Stay out of the Trough of Disillusionment When Training Your People!

By Michael J Griffin

6 minute read

Organizations must train and grow their people to remain relevant and competitive in this rapidly changing world. How then do we avoid the pitfalls of training disillusionment and achieve success in the development of our people? This visual I have adapted from Dartner says it all.

Inflated Expectations

When I meet customers who want training to develop their people, many of them have “inflated expectations” of what can be accomplished in a two or three training workshop. Either they think a two-day training will microwave their people into instant salespeople, instant leaders, or, they want to cram so much content and skills into a workshop that it becomes a lecture rather than a process to learn, change and acquire new skills or process. Agreeing with these two scenarios may get you harmony with your manager/internal customer, may get you the assignment, but will lead to the trough of training disillusionment.

The first step to avoid inflated expectations for training is to properly assess the need for training and how it supports of your organization’s culture, strategy and goals. The second step is to assess the current skill and attitude of the candidates that will attend the training. The third step is to ensure you gain the active support of the line managers or leaders who can champion this training initiative and follow up back on the job. The fourth step is to collaborate with the line managers and HR to set reasonable training outcomes that are measurable or observable by the end of the training workshop. To avoid inflated expectations for training and development take these four actions:

Assess and align the training with the organization culture, strategy and goals.

Assess and evaluate the attitude and skill level of the participants before the training.

Gain active support from the managers/leaders of the participants to be trained.

Set measurable, observable & realistic outcomes for the training and development.

The Trough of Disillusionment

How many of us have set “New Year’s Resolutions” to lose weight, get fit, or learn a new skill only to fall into the trough of disillusionment by March of not achieving our personal goals? Whether it’s personal goals, or corporate change initiatives, or training expectations, we need to avoid the “trough” to keep up momentum for improving attitude, behavior and skill of the individual, team to be persistent to keep learning skills taught. Stay out of the trough by being meticulous in the four steps I just mentioned above. After the training workshop is over, these actions must be taken to keep up development momentum.

Gain participant and trainer feedback on the training.

Ensure manager support kicks in – meet the participants to map out the commitments to practice the newly acquired skills.

Document the commitments of the each supporting manager and skill user to integrate the newly learned skills and knowledge into the work of the participant.

Slope of Reinforcement

A two-day workshop on golf doesn’t make you a great golfer. A two-day workshop on B2B selling skills doesn’t make one a salesperson who will exceed sales plan. All behavioral change needs reinforcement. By immediately implementing reinforcement, new skill users can keep a focus on integrating their new skills and knowledge into their daily job. This maintains good momentum of skill integration rather than neglect the new skills when participants jump back into the daily grind of their day to day work. Usually this reinforcement is individual work that is discussed and agreed to in the manager support meeting mentioned above. Some examples of reinforcement are:

Conduct open book skill mastery tests to reinforce knowledge and skill acquisition.

Have public recognition and simple awards for the top mastery test scorers.

Provide skill guides – wallet size, A4 desk size and HP apps for individual review.

Conduct two to four-hour skill virtual skill review sessions.

The Plateau of Productivity

Conducting a well-designed training workshop that meets agreed outcomes, followed up with manager support meetings, and, assigned reinforcement activities will at least get the new skill user to the plateau of productivity. I am experiencing this right now. I have been assigned to become skillful and fluent in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales processes. It has been a journey of self-learning with my Microsoft colleague checking up on me every week to see how many lessons and “sandbox activities” have I learned: individual learning with monitoring. Yes, I am learning and my skills of CRM and technology have improved: I am able to pass the knowledge tests at the end of each unit. But I need more! I need someone to lift the my lid, a bumbling techno-novice!

The Crest of Coaching

Go back to that “New Year’s Resolution” or that goal to become a great golfer or B2B salesperson. Goal setting, Individual work and reinforcement with manager monitoring will get you increased skill but most likely you and me will stall out on the plateau of productivity and not achieve our full potential to reach the summit of success. To achieve excellence in skill and process, we need someone to lift our lid, get us off the plateau, to pull us up to the summit of success. We need a coach: a golf coach, a sales coach, someone who is more skillful than us. Good coaching accelerates your success. Let’s review some observations of what makes good skill coaching:

Find and work for a manager that is willing, motivated, and enjoys coaching. If not quit and move to a boss who enjoys coaching you.

Find a coach that has an excellent track record in the skill area that you want to grow in.

Find a coach that has similar values and chemistry that you can “connect with” to build a healthy relationship that grows you.

Work for a coach that sets realistic learning goals & holds you accountable to meet them.

Learn from a coach who is fluent in listening, asking questions, affirming, and providing constructive feedback as you grow.

Ensure he/she is nurturing and empathetic, not your critical parent.

Summit of Success

By now you can clearly see training and development that gets results is a process not a microwave event. The vision of training is a process to grow people, leaders and teams to world class competence that supports organizational success and competitiveness. The summit of success is win3   - a win for the individual, a win for the organization and a win for your customers. Use our training curve graphic and the steps I have elaborated on in this blog to make sure your training & development programs get a good ROI of time, effort and money for win3 outcomes.

Contact me to possibly “coach” you to support your training initiatives to reach the summit of success in 2023. michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com  

Here’s wishing you successful planning of your training programs for 2023!

Michael J Griffin
Founder CEO ELAvate!
Master Trainer
Leadership and Sales Productivity Coach
Maxwell Leadership Founding Member