Why training doesn’t work and coaching is expensive

I reckon I have about 90 seconds to justify this statement before you grab the gun and shoot me in my other foot.

I have been on all sides of the training triangle and it can only ever be;

1) As effective as the weakest person in the room

2) Be dependant on many factors such as the group dynamic & politics, how it was ‘sold’ to the delegates in the first place, where the trainer got their resources and how they feel on the day.

Even when the training is over, what then? How is the learning embedded? If you are familiar with the conscious/unconscious model of learning you will know that the steps cannot be missed and if training takes the learner from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence and then to conscious competence, how does the learner and line manager ensure they don’t slip back into the miserable and demotivating conscious incompetence. It is likely that the client will come back to the training provider and say oi! your training, it didn’t work.

Training is not a magic bullet which when pointed at an individual will magically make them into something they are not. The only exception to the rule is when technical elements need to passed on. And this completely backs up my theory, if you are going to train a sales person, fresh from university (and don’t even get me started on why sales people need to be graduates!), you would not let them loose on your top client in week one. They would be put on a development programme and have access to mentors and ‘friendly’ clients to practice and hone their skills.

So I find it quite astonishing when clients put budding leaders onto leadership training courses. How can leadership be trained, management tactics and techniques can be ‘trained’ if that is how they are ‘sold’ as pure techniques to be used with caution as part of a wider toolbox, but leadership, leaders of people? Can they be trained? do you think Martin Luther King went on a training course to hone his charismatic muscle, did Margaret Thatcher go on a course to learn determination did Nelson Mandella read some books about how to inspire. No! these individuals had these qualities within them all the time and situations conspired to bring them to the fore when the time was right.

So if training isn’t the answer, what about coaching? Coaching brings out the best in people right?

Yes it does, but because you are working with a trained, passionate professional, who only has so many hours in the day, it is also very expensive, and only those in very senior positions can afford that sort of money spent on them. It can also take quite a long time as many facets of the coachee’s life come under the spotlight. Due to the confidential nature of coaching there seems no end to it and pressed HR departments are spending money on senior directors without any measurable evidence that it is working, except hopefully a happier boss. This may be enough but increasingly everybody’s spend has to be accountable, and with sessions going into the £1000’s there must be a concern that the hushed sessions taking place in fine hotels and dining clubs have an element of the emperor’s new clothes about them.

In my experience because the senior director didn’t have coaching early enough, due to cost and time constraints they have got to their lofty heights due to hard work, grit and determination, they have worked their way up, working really hard and now they are at the top, what’s expected of them? They are expected to take on maternal or paternal roles within the organisation. This is fluffy stuff. The people who are filling their shoes aren’t doing it right and so he/she gets involved and scrappy with people he/she should be inspiring.

At this stage they are being king manager and their inner leader is being pushed away. I have heard many times, “as soon as I get over this crisis I will be much more involved in working on my leadership style’ but at the moment it’s task, task, task”

So what’s the answer, I believe a leadership programme which helps people to become the best versions of themselves within their current roles and prepares them for greater leadership in the future. A structured coaching approach which is focused on the needs of the organisation and the role of the individual without compromising one or the other. One which is cost and time effective, delivers results from the get go and inspires delegates to join in. Where is that service? Watch this space.