Training that transforms

As we drove back from the village meeting, Habibul Islam, our regional sales manager, confided: “A couple of months ago, we thought Bithi would not be able to do this job and had given up on her. After attending the performance management workshop, we now know how to develop our colleagues. And it is making a world of difference!”
The proof was in the meeting. Morsheda Khanam Bithi successfully conducted a meeting with farmers where she explained how to ensure successful rice harvests.
After the meeting, she was given feedback by Aminul Islam, her immediate superior, on what she had done right and set objectives for the new skills to be demonstrated in future. She was all smiles when I asked about her work. Bithi explained that she really enjoyed her job as her skills had improved tremendously.
More often than not, we assume that a couple of days of training will work miracles in developing our people. There is a famous 70-20-10 rule in training. Attending a regular classroom training session will only impart 10 percent of learning. A couple of practice sessions may lead to 20 percent of retention. It is only through continuous and seventy percent on the job coaching that you will see the rise in the development curve of knowledge and skills of your associates. And this is the crunch in people development -- you must invest time in your people and coach them continuously and personally to a new level of skills.
Having being in the training trail since my career began nearly 30 years ago, I found training and development to be the a major competitive edge that has kept us ahead of competition.
Over the years, I learned training to be of three types. One is motivational, feel well training programmes. Once you have been through such programmes, you come out rejuvenated, maybe for a week until the aura rubs off.
The trainer's charisma and bag of tricks makes you feel you can conquer the world. However, you are soon down to reality, doing your daily grind.
The second type is where we are imparted knowledge with a sprinkle of skills, hoping we will be able to use those as soon as we are sitting in our swivel chairs, back in the office.
The third type of training is where you get value for money and is hard to come by. This is where a well thought-out programme is designed not only to impart knowledge and skills but has an on-ground follow up programme to ensure that the skills are internalised and used. Such training programmes are aligned to the company's objectives and are tailored and designed specifically to achieve these objectives.
As an example, our sales colleagues have gone through a performance-management workshop, which is designed specifically to coach and improve the communication skills of our market promoters.
We first defined what the job components of our promoters are and then looked at what knowledge and skills are required to perform the job. We then determined the level of knowledge and skills of the promoters and designed training programmes for them as well as their superiors. Our promoters meet twice a year for these training programmes. Their superiors, who have been trained to coach on skills development, spend an enormous amount of time now to coach the promoters and officers. This is the 70 percent rule, which translates training into skills.
What is the result? Higher morale, more confidence, productivity and lesser turnover. Not only do the promoters feel energised with the application of new skills in their jobs, the general working environment has also improved a lot.
Superiors are seen now not as a command and control boss but a colleague helping them to improve their skills and be successful in their jobs.
On-the-job coaching entails that you separate the skills required to perform a job from the individual as a person. More often than not, I have seen bosses screaming at their colleagues, deriding them for not doing their job right. These shouting matches are based on attacking the self-respect of the person, “You are an idiot! You don't even know how to do this.”
If someone is failing to do his job, you need to ask first, does the person have the requisite skills?
If not, arrange a training programme to impart the knowledge and practice the skills to ensure that the person can do the job. Once the skills have been learnt, and the person still fails to perform, then of course, you can fume and swear and have an 'or else' discussion.
I can assure you, the more you invest in your people through personal coaching, the less fuming you will resort to, and you will have motivated colleagues who will make sure your organisation succeeds.

The writer is the managing director of Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd.