Corporate culture versus startup culture, a mistake I made during my last training session.

A corporate trainer versus a startup trainer:

I worked on a development project for one of the tech startups. The first part of the project was to enhance the performance of the sales team through an upskilling training covering both soft skills and product knowledge. It took me 19 business days for planning including 1- needs analysis,

2-performance analysis

3- and training testing mocks.

I thought that what is operated above is enough to guarantee a high success rate for the upskilling training however, the opposite occurred.

let's check together what was missing and lessons learnt!

I made 5 main mistakes but since I was mindful of them after the first training session, I think it was a learning opportunity for me as a trainer and I am grateful that these mistakes added to my experience so, I am grateful by the end of the day and I always believe that the best is yet to come.

First mistake: Needs analysis versus culture of the organization:

As a corporate trainer, I have the below benefits:

• on boarding team: briefing the trainees about the training purpose and setting their expectations about the company's culture & values, how to positively participate during the training and how to send a feedback.
• Enough time for soft skills and product knowledge: the more time we have for the training, the more satisfied the trainees are with more activities, better engagement and a constructive feedback.
• A training manager explaining to the trainees how to fill the feedback form with no bias and how critical the feedback is.
• the most important item that I have as a corporate trainer is Audience. and I will explain why in abet.

As a startup trainer, I do not have the benefits mentioned above so, here is what happened:

• since there s no on boarding team, trainees were not briefed about the training purpose so, they had high expectations that immediately after a session of one hour, trainees will be able to perform better and achieve their KPIs.
• upskilling is being conducted during a business day so, upskilling training can cut only one hour or maximum two hours. this time cut is fatal for many reasons:

- The trainer will try to cover all ILOs and get done with the agenda faster than expected for time management purposes.

- since the trainer is in hurry, trainees will not feel engaged and will feel that it is a speech more than a training session so, for sure training satisfaction will be at its lower percentages.

- There is no training manager explaining to the trainees how crucial the feedback is and how to send a balanced feedback. so, the feedback of the training was biased and not accurate.

- The audience or the trainees had the training in the beginning of their shift early in the morning that is why they did not welcome the trainer and they felt overwhelmed because they are sales agents and they have a daily target that the training will affect because the upskilling is cutting one hour out of their shift.

Conclusion of the first mistake and lessons learnt:

corporate trainings are different than startup trainings. If you have a whole training & development department working on pre, mid and post training operations, that will help you as a trainer achieve the training goals including the training satisfaction survey. what I learnt, if I have a startup training project with no training department, I have to do the on boarding team pre-training tasks, the training manager post-training tasks and to request having more time allowance for trainees engagement. If I got back the needs analysis part of the planning, I could have postponed the whole training till I get a signal from the operation manager that business needs allow more time for the upskilling part. if there is no time, I could have pitched how the training is important for performance management and enhancement so that I can negotiate having more time for the training.

So, How culture of an organization is relative to the training satisfaction and success?

Training and continuous development is an essential part of the corporates culture and corporate employees are mostly familiar with upskilling trainings unlike startup employees who need a better change management strategy to educate them about the importance of trainings and what type of knowledge to expect as well.

corporate operation managers deal always with trainers and they have great performance analysis skills based on KPIs and many other factors so, they help trainers indirectly by identifying their teams needs and sending the exact required skills for performance enhancement so, having the development items and missing skills clearly communicated with the trainers eases their job.

In my next article, I am going to be sharing another training mistake and the lessons learnt. to give you a hint, it is about how I handled objections and my body language, the effect of both on the training session success.

Feel free to communicate with me if you are a trainer passed by a similar experience or in case you have another point of view that will enrich our insights. I will be more than glad to open a healthy discussion with you.

see next week with the "training & development hub" newsletter.