How to Make Training Work

As a training professional for over 20 years, I am always disheartened to hear people

say that they have invested heavily in training their employees and yet seen no significant benefit. There is a very good reason why traditional training fails to deliver sustainable positive change.To explain why this is I am borrowing the model of logical levels from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This model assumes that human processes can be described along a ladder of categories or levels that influence each other. The levels, from low to high, are:- Environment (where, when and with whom you do something)

- Behaviour (what you do in a given environment)

- Skills (how you do what you do)

- Beliefs and values (why you do what you do)

- Identity (who you are when you do what you do or your self-perception)Each of the levels influences each other in both directions, but a change on a higher level will have a greater impact on the lower levels than vice versa.For example, learning a new skill, e.g. learning a language, might impact upon my beliefs about another country and its people but it certainly changes my behaviour as I use this new skill to speak to people in their country, which is a change of environment.However if, for whatever reason, I adopt a belief that as an adult I actually do have the capacity to learn a new language the effects for the lower levels of skills and behaviours are incredibly positive.Most traditional training is aimed at equipping people with new behaviours and skills that they take back to their workplace environment and immediately implement in order to improve their level of performance.However, what if the employee in question does not believe that they will be able to implement the learning from the training?For example, what would happen if the employee believed that the culture of the organisation or team in which they worked was that ?training is for wimps?? Or, what if the employee?s line manager was resistant to change and made their views known? Both these situations are common in organisations.The answer is that no change would happen as the belief that change wasn?t possible would influence the lower levels of skills and behaviour. It might be that the employee believes that they could change but actually they do not value using that new skill or behaviour. In other words they are not motivated to change.Ultimately, the employee?s sense of their own identity might prevent them from changing.For example, the person in question might perceive themselves to be a technician in a motor repair centre. Promotion, while welcome financially, might not work if at identity level they cannot see themselves as anything but a technician.The message here is that unless training and development initiatives work at all the levels, it is unlikely that the organisation will experience the sustained improvement in performance that they are seeking.

How to Make Training Work

By: Ian Henderson

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