Training is Not Your Job. Leadership Development—through an Explain, Show, Coach Method—is.
Training is over often overused. We think if we just say we’re going to complete a training session that outcomes will change. It needs to be a more defined approach where you share information with individuals, then show them what that looks like in practice, and finally, invest in coaching them for success.
Asking why and being curious will lead to development, not training. Training is ensuring someone knows how to enter schedules into a scheduling system – development comes from helping a Store Manager or someone else understands why they need to schedule for ‘the business needs’. It helps to answer questions like, ‘why is this important?’ or ‘what benefits does it bring?’ ‘How does it stretch their dollars?’ ‘How will an effective schedule actually create the ability to use more hours for future schedules?’ Coaching goes beyond showing the tactics of a system. In the above example, it gives them reasons to use the system or process in new, beneficial ways.
As a leader, three steps can help ensure you are doing more than training.
Explain
As part of developing your team, ensuring they understand the desired outcomes both in everyday activities as well as their performance requires ongoing dialogue and follow up. Explaining why something is important helps to close gaps in your team’s understanding about those areas. This is not justification, this should be genuine discussion about the hows and whys behind the activities or your thoughts on the performance you have observed.
Explaining should also be seen as two-way conversation and not a download of information. True explanation answers the questions that your team has in reality, and not only the ones you may assume they have. It is why I choose ‘explain’ over tell. Training lends itself to ‘telling’ employees what needs to happen. Explaining becomes more developmental, opens up for additional dialogue, and ongoing knowledge transfer beyond just the activity that has to be completed.
Show
Action and activity is almost always better than words by themselves. If everyone could understand how to do something just by reading words, all of those DIY videos on YouTube wouldn’t exist. Showing your team what you mean, how to accomplish something, and examples of what ‘good’ looks like will exponentially increase the stickiness of what you are communicating. Include them in the activity. Get hands on wherever you can. Leveraging technology for video calls, video recordings, and even pictures will enhance your developmental impact with your team.
Coach
Every great leader is a coach more than anything else. A coach provides encouragement, conducts ongoing observations, provides honest feedback, and remains committed to your success. No successful coach had a team of people around them that felt ignored, alone, or unsupported. Great teams talk about the leadership from their coach, and the support of their teammates. The best leaders create a culture of coaching and support for everyone, from everyone.
Coaching is about more than telling people what to do, it is involving the person in the process of learning. It connects the ‘why’ of what you’re doing to the actions and behaviors that they demonstrate. It is balancing the feedback provided with recognition and counsel.
Finally, coaching is an ongoing activity. It not something you do only on an occasional basis. Hearing someone say, ‘he’s not doing what we need him to, I’ll go coach him on that’ is not true coaching. That is not being ‘coach-like’, that is performance management. When there is a culture of coaching, those observations and feedback loops are always occurring. This can lead to an environment where people who want to succeed will have that opportunity to do so every day. For those who choose not to, you address those in different ways.
Don’t let the allure of using ‘training’ as an excuse for poor performance pull you away from where you can add the most value. As a leader, you should not be a trainer. You can be a role model, you can set clear expectations, and most of all, you can be an excellent coach who explainsclearly, what your expectations are, shows them what great looks like, and provides the real coaching they need to be successful every time.
Have you ever had a great coach? How did that make you feel for your development? How can you create that same experience for people you lead?
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Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash