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Newly-minted supervisors and managers look forward to leadership training. They also look forward to the resources for new leaders and supervisors that their employers make available to them. What if their employers don’t?
It’s a huge step forward in anyone’s career, to say the least. But on a trivial level, people love leadership training because it often entails going offsite for a few days. It’s a multi-day hiatus that includes immersive sessions of reflection and orientation.
Traditionally, this kind of training is reserved for individuals who already hold senior positions. The problem with this approach, however, is it fails to address the need to groom leaders at every level – before they assume roles as leaders.. Organizations that operate in increasingly complex environments are smart to develop leaders NOW – not when a position is suddenly left open.
Why Micro-training Resources For New Leaders and Supervisors make sense.
Call it cliché, but training upcoming leaders is vital to a well-oiled organization. It’s indispensable across all ranks. This is why organizations that zero-in on a training model that delivers what new leaders and supervisors must learn in the regular course of business includes the soft skills required to lead and motivate people.
Leadership training should not end when people head home from the elaborately-planned weekend immersion study. In fact, it shouldn’t end.
Is this possible?
ABSOLUTELY!
Micro-training resources for new leaders and supervisors.
We all know how huge amounts of information are difficult to process. It’s like eating a huge wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano in one go.
But break the wheel into tiny chunks (and maybe pair it with a glass of Chardonnay), and it wouldn’t be so overwhelming. In fact, it’s more enjoyable that way. Similarly, when leadership training is fed in smaller chunks on a consistent and regular basis, information isn’t just understood, it is retained. It is also practiced.
These bite-sized learning opportunities are what we, at TIGERS® Success Series call micro-training.
How can micro-training help existing leaders?
Well-run organizations, big or small, have six principles in common when the focus is on building an ethical, quality-focused, productive, cooperative and successful organization. These measurable and observable principles are trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk resolution, and success. Put together, these six principles form a fitting acronym — TIGERS®.
Group dynamic research in business, psychology, and education have found that these six principles are essential in:
- Enriching your own company vision, mission and values, while
- Minimizing conflict (lowered productivity, relationship breakdown, and employee disengagement).
While every member in the organization is expected to internalize the principles through appropriate behavior practices, this requirement is even more sacrosanct for anyone holding a leadership position.
Unfortunately, it simply isn’t humanly possible to absorb all these in one go. Not in one weekend. Perhaps not even in a month or two. It is practice not theory and an intellectual exercise that transforms behavior for the better over time.
The solution is to deliver leadership training material in chunks so short, it takes under 20 minutes to learn. It’s practical for anyone and can be immediately used on the job.
Why Micro-Training Resources for New Leaders and Supervisors Works.
TIGERS® micro-training segments are conducted at your convenience. It takes less than 20 minutes to complete – long enough to cover the essential parts, but short enough to transform anyone into an effective learner over time. When you train all your employees, you can expect to see cost savings or productivity improvements within a year.
Our specific supervisor and team leader training demonstrates how to build employee development plans while employees are still in training so they can lead the learning and development of their employees through regularly scheduled most profitable weekly goal meetings.
Links to a training room are sent via email so training is accessible via any device. TIGERS® Micro-training consists of 52 lessons in 12 monthly segments of four training sessions each. Each annual training is based on one of the TIGERS® principles. When you include this training for all your new employees, within six years you know who your high potential new employees are. In the meantime, their micro training prepares them with group process, soft and critical problem solving and decision-making skills.
TIGERS® offers a training platform that gets all your manager and supervisor trainees on the same page. They are given the same engaging material as all your employees. Learning isn’t fragmented because it’s the same information from the same sources, presented in one consistent way. When you add the supervisor and team leader micro-training with this, too, you current supervisors learn their own skills and strategies to improve how their groups work.
TIGERS® breaks the leadership micro-training material into easy-to-absorb portions. Lessons are personalized with gamification – which makes for an effective e-learning experience.
Face to face or zoom meetings with other supervisors are still conducted as needed. In fact, we highly recommend meetings like these because leaders still need mentors and the stimulation provided by other leaders who have hit their stride. You want them to absorb behavior skills that spark engagement throughout their departments.
From our experience, we’ve seen tangible behavioral shifts. We notice improved productivity. We also see less conflict and less disengagement.
And yes… higher retention rates.
Want empowered leaders? Add Micro-training.
We all love that week-long or weekend training course that has us going home with training binders as well as tons of gung-ho managerial objectives. We begin bright-eyed with hopes that could shatter the ceilings only to be bushwhacked with the past week’s work backlog.
Let’s get real. Time is limited and attention spans are short. Science has proven that our short term memories can only absorb five pieces of information. Micro-training, this breakthrough technique that delivers material in short 20-minute chunks weekly, makes any type of information easier to absorb and remember.
The bottom line is that further, spaced-out learning (as opposed to cramming), is more effective. Couple that with a multi-media approach (use of digital technology and face-to-face interaction), you arm the future leader and existing leaders with a set of skills and a mindset that can readily be applied right away.
You also see who bubbles to the top and comes alive with the training. Perhaps these people are your next tier of leaders, internal coaches or project managers. The real benefit is that they are already trained with the soft skills and group process methods needed before they assume your critical leadership positions.
Empower your organization’s leaders with TIGERS® Micro-training and these helpful links.
- TIGERS Solutions
- TIGERS 6 Principles Micro-Training for Leaders
- TIGERS Micro-training for all your employees
- How to Empower Employees to Ask for Training
- Develop More Leaders with These Three Microlearning Opportunities
Copyright TIGERS Success Series by Dianne Crampton
ABOUT TIGERS Success Series
TIGERS® provides a comprehensive, multi-pronged and robust system for improving your workforce behavior, work culture, profitability and project management and team leadership success.
We specialize in team development that improves workforce cooperation and high performance team outcomes. Scaled to grow as your organization and leadership performance grows, our proprietary TIGERS Workforce Behavior Profile, Micro-Training technology and group facilitation methods result in your high performance team outcomes and change management success. We also license and certify elite consultants and project managers to use our resources for similar outcomes.
