Enterprise technology platforms refer to solutions or software that improve an organization’s productivity and streamline day-to-day processes and tasks. They are offered by a variety of providers like SAP, Oracle, Workday, and Salesforce. This type of technology is heavy-duty, and implementing it requires careful planning to ensure appropriate levels of adoption by impacted end users across the enterprise.

For optimal enterprise technology adoption, you need three things to be in place, or there’s going to be a gap between what you are providing users and what users need. In terms of documentation and support for using these technologies, your reference content for using the software needs to be 1) relevant to users, 2) easy to access, and 3) painless to consume.

There are some deep-rooted ideas about enterprise technology adoption that hurt everyone involved—both the frontline users and the organization as a whole. Let’s dispel them to discover how to ensure your employees have what they need and increase their adoption rate, and therefore, realize a greater ROI on the massive investment that is your new enterprise technology system.

Myth 1

Technology is already so prevalent in our lives, personally and professionally, that we don’t need to worry about providing training or online resources for using the new platform.

The prevalence of technology in our lives is so apparent and all-consuming that this impulse makes complete sense. Employees are already using tools like Teams, Zoom, and Outlook to communicate, plan, and execute goals at work, and they use multiple social media apps in their personal lives. But we should not assume adopting entirely new systems in the workplace is as easy as sending a Teams chat message or scrolling through Facebook.

Let’s imagine I’m being asked to use a new time-keeping system, but I don’t have the slightest clue what to select for workplace location. It’s a crucial component of my timesheet, but I don’t know if I should select my physical location, my supervisor’s location, or headquarters. I searched back through my emails for help because I remember receiving some reference material, and I find a 30-page user manual to refer to. It takes nearly an entire minute for the document to download, and what I need is buried 20 pages in, so it’s difficult for me to find the answer to my question. This learning content is not relevant, not easily accessible, and quite painful to use. I probably won’t go back to the manual because it was so discouraging and time-consuming.

With personal technology, you have the luxury to play around with it, maybe hit a dead end, and then redirect yourself with little to no consequences. But with workplace technology, there are complex business roles to consider. And as a user, you are likely not the decider of those business roles, nor will you have an intimate understanding of why they’re so important. This is where the necessity of providing quality reference content comes into play.

Myth 2

We don’t need to create custom content for our employees because we have superusers who can help end users with technology adoption.

Superusers, or people highly familiar with the new software and business processes, are critical to the adoption solution because these individuals know both the people and the software. But superusers are not superhumans. If you rely on them to be the primary source of knowledge, they may be welcoming to people who have questions for the first several days or perhaps even weeks after adoption, but they will inevitably become overloaded and burnt out helping others master these systems while also staying on top of their usual job.

New workplace technology practically demands that you plan to make a repository of relevant content accessible to users. People may move around an organization, but reference information should always remain in the same place and can be added to and updated as required.

Myth 3

Our employees are modern learners who prefer online, self-paced references, so there’s no need to provide live training workshops or Q&A forums for technology adoption.

All adults in the workplace have learning preferences. It is our job to find what those preferences are and how broadly they range among entire teams or organizations. It may be the case that those preferences are there because it’s something innate inside them that leads to them wanting to have higher control over their learning. But it is entirely possible that with a great change, their apparent preferences may shift. And further, it’s also possible they may not be able to fully absorb self-study materials without live training where they can engage with experts.

These learning preferences can and should be explored in a learning needs assessment before content is ever created. Then, once learning needs have been identified, you can construct the solution to fit your employee’s needs. People usually still want the option to have some expert-led workshops, whether that means hosting live, recorded webinars or having face-to-face training sessions. We want to offer them what they need to learn best, but live training is not the “end all be all.” Live webinars can orient people to items they can explore and consult when a need arises on the job, which means the live training events become a building block for the rest of an adoption solution.

Providing a blended learning journey to your people is providing a modern learning journey. A blended learning journey will lead to the most success and make learning content as palatable as possible. Give people a chance to ask questions and connect before they engage in self-guided learning at their moments of learning need.

Myth 4

The project team can create the learning content for the technology adoption; they know what they’re doing.

This is a common mistake. In many cases, the project team leading a technology adoption has the knowledge others need. The problem is that these individuals are so deep in the functional technology that they cannot recall being at the level of a beginner. Documenting a project team member’s depth of knowledge is not the best solution for frontline users. Users just need to know what to do from one screen to the next; they don’t need to know the reason behind every element of every page.

Another issue with this misconception is that the project team is typically very time-constrained, and when a project is on a schedule, they’re already multitasking. The last thing this team wants to do is stick to training or documentation design guidelines—if they find the time to create learning content, it will likely be similar to the situation described in Myth #1. On top of that, this burden of knowledge the project team carries can lead to discounting the needs of people who are not on the project team. Having dedicated instructional designers create learning content is the safest bet because they have a different perspective on the technology and the needs of the people who will use it.

Myth 5

English is our global language for business, so my users don’t need the resource content translated into our local language.

Having worked on many global projects, this is another common misconception. While organizations may hope that people will be able to navigate through English reference materials, this may not be the case. This is another situation that should be addressed in the learning needs assessment before any content is created. In that assessment, all the impacted roles—factory workers, inventory managers, HR representatives, etc.—should be consulted to discover their comfort levels with reading, speaking, and listening in English versus their local language. It can be tiring for a learner to parse important information from a highly technical, non-native language, so during the learning needs assessment, you may discover some of the content needs to be translated so that people can really become comfortable with the new processes.

This is not an all-or-nothing decision, either. You can discover needs and localize responses to them appropriately, which can be as simple as having live webinars in your local language. It’s crucial to plan for and determine these situations early on, or you may experience sudden, urgent costs to provide language-appropriate resources to your employees down the road.

Further Resources for Technology Adoption

There are many myths involved with technology adoption, but avoiding these situations is quite simple; don’t plunge into creating learning content right away. Take the time to complete a learning assessment with a learning specialist or instructional designer before developing grand plans for learning content. Another important step to consider taking, if the technology adoption is an overhaul of important existing systems, is a change impact assessment by a change management expert.

If you’re considering a new technology adoption and want to ensure your people have what they need to succeed, reach out to GP Strategies for comprehensive digital transformation solutions.

About the Authors

Ellen Kumar

Ms. Kumar is a Solution Architect with GP Strategies, and has served in roles ranging from Account Executive, to Operations Director, to Project Manager/Training Consultant. Prior to GP Strategies, she worked for University of Dayton Research Institute and GE Aircraft Engines (now GE Aerospace). She holds an M.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from University of Dayton.

With inflation rearing its ugly head, organizations all around the world are casting an extra watchful eye on their overall spend, and we’re rightfully seeing a heightened focus on training value. The question for those leading organizations or those in talent management, learning and development, or good old-fashioned training departments is this: How can you ensure that you’re getting maximum effectiveness out of your allocated training budget?

Here are a few hard-hitting, easy-to-implement steps you can take to get all you can out of your training budget.

Challenge the Ask

One of the big themes when working with clients to help develop a learning transformation is that it’s very easy not to think holistically, not to see the big picture.

Many companies have perceived gaps—maybe it’s a safety concern, lack of resources, or outdated processes or materials—and most often, clients come to the table thinking that they know what they need and what to fix to really change for the future. They’re ready to hit the ground running and dive head-first into whatever solution they believe they need. When clients approach me this way, I always ask, “Why?” Why this specific solution, this program? Challenging the ask this way can uncover what created your perceived training gap and what the business driver of any solution you implement should be.

It’s also critical to get buy-in from key players. If the training is being driven by an L&D team, or someone who’s more on the corporate side, does that also translate to the field? Do the field supervisors feel like this proposed solution will actually help to improve their workforce and improve proficiency? Or is it just training for training’s sake?

Identifying realistic, achievable outcomes and goals require conversations with everyone involved. Empathy interviews are a great way to carry this out. Talk to the teams who are often disconnected from big decision-making conversations, and keep asking, “Why?”

Develop a Roadmap

Instead of jumping right into development, take a step back and invest some time to truly uncover what’s needed. It’s important to develop a governance model or roadmap and to go through a learning assessment to understand what your current state is, so that you’re not just creating content and putting money into solutions that might not fit the way you think they will.

This is really where agility comes into play. If you take pause at first to understand what the business drivers are, what your frontline supervisors need, and how that all connects to what the business objectives are for the organization, you can tailor what you’re building to fit your needs.

This is more important than ever in our multigenerational workforce. In the scramble for more modern solutions, moving away from the more structured, traditional approaches to learning that have been in effect for decades is not always the answer for your specific organizational needs and culture.

It’s imperative we balance needs and culture when developing or implementing a solution, but if you jump right into development and content creation without designing a governance model or roadmap up front to inform decision-making, you tend to overspend and not get the results that you’re looking for.

Have Practical Expectations

People often like to chase the new modern element of training and implement new technologies simply because they exist. That’s also not always the right journey.

Some companies may still be paper based and need to get started just by getting an LMS (learning management system) but are already considering virtual reality (VR) as the solution to their problems. But would VR training really solve the true problem? Probably not. You always have to go back to these questions: What are the skills we’re trying to develop? What are the positions we need to train? And, of course, will this be a good culture fit?

It never makes sense to introduce some expensive new piece of technology—even something that’s very immersive and interactive—if it’s not going to ensure the knowledge retention you’re looking for, and if it’s not going to meet your goals. You certainly shouldn’t dismiss solutions because they are high tech or expensive, but you should balance elements of modern learning that will contribute to future stability with your current capabilities and budget.

And then there’s the time factor. Being excited and motivated to make big changes is also great, but important, influential changes take time. Sometimes clients are so excited to build things from the ground up and want to implement entire programs immediately, in the next week, when our expectation at GP Strategies is to make changes in the next year.

With major changes, we really need to be thoughtful and try to foresee challenges that aren’t here today. We want to understand how to develop skill sets for particular job positions and not be afraid of introducing some more modern learning elements, but we need to be realistic about our expectations of when and how it’s appropriate to launch and stage a new learning solution. Taking a blended approach to your learning solutions means not being scared of introducing new solutions or modalities but still being mindful of existing learning structures and accessibility.

Keep an Eye Out for Scalability

Because of our multigenerational workforce, we are facing the challenge of training employees with a wide range of needs.

We’re seeing a lot of people entering the job market with no experience, perhaps directly out of high school. For these individuals, training needs should really be focused on the fundamentals, the foundations of how to craft the skills they need so that from day one, they know the right protocols and procedures. On the other hand, you likely also have employees who have been doing their job for a long time and don’t necessarily have to rely on a regimented procedure to complete a task because they’ve done it repeatedly, and they are sometimes a bit too comfortable skipping a step here and there. They know the ins and outs of the industry, and perhaps even your organization.

How can you implement training solutions that cover both your greenest employees and your most experienced employees? You need solutions that can scale up and down. It’s also critical to make sure that any foundational training elements you adopt now will be able to attract future talent, even 10 years from now.

So, before hopping on board with the newest, shiniest technology, have an eye toward training program elements and technologies that can grow with you and have some future resilience. You’ll likely save money in the long run.

Realize That You Might Not Need More Training

If you’ve taken the time to create that governance model, you understand there are other elements outside of training that could be affecting the problem you’re trying to solve. If there’s a safety issue, there may be something happening culturally that needs attention, or maybe it’s a lack of adequate leadership that needs to be addressed before adding more training hours. Or, perhaps your employees don’t feel like they’re being given the tools for success.

Beginning with a proper design-thinking session where you’re taking a step back with stakeholders, leaders, and subject matter experts means acknowledging that one size does not fit all. Once key players have bought into that reality, it becomes possible to consider that your issue may not be a training problem. Workforce transformation is not always about training. Taking a more holistic approach to transforming your workforce means taking a magnifying glass to all facets of your organization, from your onboarding efforts to the progression path you have in place for employees long term.

It is sometimes absolutely necessary to design and launch or rework existing training to solve a problem, but take that step back and look at the other elements that could be affecting the training budget, growth, and development of your talent before rushing into a new initiative.

More Great Learning Resources

About the Authors

Ashley Johnson

Ashley specializes in global performance improvement strategies using technology-based solutions and technical resources to reduce cost, eliminate waste, and improve safety, efficiency, and overall performance of the organization. Ashley works to provide customers with strategies for achieving operational excellence and measurable changes to help promote growth, and in some cases, overall transformation.

The Link Between Employee Engagement and Business Success

Employee engagement plays a critical role in productivity, turnover, and employee well-being. Because of this, organizations worldwide have adopted some form of employee engagement or opinion survey to assess and monitor critical aspects most linked to the positive results they are after. 

Despite the strong link between engagement and business results, the construct of engagement remains somewhat elusive as solution providers market differing models and definitions of success (we at GP Strategies have contributed our own model). Regardless of the approach, however, employee development and growth consistently rank as critical drivers of engagement. 

Development and Growth: Key Drivers of Engagement 

Employee-Led Development and Career Growth  

Though related, development and growth are distinct from career advancement, which is also frequently correlated with employee engagement. While advancement is often a high driver of engagement, not everyone has a current desire to win promotions. There are seasons in life when the traditional career ladder does not feel overly important; for a lot of people, that’s never been truer than it is now. Despite the ebbs and flows around advancement within an employee’s career, growth and development are constantly and strongly correlated with engagement. Even when a team member isn’t seeking formal advancement, they still have a strong desire—even a need—to grow in their role and as an individual. 

As organizations strive to provide development opportunities, more leaders are encouraging employees to chart their own career paths. Employee-led development allows people to take ownership of their careers: seek opportunities, reach out to others in those roles, identify gaps in their skills, and pursue new opportunities to expand them. 

This autonomy can significantly lift engagement—unless employees run into roadblocks. If employees can’t understand different job roles, identify the skills required for those jobs, or learn about open positions within their organization, they will struggle to plot their course of development. 

Creating Transparency for Internal Mobility 

Many organizations lack the job data, technology, or system integration to create the transparency employees need. A thorough organizational assessment can identify counterproductive policies and cultures associated with talent acquisition, hiring, and internal movement, which can be addressed with a strong organizational design practice. 

Overcoming Barriers with Technology and Systems  

The smart use of technology is a critical component in creating a culture of employee-led development and engagement. Ultimately, a formal internal talent mobility system is about building a culture of skill development and allowing that to create a positive domino effect, aligning expertise with needs across the organization. Without the right tools in place to systematically create visibility and a path forward, managers and HR teams will remain the default go-to sources for development opportunities, resulting in an almost inevitable bottleneck in the pipeline. It is simply too much to place on a single group of already busy individuals. 

Using Mobility Tools to Manage Career Journeys

One tool designed for this purpose, Talent Mobility (from fellow LTG company PeopleFluent), manages current job, employee, and learning data. With everything in one place, employees share the development load with their managers as well as leaders and HR teams and have easier access to the data they need to perform effectively and remain highly engaged. 

Many folks believe mobility tools are simply about moving employees to new internal roles a bit more quickly, but that’s not the full picture. When not implemented as part of an intentional and well-supported program, internal job matching can actually increase turnover if there are not enough available openings. Employees do not need another enhanced career site or a basic job board with a list of random job recommendations. Instead, they want a reimagined, end-to-end experience that helps them plan and manage their personal journey within the organization. 

Benefits of Talent Mobility Programs  

Employees are looking to upskill or reskill, and in many industries, new role-specific skills evolve every year—or faster. For some, these realities are enough of a prompt on their own, but there are also strong upsides to a structured talent mobility strategy.  

Reducing Turnover Costs   

When experienced employees are forced to leave to find growth opportunities, organizations lose productivity, institutional knowledge, and client relationships. And that is before the cost to replace outgoing team members is even tallied—not to mention the uncertainty of hiring externally. A SmartRecruiters study found that “75% of employees who receive promotions will stay with the company for at least three years…as do 62% of workers who made lateral moves.” 

Higher Employee Engagement   

Companies that offer on-the-job development opportunities, like lateral moves or stretch assignments, can increase employee engagement. With so much work now being performed in hybrid and remote work environments, this can be a real boon for organizations looking to sustain employee satisfaction and contribution as well as foster equity in opportunity. 

Tech-Based Advantages 

Implementing a system that automates many of the administrative or repetitive tasks associated with employee development creates more space for HR and L&D professionals to focus on initiatives that advance the organization. With that space, talent professionals can be more thoughtful with pulse surveys and analysis, build stronger employee resource groups, and design more meaningful diversity and inclusion learning journeys, for example. 

The implementation of any new talent management strategy calls for a comprehensive change management initiative to support the adoption of the process. It is important to incorporate stakeholder commitment with strategy and tools to address resistance, remove roadblocks, and support employee acceptance of the differences in culture and technology. The thoughtful integration of purposeful organizational design, well-applied technology, and real change management support can transform the engagement of an organization through employee-led development. 

Empowering Growth: The Role of Talent Mobility in Employee Engagement 

Talent mobility is a critical component of modern employee engagement strategies. By fostering a culture of continuous development and providing transparent pathways for career growth, organizations can significantly enhance employee satisfaction and retention. The integration of advanced technology and mobility tools not only streamlines the development process but also empowers employees to take charge of their career journeys, resulting in a more dynamic, resilient, and innovative organization.  

About the Authors

Cheryl Jackson, PhD

Organization Design & Change Practice Lead

For over 15 years, Dr. Cheryl Jackson has been supporting transformational efforts in Fortune 500 organizations across a variety of industries including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and food and beverage. With a doctorate in Industrial-organizational psychology, she combines her experience with scientific methodology and research techniques to create practical solutions that drive meaningful change in the workplace. Cheryl is driven to create effective solutions that help the organization as well as its employees thrive. Her focus is organizational effectiveness strategies supported by organization design, change management, assessment and development, employee engagement, leader development, and performance management. Cheryl is driving the development of the OD and Change Management practice within and across GP Strategies through the development of offerings and solutions, internal and external education, and supporting client initiatives. She remains actively engaged in the practice by contributing to whitepapers, blogs, articles, conferences, and podcasts on organizational design and change management and serving as a lecturer in the Master of I/O program at Texas A&M University.

Akash Savdharia

Vice President for Talent Solutions at our fellow Learning Technologies Group company PeopleFluent, Akash is an entrepreneurial technology executive with over 10 years of experience bringing SaaS products to market that solve real-world data-driven problems. He drives the business vision, growth, and strategy for their talent products portfolio. Akash started out as a management consultant, focusing on business strategy for multinational pharma and biotech organizations. Later, Akash was co-founder and CEO of Patheer, an AI-powered talent development and analytics platform that revolutionized the enterprise talent and career mobility space. When Patheer was acquired by LTG, he joined PeopleFluent and the platform became Talent Mobility. Akash has a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona with a triple major in Information Systems, Operations, and Management. Talent Management Software | Learning Solutions | PeopleFluent Talent management software and learning solutions to help you guide your organization’s people, culture, and outcomes.

This blog article was written prior to LEO Learning becoming part of GP Strategies.

All L&D professionals will recognize that learning and training are both integral to performance outcomes—for both the individual and the organization. At LEO Learning, we’ve devised and deployed many learning and training solutions, and the breadth and depth of our experience have informed our holistic approach to creating optimized learning spaces. These are environments that set people up to maximize their learning potential.

We believe that organizations need to do three things to optimize their learning space:

1. Embed opportunities for both training and learning
2. Recognize the subtle differences and symbiotic relationship between training and learning
3. Identify the times where training will be more appropriate than learning and vice versa

Training vs. Learning: The Differences

Some people—inside or outside the L&D sector—use the terms “training” and “learning” interchangeably. Others, conversely, depict them as antithetical forces. We see them as distinct but symbiotic concepts.

Learning Is a Possible Result of Training

Learning should be the result of training—but to assume learning has happened just because some training has happened is a mistake. People can learn from training, and people can apply learning in training. Sometimes people learn something without doing any training. And other times people can complete some training without learning anything!

Training Is Delivered to Someone

We define training as an activity that can be done to or for someone, or completed independently. For example, most organizations will deliver information security training to their employees. An expert provides knowledge and delivers it to employees in the form of, for example, an eLearning course. Employees will probably also be asked to practice by, for instance, completing scenario questions to rehearse and repeat the skill or behaviors they need to develop. You’ll encounter training outside work, too: if you’re training for a marathon, you probably have a daily running regimen that you stick to.

Learning, on the other hand, is an internal, individual-led process. You can “train” someone, but you can’t “learn” them. The ability to learn is one of the quintessential characteristics of being human. It’s about developing broad, theoretical or conceptual knowledge and nurturing a sense of reasoning and critical thinking.

Training is one of the essential components that help to make learning happen, but it’s not enough by itself. If we want employees to form a deep understanding of something, we need to offer rich, varied educational experiences.

The “How” and the “Why” of Training and Learning

We know that for employees to develop new skills, improve their performance, or change behavior, they need to be engaged in the topic, know what they need to do, know how to do it, and be able to contextualize and apply that knowledge in unfamiliar situations.

Training—whether that’s a lecture, an eLearning course, a series of practice exercises, or a daily exercise regime—is great for the “how”. It works well for processes and procedures in specific and current contexts. Learning is the thing that happens when people make connections; if training is about the “how”, then learning is very much about the “why”.

Consider our example of marathon training. While you might need a personal trainer to practice some running drills with you initially, you may need to ask them deeper questions to glean useful insights about running to gain a competitive edge and perform better. Where we offer an intervention that is focused on the “why” and designed to stimulate learning, we may refer to this as learning rather than training.

Once you combine the how with the why (i.e. the training and the learning), your running ability is likely to be significantly better than someone who has just had personal training sessions or only learned about running techniques. And if you were to extrapolate this dual-pronged approach across a running team, for example, the performance of that team is likely to increase exponentially.

Applying the “How” and “Why” in a Business Context

At LEO, we extend the work of Professor Diana Laurillard to consider how we can optimize capacity development among an organization’s employees. Our logical progression of her original Conversational Framework defines 10 different learning modes (keep scrolling to see our additions in bold):

• Engagement (raising awareness)
• Acquisition (watch, listen to, or read instructions)
• Inquiry (ask, search, compare, and analyze)
• Collaboration (undertake group project work)
• Discussion (share insights with peers)
• Practice (apply exercises/simulations)
• Production (produce some relevant work, e.g. reports, presentations)
• Assessment (either self-led, peer-led, or accredited via formal examination)
• Reflection (either on the self, on progress, on the team, or the organization)
• Support (from workplace tools/templates, recaps/reminders, subscription learning)

But what about training in a business context, which isn’t referenced explicitly in either model? Based on our analysis, training comprises elements of both the Acquisition and Practice spaces. It’s about reading a guide, watching a video demonstration, or listening to some verbal instructions (Acquisition) and then practically applying that knowledge regularly (Practice). But acquiring and putting that knowledge into practice is not the same as learning.

In fact, for an employee in an organization to truly learn something in a way that ‘sticks’, we believe that an individual needs a solution comprising multiple learning modes and a diverse array of learning media/channels. This needs to happen in an optimized learning space that provides clear opportunities for training as well as learning.

Training and Learning Support Capacity Development

By now, we’ve established that the combined power of training and learning overrides any subtle differences between the two. So let’s focus on what they both do well: support employee capacity development. This is what an individual needs to know and do in order to do their job better. Consider, for example, how an organization may choose to educate its employees on fire safety. As an organization with an optimized learning space, its L&D team recognizes that:

• Employees need to know how to follow the procedures that keep them safe (covered by training)
• Employees need to know why those procedures are in place, so they understand the importance of fire safety and can extend their understanding beyond the detail of the procedures (covered by learning)

The organization decides to run some physical drills explicitly to train people on how to evacuate the building safely. But it realizes that, to maximize capacity development and embed real behavioral change, there needs to be a compelling learning intervention too. This means using multiple learning modes and diversifying learning media/channels as far as practical to increase learner engagement. These media/channels will naturally vary depending on the available budget, schedule, technology infrastructure, and the learning culture within an organization. So the capacity development intervention could look something like this:

Learning that grabs attention: A video from a fire expert describing the consequences of failing to follow procedure in the event of a fire (Engagement)

Learning that contextualizes and prepares the learner for training: An eLearning module explains how and why fire safety procedures differ across different settings and links to further sources of support (Acquisition)

Training that results in learning: Employees complete the fire drill as per building regulations and relevant legislation (Practice)

Further learning based on the training: Employees have a retrospective meeting to identify any issues that need to be addressed in current fire safety guidance (Discussion)

This example demonstrates how learning isn’t a substitute for or oppositional to formal training, but rather complements it. While training demonstrates how to complete certain tasks in specific ways, learning challenges an individual’s viewpoint and diversifies their knowledge base.

Someone may be trained at a foundational level to do something at work, but it’s only by asking probing questions, gleaning novel insights, absorbing that information, and practicing their craft regularly that they can begin to excel at work. And if we were to extrapolate excellent individual performance across an organization, future prospects start to look very bright.

A Final Word of Learning vs Training

An organization will incorporate both learning and training interventions throughout its learning space if it’s serious about improving performance outcomes. This holistic approach enables organizations to provide their employees with the tools to tackle current issues and equips them with the critical thinking skills to handle future challenges.

Organizations whose primary concern is capacity development are well placed to devise and deploy training and learning solutions that:

• Help them hit their short-term objectives
• Build their long-term strategic vision
• Optimize their learning spaces
• Center employee engagement
• Improve organizational performance

Want to learn more about creating an optimized learning space for your learners? Get in touch with one of our experts.

About the Authors

Victor Verster

Due to COVID and its aftereffects, your team may look a lot different than it used to. Organizations have upsized and downsized and have changed their geographic footprint. Most organizations are leveraging new and different technologies, and others are not meeting physically anymore at all. We have also seen a lot in terms of talent mobility in the last year. People are changing jobs and coming into new organizations, and new teams and leaders are forming.

It’s never a bad idea to discuss team dynamics and how to optimize them, but due to our unique point in history, we are at a pivotal moment in the way workplaces operate, and we are in the perfect place to explore what a leader’s role is for creating and managing a high-performing team.

The Most Common Leadership Roadblocks to Leading High-Performing Teams

Last year, GP Strategies conducted research about common leadership stumbles and successes. When asking people about the biggest stumbles they saw their leaders make, lackluster communication was at the top. Communication is the bedrock of high-performing and agile teams, and this research indicates that leaders are not taking a lot of time to really pause, understand, and discuss why teams exist, what their purposes are, and what their goals should be.

Anyone can pick up a bow and arrow and immediately shoot it. But if you want to hit a specific target, and for your shot to be effective, you need to first take the time to locate your target and aim before you loose the arrow. Are you taking the time to pause and take stock of your resources and talent, create goals with those assets in mind, and then communicate these things to your team?

The 4 Elements to Leading High-Performing Teams

Every team needs a leader, and every leader wants their team to succeed. Here are four primary ways a leader can foster their existing high-performing team or help guide their current team into high performance.

1. Build Trust

The relationship between employees and leaders is dyadic—it’s all about the quality of interaction and trust between the two parties. And trust is an interesting word. You can ask ten different people what trust means, and every single one of them could give you a different definition.

Trust is also on a continuum. It is not black and white. Some employees may trust you completely at first until trust is chipped away. With others who are more guarded, you may need to gain trust over time, starting at the point of hire. This means it can be very difficult to decipher how much collective trust your employees have in you as a leader, but creating the opportunity to build trust really comes down to a few key factors: consistency, credibility, and authenticity.

If you’re consistent in your approaches to solving problems, assigning projects, and interacting with your employees, if you do what you say you will do, and if you show up as the person you really are and are truthful in your words and actions—if you show this relevant vulnerability—you will create the conditions that can build trust, maintain it, or rebuild it.

2. Create Connection

Once you establish or reestablish trust, as a leader, you need to create connections. Doing so is more important than ever, according to research. Airspeed reported earlier this year on the issue of workplace social disconnection. They found that nearly 70% of workers surveyed reported they would quit their current job for a company where they believe they’d feel more connection. People are craving attachments now, particularly in this remote, virtual, and digitally enabled world we are working in.

Leaders need to get creative in the way they connect their teams to each other, facilitate connection among team members, and connect themselves with individual team members. This is one of the biggest topics of conversation with our clients right now: how exactly do we forge connection in our workplace climate? It’s important to consider the opportunities you’re providing for people to connect with each other on both work-related and occasionally on non-work-related topics.

Leaders can also create psychologically safe or inclusive environments by handling conflict well, coaching and developing employees, and amplifying the strengths of individual team members whenever possible.

3. Seek Alignment

In this remote and hybrid workforce, it can be difficult to get people on the same page, but building alignment is an important piece of leading high-performing teams. Let’s picture your team as a rowboat. You have some employees rowing on the left side of the boat, some rowing on the right side, and some at the stern. It’s critical to ensure that everyone who is rowing is doing so in the same direction, toward a common goal, or you’ll be perpetually stuck in the same place without making progress.

This part of leadership can take a lot of work. Aligning your team means making sure your team members are all aimed toward a common goal. Alignment is all about communication, and the process of great communication begins on day one—right with onboarding. It’s important that new employees have access to the resources, tools, and people they need to get their job done. And then it’s important to check in regularly to ensure that access to those things hasn’t changed.

On top of that, it’s also necessary to pause and ensure that you are indeed heading in the direction you want to go, that everything your employees are doing aligns with the overarching organizational goals or business strategies, and to then create ways to track progress, hold people accountable, measure success, and recognize individuals.

4. Drive Results

You could have the best communication, high team morale, and excellent levels of trust, but if you are not getting things done, you’re not working in the greater service of your organization. The inverse is of course true, as well: if you have a highly effective team in terms of results, but there is no connection or alignment, that’s not sustainable. Working in that environment will not provide a good experience to your team and likely won’t last long.

Achieving goals is often the metric that leaders of leaders use to determine success. Delivering results is the bottom line, and there are a lot of things that underpin delivering results depending on your industry and type of team. But from a bird’s-eye view, facilitating great results and deliverables is about making sure the right people are working on the right things. Your team could be working really hard, but if that energy is misdirected or misaligned with overarching goals, the results you want won’t materialize. Take the time to uncover individual strengths of your team members and assign responsibilities accordingly.

Improving as a Leader to Facilitate High Team Performance

There are a lot of ways leaders can improve specific behaviors to build trust, connection, alignment, and results. It all begins with understanding your current baseline. Take an honest assessment of where you are now, how you’re performing, and how your team is performing. This self-evaluation can be formal or informal. It’s crucial to also get feedback from your team. How do they think your team is operating? What gaps do they detect in your overall strategy? Do they feel purpose and connection? In what ways do they want support but aren’t receiving it?

After you have been honest with yourself about where your team currently stands and have received their input, be relevantly vulnerable and honest with them. Let them know what areas you believe need improvement and what your vision for the future is.

These more public conversations can feel uncomfortable, but being authentic and communicating will help make enormous progress toward creating that productive, safe environment that fosters a high-performing team.

About the Authors

Katy Bailey

Many organizations have adopted a hybrid working approach. It provides employees with the flexibility of how, where and when they work. With a better work-life balance, greater ability to focus, and much fewer distractions, it’s easy to see why businesses would embrace such a model.

Accommodating this environment, however, takes work. Considerations such as how to maintain a productive and efficient workforce comes into play. How can businesses continue to provide quality experiences to people from all working environments? How can they build virtual connections and cohesive teams? And what role does technology play in all of this?

In our four-part video series, GP Strategies’ Chief Learning & Innovation Officer and Senior Vice President, Matt Donovan, explores what a successful hybrid workforce looks like, and offers tips and tricks on how to build such a culture within your business.

Virtual Vs Hybrid

How can organizations create an effective hybrid work environment whilst advocating productivity and efficiency?

Equitable Experiences

How should businesses create equitable learning experiences across hybrid workforces? How can you provide the same quality experience to people from all working environments?

Productive Hybrid Teams

How do you ensure you build productive hybrid teams? How can you create a virtual connections and build cohesive teams?

Emerging Technologies

How is technology shaping organizational culture? How are learners interacting with those platforms?

About the Authors

Matt Donovan

Chief Learning & Innovation Officer

Early in life, I found that I had a natural curiosity that not only led to a passion for learning and sharing with others, but it also got me into trouble. Although not a bad kid, I often found overly structured classrooms a challenge. I could be a bit disruptive as I would explore the content and activities in a manner that made sense to me. I found that classes and teachers that nurtured a personalized approach really resonated with me, while those that did not were demotivating and affected my relationship with the content. Too often, the conversation would come to a head where the teacher would ask, “Why can’t you learn it this way?” I would push back with, “Why can’t you teach it in a variety of ways?” The only path for success was when I would deconstruct and reconstruct the lessons in a meaningful way for myself. I would say that this early experience has shaped my career. I have been blessed with a range of opportunities to work with innovative organizations that advocate for the learner, endeavor to deliver relevance, and look to bend technology to further these goals. For example, while working at Unext.com, I had the opportunity to experience over 3,000 hours of “learnability” testing on my blended learning designs. I could see for my own eyes how learners would react to my designs and how they made meaning of it. Learners asked two common questions: Is it relevant to me? Is it authentic? Through observations of and conversations with learners, I began to sharpen my skills and designed for inclusion and relevance rather than control. This lesson has served me well. In our industry, we have become overly focused on the volume and arrangement of content, instead of its value. Not surprising—content is static and easier to define. Value (relevance), on the other hand, is fluid and much harder to describe. The real insight is that you can’t really design relevance; you can only design the environment or systems that promote it. Relevance ultimately is in the eye of the learner—not the designer. So, this is why, when asked for an elevator pitch, I share my passion of being an advocate for the learner and a warrior for relevance.

When strategies for improving an organization’s diversity are initially considered, one of the first entrenched ideas that must be challenged is having an entirely homogenous workforce. Then, once a company has begun assembling a diverse pool of talent, the focus shifts towards inclusion, and counteracting the isolation that many marginalized employees may naturally feel moving into a space with an existing dominant culture.

Tokenism is one significant danger of this complex renegotiation of diversity and inclusion—it’s the mismatch between an organization’s performative effort and its actual record on inclusive behavior. Organizations risk tokenistic displays whenever individuals from marginalized backgrounds are highlighted in public events, photos, or speaking opportunities. It’s generally considered desirable in business to appear diverse—if the underlying organization isn’t diverse, and its power remains with its dominant group, accusations of tokenism are ultimately well-founded.

When Is it Tokenism? Why It’s Important to Recognize How Your Employees Actually Feel

“I’m the only one in the room” is a familiar refrain from marginalized employees—and being conscious of this fact can have a significant impact on how an individual approaches their work and the opportunities that come their way. The feeling manifests in extra pressure to perform, or a desire to avoid perpetuating negative stereotypes—whether the need to do either is real or imagined, the effect is the same.

Now imagine a Black employee is approached to be photographed for the organization’s new website, or to speak at an upcoming conference. They will likely be hesitant to turn down either opportunity—perhaps because they’re worried that their concerns will be seen as them being stereotypically “difficult”. It’s easy for people in this position to feel like they’re perceived as a monolith—the sole representative of a wider group.

Tokenization is rarely a boon. Anyone pushed into the position has a right to feel simultaneously overexposed and undervalued, and it can be exhausting to carry the burden of representing your group in simple day-to-day interactions. Doing the same publicly or to the C-suite can only intensify that feeling.

The Real Harm of Tokenism

If an employee feels like they’re only there for your diversity scorecard, their confidence and ability to do their job will be impacted, and resentment will inevitably grow. They may also feel that there’s little room for psychological safety—after all, every time they’re cornered into an “opportunity”, they must weigh up whether to play along or push back.

It’s important to not only reflect on employee experiences, but consider the harm that tokenism causes to organizations. Businesses have a real opportunity to grow diversity and build employee retention through DE&I work. When shortcuts are taken, when diversity means tokenism without equity or inclusion, marginalized people show up for work feeling unsafe and isolated.

Tokenism is an issue in the C-suite as well. In the last couple of years, we’ve increasingly seen organizations creating a new role, the chief diversity officer, ostensibly to rectify their homogenous C-suite. The potential of this role is positive—giving a person real power to steer and deliver DE&I in the organization is important. However, if this work isn’t also leading to changes in other C-level roles, the role itself can be something of a tokenistic outpost. In a post-George Floyd world, some companies have placed Black executives in these positions, giving them unclear responsibilities and short-term timelines. This needs to stop.

Avoiding Tokenism: 5 Key Steps

An organization’s actions can appear tokenistic when its DE&I effort is itself tokenistic. Establishing a robust DE&I strategy and rethinking how you approach marketing, hiring, measurement, learning, and every other aspect of your business will help you avoid tokenism. Follow these five key steps to get started:

1. Be more introspective about who is in your organization’s promotional photography, whether a given project uses a stock image library or creates new assets by using people from within the business. Stock images should reflect your workforce and not give a false impression of your demographics. Similarly, you should take care to not repeatedly approach the same narrow range of employees from minority backgrounds. In both cases, it’s important not to create a false impression of who you currently are as a business.
2. Build a transparent and authentic DE&I strategy with a realistic pathway to diversity at every level of your organization. Lacking such a strategy can undermine potentially positive acts such as creating a chief diversity officer post and filling it with a person from a marginalized group. Such hires do not create a strategy. Strategy should create such hires.
3. Measure the impact of diversity—don’t just quantify the people involved. You want to know not just how many people in your organization have a certain background, but where they are in the business. And you want to know not only what percentage of your board are from a certain background, but whether that presence actually results in their voices being heard and their ideas being acted on.
4. Maintain direct channels with marginalized employees in order to cultivate trust and preserve a safe space. Your organization could encourage listening projects and the L&D function shouldn’t simply focus on “do and don’t” training. Equip your people to call out less-than-inclusive behavior. These inward-focused measures are important, in contrast to more tokenistic actions, where the motivation usually comes from outside.
5. Clearly establish inclusion as everyone’s responsibility—clear messaging must run throughout the organization. Leaders must lead by example, and all employees should receive D&I training.

If you would like to discuss how to become a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable organization, please contact us today.

A version of this article originally appeared in Training Magazine.

About the Authors

Renato Hoxha

Research suggests that around 70% of people will experience the imposter phenomenon at least once in their lives. Sometimes known as imposter syndrome—though the term has been criticized as pathologizing—the phenomenon leads to individuals failing to recognize their own knowledge, skills, and capabilities. The end result can be properly skilled people not putting themselves forward for promotions, new positions, or new tasks.

By tackling the imposter phenomenon, employers stand to increase the mobility of existing employees and avoid having to rely solely on costly external hires. In this article, we explore how business leaders can equip themselves to recognize symptoms of the imposter phenomenon in their workforce, helping them to create a more inclusive workplace.

1. Acknowledge the Imposter Phenomenon and Raise Employee Awareness

The first step in countering any phenomenon is to acknowledge that it exists. Ideally, you should treat the imposter phenomenon with the gravity it deserves, and provide resources that help to increase overall knowledge and understanding. You should also ensure that leaders are equipped to help those experiencing it.

You could also run courses, put up posters around your locations highlighting key facts, and hold an awareness week. Of course, due to the nature of the phenomenon, it’s essential that this open, company-wide discussion is backed up with the ability for individuals to obtain information and support privately.

2. Offer Mentoring, Coaching, and Counselling

Your attempts to raise awareness must be backed with practical programs that help to counteract the phenomenon—mentoring, coaching, and counselling should be made available and easy to access.

These programs don’t have to focus on the imposter phenomenon to be effective, and in fact, they have a wider positive effect on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. For example, mentorship programs provide practical guidance and support to help people succeed, but they can be used by any individuals who need someone to go to in times of doubt. Counselling services have a similar effect—and will help cultivate the feeling that the company is invested in employee wellbeing.

3. Help Employees Recognize Imposter Chatter and Speak Out Against It

Encouraging the calling out and interrogation of “imposter chatter” is an important step in the journey towards a safer psychological environment for everyone. Business leaders need to help employees focus on their strengths, increase their confidence, and create a platform from which people feel safe to positively express what they’ve achieved.

Positive feedback and “developmental” feedback need to be synonymous. Discussions around strengths used at work should be commonplace. By increasing supportive relationships, employees will feel valued and heard. This creates an environment where imposter chatter and self-doubt are less sustainable.

4. Cultivate an Inclusive Environment

The points above will help you build a more inclusive workplace, but self-doubt can still find its way into your people’s working lives if they fear being called out or being seen as incompetent when they do speak up. To create an environment in which people feel comfortable contributing, try the following:

• Set explicit expectations: Managers should remember to communicate the expectation that everyone is allowed to contribute equally during meetings.
• Interrupt interruptions: Leaders must also act to safeguard equal contribution—when team members cut other team members off, point out that this has happened, and allow the original speaker to resume their point. Furthermore, contributions should be solicited from team members who haven’t yet spoken up.
• Stay focused on solutions: Take care to avoid assigning and emphasizing blame when things go wrong. Instead, use these episodes as opportunities for growth, learning, and evolution.

5. Allow Everyone In the Organization to Be Human

With the imposter phenomenon discussion being so tied to our achievements in our working lives, it’s important to acknowledge a more complete picture of individual attainment and fulfillment. The best leaders understand that wellbeing is key to high performance, and that teams must be encouraged and empowered to prioritize it in the pursuit of success.

This means that leaders must emphasize the importance of holidays and rest, and avoid glorifying unsustainable working habits such as excessive overtime. Delegation should be encouraged, and nobody should be afraid to ask for help. Over-committed, lone-wolf employees who cannot detach themselves from work can become an unrealistic standard against which people experiencing the imposter phenomenon self-measure—even as those over-performers risk burning out over time.

Let your team members feel heard, valued, and understood while encouraging leaders to show empathy and self-compassion. Do all this while recognizing and celebrating the range of different working styles that come naturally to people, and you’ll be better able to create an environment where everyone can be productive and efficient.

If you would like to discuss how to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable organization, please contact us today.

A version of this article originally appeared in C-Level Magazine.

About the Authors

Analyn Pelayre

Thinking about emergency situations and how they might affect your organization is not always at the top of your mind. However, being unprepared for the wide variety of situations that could disrupt your operations spells disaster.

Emergency management takes a comprehensive look at preparing for disasters and other hazards that are most likely to occur—specific to your organization and location—that pose the highest threat level or potential impact on your business continuity.

Every organization should have an Emergency Management and Preparedness plan to deal with several potential issues. When people think of emergency situations, they often consider natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, or power outages. But an Emergency Management and Preparedness consultant can also craft action plans and robust training for issues like emerging infectious diseases (such as COVID-19 or H1N1), mass shootings, fires, and cyber-attacks, to name a few.

The Five Key Components of Emergency and Disaster Management

Emergency Management (or EM) is responsible for the overall management and implementation of each of these five critical components:

1. Business continuity: an organization’s ability to maintain critical functions during or immediately after a disaster
2. Disaster recovery: the method an organization uses to gain access to IT infrastructure and primary functions after a disaster
3. Emergency response: an organization’s immediate reaction to a disaster to identify and mitigate risks
4. Resource management: the process used to find, retain, restore, or distribute necessary resources to maintain critical functions after a disaster
5. Situational awareness: an understanding of all the components of the organization and of the disaster that affect the ability to maintain normal operating functions

Through the management of facilitating business continuity, disaster recovery, emergency response, resource management, and situational awareness, EM also provides disaster preparedness education programs to community groups like schools, businesses, and municipalities to promote community resilience.

Often, an EM Consultant will aid these critical infrastructure organizations and partner with agencies to design and update preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery plans to maintain a high level of readiness for communities. EM also helps to maintain and coordinate the distribution of vital resources and coordinates a damage assessment after disasters to initiate a recovery process.

Furthermore, EM designs, develops, and implements a variety of training and exercise programs to test the capabilities of emergency responders. EM can work closely with the response community to schedule and implement training required for all levels of emergency management certification—from businesses to non-profits to public sector operations.

The 5 Phases of Emergency and Disaster Management

In addition to the five key components of EM, there are also five primary phases of EM that control the way we respond to or stave off emergency situations.

1. Prevention

The first goal of any Emergency Response Plan or EM Consultant is to prevent disasters that might occur and that we can control. A perfect example of a disaster that we could potentially control is a cyber-attack. With the proper IT infrastructure to protect privacy combined with employee education, we can stop most—if not all—cyber-attacks in their tracks.

2. Mitigation

The mitigation phase of an Emergency Response Plan is much like what it sounds: the process or steps taken to ease the burden and future effects of a foreseeable disaster. Mitigation can look like having the processes and resources to quickly move to remote work for the foreseeable future to prevent the spread of infectious disease or investing in the ability to own and quickly deploy generators or other backup energy sources in the case of a power outage.

3. Preparedness

A major component of any Emergency Response Plan is to maintain a high level of preparedness for any catastrophe that might impact your business or community. Maintaining preparedness means your organization goes through a constant cycle of organizing, planning, training, and evaluating your emergency plans. In action, this might mean quarterly or monthly assessments of your different emergency plans and required annual training for employees on a variety of safety topics.

4. Response

The response phase plays a pivotal role during any emergency. Who, what, how, when, and where responses are deployed are all vital to mitigating against unnecessary risk and loss of profit, and it may even potentially save lives. During a disaster response, an organization may deploy pre-planned resources, alternative communication methods, and potentially evacuate individuals, depending on the circumstance.

5. Recovery

Recovery is a very important phase in emergency management and occurs immediately after the response phase. During recovery, whoever manages emergencies or disasters works to get affected parties back to normal as quickly as possible. This phase includes assessing damage, restoring normal organizational functions, rebuilding any damaged assets, and assessing and evaluating your preparedness and response to the situation for future reevaluation of your Emergency Response Plan.

What Is Emergency Management Consulting?

Emergency Management consultants are your emergency management partners. They conduct detailed analyses of your current emergency preparedness programs and create future programs to fit your specific business or organizational needs.

Some of the plans and procedures a consultant might help create are emergency response plans, business continuity plans, emergency response run books, and emergency preparedness governance policies.

Beyond creating action plans, a consultant also develops, conducts, and evaluates emergency response training through activities such as tabletop exercises, functional exercises, full-scall exercises and drills, and even games to help make certain your team is ready to respond to emergency situations in every way they might need to.

Typically, an agency or company hires an EM consultant to perform any number of the five phases of emergency management. As a staff augmentation position—either as an embedded employee within a company or as an outside contributor—an EM consultant will coordinate tasks with an organization’s existing preparedness staff. Usually, EM consultants are hired to perform a very specific set of tasks related to assessments, planning, training, or exercises that a company has decided to prioritize for the time being. Regardless of how your organization utilizes an EM consultant, they will bolster your existing preparedness programs and provide insights to improve your readiness to deal with emergencies.

Why Is Emergency Management Necessary?

Research shows that nearly 75% of business that do not properly prepare for emergencies will fail within three years of a major disaster. With so much at stake, not having robust EM plans can literally break your business.

Preparing and planning for disasters significantly reduces the time it takes for normal operations to return post-incident and the threat to life and property that might occur during any number of emergencies.

The question is not whether you should prepare for emergencies. The question is, how comprehensively will you prepare for them, and how well will you be able to protect your people and your assets from the inevitable?

Further Resources

Do you have systems in place for responding to and preparing for emergencies? Our comprehensive suite of emergency management services covers everything from preparedness services to recovery services and can help you begin the process of protecting your valued resources.

If you would like to consult with Emergency Preparedness and Management experts, reach out to GP Strategies for more information.

About the Authors

David Ziegler

David H. Ziegler Sr. is Vice President at GP strategies Corporation (GP) who’s teams provide program management, vendor management, human capital management, engineering, and emergency management services to Federal, State and Local Government agencies. David was project manager responsible for operating the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) and recovery efforts for the city of New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina (2005-07) and is project manager for two DoD Chemical Weapon Destruction Facilities located in Colorado and Kentucky. He holds a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) and bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management from Eastern University (St. David’s, PA). He is a graduate from Williamson College of the Trades (Media, PA) with an associate degree in Machine Technology & is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

In our work with clients, we often use a conceptual phrase to frame the skills necessary for good leadership: competence and connection. The long-standing cliché in leadership development is that new managers are usually promoted for their technical competence but lack the connection skills to be good leaders. This, like most clichés, has survived because it frequently is true. In your early career, you stand out by being good at getting the job done—which doesn’t necessarily translate into being a good people leader. Because of this typical imbalance in these two attributes, we often stress that we’re primarily in “the connection business.”

However, lately another truism has landed top-of-mind, showing a shift in the marketplace’s attention: Every boss is a genius when times are good; it’s when things go wrong that their true capabilities are exposed. That correlates with the practical concern I’m hearing a lot more from clients in the last couple of years: All the connection skills in the world won’t help if your team thinks you don’t know what you’re doing.

In our work and assessments, we often start by looking at competence categories:

• Job-related experience
• Business aptitude
• Self-awareness
• Sound reasoning
• Accountability
• Taking responsibility
• Delivering on promises

We also evaluate the connection side of the ledger: trust, empathy, giving and receiving feedback, active listening, etc. But in times of stress and rapid change, it’s crucial first and foremost for followers to believe that the leader actually understands the work of the group and makes decisions based on real, relevant facts and data. This perception is most shaky when a new leader joins a group, or when organizations merge under senior leaders who are familiar with one part of the business but not others. Many organizations that are restructuring around the new world of work have thrust leaders into positions where their competence is at odds with the experience and expertise of the teams they now lead.

I tend to see two distinct approaches from leaders in these circumstances: hubris or curiosity. An insecure leader often arrives like a bull in a china shop, assuming, “They made me the manager for a reason, so I must know enough to start fixing things because I’m the boss.” Alternately, a more thoughtful leader can approach a new group with an honest desire to understand the work, learn why things are done the way they are, and gain the team’s trust (to mix metaphors) by spending some time in the trenches and walking a mile in their shoes. Then, by co-creating the needed changes, the team naturally signs on for the new journey.

Hubris can work for a while. When business is good, the team can find work-arounds and back-door processes to mitigate poor or uninformed decisions. If staffing levels are stable and workloads are appropriate, managing around the leader can give the impression that all is well. It’s when things turn difficult (like the 2020s have been for most companies) that the lack in true understanding of the work and its challenges is felt—in the downstream effects of bad decisions.

One of our executive coaches tells the story of a client experiencing office turmoil and high turnover who asked him to work with a senior manager who had an “empathy problem.” This leader would make unilateral decisions and counterproductive process changes and, when the team pushed back, would resort to some version of the statement: “You’re all really smart; it shouldn’t be that hard for you to adapt.”

In working with this leader—and talking with the team—the coach discovered the real problem wasn’t about empathy; rather the leader’s cavalier attitude demonstrated the fact that they truly didn’t understand the impact of their decisions. This was a crisis of competence. The leader had only a superficial knowledge of the work their team did. All the empathy in the world wouldn’t help this leader as long as they continued to make decisions exposing a disconnect with the reality of the team’s day-to-day work.

In my own career, a small talent management start-up brought in a leader to kick-start the sales organization where I worked as a consultant. He came in hot with schemes and plans for transforming a team he knew very little about. In my first meeting with the new boss, he spent an hour confidently prescribing a “better approach” to working with a client I’d been supporting for 20 years—including a long stint as a client-side employee. Based on a quick online search for org charts and job titles, he assumed to know more than I did about my long-term client. I did eventually learn a lot from him over time (he had good experience as a sales leader), but it was many months before I felt he earned any credibility, let alone my trust.

So how should a leader respond when they find themselves installed at the helm of a team that doesn’t fall within their current area of expertise? With curiosity. With a true desire to get to know their team members and the what, why, and how of the work they do every day.

Too often, leadership connection skills like emotional intelligence, active listening, or empathy are thought of as “techniques”—like something out of How to Win Friends and Influence People. But for any leader, and in particular a leader in this position, the key to active listening is to actually, really LISTEN. And the impulse behind really listening is curiosity.

I learned this the hard way as a new leader in the aerospace industry, quickly promoted to lead a diverse team across multiple functions. I made all kinds of mistakes and alienated almost everyone around me until I learned the reason for the pushback. It wasn’t that they resented a new, much less-experienced leader. They just had a hard time following one who had no idea what they were doing. Once I started to engage with humility and curiosity, my relationships with team members changed for the better. Communication in all directions improved, and the team’s performance reflected the turnaround.

A leader who joins an organization or a new team with hubris will never earn the trust of their people, no matter how skilled they are at connection. But when that leader makes a sincere effort to understand—at least at a high level—what the team does and why they do it, and brings them along to make changes together, the team will be more likely to follow.

And that leader’s decisions are much more likely to be good ones in the first place.

About the Authors

Martin Smith

A common thread running through Martin’s diverse career is a passion for leveraging employees’ personal growth and achievement for bottom-line business results. An aerospace engineer by training, he has extensive experience as a leader managing technical experts in the US space industry, and he has led multiple corporate-wide leadership development programs for a Fortune 100 Aerospace company. As an account director with GP Strategies, Martin now consults with companies worldwide to help their leaders thrive.