Have I told you how I learned to swim?

I went on a brilliant two day course called Swim to Win. I would recommend it to anyone. First we watched a PowerPoint presentation about the history of swimming – did you know Native Americans invented the front crawl? 

Then we looked through some case studies about successful swimmers, and the seminar leader told us some anecdotes about famous people he had taught to swim over the years. (He was brilliant – really knowledgeable and enthusiastic.) We also did a questionnaire to find out what our natural swimming style is – I am a classic “Sink or Swim” personality. 

By the end we all had a clear plan about how we would start swimming when we got back to work. Overall I would say it was the best swimming course I have been on.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Ok – I admit it’s a bit of a set up, but you get the idea. Although there was a lot of talk about swimming, nobody actually got in the water. Nobody learned to swim.

While people improving their swimming are not surprised when they are asked to get in the water, it is amazing how many people attending leadership and management courses are surprised when they are asked to apply the ideas back in their workplace. 

Not surprised at being asked to pretend that they’ll do it, or to write about doing it, but surprised that they’ll have to actually do it.

This is the litmus test of any training culture: how unusual it is that people will have to do anything in their workplace as a result of courses they attend.

If it makes complete sense to people that they’ll have to do some leading and managing to get better at leading and managing – like gardeners getting dirty fingernails or chefs spending a lot of time in kitchens – you have probably got a productive training culture.

If people feel the idea of actually having to bring results back to the next seminar is an affront – like asking someone drinking in a pub to clean out the beer cellars – it is likely that the training culture is working against you.

While large corporates can afford (and sometimes seem to foster) this kind of attitude to training, it can be damaging for high growth businesses where budget is scarce and people need to see results quickly.

Here are seven other tell-tale signs that you have walked into an unproductive training culture:

1. People don’t really believe training will be of any practical use to them in their day to day working lives 

2. Because of this, training now has a different function. Its job is to make people feel good, relax, or find out cocktail party facts about themselves – did you know I am more of a perceiver than a judger? That’s why my desk is always a mess! 

3. Training events rarely place any demand on participants

4. People regularly say, "you’ll always get something from a training event" implying that the “something” is often very hard to find

5. There are a lot of people in the business who can talk a good game about leadership and management, but far fewer who can really do it

6. Some people see training as a day out of the office – not as good as a day off, but better than sitting at your desk

7. Busy, purposeful people see training as a wasted day, and do everything they can to get out of it

The solution to this is just what you would expect: treat leadership and management just like any other skills.

Whether we are swimming, making cakes or repairing cars, we get better at things by doing them. We hear a new idea, apply it, get feedback, hear another new idea, apply that…