The skill trainer (a.k.a. the magician)

When delivering skill trainings, especially hard skill trainings, as a trainer, I meet two types of groups. The ones with which it is a delight to work with, and then there is the one that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. So it got me thinking, what could be the organisational issue behind, as I am sure people are not deliberately sabotaging their own learning.

To be fair to those reading, this is not about hard skill trainings that one needs on day one, to be able to do their job. Like 3D software for a mechanical design engineer, or SQL for a data analyst. I mean hard skills related to quality management, project management, standardisation or development process design. Processes that are implemented to set a frame for the daily work we do.?

So let’s start with the first group. Those who are super grateful to be able to learn, to share their problems and look for already proven solutions. This group is usually consisting of employees who have spent some time struggling with that specific topic. They already have an idea of what they should do, but not quite sure of the how. They also usually bring their own problems, hoping to solve them by the end of the training. So in this case, the training is more of a mentoring process, rather than a one way information sharing. Win-win.

When talking to the “saboteur” type of group, I usually get the following answer to my questions:

— Why are you here? — My boss sent me.

— How can we make this useful to you? — No idea, I cannot imagine that this topic can be useful.

— How will you integrate this in your daily work? — No clue, I started working here 3 days ago. I don’t even know what my job is yet.

So the pattern seems to be, that the people are either in the wrong place when receiving the training, or worse, they are in the wrong position in their job. Not knowing what your daily responsibilities are, and having such a gap between what your leader thinks is your job, and what you think is your job, is far from ok. But that is a topic for another day. Going back to the training scenario, digging deeper I usually find, that participation is a tick in a skill matrix, and if there is a training, people have to participate, even if they have zero kilometers at their job. Why, you ask? Cost, of course. If there is a training, best is to fill up all spots, right? Lets’s do a quick calculation. Let’s assume a training cost is 1000€, so we have 10 spots open. That means, 100€ per person. Cheep right? Wrong! Why? Because we know, that if we don’t use in-situ learning, 75% of the training content is forgotten in less than a week. That means, that if 6 of the people were just “fillers”, you actually lost 6x75€=450€. Meaning almost half of your training budget goes up in flames.?

I know all L&D professionals and some leaders find it important, that the skill matrix is filled, but please be mindful of the employee experience. We are not (yet) living in the Matrix, so skills are not a software download that we install and we are ready to fly helicopters. Stop hoping for miracles and expect the trainer to be some sort of a magician, that will solve all organisational deficits with a training. Remember, the main reason for burnout is usually the work environment and not the work itself. Bad L&D planing and misalignment between career path and training plan is a contributing factor.

A training should be about employees learning, and not the trainer teaching! While resisting the teaching they are not only not learning, but they are also wasting precious productive time. Take only a 30€ hourly rate on a one day training, with six people you are loosing 1440€. So you are already losing 2000€, while trying to save 100€ in training costs. And we all know, how far these numbers are from the true market price. Taking this budget, you could invest it in a proper in-situ mentoring process for your key employees, while they themselves can deploy the knowledge within the organisation. Keeping the knowledge both up to date and present in their daily routines. Win-win.?

The second, even bigger problem with this type of training is the psychological strain it puts on the employees. Remember, we are talking about engineers here. If I look at an engineer from a PCM? point of view, I usually find strong Thinker or Persister personality traits. The Thinker’s psychological need is to have his work recognised and his time well structured. Now imagine he is forced to take part in a training that he doesn’t find useful for his work. Time wasted, while work is piling up. A direct stressor that will lead to a complete abandonment of all efforts to make the best of the situation. Or will just flick open his notebook and start working while the training is delivered. This is a completely understandable action, since all he is trying to do, is to somehow satisfy his psychological needs, and ease the feeling of distress. The other way this can backfire is to activate the Thinker’s “you’re ok - I am not ok” driver. This is highly likely, since we are putting new employees in overwhelming situations. Will he be happy when he is bombarded with tons of new information? No. Not as long as he cannot put it in context. He will just feel stupid, and only see how much there is that he does not know, and not how much he could learn. Unfortunately, this is the way we humans work.?

The Persister on the other hand is all about values! If he cannot fit the topic to his value system, he will not take in any new information. Especially if he feels that the processes introduced are of no value add. This usually is rooted in a job description gap to reality or worse, an unclear definition of job responsibilities. The end result here too will be deep distress, due to the apparent lack of value of the entire training.?

We should not forget, that the scope of a training should be to reduce job related stress level, and not the contrary! When we are forcing our employees to take part in trainings, instead of having them apply, we are preconditioning our employees for a training aversion. Sure there are mandatory trainings that we need to set in place, to avoid organisational mayhem, but in this case we should make sure, that the scope is understood and found to be at least halfway helpful. When as an organisation, we feel the need to outsource these problems to an external company, to avoid the responsibility, we should take some time to self-reflect. Any organisation is only as good as the people it is made of. Throwing the hot potato back and forth will not solve the problem.

While training budgets are shrinking, planing is becoming more and more critical. I find it crucially important for HR, leaders and the trainer to spend as much time as possible in defining the scope of the training, and together choose the most appropriate method for delivering targeted know-how. May that be micro-trainings, mentoring, coaching or a simple training video, that one can watch when the stress levels allow the brain to take on new information. It’s a small invest upfront, but the savings in total cost can be significant.