Maybe I’m just as guilty?

Work life is busy. It’s quite simple… overflowing inboxes, uncontrollable ‘to do’ lists and immediate client demands at any time given the digital world we now operate in. Couple that with juggling a team and delivering motivational, inspirational leadership and I’m always amazed at how much partnerships are prepared to cut back on leadership skills training.

Back in the early ‘80s when I started my professional career, I fondly remember a variety of ‘soft skill’ courses, typically held in a grand old property somewhere in the country which lasted all week! These programmes afforded me the time and space to think, reflect and, importantly, practice the new skills that I was learning. And indeed, the skills I learnt from many of these experiential sessions have stayed with me until the current day.

Forward wind 30 years and where are we now? For soft skills training, I think we’ve reached an era of ‘lunch and learn’ – very short sessions crammed with theory but devoid of practice and reflection time… the most valuable element that makes it all ‘stick’. A professional service firm recently came to us for help because they were losing key staff, citing that the partners were not engaging with them. We put together a leadership development programme that consisted of two half days, followed by quarterly follow-up in action learning sets. We were successful in securing the project, but the client pared it back to one two-hour session without any follow-up.IP-blog_asset1

Why? We know that the most fundamental element of any training or coaching is practice. For learning to stick, it must be practised and embodied in a short time after the programme, otherwise it will be lost forever (see Kolb learning cycle).

Yet, despite PSFs making a significant investment in programmes for its partners, the practice element has virtually disappeared. Recently I was working with a coachee following a programme in response to some key behavioural changes the PSF required to meet business needs. I asked the coachee about the skills taught as they were relevant to the session I was holding with them and their response: “Yes, I went on the programme about three months ago, but I never used the skills and now I can’t remember anything about it”. I later recounted my tail to the programme provider and they told me that it should have been a two-day course, but the client only had budget for one day. They kept the theory and content and dropped the practice, with the net result that the firm’s investment is unlikely to achieve the required results.

So, if I deliver a shortened programme, am I guilty of colluding in an approach that’s unlikely to get the outcomes required? It depends. We can’t force clients into situations they aren’t prepared to embrace or pay for. What we can do is be realistic and honest, share what we believe the anticipated outcomes will be and put together the best short session possible for the attendees. My challenge is this: what’s the biggest waste of money? The week-long courses of old where lessons are still remembered 30 years later, or short-term learning that can’t be remembered three months on?

I’m not suggesting a return to the “good old days” of long residential programmes. However, by simply delivering short sessions without any follow-up such as coaching or action learning sets, we must question how valuable this training spend is?

And now I have a dilemma. At what point do we push back and say “I’m sorry, either we do this properly to ensure that we meet the business needs, or we don’t do it at all!”?

Posted in: Executive coaching, Leadership, Performance