Skills development: How can you make the learning count?

My recent work with a variety of UK and Global customers on talent and organisational development issues has revealed a number of recurring client concerns. These include; how to make learning opportunities more individualised and adaptable for the current context, how to enable learning to be more mobile with organised forums set up to share knowledge and finally how to have learning curated through LMS type platforms. All of this of course, while demonstrating the impact. These challenges need to be made sense of and aligned by those sponsoring, facilitating and undergoing the learning, often in an iterative way.  

Whilst most organisations recognise the value of equipping their managers with the skills they need to perform, unfortunately, evidence suggests that the bulk of training expenditure fails to change behaviour and performance.¹ This is perhaps since even after learning new skills, behaviour change often requires individuals to unlearn habits and their normal ways of working.

Given this challenge, we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that effective development programmes must be skilfully designed, drawing on the science of learning and development and the organisational context, to make sure that their potential reaches fruition. This science has pointed to various critical components that can increase the likelihood that development programmes not only facilitate learning but also sustainable shifts in behaviour. This blog will outline just three of the key factors.

1. Effective coaching

Coaching should never replace the more formal aspects of development but should rather be used as a valuable tool to complement and aid learning.² The value of coaching is demonstrated most clearly by one study which found that whilst training could improve productivity by 22.4% alone, follow-up coaching sessions led to a huge 88% increase in productivity.³ This effect could result from any number of factors. To take just one example, effective coaches can induce constructive reflection, encouraging employees to step out of their own mental frames and into another's, helping them to see different viewpoints and possibilities.⁴