Corporate, professional and career development coaching are some of the most important yet overlooked aspects of operating a business. It is hardly surprising, though, that many businesses are unwilling or unable to place as high a priority on staff training and development as they should, especially in economically uncertain times. Though certain socioeconomic and geopolitical factors have meant that many companies do not feel that the time is right to invest in staff, in reality there has never been a better or more important time to do so.
One of the main benefits of investing in ongoing training for staff is that it can make a business much more resilient to change because it means that staff have more specialised skills they can rely on. Having these specialised skills within the team means that a business has less of a need to look outward and take on professional services from elsewhere to supplement their own requirements. For example, having senior managers that are properly trained in leadership can mean the rest of the staff are more motivated and productive than they otherwise would be.
The fact remains that it is expensive, time consuming and labour intensive to onboard and train a new member of staff, and rather than having to do this more often that is strictly necessary is a much less effective way of doing things that to invest in staff on an ongoing basis in order to retain them and develop their careers. Staff training and development might seem like just another expense that an employer needs to cover, but that’s the wrong attitude to take.
Instead, investing in staff development over time should be made a priority and should be considered as an extremely positive and important thing. It is one of the most important things you can do for your teams and for your business as a whole and comes with many benefits on an individual and company wide level. There are many traditional approaches to staff training, but there are more innovative approaches that can be taken too, which we will explore in this article.
Theatre led coaching
If you have never heard of this kind of coaching then theatre led learning might seem like a strange concept. In truth, it is merely a set of tools and techniques that allows members of staff to engage in their thinking, feeling and doing skills all at once, while finding the right balance to engage with the task at hand. Like with any new skill, muscle memory plays an important part in this process, and it relies on being fun, interactive and engaging in order to provide the best results for trainees. Where older takes on this technique rely on roleplaying to get people in a certain mindframe, a theatre led approach has trainees be themselves which allows a trainer to accurately identify areas for improvement and provide genuinely valuable feedback.
Executive coaching
Rather than taking a traditional approach to training that sees trainees follow a script for specific scenarios, executive coaching can look into the ways that a member of staff behaves and reacts in certain situations, and gives them valuable feedback on their own behaviours and how they can be improved. It gives members of staff the tools they need to respond in a more effective and productive way, rather than teaching a formulaic approach.
The benefits of teaching through process improvement and logic rather than learning from a script are many, but the most important benefit is that this approach teaches critical thinking. It is also much easier to adapt to different situations so that teams are more resilient and able to respond in an effective and professional manner to all kinds of different and unexpected scenarios.
These are just a small number of the innovative ways you can handle the ongoing training and development of your staff, It might take some work to find the right training approach for your specific company and team members’ needs but in the end it is the best way to make sure your teams are able to grow and develop professionally within your company or organisation. You really can’t put a price on having a well trained, highly skilled and motivated workforce.