How to Create Successful Development Programs
Strategies to engage employees, build goodwill, and maximize your strategic investment.
As we begin to gather again in person, learning and development programs offer an opportunity to come together with purpose to reconnect, recommit, and reinvigorate employees. Ask anyone who has been through a transformative development program what made it special, and you will receive a variety of answers including the learning experience itself, the other participants in the room, the firm’s investment in development, the networking opportunities, or even the venue.
Right now, the human need to gather in person is palpable. Bringing employees together for the purpose of learning and development is an investment in their human capital and their human spirit. Moreover, in this highly competitive hiring market, development programs can be a differentiator that builds loyalty and signals a firm’s willingness to investment in its people.
I believe there are deliberate strategies and actions companies can take when designing these programs that maximize impact and produce transformative results.
Make attendance aspirational. In the past decade, technology has made learning opportunities easily accessible at little or no cost. Right now, high quality learning is one click away whether you want to learn about body language in Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk, study beginner Python coding on Udemy or Coursera, or take Harvard’s Exercising Leadership course on edX. However, when firms commit to building a bespoke program to gather employees, target specific learning needs, and build culture, they are making a strategic investment. Development programs signal that companies value employee experience and believe in investing in employees’ careers.
Formal learning and development experiences are a gift, a non-financial reward that taps employee curiosity, creates engagement, and strengthens capability and culture. Companies should treat it as such by making training aspirational for those who participate. This could mean having to complete certain self-study before engaging in a live session, it could mean hitting certain established sales or productivity metrics, or it can mean selecting attendees through a nomination process based on performance or potential. Recognizing milestones such as a work anniversary or becoming a first-time manager is another way to make training feel aspirational. High-touch development programs should feel like recognition and reward.
While I certainly advocate bringing teams together in person or virtually for social connection and on-the-job learning as often as possible, I believe development programs should feel like a special occasion.
Establish high expectations. Different cultures have different ways of setting and communicating expectations. Some firms embrace a “no person left behind” approach by establishing progress checkpoints and providing extra support to those who need it, while other firms pride themselves on “weeding out” those who do not pass the standards set by the organization. Regardless of where the company falls on this spectrum, it is critical to establish high expectations for participants every time there is an opportunity for them to engage in a development program.
This can be accomplished in several ways. Senior leadership support and engagement with the program is always a great start. Even if they can’t participate in the entire session, opening the experience with a few words of encouragement from a C-suite executive sponsor communicates that this is the firm’s investment and it is being taken seriously.
Establishing rules of engagement for the group up front can set the tone for the experience. Whether it’s encouraging everyone to participate, turning off mobile phones, asking participants to share challenges, updating managers, or assessing participant progress, naming the expectations with the group will set the norms for the day.
One of the best methods I’ve seen for establishing high expectations and fostering engagement is simply the result of making training aspirational to begin with. The participants in the room already feel special because they have been selected to be there. They have crossed a milestone or have been recognized as high achievers, so they want to show up for their peers in the best possible light. Even better, referring to the group as a “cohort” further enhances their shared identity and expectation of collective excellence.
Create a safe space. Given the aspiration and high expectations of the selection process, it’s even more important to create an inclusive environment once participants are in the session so they can stretch themselves as much as possible during their experience. The classroom environment creates a unique opportunity to serve as a laboratory where participants can experiment with new ideas, challenge themselves to get out of their comfort zone, and take risks. HBS professor Tom DeLong and Sara DeLong note in their Harvard Business Review article, “The Paradox of Excellence” that high need for achievement people tend to avoid taking risks.
“High achievers often let anxiety about their performance compromise their progress. Because they’re used to having things come easily to them, they tend to shy away from assignments that will truly test them and require them to learn new skills. They have successful images to preserve, so instead of embracing risk, they hunker down and lock themselves into routines—at the expense of personal growth.”
An optimally structured development program, conducted in a safe space environment, can disrupt those tendencies and unlock participants’ potential. Moreover, the classroom provides an excellent opportunity for participants to be seen, heard, and recognized.
Facilitate experiential learning. Once you have participants ready to participate in learning, create a session that engages them and surpasses their expectations.
Employees can gain knowledge on a subject by reading a book or article, listening to a podcast or watching a video on their own. The classroom is the place to reinforce that knowledge and practice know-how through experiential learning. Malcolm Knowles popularized the term andragogy to describe a set of principles about adult learners:
They need to know why something is important.
They are self-directed and want to take charge of their learning journey.
They are internally motivated.
They bring life experiences and want to be recognized.
They prefer relevance to their situations.
They are practical.
Experiential learning provides hands-on practice and feedback and reinforces the principles of andragogy. Peer-to-peer learning through role plays, case studies and other exercises allows participants to simulate on-the-job situations. The facilitated discussion that follows asks participants to reflect on their experience, interpret the concepts and dynamics they encountered, connect it to real life (“so what?”) and plan for action steps (“now what?”)
This experiential learning approach, incorporating practice and feedback, reflection, interpretation and action planning, is a critical component of learning. It requires trust in a safe space, inclusivity, and permission to fail.
Connect the dots. Finally, it’s critical that classroom experiences complement and integrate with what’s happening outside the classroom. The 70-20-10 rule is a commonly used formula in the learning and development field. It suggests that employees receive seventy percent of their development in their day-to-day experience of doing their job. Twenty percent comes from interactions and relationships with colleagues, networks and mentors, and only ten percent of development happens in the classroom. That is why the “now what” part of experiential learning is so critical. Participants should leave their learning session with established goals and an action plan for applying what they learned to their work.
Development programs are an investment worth making, with a return that far outlives the time in the classroom. Programs build skills and capabilities, recognize talent, reinforce culture, and create shared experiences among colleagues. Coming out of the pandemic, employees’ desire to gather, grow, and feel appreciated makes this the right time to invest in learning and the strategies described here can help companies maximize their investment in the program and produce transformative results.
To learn more about Veritas Leadership and the learning and development programs we offer, please explore our website or email us at info@veritasleadershipllc.com.