Don’t even think of sending your management or staff on another training, coaching or team-build until you have read this information.
Cynicism is at an all time high. Business pressure and stresses are ever-increasing. Budgets are tight. Staff needs more skills to perform effectively. Trust levels are falling and integrity levels are almost non-existent. The need to do more with less is our biggest challenge.
We need our staff to deliver more… now! As competition and pressure to perform to world-class standards grow, companies are forced to find new ways to differentiate or die….
Extensive research into training effectiveness indicates that less than 12% of what is learnt in training is applied back at the workplace. Add to this the information on memory recall, which indicates that most of us forget almost 80%+ of what we have learnt within 30 days, and we can clearly see there is a big problem.
Extensive research highlights some of the challenges we face in attempting to get our staff and teams aligned and fully active. Below are some pointers to consider for your workplace gleaned from our research, our first hand coaching and LMI intervention experiences. Research material - Dr S Priest (PhD), Daniel Goleman, Professor Stoltz and Tony Dovale.
• Often internal company confusion is created by poor communication on company vision, mission, key values, goals, contribution to purpose, clarity of purpose and organisational needs.
• Experiential learning overshadowed classroom style learning effectiveness in maintaining long-term results.
• A combination of Metaphoric and Isomorphic debriefing is shown to be the most effective form of ensuring learning is transferred to the workplace. Unless effective debriefing is utilised, learning can be totally wasted.
• Classroom lectures have almost no effectiveness in Teambuilding.
• Trust (and sub aspects Acceptance, Encouragement, Confidentiality, Dependability, Believability) plays a strong role in workplace performance.
• Touch plays the strongest role in building workplace trust.
• Almost all training and performance enhancement interventions are short- lived unless followed up with Coaching or other forms of accountability. Typically within 6 months, performance is almost back to initial baseline measures with normal training methods.
• Off-the-shelf performance enhancement programmes (Indoor/Outdoor) have proven to be considerably less effective than customised, flexible design outcomes based programmes.
• Solution Focussed Facilitation/coaching delivers substantially greater results than problem solving/focussed facilitation.
• A manager’s responsibility used to be to manage - today it’s shifted to “enable and empower people to perform”. This can best be achieved through remaining neutral in interactions, asking thought-provoking, open-ended questions, pausing and listening intently, and challenging the staff to go higher. One of the manager’s most critical role shifts is to become the coach rather than the enforcer.
• Facilitation and coaching processes have matured and evolved extensively over the last 60 years. The most potent strategies to enhance facilitation results include, Metaphoric and Isomorphic framing, and direct/indirect front-loading the experiences.
• More than 60% to 70% of a person’s daily energy/attention/ focus/productivity is utilised for “survival and protection” in the typically political corporate workspace. Unless this is addressed, most performance enhancements will not succeed.
• Adults cannot focus effectively for extended periods of learning time, yet we still embark on all day class bound workshops and intense information dumps.
• Many organisations are still run on dictatorial / fear-based control foundations which may be have been effective in the short-term, but can be devastating in the longer term. In an environment where positive relationships are fundamental to results, fear-based control erodes trust, truth, commitment, collaboration, confidentiality, health, and ultimately profitability pays the toll.
• Managers are employed for what they know/can do (Information / Technical) and removed for what they don’t know/cannot do. This is usually based around long-term effective people skills – Empathy, Leadership Coaching skills, EQ and
AQ.
• Emotions control productivity and results more than intelligence. Anger, Anxiety and depression damage your staff’s energy, health and outlook. High personal hostility levels increases the likelihood of early death by 700%.
• Elevated levels of anger and frustration increase the likelihood of cardiac problems by 200%+. It also reduces the quality of relationships and productivity. Trust is required to defuse this situation.
• Anxiety and fear can be the greatest contributor to stress which in turn creates low productivity, low resilience and high absenteeism. These states/reactions also impair a person’s ability to learn, be creative, and apply existing knowledge effectively.
• AQ or resilience is becoming one of the most important virtues in selecting staff. As a minimum, in today’s highly competitive environment, people are required and assumed to have a good IQ. The real challenges are that in order to be successful on the current playing field of business, EQ (Emotional Intelligence), AQ (Adversity Intelligence) and XQ (Implementation/Action Ability) are the determining dimensions that ensure success.
• “Customer-centric” organisations necessitate people who can initiate, build and sustain strong relationships that can endure almost any storm or problem.
• Of the 21 CRM criteria identified as critical to business success…… 4 of the top 5 depend upon the Human Element.
• Frequently CRM and Sales solutions that are human-centric will out perform tehno-centric solutions.
• Just as any sports professional, committed to achieving extraordinary results, has a coach, savvy managers ensure that AQ coaching becomes their organisation’s most powerful and cost-effective foundation of staff development and results delivery.
• Astute coaches know that soft skills have a vastly superior impact on long-term performance and productivity than hard skills training, many companies who ignore this, will lose out on capitalising on their staff’s trapped, untapped potential.
• Many organisations use training to solve “symptoms” whilst the real causes of the challenges continue to go unaddressed. Unless the underlying issues are revealed and resolved, companies will continue to waste their training spend. Read the excellent book “The fish stinks from the head” by Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D., to get an alternative perspective.
• Studies show that “success” is typically 80%+ psychological and 20%- skill dependant.
• We have numerous results, with our clients, where we have shown that the effects of our intervention have been maintained for over 24 months and longer.
• Motivation lasts a moment – Personal transformation … a lifetime. Don’t waste any more money on short-lived interventions and training.
"Management means helping people to get the best out of themselves, not organising things." - Lauren Appley
Subscribe to our leading-edge newsletters and coaching services at www.lifemasters.co.za or coachfree.com to ensure that your development activities has long-lasting efficacy.
Remember… if you continue to train today using past methods you will most likely fail. If you begin to coach today using present methods you could be competitive. If you begin to coach today using futuristic methods you will be much more successful.
With the shift from “Selling” to “Relationships”, the power of human CRM is the area of opportunity that offers greatest leverage for least cost.
Tony Can be contacted at www.tonydovale.com or +27(0)83-447-6300 South Africa
About the author:
Tony, a Business Alchemist, Entrepreneur, AQ Coach and Transformational Facilitator, has invested the last 24 years developing tools and technologies to address human "static" and energy issues that relate directly to productivity, performance, Consciousness, Awareness, Life Energy, Wealth, Inner Peace and Freedom.
See him at www.tonydovale.comor www.lifemasters.co.za Telephone +27 (0) 834-476-300 South Africa.
Tony will travel anywhere to do his special work.
Written by: Tony dovale
