Last month I put forward the idea that Leadership and Management Development Providers will create results at one of four levels:
- Favourable Reaction
- Learning
- Short Term Behavioural Change
- Long Term Behavioural Change
How can you quickly discern at which of these four levels a potential provider will deliver? After all, as one of our clients famously said, “everyone out there will tell you they can do everything, but they can’t.”
1. Favourable Reaction
Clues that training companies primarily operate at Level 1 include:
- Testimonials focus on the trainer – how much fun, how inspirational, how dynamic, how interesting he/she was
- Little concrete evidence of results in the workplace – the result is that people attended the training and were not upset or bored by it
- Training often woven into other fun activities, such as actors’ games, cooking, assault courses
- Business promotion reflects testimonials: people have a good time – all course days rated good to excellent, etc.
- Companies use associates – the key skill required is to be able to hold the interest of a group of executives for a day, or two days. Full time employees with deep knowledge of in-house content and approach are not required; in this case, associates hired on a daily rate will be able to fulfil the brief.
