So what's wrong with training?
What I mean by 'traditional classroom training' is an environment where the trainer has all the knowledge and aims to transmit that to the learner based on the premise that knowledge is all the learner needs. For example, the trainers who used to be sales managers and now tell their course delegates how they should be selling. They also do role play, which is the old style of 'pretend you're the MD of ABC products and you want to buy a new telephone system". In my experience, role plays don't work because they're not real. When we do group exercises, they are for real.
Group development is an important part of the service mix - creating change at the group level is, I think, a key service. The shift from PPI Business Coaching to excellerate gives us a lot more flexibility in the interventions we can create, the only thing that we will never do is sit a bunch of people in a room and talk at them for a day as if they don't have any prior knowledge or experience themselves.
Sadly I think there are people still running training courses using this method. My wife is currently in Munich for 4 days being subjected to it for a pharmaceutical trial training meeting where there is a lot of technical info to be disseminated. How much the delegates will retain is a different matter, given they are looking at powerpoint from 7:30 am until 6 pm each day, then being bussed out for dinner until late. Now she finally realises that all those times I was out of the country I was slaving away rather than having a great time (please don't tell her the truth).
I think that the way we can deliver 'training' will be the right solution where there are a number of people we need to work with at the same time e.g. in solution sales skills where we can develop broad skills and then follow up that with individual support that removes individual barriers to performance.
The key distinction in our approach (and by no means a unique one) is that I believe that the learners already know 99% of what they need to know, and our job is to unlock that knowledge, align it with organisational objectives and remove individual barriers to high performance. In respect of this I draw your attention to Simon Broom's pitch to a traditional training provider.
Now, having said that, I think the only people who have to defend training from coaching are the traditional training providers who have something to protect. Of course, they want to tell people that training still has a vital role in a business. Of course they would say that. Remember how vinyl fans were saying that vinyl was a far superior format to CDs 20 years ago? The mellow, rich sound, the character, the joy of sitting and reading the sleeve notes.
So one hand, training still has a place and we will deliver business performance services to groups, which might look a bit like training to the casual observer.
I just don't think we need to argue the training versus coaching point ourselves - we need to let our competitors worry about that as they run to catch up with us.
Group development is an important part of the service mix - creating change at the group level is, I think, a key service. The shift from PPI Business Coaching to excellerate gives us a lot more flexibility in the interventions we can create, the only thing that we will never do is sit a bunch of people in a room and talk at them for a day as if they don't have any prior knowledge or experience themselves.
Sadly I think there are people still running training courses using this method. My wife is currently in Munich for 4 days being subjected to it for a pharmaceutical trial training meeting where there is a lot of technical info to be disseminated. How much the delegates will retain is a different matter, given they are looking at powerpoint from 7:30 am until 6 pm each day, then being bussed out for dinner until late. Now she finally realises that all those times I was out of the country I was slaving away rather than having a great time (please don't tell her the truth).
I think that the way we can deliver 'training' will be the right solution where there are a number of people we need to work with at the same time e.g. in solution sales skills where we can develop broad skills and then follow up that with individual support that removes individual barriers to performance.
The key distinction in our approach (and by no means a unique one) is that I believe that the learners already know 99% of what they need to know, and our job is to unlock that knowledge, align it with organisational objectives and remove individual barriers to high performance. In respect of this I draw your attention to Simon Broom's pitch to a traditional training provider.
Now, having said that, I think the only people who have to defend training from coaching are the traditional training providers who have something to protect. Of course, they want to tell people that training still has a vital role in a business. Of course they would say that. Remember how vinyl fans were saying that vinyl was a far superior format to CDs 20 years ago? The mellow, rich sound, the character, the joy of sitting and reading the sleeve notes.
So one hand, training still has a place and we will deliver business performance services to groups, which might look a bit like training to the casual observer.
I just don't think we need to argue the training versus coaching point ourselves - we need to let our competitors worry about that as they run to catch up with us.
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