If leadership training or a development programme fails to deliver the expected outcomes it can cause a lot of acrimony between those undergoing the training and their senior colleagues or managers. Employees may feel let down if they receive the 'wrong training,' and businesses may feel disappointed if individuals fail to apply training sufficiently in their daily roles. In most cases, however, leadership training challenges are not the fault of either the business or its employees, but instead arise from operational difficulties or limitations that participants might not even be aware of.
Becoming aware of these challenges, the reasons behind them, and their solutions, can help businesses and their employees adopt a more positive and empowering approach to leadership training that aligns with their organisational objectives, personal learning styles, and individual goals. Let’s look at some of the main challenges businesses face when undertaking leadership training, and how these can be overcome.
The Challenges: What Can Undermine Your Leadership Training And Performance?
Challenge One: There is insufficient buy-in or support for the training
Leadership training is, ultimately, only as effective as the individuals who take part in it want it to be. If there is insufficient buy-in or support for the training from your team, then individuals are less motivated to engage in the material fully or be open to how they can apply what they’ve learned to their roles. If employees feel pressurised by senior colleagues to attend a training programme they don't care about or don’t see the value in, they are likely to just go through the motions without actually learning anything.
We believe one key reason for this disconnect is the lack of initial effort to truly understand the individual and team needs and the real problems at hand. This risks the training solution becoming geared towards the wrong issue, or only a surface-level issue. Team members are reluctant to engage with the training because it draws precious time and efforts away from their day-to-day roles and leaves their workplace challenges unsolved.
There can also be insufficient clarity about what the organisation expects of its leaders and managers, so individuals are unsure where training fits into their roles within the organisation or how it relates to their career progression. This can arise from a lack of awareness and indicates areas that communication could be improved or strengthened.
Challenge Two: Individuals find it difficult to engage with the training material
Even when completely aligned with the need for the training and the potential benefits in their roles, sometimes individuals fail to engage with the training material itself, finding it challenging, confusing, or just plain boring. It can be easy for us to write this off by saying that some training programmes are simply better than others, and while this may be true, there are often other reasons for difficulties engaging.
The main issue we see is enrolling leaders and managers in a training course that doesn't address their unique needs and challenges. In other words, an ‘off-the-shelf’ solution. On these courses, individuals struggle to see how the training material relates to their individual work, or how they can personally make an impact or effect change. This impedes their ability to retain information during the training, while also making it difficult to apply back in the workplace.
Off-the-shelf training and standardised approaches often don't work because one size does not fit all in terms of leadership. There are unique contexts and a wide variety of needs and learning styles to consider, therefore if a relevant and impactful learning journey is not created for leaders by adapting both the content and approach, it will negatively affect individuals’ ability to retain learning and apply it back in their roles.
Challenge Three: There is inadequate post-training support and follow-up
Most of us have had the uncomfortable experience of completing a course or CPD programme and being left with a ‘now what?’ feeling on our return to the workplace. This is common in programmes that are too theoretical, or where there is no clear connection between the course material and how it can be applied.
However, this can also arise from an inadequate support system and follow-up resources (e.g. mentoring, coaching, action plans, self-reflection time, and post training materials) to help individuals to implement their new skills. Without a system in place to check in on progress and access additional guidance where needed, employees can arrive back at the workplace feeling isolated and businesses will loose vital value from the training by not capitalising on the key learnings fresh in individuals’ minds. This problem often gets worse due to the heavy workload that many managers and leaders deal with. Coming back from training to a pile of tasks makes it hard to focus on using new skills, as the urgent need to catch up takes priority.
Challenge Four: Businesses struggle to achieve sustainable change long-term
Businesses invest in leadership training to address a performance or behaviour based need. However, the training itself is not a silver bullet designed to completely resolve any issue. Achieving change in individual performance or larger-scale organisational change is an ongoing process that takes time, learning new behaviours and breaking habits that are entrenched is extremely difficult. Organisations need to have the sufficient infrastructure and a collective commitment to implementing the initiatives post-training to have any hope of achieving the results they're looking for.
The way that businesses roll out training can also inhibit results, with it often being delivered in silos, with different teams undertaking training at different times. While this avoids too many leaders being away from the desk at once, it can also limit the implementation of a shared language and mutual understanding of what's expected across teams and departments.
Finally, an absence of clear goals and mutually agreed metrics to measure success can also restrict the ability of businesses to quantify progress in leadership performance over time.
The Solutions: How To Avoid Or Resolve These Challenges
So far, so gloomy! We’ve outlined the challenges that many businesses face when implementing leadership training, some of which you may have experienced yourself. But what are the best strategies to overcome these problems or, even better, how can you avoid them in the first place?
Ultimately, to drive the best value from any training initiative it has to be capable of delivering change long-term. Problems occur when training lacks foresight or planning, or is done without considering the workplace environment as a whole and the daily pressures that impact performance. The following strategies are our ideal recommendations for making leadership training stick and getting the best return on investment for your business.
Solution One: Conduct a ‘day in the life’ exercise
In a ‘day in the life’ exercise, you, or your training partner, carry out a series of structured interviews with a cross-section of your management team to achieve a well-rounded and unbiased understanding of the challenges that they're facing. For larger organisational goals, this could be carried out across different levels and departments of the business, or a smaller sample may be sufficient if you only need to develop something for a single team or department.
This exercise helps to corroborate the different expectations and goals that stakeholders within your organisation have for your leaders, and will guide your training partner to recommend the best training solutions for your needs, rather than basing it on a single manager or small group of senior leaders’ opinions. Creating reports based on your findings from these 'day in the life' discussions and sharing them can also help foster transparency and mutual understanding
Solution Two: Design a bespoke training solution that meets the needs identified
A bespoke training solution could be based on a single area of need, or a modular programme could be adopted to target multiple areas. With a multi-modular approach, you should consider not just the best topics for the needs identified but also the most appropriate format (i.e. virtual, face-to-face or a combination) and how the programme will operate as a whole (i.e. the order of the modules and the frequency) so that key issues are tackled first and individuals are clear on what their development journey looks like.
Some other top tips for creating a successful training initiative or development programme include:
- Getting buy-in and support from your stakeholders, senior leaders, board, and managers
- Creating a clear training plan and vision that everyone agrees on
- Establishing clearly defined values, behaviours, and expectations
- Connecting your wider organisational goals to day-to-day leadership/managerial roles, and what individuals care about most
- Identifying early opportunities to build relationships and develop self-awareness and awareness of others
Depending on needs, leadership modules could cover topics such as confidence, resilience, having difficult conversations, behaviour change, building relationships, self and team awareness, vision, decision-making, ownership, accountability, collaboration, self-leadership and more. This approach establishes fertile ground for long-term uptake of training knowledge and performance improvement.
Solution Three: Incorporate key elements into the training to assist with skill transfer and implementation back in the workplace
There are several ways that you can maximise the implementation of your training investment back in the workplace, including:
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Experiential learning – incorporating practical team exercises and challenges into your leadership programme that are memorable and provide unique opportunities for your managers and leaders to apply theory to real-world situations and review the impact.
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Personal feedback – including regular opportunities for individuals to give and receive feedback from training professionals, peers, managers and/or senior stakeholders to help them recognise individual strengths and weaknesses, improve their performance and develop better relationships.
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Coaching and mentoring – incorporating regular one-to-one support for your leaders and managers in addition to the formal training, or scheduling it as part of an ongoing leadership development programme.
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Models that are easy to understand and apply – training should cover models for both managing up and top-down leadership, and create a common language for better communication both during and after the training.
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Supporting materials – provide individuals with comprehensive supporting materials to reinforce learning and facilitate further enquiry, including key takeaways, training toolkits, journals, personalised and team-based action plans.
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Pre and post learning activities – set aside personal time for individuals to prepare and reflect before and after the training/different leadership modules. This helps your leaders create a personal synthesis of the theory provided on the training, encouraging practical and creative applications back in the workplace.
Solution Four: Measure your results carefully
Seek out both qualitative and quantitative feedback after your training to qualify the value and impact it has had. This can include assessing baseline knowledge before, during, and after training, asking for feedback and input from participants, monitoring whether your managers and leaders learn from successes and failures over time and are able to make the necessary adjustments, and asking for 360° feedback at set intervals and sharing it openly.
Longer term monitoring can incorporate tracking individual career development and performance in one-to-ones and during key challenges, tracking specific organisational results against individual and team goals, and noting any improvement in staff retention rates and performance metrics.
Next Steps
It may be time to take a closer look at your leadership training, but even before that taking a deeper dive into the needs of your organisation as a whole. What skills and behaviours will contribute to the wider vision for success? What does a successful leader look like in your business? Armed with these insights, you can evaluate the efficacy of your initiatives and achieve better, more sustainable results.
Please get in touch with GRA today to find out how our bespoke leadership programmes can help improve your training outcomes and avoid the challenges that many businesses face with successfully implementing change within their organisations.
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