Suzie is a Corps Officer. Last year she held a day apart with her ministry leaders to ‘dream big’ and identify improvements they could implement within their ministries to really have an impact on their local community. Everyone walked away very inspired and excited about the next 12 months.
Over the first few months following that dreaming day, Suzie realised that not much progress had taken place. The leaders really seemed to be struggling to implement their great ideas. They seemed to be getting caught up in ‘business as usual’ and just didn’t have time to focus on the longer-term strategies.
Suzie arranged for the team to come together to do some time management training, believing that they just needed some techniques to create more time in their day to focus on the new ideas. That was 2 months ago – but unfortunately, things have still not progressed far. She has decided the training must have been sub-standard, and has now decided to contact her Learning Partner for some advice.
We may not all be Corps Officers, but I am sure that this scenario would feel familiar to many managers and leaders across The Salvation Army.
Don’t worry – you are definitely not alone! A typical scenario I have heard across my nearly 30 years in the learning and development industry is ‘I need some training in xyz’. Managers often start with the solution, not the problem.
A needs analysis – as it pertains to learning & development – helps to identify the gap between current and desired capability. It may also identify that a gap is actually not a capability gap at all – but some other barrier or issue within the work environment that may be hindering performance.
Gaps can exist in knowledge, skill and practice. Training may go some way to addressing knowledge and skill – but the application or ‘practice’ of this knowledge and skills may depend on a range of factors including:
- Is the person confident or motivated to apply the knowledge and skill?
- Are there behaviours that need to be ‘unlearned’?
- Are there incentives to change behaviour? Are there rewards for not changing behaviour?
- Is there support available? e.g. on-the-job coaching or debriefing
- Are required resources available?
- Are workplace relationships creating a hindrance?
Consider these scenarios:
- Greg is a program manager who struggles to deal with conflict and tends to avoid it, which creates problems within the team. He has been sent to numerous training programs on dealing with conflict but nothing has changed. In actual fact, Greg’s real issue is a deep-seated fear. He knows all the techniques, but just struggles to get past the threat he feels when he is faced with a difficult conversation. Greg may benefit from one-on-one coaching – and possibly counselling – to help him work through the underlying cause of his fear.
- Maddie is a volunteer who is generally lovely but sometimes offends people with some of her comments and her language. Her manager Ken thought that sending her to a ‘communication skills’ training course might help, but after talking with his Learning Partner, he realises that he firstly needs to provide Maddie with some specific feedback so that she is aware of the problem behaviour. The Learning Partner provided Ken with some tools on how to give this feedback in a helpful way.
As a learning professional, when I am approached with a solution… ‘We need training in xyz’, I start by taking it back to the problem, and the desired outcome. An outcome and a solution are two very different things. The outcomes may well be achieved by a variety of solutions, some of which may be training-related and some which may not.
Once we have been able to answer those key needs questions of ‘What is the outcome you are trying to achieve?’ and ‘What behaviours are you wanting/needing to change?’ we can then recommend methods and tools that can help further identify specific areas of need, such as individual capability assessments, broader training needs analyses or even a competency matrix to identify the specific knowledge, skills and behaviours you are needing to develop.
If you are facing a situation where you need to introduce new capabilities or addressing gaps in current capability, contact your Learning Partner early on so they can guide you through this needs analysis process and provide appropriate support and advice.
