Training professionals overestimate the value of training too often. For example, training is not necessary when a change in policy will produce the desired results. Our goal is to assess the organization's training need based on your goals and offer you honest alternatives — whether it is training or some more effective and efficient alternative.
The challenge
Can you relate to Carolyn's training challenge?
Based on employee complaints, the human resource director, Carolyn, hires a consultant to offer communications training. Carolyn permitted the vendor to use an off-the-shelf communication skills training that had proven useful for other clients.
After several training sessions, a number of employees complained that it was too basic and uninformative. They requested more focus on communication skills to help them deal with bullying and insensitivity among colleagues.
Your training must target specific competency gaps that DTUI will partner with you to identify.
High-impact design
Is your training stuck in outdated awareness & unconscious bias cycles?
In a knowledge-based economy, individual competence is no longer enough — people must share what they know for the organization to stay competitive. Too often, needs assessment only “looks for” awareness problems like poor communication or unconscious bias. High-impact design, in contrast, is based on an in-depth understanding of the specific performance gaps people need to overcome. DTUI's High Impact Instructional Design & Training Development approach characterizes competence as four components.
Awareness
Recognizing bias, differences, and the blind spots that quietly limit performance.
Attitude
The mindsets and openness that make inclusive, productive behavior possible.
Knowledge
The facts, frameworks, and context people need to act with confidence.
Skills
The applied behaviors that transfer from the training room into real work.
4
learning components shape every DTUI training: awareness, attitude, knowledge & skills.
Instructional design
Content built around the competency that actually needs to change
Instructional design involves creating and developing training content. We utilize our competency-based design approach, which characterizes training as involving four learning components: awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills. Training design focuses on the component identified as the learning target based on assessment. The result is high-impact training content.
Top ten questions
Questions managers ask about training
If you are like most people who contact us, you have questions about training and our expertise in delivering it. Here are honest answers to the most common ones.
While training each employee may be the best way to assure training reaches the entire organization, it may not optimize the return on investment. Training success does not necessarily depend on how many people filled the seats. The quality of the training — as evidenced by its impact on the learner's role in driving the business — is the most important factor. Training the right one-third of personnel or fewer with a new competence can sufficiently benefit the organization if the right people are identified and trained. Our goal is to offer cost-effective training with the highest impact.
Trainers are great at training, but fall short all too often when it comes to understanding how the training they deliver will meet the organization's goals. The client is interested in getting results; the trainer focuses on the content, which too often only loosely relates to expected results. This is typically due to a gap in understanding the client's point of view and the business objectives linked to the training. Our goal is to partner with you to get the results you expect and deserve — high-impact training aligns content with business needs in ways that lead to measurable results.
Most training is designed based on best practices for delivering the content or what the trainer has found useful in the past. That does not translate into impacting business goals. We use a training design and development framework that breaks content into four competence-component areas. These components readily lend themselves to each role and set of responsibilities in driving business processes.
Many trainers fail to see that they have an opportunity to become partners with management in driving business goals. This requires getting to know the managers, their business, business drivers, and objectives. Our training design and development framework has time and again provided a solution that gets managers and the organization closer to their business goals — options they fully recognize hold promise for reaching those goals.
Managers need and deserve to know what the training costs will be. They have a limited budget and other critical concerns putting pressure on their resources. We present decision makers with clear, results-oriented training solutions, choices for delivery, and justifications for return on investment.
Managers object to conducting a needs assessment for two basic reasons: they think what is needed is straightforward (often a myth, because the perceived need is a symptom of a less obvious core problem), and they want to avoid the extra cost. We help managers understand the cost-benefits of their decision and offer data-collection options that balance cost and quality. Then the manager makes the final decision — no pressure.
Many managers do not ask for an evaluation; they wait for participants to offer comments afterward. We always evaluate our training because the feedback helps us make the next training even better, and we very seldom receive less than high evaluation ratings. Evaluations are also an extension of our partnership with managers — once, when a manager raised concern over a couple of verbal complaints, we shared the high group-average results and even the raw scores, which assured her she had hired the right professionals.
This is a question managers seldom ask — we love to hear when they do. Training can be very effective, but most evaluations cannot adequately capture all the ways the new behavior will unfold in the real world. It is best to collect data that captures learning transfer — the extent to which what is learned translates into effective workplace behaviors. We also provide alternative ways to collect data over time to identify components of the new behavior that have not sufficiently transferred, so additional work can be offered to improve impact.
More managers see the benefit of online learning each day, but classroom preference remains high among the decision makers who still favor it. Cost is the number-one driver. Take sexual-harassment training — a recurring state requirement where organizations turn online for savings; the catch is that the essential competence to legally protect the organization is a skill. E-learning develops knowledge well but lags in driving skills. A blended approach combining e-learning and classroom learning is both cost-effective and high-impact. DTUI's e-learning design pushes technology to the limit in skill-building interactivity — our focus is always on helping clients identify the best modality to reach specific goals.
e-Learning & Training-Online Services
Blended learning: the cost-effective, high-impact duo
One of the most popular training formats today combines online and classroom-based courses to develop competency — a blended learning approach. It is not only cost-effective, but the knowledge-building strengths of online education and the skill-building that only the classroom can provide make for a dynamic duo. Our competence-component approach allows for precision in assessment that specifies the gaps that need to be targeted for training.
For trainers
Top ten tips for successful training
Practical tips to help you stay confident and effective as you prepare for and conduct a diversity training workshop.
1
Practice ahead of time
Practice delivering the lecturettes you will use and the transitions between activities. With a co-trainer, practice together and trade valuable feedback.
2
Polish your delivery
Focus on the simple expression of ideas; don't memorize — fix the sequence of points in your mind. Use posture, tone of voice, appearance, and attire effectively.
3
Manage your time
Each activity has a time requirement. Stick to your schedule unless a discussion is too valuable to cut short, and be ready to adjust to make up time.
4
Personalize the workshop
Tell your own stories and the cultural encounters and mistakes you've made. This builds rapport and puts participants at ease.
5
Make eye contact
Good eye contact is extremely effective. Continuously shift your gaze to include everyone — it holds attention and signals that each participant matters.
6
Talk loudly enough to be heard
Be aware of the volume of contributions and your own comments. Restate questions so that everyone can hear both the question and your response.
7
Pay attention to group dynamics
Be on the lookout for difficulties; if participants get stuck, intervene to help them examine what is happening.
8
Keep it practical
Participants want answers to “How do I use this?” and “What's in it for me?” Make sure practical applications surface as you process activities.
9
Stay flexible
Adapt activities and timing to the needs and energy of the group without losing sight of the learning objectives.
10
Have fun
Enjoy yourself. Your enthusiasm is contagious — when you have fun, participants engage more deeply and remember more.
From Vaughn, B.E. (2004). Managing Diversity e-Coach Book. Diversity Training University Publications: San Francisco, CA. Based on: Kogod, S. Kanu. A Workshop for Managing Diversity in the Workplace (Pfeiffer & Co, 1991) 17–18.
Ready to design training that drives results?
Partner with DTUI to identify the competency gaps that matter and build high-impact training around them.