Providing Training vs. Forcing Leaps
How much do you expect from your team?
Welcome to “Driving Businesses by Developing People” written by me, David Huynh. For those who do not know me, I am a people-focused business professional who builds team members to generate results. Thank you for joining me. If you are not on my email list yet and want to dive deeper into the intersection of business and people with me, you may subscribe here:
On one extreme, I have seen a senior executive scolding one of my peers for under performing, but did not provide any guidance on how to improve. On the other, I have seen managers provide targeted trainings that walk through exactly how to achieve a certain goal. In the first case, the senior executive expected my peer to achieve the objective without any training. In the latter case, the managers did not expect their team members to make any leaps. In this context, leaps are the decisions a team member needs to make to get from the baseline training to completing the objective. The middle ground in between these two extreme cases is partially training our team members, meaning that team members will also need to make some decisions on their own.
Making leaps are indispensable for accelerating a team member's growth. High expectations translate to higher leaps and more team member growth upside, but come at the expense of higher business risk. More training translate to smaller leaps and less team member growth upside, while decreasing business risk. As managers, how should be balance business risk, team member development, and our personal time? Ultimately, as we will discuss, whether we should provide more training or force more leaps depends on our understanding of our team's capabilities.
The diagram below was designed to capture this phenomena - for the same same challenge, if more relevant training is provided, the corresponding height of the leap to solve a given problem will be lower. Expanding further, a higher leap translates to a larger quantity of complex decisions. For our discussion, trainings are assumed to be provided by managers and the necessary leaps are assumed to be made by the executing team members. Four specific possibilities are provided here, each with varying amounts of training.
We will break the four possibilities into three categories: 1) no training / full leap, 2) full training / no leap, and 3) partial training / partial leap. After defining these categories, we will dive into their pros, cons, and the typical circumstances that they are applied.
No Training / Full Leap
In the first bar on the diagram, the executing team member will need to solve the challenge with no training provided.
Pro: Team member receives full ownership of their work; Manager needs to invest less time
Con: If the team member is not prepared, they may not be able to make the leap, which will yield negative business results
Typical Circumstances: A manager does not exist (e.g., independent entrepreneur), team member already has capabilities, or the manager does not want to invest in training
No training is the best option if the team member is ready to tackle the whole problem alone. However, if the team member is not capable yet, providing some training or guidance should be considered.
Full Training / No Leap
On the right-most bar, the manager will provide complete training, such that no room for interpretation and no leaps are necessary. These are explicit directions that clearly dictate the steps required to execute a particular task or the decision tree in a given situation.
Pro: Team members can produce stronger business results with limited working experience
Con: Team members will not not receive problem solving experience. Managers need to be more hands on and invest more time
Typical Circumstances: Kitchen staff at fast food restaurant, assembly line at a factory
Full training is the best option to decrease labor costs, because inexperienced individuals can be hired. It is successful for aspects of a business that do not change day to day and therefore team members will not need to think about solving new problems.
Partial Training / Partial Leap
In the two middle bars on the diagram, the manager will provide some training, and the team member will need to make some leaps, some decisions in order to solve the challenge. Compared to no training and no leap, partial training is the most complex because managers need to answer "how much training?"
In most circumstances, the process of determining how much training is appropriate will need to be iterative based on the business results and input from the team member(s). If multiple team members are making a similar mistake, we need to have more training. Regardless of the business result, we should check-in on our team members throughout the course of the project. If there is sufficient time for the team member to make mistakes with their leaps and get feedback to try again, we should let them experiment. However, if time is pressed and/or the team member is struggling with a particular aspect, we should look to provide targeted training. The level of specificity of the additional training we provide should be based on our expectations of our team members. If our team members are fresh graduates with limited experience, the trainings will need to be more specific / targeted.
Pro: Team members can get problem solving experience; If the manager provides the appropriate amount of training, the business will also achieve strong results
Con: Manager needs to be able to gauge how much training team needs; If not enough training is provided, business results may be poor
Typical Circumstances: nearly all business situations: Team is not ready to tackle problems completely alone, but capable enough to make some pivotal decisions
Partial training is the best option in the majority of business situations - all situations excluding those where no or full training are best. As managers, we just need to be cognizant of our teams abilities so that we know how much to train.
Closing Remarks
We can train less and force our team to take more leaps, or train more to have our team take fewer leaps. Depending on the situation, we may need to opt more towards one direction based on the circumstance. In the overwhelming majority of cases, we will provide some training, but it is up to our understanding of our team members to determine how much training we should provide. Therefore, if not already clear, a manager's role is to understand the capabilities of their team so that they can provide the appropriate amount of guidance to optimize for business results, team development, and time investment.
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This is timely and insightful, David!! I for one have to get back to thinking how trainings are needed particularly that almost half of the team is already new! Definitely a good reminder to checkin on how the team is doing development-wise, and balancing leaps or training.