How “Difficult People” Help Your Organization

Link Training Outcomes to Organizational Results

As a specialist in adult learning and human development, the greatest insight I have discovered is that we dramatically underestimate what employees have to offer to the organizations they work for. We tend to see “difficult people” as problems that can never be solved rather than as opportunities to develop excellence and new growth. What is the reason for this? It’s because managers and supervisors are so engaged in the day-to-day operations of the organization, that there is precious little time to positively interact with and influence employees. And yet, training represents that conscious pause and recognition that effective action is, indeed, possible.

Sometimes these “soft skills” are deemed unnecessary or incidental to the workplace but nothing could be further from the truth. As the stresses of the job increase and the rate of change in society rockets forward, it has become clear that so-called “soft-skills” are not soft at all. Considering that we spend much more time at work than with our own families and friends, topics like Difficult Conversations, Emotional Intelligence, High-Performing Teams, Agile Planning and Customer Service become necessities and in fact, a competitive advantage for the 21st century organization. After all, the world’s most innovative organizations: Apple, The Cleveland Clinic, Google and many more discovered this years ago. They must be doing something right – their training outcomes are directly linked to their profitability and service satisfaction to their customers.

By partnering with organizations and also getting to know the fears, insecurities, goals and aspirations of individual employees, we can make dramatic strides in training outcomes because we merge the hard outcomes of the organization with the authentic needs of people that make up organizations. I am very fortunate to work and train for CTG – they are a leader in the field and their clients demonstrate a clear commitment to the value – economic and interpersonal – of training.

Rob Levit is a gifted teacher, trainer and facilitator who has worked extensively with educational, corporate and nonprofit clients. His inclusive and interactive approach create avenues of communication that encourage participation from those with different learning and personality styles. Read full bio

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Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

According to a recent survey of more than 500 learning and development professionals conducted by Training magazine and Wilson Learning Worldwide, developing leaders closely correlates with market performance. The next generation of leaders must lead in a more complex, more global and more collaborative work environment. Is your organization ready? Why not? What is most critical to successful leadership development? The survey says…

1. Organizations do not have sufficient resources to develop leadership and they lack sufficient leadership bench strength, but what differentiates the high performing organizations?

• Top executives set expectations for participation in leadership development. They are involved in kick-off meetings, they publicly acknowledge that leadership is a critical competitive advantage and they actually teach or lead leadership development sessions
• High performers use 360-feedback tools, virtual networks and partner with local colleges
• The greatest differences between high performing organizations and low performing organizations are high performers measure the managers’ perceptions of impact on employees’ leadership skills and use 360-feedback before and after leadership development
• The most highly-rated learning methods are on-the-job, instructor-led classroom programs and manager coaching. The least effective methods are open-source programs, learning libraries and self-paced print materials.

2. The skills most needed by the next generation of leaders- COMMUNICATION- writing, having difficult/ critical conversations and public speaking. Behind communication skills, next priority need is for skills to coach and develop others.

Are your leaders ready for their future? “The future of your organization may depend on it.”

If your organization isn’t happy with being “an average performer”, contact Anne Arundel Community College’s Corporate Training Group, an affordable provider of these type of high performing leadership development programs for more than 5 years, and provider of results-driven corporate training, leadership development and business support services for over 30 years.