Leading On Learning (Part 2)
During my research I stumbled across a useful PDF booklet published by the UK Campaign For Learning entitled “Leading on Learning”. In this post I have extracted the sections of the document regarding “How does a successful manager act?” and “Key steps to developing your staff” which offer some great advice that I thought would be useful to share.
You can download the full document for yourself at:
Campaign For Learning - Leading On Learning PDF Booklet
Summary: A Learning Culture Cannot Emerge Without Management Buy-In And Support
It's my personal belief that a learning culture cannot emerge without management buy-in due to the critical role that managers play every day in influencing their staff. If management aren't focused on developing people as part of their daily work then little people growth will occur. In the IT industry, which is dependent on learning even to stand still, failing to develop people will put an organisation firmly on the path to becoming obsolete.
If you are a manager or team leader, as you read the article below, treat it as a mirror. How do you measure up? Are you a successful manager in terms of building people and enabling them to develop? Hopefully, you also will find the advice about how to develop your staff useful too.
Tim Simpson
14th June, 2019
#LifeAtCapgemini
How does a successful manager act to develop their staff?
How does a successful manager act?
The successful manager who facilitates learning is one who can see the potential in their staff; they will listen well, give clear direction and crucially will make personal development easier to achieve for both themselves and those who work with them.
| Managers can: | The result of all of this is that staff: |
|---|---|
| Enable learning | Gain confidence |
| Offer opportunities for personal development | Perform better |
| Maximise talent in their team | Challenge themselves more often without being prompted |
| Help people to identify and achieve their own potential | Are more interested in what is happening in the team and the organisation |
The Campaign for Learning’s research shows that managers often neglect their role in enabling learning and skills because of the high number of performance related targets that they have to deal with and the day-to-day challenges that occur within the workplace.
However, if your staff are continually learning and developing, you will reach those targets more easily - learning brings benefits in itself but it is also a very effective means to an end.
The CMI (Chartered Management Institute) says good management is essential because it:
- Improves business performance
- Improves employee performance
- Makes people healthier and happier
- Improves the survival rates of businesses
- Improves society in terms of ethical and sustainable benefits
Your Role As A Manager
Your role as a manager can have a major impact on your staff’s willingness and ability to develop. You are able to influence through:
- Performance development reviews
- Induction activities
- Identifying skills needs
- Giving access to challenging work or job rotation
- Coaching and guidance
- Providing informal training programmes
- Encouraging staff’s career development and promotion
- Ensuring knowledge sharing
- Holding ‘lessons learned’ sessions
- Leading by example
Fast Fact: 43% of people think their manager is ineffective or highly ineffective, according to research by the CMI.
Key Steps To Developing Your Staff
There are two key elements to ensure effective and productive learning in the workplace - planning and evaluation.
Planning
As a manager, you will have targets that are part of the organisational business plan. In order to meet these targets you and your staff will need skills and knowledge you may or may not have. You will need to identify any gaps in skills and knowledge and then plan to help you schedule the necessary learning over the year and across your team, within the limits imposed by your organisation’s schedules.
You may not be solely responsible for the learning and development of your staff, as there may be departments in your organisation that deal with this. However, you will be key in identifying learning needs, communicating these to relevant departments and giving staff time and support for their development. If your team understand how their development fits with the delivery of the business plan they will feel more comfortable about taking up relevant opportunities. This will help people see personal development as an expected part of performance management - and you will have a better idea of the budget needed.
Top tips for planning learning and development:
- Make sure you involve your staff in identifying and agreeing relevant training. This conversation is vital for buy-in.
- Use the appraisal system to conduct a Training Needs Analysis. This will show you what skills and knowledge your team already have against what is needed to achieve next year’s objectives.
- If you have learning champions, Union Learning Representatives or Learning and Development experts, work with them as they may have access to more resources and expertise.
- Be aware that people may prefer to learn in different ways. For instance, some people may prefer to listen and learn, others prefer to learn by doing and some prefer to learn visually and by reading or seeing diagrams. These preferences may alter over time and depend on the particular context. This means that if someone hasn’t succeeded in learning (in their school days or more recently) by one method, it doesn’t mean they can’t learn - trying a different method may change their experience completely. However, it’s important not simply to label people with a preferred learning style as this too can create a barrier to learning and discourage people from trying new ways of learning
- Think about personality types and previous experiences when planning learning and development. Remember you are dealing with people who have feelings as well as skills and knowledge. The conversation with each person is key to understanding what makes them tick and what their attitudes to learning are.
Evaluation
Once you’ve planned your team’s development and have given them the resources to learn, it is extremely important to measure afterwards how useful the activity was. It’s important that you understand what learning has taken place, how it will be used in the workplace and how much it costs, so you can plan for the future and make sure you get the best value out of all your learning and development.
Essential Steps For Evaluation
You identified individual and group training needs at the start; now consider to what extent the activity met the identified training needs.
- Discuss with your staff what they got out of the activities, and to what extent their objectives as individuals were achieved.
- Go on to discuss with staff how they will use what they’ve learned to improve the way that they work. This is crucial to ensure continued buy-in and identify what sorts of training are most useful for your organisation.
- Measure the overall investment of time, money and resources that your staff put into learning and development.
- Remember that learning and development includes inductions, presentations, shadowing, reading etc. as well as training. (There are at least 50 ways to learn other than attending training!)
- Report outcomes to your managers and celebrate successes. This is essential to gain support for future learning and development.
- Keeping records can help you find out which learning and development is effective and which isn’t.
Models There are a number of models you can use to structure your evaluation e.g. the Kirkpatrick model can be used to measure the effectiveness of training and looks at four levels of evaluation – reaction, learning, behaviour and results. Another model is the 70:20:10 model.
Space To Reflect
Do you have an individual learning and development plan?
What learning and development have you taken part in over the last year?
Did you discuss how it related to your work before you took part in the learning and development activity?
Did you discuss the impact of this with your line manager after the activity?
How do you know that a development activity has an impact on how you perform your job?
Have you ever been rewarded for taking part in learning and development?
Think about the implications of your own learning experience for the learning and development of your team.
Do you have regular discussions with your staff about learning and development?
Do you relate these to business activities and objectives?
Name one thing that you do to encourage staff to develop themselves. Think of one further thing you could also do in the future to ensure learning and development are always on the agenda.
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