One question many organizations face in rolling out training is whether the training should be done by external or internal trainers. The typical discussion often hinges on resources. An organization will pay significantly less to have training done by internal trainers because once trainers are certified, the organization only pays for the training materials. The flip side of this argument is that an internal trainer will have to dedicate part of their time and attention to doing the effort. Thus, the cost differential is not as large when the cost for paying their salary is taken into consideration. 

While this is an important factor, we believe the more important factor is the long-term effectiveness of creating behavior change through training. 

Our research has shown that while external trainers get better scores and people are happier or better served at the end of the training class, the aura of the class fades once people get back to their desks to real work. VitalSmarts conducted an experiment that compared the effectiveness of external trainers and internal leaders. The survey measured the Intention to use the skills, and then the actual use of the skills taught in the course thirty days and six months later. As was expected, intention to use the skills was significantly higher when an external trainer taught the course. The actual use of the skills dropped off sharply after 6 months. Internal trainers had the exact opposite effect, as shown in the graph below.

Note: in the graph below, the 3 groups of graphs represent external trainers, skilled internal leaders and unskilled internal leaders. 

In this study, 2 groups of leaders were studied: 1) leaders who were pretty good at training, and 2) leaders who were not good at training at all. 

Joseph Grenny of VitalSmarts conducted a web seminar for Training Magazine about applying Influencer principles to successful training initiatives. The purpose of this seminar is to show the strategies that need to surround a training initiative to create genuine and sustainable change. The link to this seminar is shown below. 

https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.F3E35747D500D5087643D94E0EF1A9&sid=2010436

The discussion of the research study on external trainers versus leaders training is found over one hour into the web seminar, starting approximately at the 1:02:50 mark. Note that the first hour of this seminar talks about the influencer model to create change; the last 10 minutes discusses how to apply the Influencer methodology to rolling out training initiatives. 

The reasons that internal training is more effective include the following: 

External trainers leave the organization after the training is completed so that participants unknowingly fall into the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind "syndrome.

Internal trainers intentionally or unintentionally tailor the application of the training to real life situations that exist in their organization so that the course is more real and more applicable to participants. 

Because internal trainers must learn the skills to teach them, they better understand the nuances and complexities of dialogue within their organizations. Thus, attendees have internal resources who can coach, provide feedback and answer questions about the content and how to deal with the content. 

Internal trainers provide encouragement  to try and use the skills by using stories and modeling that they have applied the skills. 

Attendees are reminded of the training whenever they see someone in their organization who has conducted the training. This cannot be stressed enough - not only will they be reminded when they meet with someone who trained them, but whenever their name is brought up they are once again taken back to the importance of using the skills. 

External trainers underestimate the impact of the subtleties of an organization's culture because they have not had to do work within that culture. Internal trainers truly see the enormity of creating an honest and open culture that is currently not that way. 

External training efforts can overcome many of these hurdles through intensive follow up, application and coaching. These are required because there are no shortcuts in using training to create genuine change.  

NOTE: This LeadershipSmarts White Paper was written by Murray Low in June 2011

HBR reports that out of 7 indicators, the one most strongly correlated with 10-year returns is employees' comfort in speaking up, even when they have negative things to say. Corporate Executive Board study shows companies in the top quartile in openness of communication delivered an average total shareholder return of 7.9% over a 10-year period, compared with 2.1% at companies in other quartiles.

Here is a humorous little video to give an example of where Crucial Conversations training could really help! Enjoy and share...

The Tough Choice - click to watch (2min.)

I bought my first Mac in 1984. I didn't want the low end machine with 128K - no, I went all out with the 512K RAM model. We loved our Macs. We had Apple computers and notebooks for over 15 years. But in the 90's my son asked for a PC so he could play cooler computer games. I'd been using PC's at work for over a decade and it seemed to me that Apples were less powerful from a business perspective.

So we switched, gradually at first, eventually replacing our old Macs with new PCs. The problem, of course, was that the PC's crashed while the Macs had never done that. They froze up, had to be re-booted and at times developed maddening viruses. (I have nothing against PCs today - we actually use both systems.) Without ever intentionally knowing it, we lost our reliable operating system and replaced it with one that was a big headache. Because the underlying operating system could crash, we could never be sure that the program we were using would perform for us reliably.

Does that ever occur in organizations? Consider this question: "Does your organization have a high performance cultural operating system?" What we mean by a high performance operating system is that no matter what you are strategy you are trying to execute, what major project you need to bring online, what program you need to implement or improvement you need to make, it will occur because you have an underlying high performance cultural operating system.

High performance cultural operating systems can be built and they can also atrophy. In 1999 I welcomed a new colleague from Boeing who was a highly capable Organization Effectiveness consultant. We worked together on creating collaboration and dialogue across organizations. She confided in me that the reason she left her organization was her concern that the organization was losing its competitiveness because of the culture. The lack of collaboration showed up in hidden agendas, organizations competing internally, and the refusal to engage to work on business issues.

I trusted my colleague deeply and have followed Boeing's performance relative to its main competitor, Airbus. Both are large organizations with extremely complex products and difficult product development and execution challenges. From 1989 to 1999, Boeing had over 50% more orders and delivered 3 times as many planes as Airbus did. From 2000 to 2011, they had 13% less orders and actually delivered fewer planes. This year Boeing has had 1/3 of the orders of Airbus and delivered only 78% of the airplanes as their competitor, Airbus.

To be fair, both companies have experienced massive problems in developing and delivering to market existing and new airplanes in a very tough economic climate. And the exact causes of corporate performance are often unknown. But I would venture a guess that if you surveyed employees at Boeing and Airbus by asking " Does your organization have a high performance cultural operating system?" the scores at Airbus would be higher.

Employees behave differently in organizations that do not have a high performance cultural operating system. Employee act in silos and avoid conflict rather than surface and resolve problems. People end up protecting their turf and the organization finds it difficult to hold people accountable in meaningful and productive ways. Status quo behaviors drive status quo performance.

The most pernicious part of this scenario is that the culture and behaviors that impede high performance are found below the surface. The resistance that occurs from below overwhelms efforts to pursue a new strategy, implement a new process, install a new system or operate from a new structure.

We help organizations surface these below-the-waterline dysfunctional behaviors. If we know the status quo monster, then we can identify effective behaviors that form part of a high performance cultural operating system.

Handling Make-or-Break Conversations

Joseph Grenny's latest BusinessWeek column features new research VitalSmarts conducted on life-changing conversations and highlights results and content from Crucial Conversations Second Edition.

The research reminds us that we need to take control of a contentious conversation before it loses you a client, spouse, or job. Click on this LINK to learn how to do this and why it is so critical.  

In Memoriam

9/11 puts the work we do in perspective. I found myself that day in Vienna Austria, training country representatives from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the former Soviet Union how to help groups reengineer their business processes. Towards the end of the day a participant interrupted my teaching by handing me a large Post-it note that read "The World Trade Center has been bombed and 40,000 people are dead." I had no idea what to think so I read the note to the class and asked if they had heard anything about it. Some reported they had received text messages confirming an attack. (Yes, texting was already going strong in Europe in 2001).

We had almost completed the workshop, so without uttering another sentence I told everyone that class was over. I arrived back at my hotel room in time to watch the hijackers' horrific attack on the second tower. I became glued to CNN and the BBC that week in Vienna (the only English stations besides HBO), interrupting reports from abroad with bike rides and walks in the city and along the Danube. What became painfully obvious to me then still rings true today: while the work we do at times dramatically helps people, teams and organizations, that work pales in comparison to what is truly important in our lives. And we hope that friends, colleagues and clients have no doubts that this is the case as they observe how we work with them.

Building Community

At LeadershipSmarts our goal is to create sustainable leadership and genuine change. We have partnered with thousands of you over the last 5 years in Alberta. We recognize the inherent difficulty in developing new skills and practices that create better results. To that end, we will be launching 2 new communities this fall:

Crucial Skills - for people who have attended one of our Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations or Influence course.

Training - for those facilitating those courses within their organizations.

Look for further details and an invitation to join these communities this month.  

Changes

Our Monthly Newsletter will focus on topical content areas and the community mentioned above. We will feature much of the Newsletter content on our Blog, starting in October. The headlines and beginning of the piece will be found here, with the rest of the column found on our blog. You'll find an example of a shorter piece directly below.

We are also changing the nature of our Executive Breakfast Seminars to focus on an overview of our skills and processes. These breakfasts will be coming to Calgary and Edmonton in early October.   

Adversity: What's the Problem with Problems?

"Houston, we have a problem." Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert wanted Mission Control to know they had huge obstacles to overcome as a result of the explosion and resulting loss of heat and water in the spacecraft. In life and death situations, problems are surfaced and dealt with real time. Contrast that with people at the water cooler who have been overheard saying, "They don't want to hear or even know about it." But "it" is precisely what leaders must hear and must know.