Mitchell Phoenix - Leadership and Management Training

How to Choose a Leadership and Management Development Provider

Part 3 - Behavioural Change

What Results will Providers Operating at this Level Provide?

The results of behavioural change can include: process improvements, bottom line contribution, increased levels of motivation, enhanced reputation, more effective use of time, higher levels of influence, greater creativity, stronger decision making, and better sales results.

“What happens when trainees leave the classroom and return to their jobs? How much transfer of knowledge, skills and attitudes occurs?”  Kirkpatrick

This is the reason why most learning and development initiatives are undertaken – to change behaviour in the workplace. But surprisingly it is only once we reach this third level that we encounter any deliberate attempt to facilitate the transfer of what has happened in the seminar room back into the real world. 

Clues that providers operate on this level:

• Testimonials  focus on the delegate rather than the training
• Testimonials focus on how delegates applied the material at work and what the result was
• Provider is happy to cite individual examples of how delegates approached workplace challenges differently as a result of attending a program
• Testimonials from MDs and senior executives are evident, which talk about how the course benefitted them in their work
• Line manager support of programs is a routine part of any initiative
• Content of programs is robust and directly useful to delegates
• Structure of the training is a day a month over 5 or 6 months, allowing time for behavioural change to take place
• Provider uses full time employees, rather than trainers hired on a day by day basis 

How easy is it to create behavioural change? Kirkpatrick identifies a number of challenges:

1. An opportunity to do something different may not present itself to the delegate
2. The person might not take that opportunity when it does present itself
3. They might change their behaviour but not feel sufficiently rewarded for doing so to make this new behaviour a permanent feature of their style, and go back to old ways of doing things

Click here to read what is required to overcome these obstacles.

How to Choose a Leadership and Management Development Provider - Part 2

Last week we explored training providers which deliver at Level 1 - Favourable Reaction. This week we focus on providers who deliver Learning.

2. Learning

What are the results reported by providers at this level?

1. A needs assessment is carried out, where delegates are tested to find out what they already know and don’t know. Training is delivered, and delegates are retested on what they now know. The result is shown in the difference between what they know now compared to what they knew before.

2. A certificate is often awarded to show that delegates now know more than they knew before. Where the certificate is deemed to be a useful addition to the delegate’s CV (eg an MBA), it is often the securing of this certificate that is held to be the most important result of the training programme.

Training that is focused predominantly on learning varies widely, from an MBA at a prominent business school to a one day Personality Type session run in a kitchen. What is learned can range from the latest, most complex process improvement models to the fact that one member of the department is less detail-oriented than another.

Clues that providers operate at this level:

• Testimonials focus on how much the trainer knows, on what the delegate now knows, or on all the useful tips and tricks the delegate picked up
• Promotion focuses on participants’ intentions to put what they learned into practice, rather than what they did differently back in the workplace
• Marketing focuses on the heritage / prestige of the institution
• Advertising will focus on how programmes kick-started careers through contacts made on programs, or once delegates were able to put the qualification on their CV

Why are the types of offerings described above only listed as the second in a hierarchy of four types of training? Why would a learning and development manager look for a programme that delivers anything more than learning? Leadership and management training which focuses primarily on learning often does not deliver development.  

How can this be? Consider these two questions:

1. “If a change is going to be unpopular with your subordinates, you should proceed slowly to gain acceptance.” Agree / Disagree

2. “If you are promoted to a management job, you should make it different than it was under your predecessor.” Agree / Disagree

What would you answer? Click to find out how these questions point to the gap between learning and development

Last month we put forward the idea that Leadership and Management Development Providers will create results at one of four levels:

1. Favourable Reaction
2. Learning
3. Short Term Behavioural Change
4. Long Term Behavioural Change

(Read more about this here)

How can you quickly discern at which of these four levels a potential provider will deliver? After all, as one of our clients famously said, “everyone out there will tell you they can do everything, but they can’t.”

1. Favourable Reaction

Clues that training companies primarily operate at Level 1 include:

• Testimonials focus on the trainer – how much fun, how inspirational, how dynamic, how interesting he/she was
• Little concrete evidence of results in the workplace – the result is that people attended the training and were not upset or bored by it 
• Training often woven into other fun activities, such as actors’ games, cooking, assault courses
• Business promotion reflects testimonials: people have a good time – all course days rated good to excellent, etc.
• Companies use associates – the key skill required is to be able to hold the interest of a group of executives for a day, or two days. Full time employees with deep knowledge of in-house content and approach are not required; in this case, associates hired on a daily rate will be able to fulfil the brief.

Click for a fuller discussion of Favourable Reaction as a Result of Leadership and Management Training

If you missed it, "Decisive Leadership - Effective Decision Making for Management Accountants" was published in September's edition of CIMA's Financial Management magazine.

This is a step by step action plan for Management Accountants who want to exert a stronger influence on their business in the next 3 months.

Click to read Decisive Leadership for Management Accountants

Over 20 years of client work, Mitchell Phoenix' approach has been constantly refined in the pursuit of a single goal: the creation of results in the client's business. This principle is the foundation on which our programs are built, and it is in the light of this principle that all other decisions about course content and structure are taken. 

But once the overarching purpose is established, what other principles are invoked to ensure every course produces real, practical results? Click to read how we build leadership and management training.

GOVERNING CHANGE DATES

Structure: Six full day seminars, one day each month for six months

Seminar 1 Wednesday 25 January, 2012
Seminar 2 Wednesday 29 February, 2012
Seminar 3 Wednesday 28 March, 2012
Seminar 4 Wednesday 25 April, 2012
Seminar 5 Wednesday 23 May, 2012
Seminar 6 Wednesday 20 June, 2012



Principal Focus: Leading, directing and mobilizing staff

Key themes:

Seminar One - Key and Fundamental Principles of Management
Seminar Two - Improving the Contribution of Staff and Others
Seminar Three - Leadership in Management
Seminar Four - Improving the Quality of Leadership Influence
Seminar Five - Dominating Change
Seminar Six - Managing into the Future

Course fees: £3650.00 exc VAT

Who will benefit? The Managers of Managers (Senior Level)

"Governing Change" is for managers and management teams who wish to capitalize on their experience and advance their leadership and management abilities. The focus is on the critical area of high quality communication and the management of relationships which take up a substantial part of every manager's time.

Click here to make a booking on this program

What is covered on this course? Click here for course outline

What results do delegates create when attending this course? Click here for sample results

Here is an example of real ROI:

Communicating a Challenging Decision and Retaining Commitment

A manager had to run a difficult bonus review meeting with one of her direct reports. Under previous arrangements, put in place when the company was much smaller, the direct report only had to satisfy some basic requirements in order to qualify for his bonus. The manager wanted to change this situation, and link the direct report’s bonus to target achievement. Mindful that this was likely to be unpopular, the manager booked out a whole morning for the meeting in which she was going to broach this subject.

Using concepts developed on the Foundations of Management Program, the manager first agreed with her direct report that bonuses should be based on performance. This done, they worked together to create a set of objectives for the coming year relating to a particularly important aspect of the direct report’s role. With the objectives agreed, the manager told the direct report that his bonus for the coming year would be dependent on the achievement of the objectives they had just created. After a short discussion, the direct report agreed to this and they set a follow up meeting to monitor progress towards the achievement of the first objective. 

The manager felt in complete control in the meeting, and concluded it in 20 minutes, leaving a whole morning free for other work. She later reported that it was completely successful in terms of creating motivation in the direct report and securing agreement to a difficult decision.

c. 8-10 of these per delegate x 8 delegates = c. 70 results = real ROI from a management training program

… and what is a waste of money:

As mentioned in a previous post, the management training industry has created a smokescreen around what is a real result and what isn’t. The examples below are regularly proffered as ROI, when in fact all could be achieved much more cheaply through other means:

1. Everyone actually attended the course – (the only requirements here are physical presence in the seminar room and a pulse, it is a rare delegate who cannot manage either of these. Cheaper alternative = organise a meeting, see who turns up)

2. Everyone enjoyed themselves – (cheaper options = pub, crazy golf, day off…)

3. Everyone found things out about themselves (without action in the workplace to build on this, cheaper alternatives = horoscopes + star signs, drunken post pub truth-telling sessions, books)

4. Everyone left with an action plan for how they are going to implement what they learned back in the workplace (alternatives = your last set of new year’s resolutions)

5. Everyone enjoyed the facilities on their residential course (most residential courses are hotels that use training to hook people in. Cheaper alternative = book a week in a better hotel, leave out the “training”)