It is April. March certainly went out like a lion – wind, thunder and lightning, and even hail. Let’s hope April is better behaved so while the children are on holiday they can get outside in the dry. The garden is full of blossom, and it would be nice if it wasn’t washed away.
And how is your business life? The new tax year starts so does that maybe mean your new financial year starts too? If so, did you end last year well? All targets achieved? That is partly what I have been thinking about. I am always asking my clients about their aspirations and reminding them how long they may have left to achieve them. This is not down to me but if someone wants to have a dream achieved in three years or whenever, there are things to do now to make that happen; otherwise it just stays a dream.
Several of my clients are in the midst of setting up online training courses. Of course that should be wonderful. They are around fact-based subjects. They will be accessible when it is convenient, and learners can work at their own pace. If they are popular they will generate passive income whilst the trainer sleeps. Fabulous.
I am a trained trainer and have been doing this alongside my day job for a very long time – if we have teams then this applies to all of us. Like most of us, I do use online courses but only for fact-based training. I am skeptical about using this approach for behaviour-based training. It can be just too easy to play the game. Often the behaviour they want you to select in the multi choice answer is obvious but not what you really believe and not what you might do in the real world.
If I want to train behaviours and help people select the most effective behaviour to achieve what they want, I need to show them what the options are and what the most effective one might be. I also need to train people in observational skills. We need to understand the difference between what we do and how we do it. It can mean putting people into role play. In the main no one likes this much because they feel vulnerable, but it can be done with a skilled trainer who makes sure they feel safe and able to try different solutions.
Sometimes we made it easier by using training films and there is a whole generation who were educated by Video Arts and the mighty John Cleese. Before that creative trainers used mainstream films. I was taught many things about leadership and inspiration by Reach for the Sky. It was an old film when we were seeing it in the 1970s. It is about Douglas Bader an RAF pilot. He has a horrible accident, and both his legs are amputated. He masters two prosthetics and in the second world war takes command of a squadron. It is a total mess; morale is on the floor, no one cares. It is an action movie so there is lots of aerial stuff and he ends up in Colditz. It made a great experience one night after dinner thinking about his management style, how he picked up his squadron members and got them back on track and also the mistakes he made. I suspect in real life Bader had a very hard time to achieve what he did but simplified in front of us, it gave us all sorts of ideas about what we could do if we found ourselves in a similar situation – and who has not picked up a dispirited bunch of people and had to form them into an effective team where there is fun working together.
Another time we were being taught about influencing skills and how to persuade people in meetings to consider other ways to look at problems. This time they showed us Twelve Angry Men. Again an old film it was about twelve jurors debating the guilt of a man on trial for murder and therefore his life. Again it was the 1970s but there was no other way to do it.
So why am I giving you these examples from ancient history? Because they helped us to see situations up close and different ways to deal with them; some successful and some much less so. In those far-off days before the pandemic we worked in the same rooms, and we watched and listened to how people did things. We heard people dealing with customers, some difficult. We heard how customers who were unhappy were won round and went away happy. We heard forms of words that worked. We saw patience, warmth and even humour. Sometimes there was discussion beforehand thinking through the best ways of dealing with a situation and sometimes there was time afterwards to discuss what happened and how effective it might have been. Apart from training people how to use interpersonal skills very effectively it built strong teams committed to each other and sharing objectives. We leant “how we do it here”. The best advice could then be “do what you think XX would do in the situation”.
So what can we do now? There are no easy answers. Hybrid working is against us. My belief is that long term each organisation has to find a way through this. We need to bring people together to share their experience, to appreciate there are different ways to do things and some are more effective than others. Most of all to encourage them to share ideas. I think we have to orchestrate training days around real live situations. I also think there is still a strong argument for going on face-to-face training courses. Get out of the office, meet people who are committed to the same objectives that you are and see new ways of doing things. Work with experienced trainers who know their subject areas inside out, know how to keep their delegates in a safe space so they are not afraid to try things out and draw out the learning.
There are so many good outcomes: effective thinking and behaviour, increased energy and high morale.
All of this leads me to recommend some of the Mastermind programmes there are out there. Not only do they meet the criteria I am talking about, but they bring together a group of delegates who grow to trust and support each other and so they learn together in a safe environment. They use very skilled experts. They might be around your market sector, or they might be based on a subject area.
Hopefully you can find somewhere like that to develop your skills and your people. But it is not always possible. So then I advocate using mentors – we walk alongside you in real time and we are prepared to share our experience to help you learn from real life. If the person/mentor relationship is a strong one there is nothing which cannot be discussed.
You might want to think about how you build being a mentor to your team into your business.
So if you want to talk about how you learn and develop skills give me a call. If you want to develop yourself in real time with real issues speak with me. I love talking to people. We can talk about your business and what you want from it and your life. I love speaking with people, off the meter, to help them explore possibilities and whether/how to take them forward. I hope you will be one of them.
And by the way some old films teach good lessons!!!