Bitesize No. 7 – Turning Soft Skills into Hard Results
Some aspects of this Bitesize series may have been difficult to swallow for trainers who spend much of their time trying to develop soft skills.
It is sometimes hard to accept that all skills, soft or hard, are meant to produce real results at the end of the day.
Also, it is often the softer, more creative side of training and development that many trainers enjoy.
Attaching hard pounds-sterling figures to this work makes it feel cold and clinical, but there is no reason why it should.
Take outdoor management development as an example.
How is this sort of development supposed to add value? Will it build team cohesion or is it more about self-reliance?
Or maybe a project team will just work better having had this sort of experience together away from the workface?
If you ask the participants what they gained from the experience (level 1 validation) you could possibly receive some glowing tributes to the programme.
Unfortunately, though, all of this is expressed in soft, intangible terms. None of this would actually tell you whether this outdoor programme added any value or not.
Of course, the programme designer might argue that you cannot always measure the benefits of development in hard cash terms that a business partner would demand.
Well, this is never likely to happen because a business partner would not have sanctioned such a development programme in the first place.
Let us go back to the drawing board.
A project manager in an IT services business comes to the business partner in training and asks for some help with improving the team spirit in her team.
She adds that in her last job, with her previous employer, she went on an outdoor management programme that she felt was very beneficial for all concerned. So she asks if they could organise something very similar for her present team.
The business partner says they only support training investment in activities that are designed to add value.
The project manager is adamant that this team-building event will add value - she just knows that it will be of great benefit.
Her enthusiasm though is not a sound enough basis for the business partner to work from.
They ask four simple questions to establish whether it is likely to add value and these are not hypothetical questions: - 1. Will the training result in providing customers with more services or support? 2. Will it reduce our operating costs? 3. Will it help us obtain higher prices for our services or more revenue? 4. Will it improve the quality of customer service we provide?
If the project manager says no to all of these there is a serious problem.
Either she has to re-think the potential benefits of the programme in added value terms or she has to articulate what problems lie beneath the symptom of poor team spirit.
A business partner will not sanction any programme where the business sponsor and trainees are not clearly committed to adding value or are unsure how it will add value.
Roger Greenaway , 29 April 2004 @ 15:50 PM simulation or stimulation?
Paul raises the issue of soft into hard mainly in the context of team building using the outdoors.
I have raised similar issues in a comparison of outdoor exercises simulating situations at work and of indoor exercises (e.g. Jungle Escape) simulating outdoor adventure. See: http://reviewing.co.uk/activities/outdoor_indoor.htm
I was fascinated/disturbed to find that the 'I escaped from the jungle' badges were upgraded to 'We escaped from the jungle' badges to reinforce the team aspect.
The issues raised by Paul are not really indoor/outdoor issues. I think they are more about training design and the quality of the facilitation to make the necessary links -in powerful, not superficial, ways (no badges please!).
Paul's 4 questions are an important challenge whether the training is indoors or outdoors.
Re questions 1 and 4 - In either environment it is possible to go for simulated designs in which participants have sustained experiences in the roles of customer and provider. In any design real customers can be included at any stage - before, during or after.
Re questions 2 and 3 - how about using a training design (indoors or outdoors) in which people experience doing similar tasks in groups of very different sizes. Every time a smaller group outperforms a larger group there is scope for producing hard learning leading to hard results.
But I do not favour turning all training (indoor or outdoor) into simulation. There is plenty of power (and hard results) in sTimulation too. I explore this in my article on 'how transfer happens'(available from http://reviewing.co.uk) Roger Greenaway
Peter Dilger , 06 April 2004 @ 00:02 AM Outdoor self development or team development
My experience of the bulk of outdoor courses is that the declared objectives of enhancing team and mangement performance are totally at odds with the format of the courses. The tasks and exercises are often more suited to promoting personal rather than team development.
Asking individuals to confront their own fears and phobias, when correctly monitored and supervised, may work wonders for personal self esteem but often fails to add to the team experiemce. In fact I have witnessed times when this process has been both damaging to the morale of the team and has bordered on being dangerous for the individuals involved.
When applied to management development, I often wonder what management insight was gained by a 50 year old, overweight executive paddling his canoe down a swollen river.
Many of the advocates of outdoor management and team development courses quote, as one of their justifications, the success enjoyed by the armed services. Well as an ex-serviceman I agree that outdoor activities form a part, but only a part, of a complex and intergrated training structure. But many of the exercises "borrowed" from the military are in fact not used as team builders, but are the ones used to select individuals who then go on to join the team building programmes.
However it's not all negative. Effective exercises designed to address specific management, or team issues, can benefit from being conducted outdoors. But they need to be just that. The outdoors can gives an added dimension but the outcomes should never be weighted in favour of the fitter, often younger, more athletic delegates.
I know the arguements will be that the team will rally round to help the weaker members - but in many cases the issues divide the team.
As a last thought I wonder how many of our really successful entrepreeurs and managers would have been identified from their ability to abseil down the side of a cliff.
