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The goal of new training programs is usually for the training to have some kind of concrete effect.
However, what “effect” means varies between different fields and organizations, both in what we’re hoping to achieve and in how difficult the desired effect is to actually measure.
Fortunately, research in Transfer of Training has given us a set of components that each training program should include in order to have an effect, and these components seem to apply to virtually any context.
One such component is manager involvement.
There are many ways that managers can be involved in the training of their co-workers in many ways. When we organize training programs, we can aim for different levels of manager involvement – everything from asking a single informal question ahead of a new training program to guided coaching and giving feedback over several months.
Here in this article, we’ll be looking more closely at one of the most fundamental – and powerful – ways of getting managers involved: talking to co-workers ahead of a new training program.
If the circumstances allowed for it, and we were able to optimize the process entirely around the co-worker’s training and desired behavioral shift, we could make manager involvement extremely advanced. Regular coaching, goal follow-up and separate assignments for managers could, if they were actually implemented, produce extraordinary results.
Unfortunately, that kind of time investment is rarely possible for managers or training organizers.
The fact of the matter is that managers almost invariably have extremely limited time and “supporting co-workers participating in training programs” will basically never be very high on the agenda. On the contrary, managers expect us as training organizers to cover all the support the co-worker might need.
However, transfer research has shown that our help is usually not enough. Managers are an integral part of the co-workers’ actual workplace environment, and as such their support is irreplaceable.
The key for training organizers who want to get managers involved is therefore to accept the very limited time that managers have available and instead focus on designing small, clear and simple behaviors they can adopt. More specifically, behaviors that can fit into even the busiest daily agenda, so you know they’ll actually be implemented.
Tip: Start small and expand from there – the most important thing is for managers to be involved at all..
Studies from researchers like Teresa Amabile at Harvard have shown that if we can give managers a small sense of achievement, they may very well ride that wave of motivation and expand to more ambitious behaviors as well.
Here’s where the pre-training talk comes in.
The introductory interview is conducted between the employee who is to attend the training and his immediate manager. It takes about 10-15 minutes, and is preferably carried out 1-2 weeks before a training session or the start of a training program.
The conversation can take place on the initiative of both the employee and the manager, but we recommend that the manager is the one who takes the initiative. The fact that the manager initiates sends the signal that the manager values the training highly, which often strengthens the employee's motivation to get involved in the training.
The pre-training talk has four aims:
The talk should be scheduled and initiated by the manager. The agenda should reflect the four aims of the talk, so that afterwards the co-worker:
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