One Day Seminars Don’t Work

By: Bruce Renton,
Champion Builder
Champions in the Workplace, Calgary
August 2008

The comments below are quoted or paraphrased from hundreds of interviews and telephone calls which the writer has had with participants and decision makers who attended or invested in training programs.

• This doesn’t apply to me: Typically employees attend a workshop within a group of 25 or more people. “There are discussions that do not apply to my job or to my business. If I am a car manufacturer I don’t care about serving hamburgers! “ Solution: Coaching for teams of people that work together in the same company. Getting the opportunity to better understand what my co-workers do and how they think. Most importantly to discover they have the same challenges as me. This is more powerful to discover this from a co-worker than a stranger. The stranger is gone tomorrow when the training is over. The co-worker is with you every day. Here is one more key: what is in it for me? Participants will put their hearts into the training when they discover how the training will help them at work and most importantly in their personal life. A good coach is able to identify the unmet personal needs and relate the program to what they want. Then throughout the program ensure they are guided and encouraged to get that personal outcome. Outcomes can include: less overtime but getting the same or more work completed to have more personal time to play with their children, socialize or other recreational activities. A spouse or friend that sees a difference in the participant and says so sparks a champion in the workplace.

• Too much too fast: “It was good but I couldn’t absorb so much in one day. My first morning back at the office started off okay, but within a few hours all that I learned just seemed to fall apart. I just slumped back into the way I used to do things.” Solution: Several short sessions held weekly over at least six meetings. This gives participants the opportunity to try out new approaches; then return to the next session to find out how make a mid-course correction. Also short sessions reduce the pressure of being off work and coming back to high pressure catchup workload.

• Too bad other members of my team from work weren’t with me. We all need to learn this to be a better team. Solution: Training where members of the team are in the same room and get to learn, apply and discuss how to and how they applied the techniques or principles is a powerful way to build a team. A good facilitator gets co-workers to exchange ideas. This builds trust and loyalty. The second outcome is retention. If you feel trust and respect and it is going both ways you are less likely to leave a company even if the pay is less than a competitor because you feel valued and understood.

• My people went off for a day of training, but no results: Solution: Each week the coach works with each participant to set goals in alignment with expectations of the company. At each session the facilitator then opens up the discussion to get feedback about goal progress. In this way everyone helps each other when it comes to praise and to finding a way to succeed to reach that goal or outcome before the next session. Most people want their co-worker to succeed, it is a win-win.