QUIZ: Are You "Checking the Box" or Developing Winners?

With all you've got to do each day as a leader in sports and entertainment, training can often be an afterthought, a luxury, or something only people with budgets get to do. Once you "get it done" (training your staff), you can check the box with YOUR boss and say that it's done.

But here's a simple quiz to see if checking the box is the smartest choice for you:

1. You put "Training and Incentives" in the budget each year, but you only get a small portion of what you ask for. When you have to decide between training and incentives with the dollars you have, which one usually wins?

a). Neither; I use the money for something else

b). Incentives; I want to reward my people with short-term goodies

c). I try to spread it out between the two, and frankly, there's not enough to do either effectively

d). I put as much as I can into training to help them earn their own incentives.

2. You came up the ranks from the sales side, and you love to do the training of your sales team yourself. How do you justify taking time away from your many day-to-day responsibilities as a higher-level executive?

a). Nobody questions it internally, and I don't have to ask for budget, so I just do it. It's fun, and I get a charge out of getting back to my roots

b). If I didn't do it, my people wouldn't get anything at all

c). I want to see how well my people are doing myself, and my junior managers get to see me in action and learn from my style

d). I struggle with that, but haven't found a better solution as of yet.

3. You see someone struggling on your sales team that obviously needs some help in order to justify them being around for much longer. How do you handle it?

a). I make sure their manager knows that I've seen their struggle, and delegate the job to them to either shore up their game or make a difficult decision

b). I take them under my wing myself and see if we can come up with a game plan to get them on track

c). I give them one of my many sales books from the shelf and encourage them to read a specific portion of it, and report back to me about how they'll incorporate what they learned into their sales day

d). Beyond one-on-one's with their immediate supervisor, I don't have a ready resource available that would help.

4. Your young manager is trying to maintain control of their sales team. It's their first leadership role, and they're having difficulty leading those who were their friends just a few months ago. What's your course of action?

a). Create a development plan and find time on my calendar to meet with them one-on-one each week to help them to grow into the position

b). Take over the sales team, let the young leader watch and emulate what I do, and then give them the reins once again a few months later

c). Talk to the entire sales team (without the leader in the room) and read them the riot act about who's in charge and how they should respect their leader

d). I've been watching this unfold from afar, thinking the problem will just go away over time, and it's not happening.

5. People are leaving your organization faster than you can replace them. It's draining you and the company, and you feel that no one is being honest in saying why they're leaving. What's the best next step?

a). Have someone neutral who they trusted at the company (i.e., receptionist) reach out to them to get the REAL story of why they left

b). Pay the next crop of people more money to keep them from leaving too soon

c). Start looking for a new job myself, just in case someone starts pointing a finger at me being the root cause of it all

d). Consider the kinds of things that people want in their roles today, such as growth and development opportunities, and choose to invest in those things for both new and current staff (and use the development piece as a recruitment tool).

If you answered (D) to any of the above, you have hope. Training isn't a one-time "check-the-box" thing, but an all-the-time, keep-on-rising constant in a growing, thriving organization. Effective integrated learning programs have been proven to reduce turnover, improve the appeal of a job opportunity, boost company pride, increase performance, and deliver measurable ROI.

You may not have an enormous budget for training. Fortunately, you don't need a big budget when you work with us. However you choose to improve, whether it's with ISBI 360 or someone else, make the conscious choice to develop winners -- and be careful not to burn yourself out in the process. Just because you CAN do it yourself doesn't mean that you SHOULD.

--?Bill Guertin?is Chief Learning Officer of?ISBI 360,?a training, sales and recruitment company that increases revenue and results for the business side of sports & entertainment. Reach out to Bill at?[email protected], or set a time to talk with him one-on-one at?www.calendly.com/bill-isbi360.