Effective Training and Leadership Development
Here are tips about how to provide effective training and leadership development for adult learners.
Enormous research has been done on how to train with impact. Here are some specific tips that will increase the impact of your investment in building leadership brand, as opposed to developing leaders:
- Offer an integrated model for the experience.
We continue to see many training events as parades of stars, with each day or module taught by a thoughtful presenter (either outside faculty, line manager, or customer), then another module from another face, and then another. With little integration, each training module is an isolated event. Branded training requires an integrated message (what our leaders need to know and do to demonstrate a leadership brand consistent with a firm brand) that has distinct modules woven around the brand theme.
- Use a host of training pedagogies.
Since adults learn differently from another, different methodologies can and should be used. A mix of lecture, small group discussion, written case studies, live case studies, action learning projects, team presentation, video snippets, technology-based learning, simulations, assessment tools, and so forth can be woven into the training experience to ensure that regardless of each participant's learning style, all will find some methods that work well.
- Bear in mind that with adult learners, the faculty should be talking about 60 or 70 percent of the time.
If faculty allows their participation to fall below 50 percent of the talking time, participants are in a problem-solving session and wonder what the faculty adds; if faculty does 85 percent or more of the talking, participants are more likely to be listening than internalizing what is taught.
- Design modules to follow the concept-illustration-action (C-I-A) rational.
During a training experience, a host of modules may be woven around the integrated C-I-A theme. Each module should have a clear set of concepts.
Here are tips about how to provide effective training and leadership development for adult learners.
Enormous research has been done on how to train with impact. Here are some specific tips that will increase the impact of your investment in building leadership brand, as opposed to developing leaders:
- Offer an integrated model for the experience.
We continue to see many training events as parades of stars, with each day or module taught by a thoughtful presenter (either outside faculty, line manager, or customer), then another module from another face, and then another. With little integration, each training module is an isolated event. Branded training requires an integrated message (what our leaders need to know and do to demonstrate a leadership brand consistent with a firm brand) that has distinct modules woven around the brand theme.
- Use a host of training pedagogies.
Since adults learn differently from another, different methodologies can and should be used. A mix of lecture, small group discussion, written case studies, live case studies, action learning projects, team presentation, video snippets, technology-based learning, simulations, assessment tools, and so forth can be woven into the training experience to ensure that regardless of each participant's learning style, all will find some methods that work well.
- Bear in mind that with adult learners, the faculty should be talking about 60 or 70 percent of the time.
If faculty allows their participation to fall below 50 percent of the talking time, participants are in a problem-solving session and wonder what the faculty adds; if faculty does 85 percent or more of the talking, participants are more likely to be listening than internalizing what is taught.
- Design modules to follow the concept-illustration-action (C-I-A) rational.
During a training experience, a host of modules may be woven around the integrated C-I-A theme. Each module should have a clear set of concepts.
