Leaders, Managers, Team Leads as Performance Coaches (Part 4), By Segun Mojeed

I have had to take a brief ‘unannounced’ family-business vacation. My apologies. I had to do it for family. As it is customary especially in this part of the globe, we needed to meet, greet and know the parents and family of our son’s wife in a very brief and solemn gathering at Brampton, ON. You call them in-laws but my mother lived and taught me to know, receive and honour them as members of our family. Mr Lannie Sinclair and Mrs Lorn Sinclair, it was great meeting and knowing you. We are family. You gave us a precious daughter, Omo-Tara Mojeed. My wife, Omolara and I, and the entire Mojeed and Lawanson families worldwide say a big thank you. Salute le familia!

As we continue on the subject of performance coaching, it is pertinent I tell you that most of what I have shared on training effectiveness – a major portfolio of a performance coach, are from my understanding of the Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation. A model I’m a certified user and facilitator. Evaluation enhances effectiveness. Effectiveness is results! What gets measured gets done, so goes the saying. Suffice now to say that a clear grasp of the four levels and the willingness to use them is a sure-fire for training effectiveness, training that brings results for the business, and impacts the life of the individual. Training in which your return on expectations are measurable, visible, huge and value-adding, and you get your money’s worth. Training then becomes truly an investment, not just a cost-centre.

A recap of the Kirkpatrick four levels, and then a browsing through the seven laws of training or teaching would be a fitting conclusion to the role of a performance coach in training effectiveness. Level one is called reaction – as the tag suggests, this is measuring to what degree participants react favourably to the learning event even right from the planning phase. In BezaleelConsulting, we partly use our pre-conference resources to measure reaction. How does the delegate feel about the training invite? How was it communicated? Why the training in the first place? We send out the Learning Contract and a few questionnaires including our pre-training competency assessment, days before any training and we ask for responses from delegates, working hand-in-hand with our clients’ HR, notwithstanding if the training is web-based, brick and mortar in-house or open enrolment. Level one thus also gauges customer (delegates) satisfaction and engagement pre-class and during class.

Learning is what we call level two and this measures to what degree participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment for action based on their participation in the training. The immediate post-training assessment questionnaire we have come to nickname ‘Happy Sheet’ is often used in measuring levels one and two, but is that enough? Additionally, in some organisations, it is mandatory that training facilitators set up quiz for delegates based on the training just received, grade such quiz and submit results to the client. We are told that such results are often used for appraisal decisions and to judge learning acquired. The drawback in this is that isn’t it too early to judge learning if such quiz are taken just at the end of the course? Also, knowing that there would be a test, some participants would just cram the sessions a la what they were doing in their school days. The jury is still out on this. However, these two levels are mostly measuring what I referred to in Part 2 as effective training.

Level three is known as Behaviour and it measures to what degree participants apply their learning when back at work. From my experience and practice, what is expected from delegates in terms of behaviour and performance when they return to work must have been laid bare from the beginning long before the training. This is called expectations or learning outcomes. The Learning Contract helps partly in this area. A performance coach must engage his team-member participants on what the training is all about and what is expected of them. A ‘first fruit’ of any worthwhile learning event is behavioural change. In BezaleelConsulting, our clients know us and they can testify that though each of our training programme has its generic learning outcomes, we still engage with our clients to incorporate their expectations, and in the process adjusting our Instructor’s Guide, thereby oftentimes widening the scope of the training and enriching the curriculum for the benefit of all.

Results! This is the name for the next level which is level four. This goes on to measure to what degree targeted outcome occurs that can be traceable to the training, how often this is occurring and how are they being reinforced. If there was no documented expectation, there would not be any targeted outcome. Behaviour and results are much dependent on the environment participants return to after training. Is it an environment that reinforces positive outcomes, or one that stifles initiatives and application of new knowledge? Is it a workplace where performance coaching is the culture and managers are held accountable for the spirit and the letters of the Learning Contract? Is it an environment where team leads beat down their associates and discountenance their inputs as coming from these “young inexperienced graduates”? What behaviour is your work environment promoting? The behaviour that is rewarded gets repeated.

Four to six months after a training is enough for us to come knocking, working hand-in-gloves with HR to evaluate and look out for behavioural change and results. You may check Part 2 again for the contents of a Learning Contract. Suffice now to say it basically contains a commitment from the delegate to attend the training with purpose, obtain key learning, return to work to share takeaway ideas and apply the learning. The other part and the bigger responsibility is for the performance coach to undertake to follow up on the delegate ensuring he does what he is committed to pre-training, during training and post-training.

For maximum impact, the four levels are flipped during the planning phase of a learning event starting from level 4 moving on to level 1. In other words, begin your training initiatives with level four, Results! What gaps are we bridging? What would success look like? What’s in it for the business? What should we be seeing post-training? Call it “the four levels in reverse”. It is something akin to re-enacting Stephen R. Covey’s Habit No. 2 in his classic bestseller, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”: Begin with the end in mind – a set of principles of personal leadership. So, the flipping keeps the focus on what is most important – the programme outcome that is accomplished through improved on-the-job performance of participants in a training.

In concluding this sub-topic of training effectiveness, I would like to delve into the “7 Laws of Training/Teaching/Facilitation”. I was pleasantly gladdened when, years ago, 1987 to be precise I became a student in the Sunday School of the Foursquare Gospel Church’s Workers-in-Training class (by the way, this class has now been rebranded and is now called CDC 3 – Christian Development Course III and I’m glad to be a teacher in this class). One of the prominent modules and a very resonating one for that matter was the Seven Laws of Teaching. I had also been taught a semblance of it in my post graduate HR class in 1986.

Fast forward to 1997 or so, courtesy of a friend and professional colleague, Dr Toyin Bankole, I read the Executive Summary of the book, Stop Managing, Start Coaching authored by Jerry W. Gilley and Nathaniel W. Boughton. This summary reinforced what we learned in the Workers-in-Training classes. Before I do a recap of the seven laws, let me quickly share some principles that would also accelerate training effectiveness as gleaned from this Executive Summary:

• Managers and team leads are better positioned to train their employees, better positioned than human resource or training experts because they (team leads) are ultimately accountable for employee performance and productivity, and because they have relevant hands-on experiences to deploy on-the-job training. Let us, the professionals train your managers and team leads in the excellent art of hands-holding and feedback. Feedback, they say, is the breakfast of champions.
• Numerous researches support the spread and balance of learning and development activities on the basis of 70% on-the-job learning, 20% coaching, mentoring and feedback, while only 10% percent should be ‘brick and mortar’ and web-based training. All of them must however be used together for effectiveness.
• One of the principles is also that we must present information only if it is useful, theory should be tied to practical application.
• We must present information in a way that permits mastery – employees must understand completely and be able to use learning acquired.
• Training facilitators should present only one idea or concept at a time – we must avoid information overload.
• Lastly we must use feedback and frequent summaries.

Having laid this foundation, what then are these seven laws of teaching and/or training?

To be continued… Shalom.

Postscript: Uber fariga!  The word ‘fariga’ is arguably an expression of disagreement and non-conformity. Another Yoruba word close to it is “yari”. I was going through the Canadian National Post (www.nationalpost.com) of January 9 when I saw this bold headline: “We don’t do rides, our drivers do, Uber says”. The Canadian arm of Uber Technologies Inc., Uber Canada Inc. (UCI) is fighting a tax reassessment that the ride-hailing company says incorrectly assume it was responsible to account for sales tax on rides provided using the service. UCI says it does not supply transportation services to riders, “at all time (sic), only the driver-partners supply the transportation services to riders, not UCI.” It says it rather provides marketing and support services. My take is if this much battle is raging for just tax reassessment, I wonder what happens if a rider is injured or a driver commits an infraction while having a ride that requires customer compensation. Is the company responsible or is it the driver that should be made to pay? I personally feel this is bordering on anonymity and facelessness. I pray that one day, no one tells us “we don’t have accidents, our drivers do”. Relevant agencies ought to be proactive about this. Let’s not wait until something happens.

Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article:

1. BezaleelConsulting/Olusegun Mojeed: A compendium of over 25 years of manuscripts of my thesis and lecture series in Talent Management and People Matters (unpublished yet), BezaleelConsulting Group Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com
2. James D. and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation, 2016 ATD.
3. Jerry W. Gilley & Nathaniel W. Boughton: Stop Managing, Start Coaching, Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996.
4. Foursquare Gospel Church: Sunday School Workers-In-Training/CDC 3 Manual.
5. Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, 25^th Anniversary Edition, 2013