Trina tells all: “What I’ve learned about leadership training”

If you’ve had the opportunity to nurture superstar leaders, you already know what a positive impact they can make on staff engagement, retention, and ultimately your organization’s bottom line! But it can be challenging for HR professionals like ourselves to know how to most effectively invest in our leaders now to ensure mutual success in the years to come.

Having recently developed and implemented Payworks’ first-ever Leadership Development Program, I’ve learned some valuable lessons on the opportunities – and challenges – a leader training strategy can provide within your business.

If you’re considering making a similar move, read on for a few ideas on how to start off on the right foot, avoid the dreaded “scope creep” (…well, mostly), and deliver a program of which your whole team can be proud.

Identifying goals for leaders within the organization

You know the key role leaders play in building your business, and you have an idea of where your business is headed – but how do you ensure each of your leaders is well-positioned to contribute along that path forward?

The first step is to identify the areas of your overall business trajectory where leadership can have the highest “make or break” impact. In Payworks’ case, our story has been one of exponential, coast-to-coast growth… and that growth has particularly ramped up in the past few years. So the question became: how can we provide our talented leaders – whether they be long-tenured, new to the business or emerging from within our own workforce – with the skills, perspectives and tools needed to most effectively engage, retain, and manage teams that are larger, more diverse, and more geographically spread-out than ever before?

This may be a helpful stage at which to engage an outside consultant, whose expertise can be invaluable to the process. In my experience, they brought valuable subject matter expertise through the lens of an outside perspective, and provided solid support in identifying opportunities to streamline processes, managing transitions, and making informed decisions based on metrics, trends, and performance indicators.

Determining a specific area of focus for your leaders based on your organization’s overall story will both inform the goals of your leadership training program and ensure they’re aligned with the goals of the business as a whole.

Conducting your research

A good next step is to get the lay of the land as it currently stands. Where do leaders feel they’re well-equipped to support your organization’s goals and their own teams? Where are they feeling like they could use some additional support?

I approached this a few different ways: individual meetings, focus groups, and even some candid conversations by the coffee station. As all HR folks know, one size rarely fits all, and different leaders will feel most comfortable and empowered to speak freely in different situations – whether it’s a private conversation where they can cut to the chase, or a group setting where they feel buoyed by the support of their peers.

You also likely already have more information at your fingertips than you might realize! Dig back into your latest employee engagement survey results, look at retention metrics, and re-evaluate your understanding of current competencies based on other recent assessment initiatives.

No matter how you gather it, the qualitative and quantitative data gathered through this research should reveal some interesting trends… and opportunities!

Establishing your training program goals, strategy and scope (present and future!)

Now that you have a sense of the areas where your training program could potentially make the most positive impact for your leaders, it’s time to figure out how to deliver it. This means forming a business case to share with your executive team members, establishing clear program goals, and from there determining the strategy by which you can most effectively achieve them.

While this is obviously no small feat (and you may choose to engage a partner to help shoulder the load – more on that below), it’s incredibly exciting to see the building blocks start to fall into place! And once they’re in place, I’d recommend seeking buy-in from “executive sponsors” – members of your executive leadership team who believe in the program’s strategy and value, and who’ll enthusiastically promote it throughout the rest of the business – as an excellent way to help build and share that excitement with the leaders the program will serve. They’ll also be invaluable in aligning the whole team with the change management process that’s necessary to allocate resources and time to your program.

One caution: in the midst of all that great passion for the project, it can be all too easy for the scope of the training program to start ballooning. One of the best ways to keep this energy focused is to outline upfront a strategy-driven timeline of training to be delivered in sustainable stages over the course of months or even years (for example, focusing on current leaders first and emerging leaders second, and explaining why).

Similarly, it’s important to reflect on the critical issues of your organization’s core purposes, leadership values, and vision for serving the needs of the marketplace. This will keep your strategy and its long-term goals at the forefront without dampening any of the rah-rah power that’s so important to the training program’s success!

In fact, this may be the stage where you could use some of that extra energy yourself – after all, this is where you need to be the most methodical to ensure you’ve thought of everything (well, within reason!). My best advice: be patient. What you’re creating is going to have lasting impact throughout the business, so give yourself grace and plenty of time as you work through the details.

Evaluating partners

As your vision for the training program starts to crystallize, you may determine that engaging a training partner is the best (or perhaps only!) feasible way to make it a reality. But who can you entrust with the program, and how do you know what to look for?

I leaned on a slightly-adapted version of the SECTIONS model, which was originally outlined by A.W. Bates and Gary Poole as a framework for selecting technology (but is applicable to many other scenarios as well). This model includes looking at:

• Students: What kind of opportunities or transferrable skills will participants gain?
• Ease of Use: How simple is it for participants to access the program? Are there technological or security barriers?
• Costs: This one’s pretty self-explanatory!
• Teaching & Learning: Does the partner support a self-assessment tool? Do they support your preferred learning model?
• Interactivity: Will participants have access to course materials or cohort learning?
• Organizational Issues: Would the workshops offered be repeatable or scalable to account for growth? Are the courses offered hybrid (in-person and virtual) to be inclusive of all participants, regardless of their location?
• Networking: Is the program conducive to peer networking opportunities (cohort learning)? Does it allow for networking opportunities at similar and different organizational hierarchy levels?
• Security & Privacy: Does the required technology meet the organization’s security and privacy requirements?

No matter what framework you choose, evaluating vendors against each other in individual categories should be very helpful for honing in on your perfect partner – it certainly was for me!

Outlining your plan for execution… but staying agile

Regardless of whether you engage a partner or not, once the training program’s goals and strategy are locked in, you’re ready to start looking at the nitty-gritty of when and how this is all going to take place. Participants (and their own teams!) will appreciate having an upfront sense of how this will fit into the busy day-to-day life of the business… so the more detail you can provide in advance, the better.

You’ll also need to determine your own metrics for success. This is best accomplished by determining not only what results would lead to the accomplishment of the program’s goals, but also how you’ll get there: be it changes to content (what needs to change within the organization in terms of structures, systems, work practices and more), people (the human dynamics of change – behaviours, skills, culture, etc.), and process (how change is designed, implemented and integrated into the day to day life of the organization).

With that said, it’s also important to stay agile because – no matter how well you plan – there will be bumps in the road, conflicting priorities and more. As the program rolls out, I’d recommend staying in close touch with the participating leaders. Find out what they’re loving and what’s falling flat from the perspective of content, format, scheduling or otherwise. Any feedback you can gather through pulse checks, surveys, focus groups or otherwise will only help make your training program better – now and in the future!

Looking to take a deep dive into projects like these – you know, the ones that brought you into HR in the first place? With Payworks’ Human Resources solution, you can spend more time on the big picture… because when employee information is organized and details flow from payroll to HR (rather than rekeying data!), you can finally reduce paperwork and focus on people. Learn more: https://www.payworks.ca/solutions/human-resources.