Management Training or Talent Development?

It’s not enough in today’s organisational world to recruit someone who will simply ‘fit the job’ and leave them to it.  Business and organisations have to continually change and develop and their staff their need to change, develop and ‘move with the times’ as well.

So what should you do as an employer?  Here’s a guide to making the most out of your human assets.

• Make training and development and issue for the Board.  The Board should be able to clearly articulate the strategy of the business and where it is going, and therefore define the types of skills, behaviours and people the business will need in the future.
• Who are the potential leaders of the business in the next 5, 10 or 15 years?  Has the business a mechanism to identify the leaders of tomorrow?  What leadership training and development is being provided to support your in house talent?
• Be clear with your managers and staff what it is they need to learn.  Don’t just assume that they should work on their weaknesses, ask what is it that will add the greatest value to their performance?
• Provide ‘on the job’ opportunities for your talent to flourish.  Generally people will raise their performance to what is being requested of them.  If you never ask someone to step outside their comfort zone you will never find out!
• Don’t assume that management training is the answer to all you development needs.  Provide a range of options to help managers and staff learn.  Would they benefit from coaching, mentoring, project work or a secondment?
• Job Adverts often state that candidates must be ‘self starters’.   However you won’t get that from conventional management training.   Management Training should really be about an individual’s ‘development’, and therefore provide opportunities for self direction and self learning.
• Ensure that there is a business case for any management training and development. It is important that the organisation is clear about the objectives of any management training and development. Ultimately you should ask yourself, ‘What is it that I want to see differently from this person or group of people?’ In this way it is possible to monitor the impact of training on individual performance and also on the company’s bottom line.  You will get greater support from the Board if there is a clear business case!

Ultimately the competitive edge of your business resides with the abilities of your staff, managers and leaders in the business.  Surely, management training and development is far too an important business issue to be left to the training and HR specialists?