3 Steps to Improve Your Manager Training

If you are like most organizations, one of your major priorities is improving the abilities of your managers. The challenge is knowing where to start. 

After years of working with organizations of all shapes and sizes, we have noticed several trends in what holds most manager training back. The truth is, despite much of the learning industry trying to convince you otherwise, making improvements really isn’t that complicated.

Whether you are looking to upgrade your existing training, or starting from scratch, there are three simple steps you can take to improve your manager training TODAY.

1) IDENTIFY SPECIFIC BEHAVIORS.

When organizations create manager training, they often create something approximating a college course on management. It is a lot of information about why management is important and the impact feedback can have on an organization. 

That’s all great. But it isn’t going to move the needle.

What will move the needle is getting your managers to behave differently. You don’t want them to know why management is important, you want them to be able to BE a good manager. So that begs the question, what does it mean to be a good manager in your organization?

If you want to improve your training, you need to go through all the expectations of a manager, hiring, firing, feedback, goal setting, and write down what being great at this looks like. Examples might include how to hold a good one-on-one or the best way to set goals using your company’s goal framework. 

This might sound really prescriptive, but that is the point. Remember, these people probably have other responsibilities, and they don’t have a lot of spare capacity to figure out what good looks like on their own. Giving them a clear roadmap of expected behaviors is the first critical step to success.

2) BE REALISTIC ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE

I have worked with multiple companies that declared "this is the year of the manager." A year later, very little had changed. They were trying to transform everything all at once, so nothing worked. 

Very often a company will put together a 2-hour or half day session on all things leadership. Everything from feedback to time management to hiring. That is a lot of ground to cover. This means the course ends up quickly breezing over a ton of topics, without giving the participants any time to dig in.

When you are thinking about manager training, be clear about the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to that training, and adjust what you are trying to get done accordingly.

Rather than giving a laundry list of best practices, focus on just one critical behavior. Give them time to understand it, talk about it, and most importantly, practice the behavior a few times. This way they walk out with at least one new skill, rather than a bunch of random information.

3) PLAN AT LEAST THREE TOUCH POINTS

All learning is based on building connections in the brain. The easiest way to build those connections is through repetition. 

If you really want your training to stick, don’t think of the training as a single engagement. You need to plan multiple touch points with each participant, to build up some repetition. Though more is better, we recommend at least three touch points.

• Start with some kind of pre-read, whether in an email, a slack, or an online course. You could send them something to read, a video to watch, doesn’t matter. Just start by exposing them to the key ideas.

• Next, hold your actual course. This is where you will bring people together to engage with and practice the techniques you are teaching them.

• Then, a day or two after the class, send a follow-up. This should be using the same language used in the first two touch points and gets them to re-engage with the ideas. Maybe challenge them to put the behaviors they learned to use as soon as possible.

Manager training is hard and there are a lot of ways to tackle it, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. These three tips should help you continue on your journey towards better manager training. 

Want more help? Please reach out and I would love to jump on a call.