DIY Team Training
I have worked with over 100 managers and teams, which includes building around 40 high-performance, self-managing teams. From this work, I have learnt that there are common reasons why managers and teams fail and why both do not develop to their full potential. The reasons are simple in nature and are relatively easy to correct, making you a better manager with a dedicated, loyal, self-managing team.
Introduction
One in four senior managers reported that training was critical to business outcomes. Still, they and their HR teams continue to pour money into training, year after year, in an effort to trigger organizational change. But what they actually need is a new way of thinking about learning and development.
Organizations spent $359 Billion globally on training in 2021, but was it worth it?
· 75% of managers are dissatisfied with external team training.
· Only 12% of employees apply new skills learned in training programs.
· Only 25% of respondents to a McKinsey survey believe that training measurably improved performance.
Training courses that run for just a couple of days or a week have been proven in several studies to be a waste of time. Pre-and post-training surveys by McKinsey show that most managers thought little had changed as a result of training, even though it had been inspiring at the time. The same surveys also showed that most employees quickly regressed to their pre-training performance.
Use It or Lose It
We’re learning at the wrong time. People learn best when they have to practice something. Our brains quickly forget what we don’t use. Incorporating new learning into your work is one way to retain knowledge. Another is spaced repetition, which refers to spreading learning out over time.
What do today’s employees want?
Today's millennial generation, unlike the baby boomers before them, are vocal about what they want their workplace to look like; they will not accept old-style methods of traditional management, which they view as managing, administering, stifling, unreasonable and unwarranted. They want managers and workplaces that recognize them for their efforts and that are collaborative and supportive.
Today’s employees want a combination of a progressive management style and being a member of a high-performance, self-managing team. These fulfil their willingness and desire to work across teams, as well as their constant need for feedback, reinforcement, and praise for being tech-savvy. No matter how they are viewed, the simple truth is that today’s employees look at work dramatically differently from the baby boomer generation that preceded them.
Why most teams fail to deliver
Most teams have a fixed mindset that they can't improve, change, or re-frame their situation. This I call 'team quicksand', where a team becomes immobilised and can't move forward. Team quicksand stops teams from achieving high performance. The biggest problem is that team members fail to realise the positive aspects of their team by instead focusing on the negative, with little if any realisation of how capable the team actually is and how they can do better.
Self-Managing, High-Performance Teams
Self-managing, high-performance teams are teams that, in conjunction with and also in isolation from their manager, decide what work needs to be done and how and when it is done. In self-managing teams, team members are considered to be equal; there are no distinctions about seniority or privilege.
DIY Team Training program
This DIY Team Training program addresses issues and, at the same time, it builds a self-managing, high-performance team. Designed for busy managers, each of the following training program sections has a corresponding Workshop Handout with Training Instructions to let you deliver the program.
1. Management communication
It’s important to take notice of how you communicate. Here is how to have a professional conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and without offending somebody. We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like. The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you feel like you've made a real connection, or you've been perfectly understood.
2. Progressive management style
It’s important to understand how your management style influences the way you think, feel, speak, and act. Your management style has a significant impact on how you and your team operate; the right management style promotes team member engagement and makes your team members feel more comfortable approaching you with questions, suggestions, and ideas. The right management style substantially increases your confidence and lowers your stress levels.
3. Disengaged team members
Disengaged team members feel no real connection to their jobs and tend to do the bare minimum; they do as little as possible to get by. Disengagement can show in several ways, a 9-to-5 clock mentality or a tendency to seal oneself off from other team members. It becomes most noticeable when someone who's ordinarily outgoing and enthusiastic seems to fall by the wayside and has nothing positive to contribute. They may resent their job, tend to gripe to co-workers and drag down office morale.
4. Autonomy and empowerment
Team members who do not have autonomy or empowerment require external motivation. Whereas team members who do possess autonomy and empowerment do not. Autonomy and empowerment are critical attributes of self-managing teams; without them, you have frustrated team members who are constantly reminded that they're not trusted to make even small decisions let alone the bigger ones; this saps motivation and leads to resentment.
5. Team members do not understand each other
When a team knows each other’s working styles, backgrounds, diversity, strengths, and skills, this adds to the team’s overall consciousness in terms of what assets the team possesses and how the team can best use them. Five questionnaires are used to allow team members to show each other their respective attributes.
6. Common vision
Ordinary teams respond to a mandate from outside their team, making them entirely internally focused, whereas self-managing teams define their own team vision. In an ordinary team, the manager is the backbone and functions as the support system for teamwork and collaboration. In a ship analogy, managers are the people with their eyes on the horizon; managers are the ones reading the map. The manager of an ordinary team plots the course and shows team members how to get there. However, this does not apply to self-managing teams where the whole team reads the map and determines the team’s direction.
7. Standards of behaviour
In this workshop, team members agree on what are acceptable and unacceptable team behaviours. Self-managing teams define a set of team rules as standards of behaviour. Establishing clear ground rules gives a team its cultural and psychologically safe baseline. It is a fundamental step in team development. Team rules increase psychological safety and reduce potential conflict among team members.
8. Team communication
This workshop involves making changes to the way team members communicate. If you want to create chaos where confusion runs rampant and production is low, then work in a team that does not know how to communicate. We all know that poor communication is at the root of all problems. What is required is open communication which means practising mutually beneficial and honest discussions.
9. Master plan
A team can only consistently deliver when team members are working to a common plan. Individuals and separate teams require their own work plans, like project plans, but what is also required is a joint Master plan.
10. Meetings people want to attend
This workshop is about how to run team meetings, so people want to attend. It covers content, format, protocols, shared leadership and how to tell if your meetings are effective. Let’s face it, one of the things that take up most of your time in meetings. Self-managing teams hold meetings that you want to attend because they are productive and efficiently make use of your time. Every meeting is focused, timely, and necessary and is used to solve problems, make decisions, disseminate information, and enhance skills.
The training program has been specifically designed so that a manager can deliver it. It is easy to follow and is basically foolproof. It is a proven method that has been successfully used many times. It delivers powerful and long-lasting results. All you need to do is follow Workshop Training Instructions and give out a Workshop handout.
You can get the DIY Team Training Program at its introductory price of only $49, which is 50% off – exceptional value.
I priced the training program this way because I want every manager and every team to achieve high performance, increase their job satisfaction and feel truly valued at work. This is within reach of every manager and team – I know it is, and I have repeatedly proven it. Now you can too.
The DIY Team Training program is based on ‘spaced repetition, a method that spreads out training over time. This method guarantees that learners remember 80% of what they have learned after 6 months. (Whereas training based on traditional training courses - learners forgot 80% of what they learned after just 6 days.) The program only requires 1 hour per fortnight of your time spread out over 4 months. The program includes detailed Workshop Handouts and accompanying Training Instructions for the manager to use.DIY Training Program includes:
Team Structure
Management Style
Team Engagement
Team Evaluation
Team Rules
and much more.