Chapter 10

The Follow-Up Coach

What’s in This Chapter

•  Supporting a team in “Five Moments of Need”

•  Facilitating ongoing learning

Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher of www.applysynergies.com are running around the world of learning and development shouting loudly “The emperor has no clothes!” and they have been for years. Here’s what they are really saying: Learning events—whether live or virtual—are only 15 percent of what it takes for people to change performance.

Their message is tough to digest, easy to ignore, and critical in the evolution from training people to growing measurable performance. I love facilitating learning, and I want to think that some of what I teach actually gets used in the workplace, but I always worry that is not true. Gottfredson and Mosher’s model shows me my worries are well founded. They describe “Five Moments of Need,” which provide an overarching framework for helping learners become and remain competent in their individual and collective work (2012):

1.  When people are learning how to do something for the first time (new)

2.  When people are expanding the breadth and depth of what they have learned (more)

3.  When people need to act upon what they have learned, which includes planning what they will do, remembering what they may have forgotten, or adapting their performance to a unique situation (apply)

4.  When problems arise, or things break or don’t work the way they were intended (solve)

5.  When people need to learn a new way of doing something, which requires them to change skills that are deeply ingrained in their performance practices (change).

This leadership training book is designed to initiate steps 1 (new) and 2 (more) and to create a safe practice field in the two-day simulation for a small amount of steps 3 (apply) and 4 (solve). Clearly reinforcing learning back on the job is critical to getting to solve and change. This chapter will suggest strategies to help learners take what they have learned in a session and continue to use and grow that knowledge in their jobs. The strategies are clustered around four main themes:

•  Circle of influence versus control

•  Support through community

•  Support through coaching and mentoring

•  Support through outside associations and opportunities.

Circle of Influence Versus Control

The 85 percent of performance change that remains after the 15 percent that’s influenced by training may not lie within the scope of your job. Ethically, if you know the 85 percent will not happen, you also know that your training will provide little return on investment (ROI). Put more brutally, you shouldn’t be doing the training. I try to teach my workshops emphasizing the value to the individual, regardless of the buy-in of others. Help your learners value the fact that the learning will help them individually.

There is a difference between what you can control, what you can influence, and what you can’t control. As a leader in your organization, you must be honest with yourself about what authority (and budget) you have to do the follow-up that will ensure that learners don’t just know but also apply. Your initial reaction may be that you can’t control these outcomes, which may be partly true. But don’t give up—there are always ways you can help if you set your mind to it. Consider these influencing interventions that keep the leadership lessons learned in class top of mind:

•  Create a newsletter, blog, podcast, video, or email broadcast with a “Leadership Tip of the Month.” Ask all alumni of the leadership programs to submit their lessons learned and give prizes to the top one you pick to include each month.

•  Before the learners can participate in your workshop, ask for a contribution from their supervisor. The 360-degree online assessments are great for bringing in leadership and peers. If you cannot use this assessment, consider doing a brief survey of supervisors on what they see as leadership performance gaps to share with your learners.

•  Use a cloud-based tool like HRx (www.hrxplan.com). This cloud-based tool is one of many new “mini LMS” solutions. It allows leaders to manage the ongoing growth of each member of their teams. Leaders and team members choose the development content (that exists in the tool), and the leaders can then track completion. In this tool, the gap analysis is done based on the results of assessments. The tool can even be turned into a game to create competition among class attendees if that’s appropriate in your culture.

The best way to grow leadership is through managers. Work with your participants’ supervisors to encourage them to assign and support the graduates in challenging projects that can help them grow. Explain to leadership how critical it is for the learners that performance reviews and competency models use what they’ve learned in leadership learning experiences.

Here are additional ideas for keeping leadership lessons top of mind and supporting continuing performance growth.

Support Through Community

People want to belong to a community and your learners are no different. In class, they were part of a community, but now they’ve gone back to work. When they return from a learning experience and they are the only one who attended, it is difficult to stay motivated to try new behaviors. Maintaining connection with and among participants not only helps each alumnus but also spreads the word about the value of the workshop. Here are a few ways to do this:

•  Send a survey to alumni six months after the workshop. Ask them how many hours of productive time they “got back” by improving their leadership. Convert the total number of hours reported to a dollar amount (based on average loaded salaries) and share the information with everyone as part of marketing the value of the program.

•  Build an Invite-Only Facebook or LinkedIn site and invite alumni to join after the workshop. Prime the pump by adding articles and starting discussions. Ask people specifically to contribute a success story.

•  Schedule coffee breaks, happy hours, or lunches with alumni and an executive speaker to maintain passion for the topic.

•  Create quick webinars on specific topics (less than 30 minutes) and record them.

•  Celebrate the promotion of all alumni.

With virtual learning, community becomes more challenging. I recently attended a Coursera college course (www.coursera.com) with 900 other participants globally that was a great learning experience (“Irrational Behavior” by Dan Ariely). Connecting with people in the discussions was very difficult because of the volume of comments. It would have been more useful to have smaller cohorts to work with in the discussion board. You have to be sensitive to the number of people involved when working virtually. The facilitator’s videos, articles to read, quizzes, and challenges motivated me. I did not have time for any of it but made time because I saw value in the content.

Likewise, to create community in online workshops, consider using discussion boards and explicit assignment of pairs to review one another’s homework.

Think about how you could build an elite “club” of leadership training alumni and how to facilitate their ongoing discussions and connections through live or online experiences. The ultimate goal would be for one of them to lead the group for a period of time.

Support Through Coaching and Mentoring

I define coach (see Chapter 11: Follow-Up Activities) as a neutral person who facilitates another’s growth. A mentor is a person who knows the field and likely the company well and can help another person negotiate leadership in that organization. Bosses (direct or above) may play the role of one or none of these.

One way to use coaching as a follow-up activity is to hold leadership retreats with a 5:1 ratio of learners to coaches. The coaches observe the behaviors of the learners throughout a three-day period and give them occasional one-on-one feedback with a full-hour coaching session on the third day to develop an action plan. Coaches coach each individual by phone once a month for at least three months. As part of these leadership retreats, learners listen to executive speakers from their company and have opportunities to meet and network with them and with each other. Finally, one executive who is the sponsor of the retreat agrees to meet one-on-one with each participant if desired. This engagement by company leadership facilitates ongoing performance very effectively.

In all cases, the learner must initiate the coaching, mentoring, and sponsor meeting. Each individual decides how much or little he or she wants to grow.

Support Through Outside Associations and Opportunities

Instead of investing time in setting up an internal community, consider using some outside organizations. Many forums are available on LinkedIn and other social media sites that are interested in leadership.

Look for interesting online and live games to use content and supplies already available to get alumni back together for an engaging revisit of their leadership growth. Also consider asking people to build infographics or digital posters representing their leadership journey to post in their area.

The Bare Minimum

•  Remember that most learning occurs after the workshop. Continue to stress to managers and alumni how critical this reinforcement is.

•  Make sure you give learners the support they need to implement ideas and concepts learned in the Leadership Training Workshop sessions.

•  Explain to leadership how critical it is for the learners that their performance reviews based on competency models align to what they’ve learned. Create support for continued learning through community, mentoring and coaching, as well as outside associations and opportunities.

What to Do Next

•  Figure out what is in and out of your control. Change your view of leadership training as a course and expand it to include growth on the job through creative intervention.

•  Get leaders involved. Ask the managers how to maintain the momentum of their new leaders after the experience.

•  Don’t try everything at once. Roll out one intervention and see how it goes.

•  Stay in touch with your learners as much as possible.

Additional Resources

Gottfredson, C., and B. Mosher. (2012). “Are You Meeting All Five Moments of Learning Need?” Learning Solutions Magazine, June 18.

Haneberg, L. (2006). Coaching Basics. ASTD Training Basics Series. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

www.HRx.com. Contact [email protected] for more information.