Does external training work?

​Colleagues,
 
Last week we looked at the five faces of the cube of development. This week, I’ll clarify how to best use and integrate each face into your organization for maximum impact.
 
External Trainers and Workshops
This face is the most expensive form of development. It may be the best option when one or a few people need to acquire specific knowledge or skills. It can be effective for a whole team to attend so they can support each other in the future.
 
External training has three weaknesses:

1. It happens away from the workplace.
2. It is generally not contextualized for your specific organization.
3. Nobody else in the organization receives the training.

 
Since this training occurs away from the organization, there is often little organizational support for the training attendee as they try and implement what they learned. Organizational practices that allow for both sharing of the knowledge and follow-up support for those implementing it are key to capturing the value of external training.
 
To share information, the attendee can:

• share the key training elements in a document
• provide a mini training at a meeting
• conduct a “lunch and learn” (interested people attend a presentation during lunch)
• Coach or mentor others in learning the knowledge/skills

 
To increase support for applying the new knowledge, the attendee should create a basic plan for implementing the new knowledge. This plan should include behaviors and outcomes and a leader should help support the plan by checking for implementation. This takes significant effort, but why would you invest thousands of dollars for training and not follow through with support?
 
Let me know if you have other ideas to add!
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick