So you think your team needs training?

This morning while going through my emails I happened to read a request for help on the Service Roundtable. (By the way, if you want some great information and help in your contracting business, check them out at serviceroundtable.com, I highly recommend joining and tell them I sent you) The request came from an HVAC Contractor asking if anyone could recommend some customer service and sales training for his people. Naturally some folks responded with some recommendations for training available.

Since I have a training management and training development background, a bunch of questions developed in my head.
Why do you think you need training?
What event caused you to realize you need help?
Did you determine the root cause of the event that made you believe you needed training?

Is there another solution that could resolve the issue without having to do training?
Is it a lack of knowledge and training that is the culprit?

When I managed the training department at GE I regularly had managers from around the country call and say "I need someone to come here and train my people on _____" I would either send one of my people or visit the location myself to attempt and make an assessment of the situation. Most of the time I found that the problem was really not a result of lack of knowledge or training.


So many people, especially managers look at training as the cure for a problem. Keep in mind, training, education, learning or the communication of information is done solely to provide an employee with the knowledge to do their job. You would provide training based on the idea that they did not have the information or knowledge to do the job. So, if you had an employee that had a lack of motivation, training can not solve your problem.

There are five reasons why employees do not perform well and only one of them is a lack of knowledge or training. The other four are:
The employee has no idea what you expect from them
A non-work related problem is distracting them
The employee is not suited for the job
The employee doesn't care

Before you go buying a training program or having someone like me come in and charge you thousands of dollars, take a look at the other options and really focus on what brought you to the point of believing you need help.

One of things that I always ask clients before I start developing a training program for them is "What specifically do you want your people to do differently after going through the training?" Even if it is a list of things, I'm okay with that. Now we can look at the root cause of the problem and go from there.

I look at it this way, let's say you get headaches everyday and you take tylenol several times a day to eliminate the pain. Does this mean your headache is a result of the lack of tylenol? This is what I mean by getting to the root cause.