “training” or “company training.” For some companies the word “training” is non-existent. Many times, we are asked to train other people either because we’ve done a good job at work or we might be seen as an expert within our company. Training is not easy though (Read Still Re-Training Your Employees? Is It A People Problem Or A TrainingProblem?). There are different learning styles the trainees have and different methods of teaching from the facilitator. There is one element though that most companies or managers forget to consider when training their employees.

What are your objectives?

Most trainers are not trained to train. If you are put in a position to train and have no training experience (or even if you do) you should focus on this one key area: the objectives of your training. Brainstorming the objectives will force you to think about what you’re trying to get out of your own training. These are some questions you should be asking yourself:

What should the trainee(s) be able to do, say, make, create, develop, use or see after the trainee(s) is done with my training?

Have you ever wondered why most trainings begin with the objectives and the objectives typically begin with “by the end of this training you will…?” Put some thought into the things you want to accomplish after the trainee(s) walk out of your training at the end.

Is your training content aligned to your objectives?

Telling someone what to do is not a training. Showing someone what to do is not a training either. Everything you do in a training must be correlated with your objectives. Your goal as a trainer is to meet those objectives and have the trainee(s) accomplish those objectives as well

How many objectives do you have?

If you develop a training program for your staff and have 15 objectives for your training, do you think the training will be a long training or a short training? Most likely it will be a long training and with long trainings people forget most of the content. Stick to 5 objectives but heavily focus on mastering those objectives. If you need to cover more objectives then you should consider splitting the training module so that it is not one long training.

If you want to put your brain to work and implement some of these ideas, think about training a group of people to make a sandwich. If your goal is to make every single trainee make the exact sandwich every single time, what objectives would you develop? How can you make your content correlate with your objectives? Will your objectives include the understanding of ingredients, speed, and quality control? Focus on your objectives and you will have more consistent results with your staff. 

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way. 

3 Steps To Creating Your Own ‘Mini-Me’ At Work

"Mini-Me, if anything should happen to you, I don't know what I would do...I'd probably move on, get another replica but there would be a 10 minute period there where I would just be inconsolable."

- Dr. Evil 

I remember the first time I watched the Austin Powers movie. It was a hilarious, original film with extremely memorable quotes and characters. If you were to ask me to recite quotes from the movie, I would butcher the phrases, but there was one character that stood out to me above all – Mini-Me.

Mini-Me is supposed to be a smaller replica of the movie’s villain, Dr. Evil. Mini-Me acts, talks and moves like Dr. Evil. He’s supposed to be Dr. Evil’s mini-clone. Do you ever wish you could split yourself in half or that you could clone yourself at work? Perhaps you feel you don’t have as many hours in a day to complete your work. Or you might feel like you have too many projects on your lap. Wouldn’t you want a Mini-You? Here are three steps to guide you on creating your own Mini-Me.

Identify Your Mini-Me

The true reason why we would want to split ourselves in half is because we want someone to do the work exactly as we would do it. We don’t believe there is anyone else out there who could do a better job so we would need another “me” to execute. In order to build your Mini-Me, you need to first identify someone that you can take under your wing who is as good (or better) than you. Are you managing someone who is extremely talented? Is there anyone that you trust or you can depend on? Who can become your Mini-Me? In my opinion, there is one characteristic I would look in a person above any other characteristics: is the person teachable and coachable? You might have the smartest, talented, competent person in your department, but if that person is not coachable, you will struggle.

Learn How To Teach

You might have a person you identified as talented and teachable, but if you don’t know how to coach, train or teach that person properly, you will have difficulty building that person up to your standards. Most people want to create a Mini-Me, but they don’t know how to properly teach their Mini-Me. Telling someone how to do an expense report is not teaching. Telling someone to figure out how to do your job is not teaching. Although you might have those shining stars that could probably figure things out on their own, if you truly want to have things done just the way you would do them, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves. You’ll have to do a better job in training and showing the way so that your Mini-Me understands what you look at, what you see as perfection and what is the bar.

Invest Time In Your Mini-Me

Investing time in others is probably the most difficult part of any manager’s role. It’s difficult because many managers can’t seem to find the time to invest in others. However, the secret to developing a successful Mini-Me, is the prioritization of the time you spend with your Mini-Me. You want to spend more of your time teaching, training, coaching, observing, correcting, giving feedback to your Mini-Me, and less time doing tasks that won’t contribute to the development of your Mini-Me. Eventually, you want your Mini-Me to be able to do those tasks that keep you from spending time with him/her.

Perhaps your Mini-Me won’t walk like you, talk like you or act like you, but at least he/she will do the work exactly as you would. Then, if you’re successful at building your first Mini-Me, you might end up having multiple Mini-Yous.

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.