Everyone wants training but no one has time for it. Yet to be successful and outperform your competition your team needs to elevate their technical, interpersonal, leadership and other skills. So how do you resolve the dilemma?
Micro-training. Brief, structured sessions designed to address one issue, one concept, or one skill.
Need to improve your frontline managers’ communication skills? Deliver single-topic workshops of no more than 30 minutes. Topics might include: communicating expectations, giving effective feedback, or providing high-impact recognition. In the workshop you would: 1) “Tell” – explain the skill, and when and why it should be applied (5 minutes), 2) “Show” – demonstrate the skill (5 minutes), 3) “Do” – have them role-play the skill with each other (15 minutes), and 4) “De-brief” – feedback experiences and answer questions (5 minutes). You could provide a 1-page hardcopy and e-copy summary to reinforce what you’ve covered.
Want to elevate your top management team’s thinking? Give them a brief article each month about strategy, change, leadership, or some other relevant topic. Along with the article, give them up to three questions to challenge their thinking. Then, about 2 – 4 weeks later, meet as a team, allow up to 30 minutes, and have each person discuss their answers and rationale. You facilitate the group discussion (you don’t dominate) and help the group draw conclusions.
Those are brief, structured and planned group sessions. Yet micro-training can also be real-time (i.e., spontaneous) and individualized. An account rep is concerned about the objections a potential client might raise? You meet with the rep to identify possible objections and effective responses. You develop and record bullet-points. Then you role-play the potential client conversation. Done. That’s micro-training.
Yes, every organization is stretched and, yes, time is increasingly precious. So rethink the delivery model for developing your people. Micro-training may be your solution.
Make it happen.
Michael
How to Develop Your Team Through Micro-Training
