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Brian's
Introduction
By
Brian Walsh (Founder & CEO of
Entrepreneur.co.za)
As I mentioned under the ‘Hiring’ section,
training of staff is essential, not just when
they start but also on an ongoing basis
throughout their employment. It is not advisable
to only offer product and procedural training,
but also look at soft skills and other related
skills like communication, sales, management and
even leadership.
Now I know that many entrepreneurs aren’t
necessarily the best trainers themselves. I do
however, recommend that you look into training
as a skill, but accept that you may well need to
use professional trainers. In this introduction,
I am going to focus on you doing the training.
Statistics show that the average retention level
from corporate training in the US is around
21 percent and decreasing year on year. Let’s
face it - people don’t absorb what they don’t
believe is relevant in their current context of
life. However, people do absorb what they do
believe is relevant. A simple example: if you
love rugby but not soccer, you may walk past a
television set where rugby is showing and you
will stop to learn more, like who is playing,
what is the score etc. But if you walked past a
television showing soccer, you probably wouldn’t
give it a second glance. The point is that you
must make your material very relevant to the
individuals you are training.
Secondly, people have different preferences as
to how they absorb information. You would have
to become an astute NLP practitioner if you
wanted to identify with each individual, but it
is easier to use the VAK [Visual, Audio and
Kinesthetic (touch and emotions)] system. What I
mean by this is that you should use multimedia
to present information to ensure that people
absorb information better. Use presentations,
practical examples and be precise and to the
point when you present.
Prepare and practice your training sessions
beforehand. An organised and precise training
session achieves much more than a disorganised
and random session. It is also essential to
leave a reasonable amount of time for questions,
and where possible, create and distribute notes,
preferably with practical exercises.
Becoming a good trainer doesn’t happen
overnight, but it can do wonders for your
company. We at Entrepreneur are going try and
help you as much as possible. We will soon be
launching a skills centre where you can get your
staff to do various online skills courses that
will help them in their quest to be more
productive. The main advantage is that they can
use the system 24/7 when they need it.
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