Mitchell Phoenix - Leadership and Management Training

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