TRAIN TO INGRAIN: The Reality-Based Solution
The problem (The Plain Truth About Your Pain) is that well over 90% of training and development programs don't result in improved workplace performance. This makes it nearly impossible for a typical training program to have a positive impact on business results or improve the bottom line.
The explanation (The Scientific Explanation) is that a training course can’t possibly contain enough practice and reinforcement to produce lasting changes in on-the-job behavior. A great deal of practice and repetition is needed to ingrain skills. This kind of reinforcement can only take place during a period of months after training, during day-to-day performance on the job.
This means that everyone who influences workplace performance has to get involved, not just trainers and learners. Because the learners’ managers have so much to do with what direct reports do and how they do it, managers have a major impact on whether new skills will be ingrained. Even senior managers have a role, because they control the environment—whether the system is compatible with the new skills or is in conflict with them.
TRAIN TO INGRAIN is a commonsense training and development methodology created with these practical realities in mind. It's a reinforcement-centered integrated approach that engages all the key players to focus programs and learners on closing performance gaps that impact on business results. To be fully effective, the training and development process should have five phases.
Phase 1
Before programs are implemented, several key players "plow the ground" so that the seeds of performance improvement will take hold and grow. Senior managers require trainers to focus on workplace performance shortfalls that impact on business results. They support programs that prepare managers for their performance coaching roles. They invest in the kind of flexible feedback technology that will economically deliver the kind of measurements needed to support training and reinforce skills. Trainers acquire behavior-based programs that are optimized for transferring learning to the workplace. Managers meet with direct reports to establish focus and motivation.
Phase 2
When learners know where they are strong and where they need improvement, they know what to focus on during training. When learners discover that their baseline performance was measured before training and will be measured again and again afterwards to check for improvement, they're keenly motivated to change their workplace habits.
The empowering technology here is 20/20 Insight GOLD, an award-winning flexible, state-of-the-art feedback platform. Used along with the Supervision Series, it focuses learning and provides customized feedback so that learners and managers can gauge whether skills are improving. These measurements have the added benefit of facilitating accountability.
Phase 3
The award-winning Supervision Series curriculum, created and published by Vital Learning Corporation, is the world’s premier behavior-based, blended leadership training technology. Excellent skills are introduced and modeled. Learners get safe opportunities to practice workplace-related skills.
Phase 4
This crucial phase of development is the one most neglected by organizations, which is why skills rarely transfer to the workplace. The key elements of reinforcement are ongoing learning, ongoing feedback, coaching and accountability.
20/20 Insight GOLD, used in tandem with the Supervision Series, supports all four of these elements. Furthermore, the technologies that empower the training courses also contain the resources needed for up to a year of behavior-based reinforcement. Learners use these tools to check and reinforce desired behaviors. Ongoing learning happens on the job. Managers use these tools to coach the learners during routine meetings with the manager. In the end, even an extended reinforcement phase involves very little extra time or money.
Phase 5
One of the major factors in learning transfer is whether an organization's culture, policies and systems support or conflict with line leaders' efforts to apply what they learned in training. If aspects of the environment frustrate the application of new skills, there's little chance that learners will persist through the difficult reinforcement phase. As in the Commitment phase, senior management plays a key role, examining organization policies, evaluating standards and protocols and updating business practices to make them compatible with and supportive of desired leader behaviors.
Having considered the five phases of TRAIN TO INGRAIN for the first time, an executive may wonder if the organization can support so much change. A predictable reaction might be, “Maybe we can afford the assessment and training component. But I’m pretty sure the rest of it is beyond our means right now.” Or: “I don’t think management will want to assume these training and development roles. That’s what they’re paying the trainers for.” But consider this:
TRAIN TO INGRAIN doesn’t mean doing more things. It means doing what you already do differently. And it's not a rigid approach. It describes alternative ways of getting the job done. You may need to make some changes in emphasis and policy. But in the end, there's very little additional cost beyond the initial investment in assessment and development programs.
You can implement assessment without following through with training, or you can implement training without the benefits of assessment. But why would you? The synergy of doing both together is like adding two plus two to get seven.
You can coordinate assessment and training without preparing the way with commitment, without the extended period of reinforcement that’s needed to ingrain the new skills, and without integrating the organization’s practices to align with desired behavior. But why would you? Why would you invest in training and development, knowing that it probably won’t transfer to permanent improvements in the workplace? Why would you invest that much money knowing that you can’t possibly get the results you want?
- Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., CEO, Performance Support Systems
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