Training. Its such a sticky topic for traditional HR departments. Many leaders would rather not spend their precious budgets on training incentives and would rather focus on the core business. But what people keep forgetting is the core business can’t succeed without it’s people.
So what can one do to train employees without having to dive into training? Groom them. Groom them through subtle and cheap yet extremely effective ways.
1. One on one talks with you (their boss)
Technically straight forward but when’s the last time you sat with your employees and talked to them with the objective of their self improvement? Probably not recently. We get so caught up in daily operations that the need for TLC for our teammates gets forgotten. Also the focus of these discussions should be abstract. Like focus on the need to be optimistic rather than focusing on soft skills.
Action Step: make sure you give each team member some one on one time at least once a month and talk about what they did right and what they can do to improve.
2. Town hall meetings where the chiefs focus on values as much as goals
It still amazes me how many companies don’t have town hall.meetings. I’d like to ask all of them just how do they expect each member of their company to contribute if they don’t know where the head honcho is coming from. Companies that do have town hall meetings often forget to focus on what’s really important – the values of the organization that should be part of every employee. And we’re talking about the basics: honesty, integrity, self motivation, etc.
Action Step: Have town hall meetings with the chiefs at least once a quarter. And don’t let the chiefs just ramble – give them some fixed bullet points to work with with the focus on encouraging employee improvement.
3. Rather than correcting work, telling them what’s wrong with it
This I learned from a mentor of mine very early on in my career. Rather than correcting my work and sending back a file with “Track Changes” selected, she would write an email which bullet pointed everything that I needed to correct. And it would irritate me so much! I would think, okay fine – I need to correct how I format headings, but why couldn’t she do it rather than sending it back? But as time went on I realized that her regular bullet points stuck in my head and slowly my deliverables improved.
Action Step: Start today by providing written feedback rather than correcting mistakes yourself. When possible, cc other leaders so they can see what you’re doing and hopefully they’ll follow in your footsteps.
4. Be a role model
Oh now this one’s hard simply because we hear it so often but it’s really hard to be the perfect role model all the time! Sometimes you just want to be lazy, sometimes you don’t want to be motivated and sometimes you really do want to give up! Who doesn’t?! But I have two secrets for you to be perceived as the perfect role model all the time:
Action Steps: 1. Have a confidant, preferably someone senior to you who you can turn to for venting, and 2. Try not to let others see you when you’re in a rut.
Follow these action steps and you’ll be grooming your team left, right and center without ever sending them to a soft skills training. If you have any other tips you’d like to share, please comment below. And make sure you’ve subscribed to the blog to get more tips and tricks for improving your team.