Thursday, May 5, 2011

Staying on Track with Timely Training

It's not easy to come up with a consist plan for training people.  Frankly, most of us fake it from week to week.  We're convinced training is important, but we're throwing it together at the last minute.  One of my mentors once owned it, he said, "If it wasn't for the fact that my guys would lose respect for me, I'd walk in tomorrow and tell them I just didn't have time to make a successful company".

I decided that I do have time to make this company a success, so I'd better figure out the time to plan the training to get us there.  I sat down in November 2010 and wrote out what the focus should be for each quarter: Understanding People, Talking to People, Managing Stress (Related to People), and Goal Setting/Vision Casting.   Then, in December 2010, on a day when the weather was bad and the phones were quiet, I wrote down a theme for each week's training:

Q1: Understanding People--training about personalities, attitudes, values, and interests
        Week 1: Overview of DISC, Discussion on the Value of a Team
        Week 2: Your DISC/PIAV results--know thyself
        Weeks 3-6: Getting to know the "C", "S", "I", "D"
        Week 7-10: Becoming a "D", "I", "S", "C"
        Week 11: Introduction to Attitudes and Values
        Week 12: How to Identify those attitudes and values
        Week 13: How to Speak the language that persuades

Q2: Talking to People--training about communication, conflict resolution, alignment, and elevation
        Week 1: Active Listening
        Week 2: Validation
        Week 3: Alignment
        Week 4: Personal Growth
        Week 5: Side-stepping Unnecessary Arguments
        Week 6: How to be Transaction-Sensitive/Speak to a Realtor
        Week 7-10: Practicing these scripts
        Week 11-13: Making the scripts your own

Q3: Stress Management--training about self-care, internalization, visualization, etc
        Week 1: Review of our own DISC/PIAV--focusing on stress reactions
        Week 2: Validation
        Week 3: Alignment
        Week 4: Warning Signs for Stress
        Week 5: Coping with Small Stress
        Week 6: Deciding How to Handle Stress Before it Starts
        Week 7-10: Personal Care practices for stress management
        Week 11-13: Internalizing the Good, Visualizing the Successes

Q4: Goal Setting and Vision Casting--training about personal whys, goals, group goals, and where we're going
        Week 1: Review Tribal Languages
        Week 2: Review PIAV/DISC
        Week 3: Review Active Listening and Alignment
        Week 4: Capturing Your Why-beast
        Week 5: The proper care and feeding of a Why-beast
        Week 6: How does Your Why fit into this company
        Week 7-10: Personal Goal-Setting
        Week 11-13: Corporate Goal-Setting

What have a learned from all this?  It's nice to have a little direction when I'm trying to prep for training time and I can shuffle the individual weeks around as needed without forgetting anything.  It's a heck of a lot of stress off my shoulders when I don't have to be brilliant once a week, I just have to follow an outline while engaging the staff.

0 comments: