The worlds of training and coaching MUST coexist! Training by itself dissipates after a short time; whereas, coaching, can be a daily pursuit of better developing employees. When a person leaves training whether it be on online or in a workshop setting, organizations need to be creative as to how to hand the ball from training to managers to coach their employees. Create coaching plans for managers to follow that enable them to coach to the attributes taught within the training. We call them "Progress Coaching Guides". These guides serve as a playbook for managers to follow but more importantly tie the worlds of training and management together.

Here is a brief example. A company is rolling out a new product. The training is a half day of features, benefits, and technical specifications. The training department could create mini guides of questions for managers to ask employees, activities to facilitate ensuring they have the proper knowledge, and are applying the product knowledge in the real world. Weekly or bi-weekly sessions could have employees teach what they are learning in the field as it relates to their jobs and sharing what challenges exits. This approach enables continuous learning and application to the real world.

Training reinforcement is a powerful tool when building teams of people's knowledge and skill levels. We can no longer simply roll out training and hope for the best. Coaching and Training Reinforcement MUST be added to support the g training as well as extend its teachings.

Here is another easy and inexpensive training reinforcement method that we use for our clients. Remember there are many reasons training reinforcement programs are important, including increased returns on investment, increased retention of knowledge, increased sales from better-trained teams, etc.

Today we will discuss, chain training, a method actually brought to us by one of our clients.  Weekly or bi-weekly, find a relevant article related to your learning initiatives, print the article and include a blank page on top. Start the article off with one member of the team, have them read the article and write the most profound thing they learned from the article on the blank front page. Then pass it on one by one to the rest of the team.  Include a recap of all main points attached to the next week’s article.

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