3 Tips to drive leadership buy-in for skill development

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Why managers ask for “training” then don’t support it

Has this happened to you? A manager comes to you and tells you that their team needs “training”, so being the customer-focused person you are, you try to get it scheduled, but the manager becomes a roadblock to execution. Or, you deliver the training they request… but then the manager does nothing to support application on the job.

When this happens, what you lack is manager buy in.

There’s actually a great article from Tim Riesterer called “A skills deficiency of our own making” where he talks about managers becoming the road block. “Faced with the contradictory pressures to drive the business or take time to hone their team’s skills, the majority of managers are opting to take a pass on the training, according to 56 percent of respondents.”

So, you need to help managers understand the impact of not upskilling their teams. Here are 3 steps for doing that.

1) Find out what skill gaps exist

Let’s start with the obvious question, do they really need the training the manager requested? How do you know? This is where a skills assessment is key. It’s the first step in driving buy in, for both the manager and the individual with the gap.

A skills assessment (or competency assessment) is performed on those identified tasks and skills that a person in their role needs to do to be successful. (That’s a role-based competency model.) A rating is selected based upon how they do that task, which defines their proficiency level. In other words, a skills assessment measures How (behaviors) someone does the What (task/skill). The individual’s selected proficiency level is then compared with the target level, defining proficiency or skill gaps for each task.

When a person does their self-assessment and becomes self-aware of their capabilities and skill gaps, they will be motivated to change. And that gives you and managers the best chance for changing their behavior.

Through active participation in their team’s competency assessment, managers will see exactly what gaps each person has. This makes their job SO much easier. No guesswork!

In a perfect world, you need managers to be able to see skill gaps and strengths both for each individual and their team in aggregate. In our Self-Directed Learning Engine™ application, managers can see both with ease. The other thing we do that we’ve found to be really successful is to connect skill gaps to business impacts/their objectives. Despite it being obvious to you, not every manager easily makes the connection that the inability to qualify sales opportunities using a specific methodology leads to the inability to win business consistently. Connect the dots for them.

At this point, a manager should understand individual and team gaps, and understand why they have a vested interest in supporting team member development, not just asking for it. It will be incredibly difficult for a manager to know what skill gaps exist, and then not want to close them.

2) Talk about “learning, development, or upskilling” not “training”

Because you’ll have access to capability analytics in aggregate across managers, it is likely you can proactively go to individual managers to tell how you can help them get what their team members need. And if your competency development system automatically provides personalized learning options, then you’ll already know what they need.

But if they come to you first to talk about “training”, this provides you with the opportunity to educate them about “learning, development or upskilling” vs. “training”. We like to say that “training” is what people do TO you. And “learning” is what you do for yourself. Which do you think is more effective? And while it may be true that a particular skill gap requires formal learning (the “10” in 70-20-10), what people call “training”, then that’s fine. But it won’t be enough. People need to have the opportunity to apply what they learn on the job – which is “experiential learning” (the “70” in 70-20-10). And that’s where the managers MUST play an active role. Of course, you need to have defined the appropriate experiential learning, such as skill practices or other activities. But the benefit to individuals and their managers is that people can learn WHILE working. Josh Bersin calls this “learning in the flow of work”. And that’s going to have a lot of interest and support from managers. It eliminates the “contradictory pressures” Tim Riesterer mentions.

3) Sell managers through education

At this point, you should already have quite a bit of manager support for true development. But there’s one more step you can take.

We provide our customers with a manager toolkit to help them understand what’s in it for them. This short glossy PDF sells them on their role and the benefits to them. If employees are more proficient, then they’ll get greater results, more efficiently, with less ongoing support to accomplish objectives.

Managers also need to understand that NOT supporting development is a risk. If team members aren’t given the opportunity to grow, they’ll go somewhere they can.

Show managers how easy it is to drive a culture of learning by creating a development habit. To do this, they need to ask about development progress all the time… in every 1:1 and every team meeting. Give them a list of questions they can ask. For example, “How many team members performed some development activity in the last week? Would anyone like to share what they did? (recognition) What progress have you made with the 1 activity on your development plan?” Talking about development all the time, in every interaction, shows team members that development is really important. And because skills are something each individual owns and can take with them (“skills are currency”), that will make them more engaged and satisfied. And engagement and satisfaction drives retention – what manager doesn’t want that?

If you don’t have materials like these for your managers, take the time to create them. Make it short and focused exclusively on their benefits.

If possible, provide managers with their own competency model so they can self-assess, own their development, and “walk the talk”.

Put it all together and it will be hard to say “no”

The shelf life of a skill is now pegged at less than 5 years. The pace of change is driving the need for perpetual upskilling. You need managers to understand just how at risk they are if they do nothing.

The future of competitive advantage will be dictated by which organization has people who are the most skilled, and have the ability to upskill at the speed of change. Learning agility is key to success. And developing learning agility requires manager support.

Ultimately, if both employees and their managers participate in a skills assessment and identify skill gaps, and are presented with a personalized learning plan for closing those gaps, it will be hard for a manager to say, “listen, I know you have gaps, and here’s a list of activities you can do to close them, but I’m not going to give you time to do that,” especially if you provide opportunities for them to learn while working.