You have your work cut out for you as a trainer. Truth be told, you can pour hours of your life into preparing a training session but the work you do will be rendered useless if you find you are part of an organisation that doesn’t really foster the development of its employees.

Before you plan your next training session, consider the four main developmental blocks. They are:

• Unrewarding organisations. Does your organisation encourage employees to obtain training and/or reward them for seeking it out? Are employees motivated to seek further education?
• Difficult line managers. Upper management may require additional training, but sometimes middle and lower management finds it difficult to let employees off the hook for for the time needed to actually obtain that training. Through not fault of your own you suddenly have employees who can’t meet their educational goals because their managers simply won’t let them.
• Passive participants. In some cases the employees themselves really don’t care about receiving additional training. They come to work to do their jobs, collect a paycheck, and go home. This may work for them but in the grand scheme of things can prove detrimental to the overall goals of your organisation.
• Trainers who can’t promote development. It’s one thing to give a training seminar, but a completely different thing to teach attendees how to use the skills they’ve learned when they return to their offices. I’ve actually been to training seminars in which the presenter has followed people back to their desks to help them experiment with new software programs or to show them how to incorporate new skills. You can’t just drop information in a person’s lap and expect him to know what to do with it.

As a trainer it’s your responsibility to identify these blocks and find ways to work around them. Communicate with all levels of management and with every employee to ensure your organisation’s training requirements are clear. There’s no reason for anyone to be left in the dark with it comes to continuing education.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Building a development plan, whether for your personal use or to outline a training program, is no simple task. A considerable amount of thought must go into each aspect of the plan, but where most managers, trainers, and individuals go wrong is in believing that their development plans have to be perfect on the first try. This just isn’t so.

It’s important to remember that your development plan is a guide to help you jump start your personal growth, training seminar, or project. There’s no way to predict changes, roadblocks, or setbacks and there’s no reason to feel bad about abandoning parts of the plan if necessary later on down the line.

Another mistake people make when outlining their personal development plans is in choosing too many goals. It’s perfect acceptable to have a lengthy list of goals, but it’s impossible to focus on all of them at the same time. Choose two favorites (no more than four) and focus on them until you’ve achieved your goals; then move on to the next one on your list.

Finally, make sure the goals you’ve chosen are things you really care about and want to achieve. So many people get caught up in the “development plan” cycle and end up “borrowing” ideas from other sources. In the end, they certainly make progress but it doesn’t really mean anything - they’re simply crossing items off of their “to-do” lists instead of completing tasks that have personal meaning.  It’s OK to browse sample development plans or ask your mentors, supervisors, and peers for suggestions, but in the end you need to make sure the goals you include are personalized and mean something to you.

These reminders apply more to your personal develpment plan than anything else, but knowing what your goals are as a manager or trainer are just as important as your plans for your classes. In the near future we’ll talk a bit about how to tailor effective development plans for your employees and training sessions. Until then, take a look at your personal agendas and let me know what you think! Are you on track or do you need your goals a bit more?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

By now you may have found a personal mentor but have you found the time to sit down with him, or even just yourself, to seriously discuss your own personal development plan?

You’re going to spend a ton of time helping your team mates and employees formulate personal development plans to enhance their own careers, and you shouldn’t let your own fall through the cracks. Here are a few things you need to consider when brainstorming your plan:

What are your ultimate goals? Where do you want your career path to take you?

How will you achieve your goals? Do you need to obtain additional training or start working on new projects in order to reach those goals?

How will you evaluate your progress? Will your own manager or mentor monitor you and hold you accountable for your level of success?

Remember, setting goals for the development of your management skills and career is a personal task. Take the project seriously. Come up with your own ideas as opposed to using a generic list of “goals” you’ve found on the internet or on another training website.

Your own supervisors, peers, and even your subordinates may have valuable suggestions for you to use in developing your personal development plan. Make sure you ask for their help or, better yet, make creating a personal development plan into a group project so that you can all help each other at the same time!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

When I first started out as a manager I found myself spending hours upon hours coaching and training my employees, but at the time I had poor time management skills and wasn’t making enough time for my own personal growth. I quickly realized that if I was going to continue to grow I was going to have to find a mentor, but doing so was easier said than done.

At first, I was frustrated because I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. After a bit of self-reflection I realized that finding a mentor, or even multiple mentors, didn’t have to be as difficult as I was making it out to be. Here are a few things I learned along the way:

You want to find a mentor with a similar personality to yours. You’ll want to learn from someone you can get along with, so look for a mentor with a similar (or better) work ethic and personality.

It’s ok to ask your coworkers and peers for help. Those you work with may have already been through the process of searching for a mentor, and there is no reason to be ashamed to ask for help with your own search. Even if they haven’t found the need for a mentor, your peers may know someone they consider an excellent resource or teacher. Ask for referrals and introductions, if necessary.

I’ve already had mentors and didn’t realise it. I am willing to bet that you’ve had a personal or professional relationship with someone, at some point in your life, in which that person acted as a mentor. He may have helped you in school, coached you through sports, or helped you find your first job. Do you still have a relationship with this person; and can he or she still help you?

There are a myriad of places you can look for a good mentor. Don’t forget to consider more experienced peers, upper management, and online forums. Businesspersons from any field of work, not limited to your own, are also great sources of information and mentorship.

Remember, you can’t grow your career without networking and continuing your education. A good mentor will be a valuable source of information and guidance. Do any of you have mentors already? If so, how do you feel they’ve helped you with your career?

Thanks again,

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

In this blog I am going to cover a subject that is close to many of our hearts!

………the Development Plan!

Yes, we have set our objectives and now it is time to put together a development plan of the activities and skills that we need to improve upon and how we can achieve them
throughout the next review period……and that’s when a lot of our minds go blank!

Sure we know what skills we need help on and what we need to improve but HOW is the question!

Many managers just think that by placing you on a course that it will do the trick - believe me I have seen many people attend our public open courses who were "TOLD" that they needed to attend by their manager!

Whilst management training is my livelihood and it keeps my wife in GUCCI and PRADA (she wishes! well, ok,  Marks and Spencers and Next then!) there are other ways to help your development.

Training is an excellent vehicle to learn new skills in a safe environment, there is simply no other activity to match it - but I would say that wouldn’t I!

But what I am saying is that attending a training course is not the be all and end all of your development.

Next time when you are putting your development plan together, sure, include training courses in there but also think of some of these development activities that you could include as well:

Coaching (internal and external)
CD Roms
Computer Based Training (CBT)
Role Plays
Observation
Simulations
Feedback from others
Shadowing
Mentoring from others at least 2 positions higher than you are
Books
Action Learning Sets
Questionnaires
Leadership & Management development programmes
Taking on roles within your team
Taking some of your managers work on
Team building days
Cross training
Multi skilling
Job rotation
Job swapping

I hope this helps you?

Sean

MTD Training - The Management Training Company