People Development vs Training - Its Not Training!
People development has long been recognised as a primary need
for any growing and developing organisation. However there seems
to be little agreement as to what people development really is.
What tends to happen is that companies, once they do decide that
something is needed (through annual appraisals, personal
development reviews, performance management reviews, change
programmes, etc), put out a call for training, without really
understanding the difference between it and development.
Then they get saddled with programmes that 'train' people on the
'right' way to do things (communication, presentation,
assertiveness, etc.) and find that things don't seem to change
much. For instance, we often hear of presentation training
designed to get everyone giving a consistent message. So people
get trained in the right way to deliver the company message,
rather than having their individual capacity developed to
present in their unique style.
One company we spoke to had put an entire department of 400
people through a 'training' programme (prestigious and
expensive!) and plaintively asked why nothing had changed a few
months down the line. It wasn't even that the training was bad;
it simply had a different, more proscriptive perspective on the
issue at hand (indeed, the outcome was one of conformity) and
the organisation ended up not getting what it needed.
It's not called sheep-dip training for nothing!
Impact Factory has been at the cutting edge in the field of
people development for over ten years and we think we know what
we're talking about.
To start with, it's not training. Training presupposes that the
people involved need to acquire some new skill. They need to
become good at doing something that the organisation needs. This
may be part of someone's development but it isn't all there is
by a long shot.
Real people development should be driven by the person being
"developed". Think of it as learning to use new words within a
language rather than learning a new language. In hard skill
terms it is rather like a good computer programmer developing
his ability to write better programmes. He doesn't need to learn
to programme, he's already a long way down that road.
In just the same way, people development issues such as
influencing, negotiating, assertiveness, presenting, time
management, etc, begin with people who already have a good
foundation of skill in the area. For instance, an organisation
may identify that a group of managers need to communicate better
and therefore look for programmes to address that. But the
reality is that these managers already do communication or they
wouldn't have their jobs in the first place. Therefore trying to
get them 'trained' in communication won't do it. There has to be
respect and regard for what people already have.
Here's a good example of how we see the difference between
training and development. Let's take appraisals. If managers get
any appraisal training at all, it tends to be along the line of:
how do appraisals work and what procedures you need to follow.
>From a development perspective, we'd be far more interested
developing a manager's skills so they could handle a difficult
appraisal well.
One issue we've encountered a lot is one of time management: "We
need this person to become better at managing their time. What
can you do to fix that?" Well, we can't, and here's why. If,
after a whole life of managing their time (however it is that
they do it), someone is still unable to work to a time table, it
is highly unlikely they will 'develop' into a well-regimented,
routine-driven person, no matter how much 'training' they are
given.
Unfortunately, what can happen is that they are sent on
time-management training courses that end up making them feel
bad. First they learn all about clear-desk policies, the right
way to be organised, keeping an up-to-date filofax and making
'to-do' lists, and might possibly go away inspired with this new
routine - for about a week. Then, their real and true
personality asserts itself and they revert to type by doing
exactly what they've always done. Except now they have the added
burden of not having done it the right way, and the
'time-management' problem still exists.
That's tackling the situation from a training perspective: this
is the problem; give me the solution.
A people development perspective is completely different: it
looks at what people actually do, rather than at what companies
wish they would do.
So with our time management 'problem' person, the aim would be
to identify what they can do, not what they can't. With this
approach we would turn things on their head. Perhaps this person
works best under pressure and their best skill lies in not
missing deadlines. Someone who does work well under pressure
tends to leave things to the last minute and appears
disorganised and chaotic, which makes colleagues very uneasy.
This person could now be developed into someone who is skilled
at allaying the concerns of colleagues and has a reputation for
calm in the midst of chaos. Far easier than trying to get them
to start projects earlier or to miraculously become organised.
We can't fix any of that.
All effective people development starts with an assessment of
what each individual already does well. And more importantly
avoids any reference to weaknesses or things that need 'fixing'.
At first look this may seem wrong, and against a lot of current
management thinking: surely you should look at strengths and
weaknesses. We don't think so. A sure-fire way to undermine
someone's confidence is to tell them what they're weak at.
You can also look at turning a perceived weakness into something
the person can use. For example, if someone is quite young and
inexperienced there is often the desire to get them to have more
authority. Whereas if you turn it around you can develop this
person's sense of pride in their youthfulness, energy and fresh
outlook.
This is because any soft skill that a person is bad at is one
that they will never excel at. You can put a lot of training
effort into getting someone from bad at something to competent
at it. Whereas with just a little development effort you can get
that same person from good at something to excellent at it. And
what is more, you will have a happy person on your hands as
opposed to a weary one.
At Impact Factory we are passionate about peopling feeling more
in charge of whatever arena they are working in. That's why we
say our work is 'more than just training'.