Are you investing in yourself ?

I had written a piece in “my ascent” a publication of times of India. It was published as a winning entry in “Voice of HR” in March 2013. It was a satisfying moment with messages and compliments from people around. However my big moment came up when I got a call from an ex- colleague of mine around 4 weeks back. He shared that he was inspired by one of the thoughts I had put forward, not a new one though. I had suggested that professionals should start investing in themselves through training. They should allocate a certain percentage of their salary towards their own training, wherever and whenever they assess they need new skills & competencies & their organizations are not planning or proposing to provide him with that. My ex Colleague, to improve his chances at an aspirational company and role, enrolled himself in a 6 month program to improve his knowledge & skills.

Since that call, I have been for long thinking about writing my thoughts on learning & training by professionals. For long I thought about how to structure it. I searched for quotes on “learning” on Google and a website link gave me a list of 797 quotes. These are just in English. I am sure there are many more in different languages.  I particularly like this one by Mahatma Gandhi.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Employers & in particular HR heads in most organizations are striving to develop “learning organizations”. They wish to build leadership pipeline. To create career paths and succession planning. HR wishes to nurture & groom talent to take on new challenges and growth plans.

There seems to be a dis-connect as most professionals at mid to senior level do not seem to get these opportunities of help in form of training, mentoring or coaching at workplace. To be fair large companies, very few though, today have plans in this area and they execute it well. Even in these large organizations the coverage is not high and inconsistent. However there is large no. of organizations that do not create definitive plans and yet whine the fact that their employees are not smart enough to manage market challenges.

It leaves me wondering where the problem is or challenge in marrying these objectives, people and organization development. In my view the answer would lie in responses to following questions, by professionals who have had minimum 15 years of work experience.

Q .In the organizations we have worked with, how many and which ones really prepared you well to take on new roles & invested in you through the process of new skills, learning’s and knowledge?

Q. Which organizations supported you with help in form of training (mentors, coaches) when you were asked to take on a new challenges  which demands you to stretch , explore more & learn new behaviours?

Q. When choosing a new job, do you specifically check on how the organization helps employees grow their learning’s and development of new skills?

Please do not be surprised by your own responses to these questions.  Do not feel discouraged too. Perhaps ask yourself something you have not yet asked yourself.

Q. What do you need to do about our own growth in next 3-5 years to be in your aspirational role and / or company? Does this “need to do list” account for new and better skills and competencies?  

Q. Are we thinking or planning to invest in ourselves in absence of investment from our employers?

Q. Have we identified the areas in which we should be improving our skills to be more successful in future?

Laurence J. peter said -- Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.  The challenge therefore to rise & improve further, professionals have to raise his level of incompetency.  If the company does not and you do not as well , one can be consigned to a level and role which may outgrow importance and criticalness and the professional may be left stranded in his career.

So go out and invest in yourself. Do not wait for your employer. 

Train yourself. Learn more.  Invest time & money on yourself. 

  

Game Changer : Coaching leaders in small & Mid size organization!

Coaching is such a new phenomenon in Asia , that to all practical purposes, no one knows what it is. So at any given time less than 1 in 10,000 people are actually looking for a coach. 

(According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) , Organizations spend over $200 billion on training and development each year, and It's a widely held opinion within the training industry that between 50 and 90% of training is utterly wasted. Coaching is a much better solution to many situations.

Each year people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on books they never read and workshops whose content they quickly forget. Just look back at the library at home & you would find a self-help book adorning the shelves. Has it helped you change & improve? Not very likely. 

Many of the traditional approaches of imparting new knowledge do not translate into changes in behaviour. Coaching is a far more effective solution. Coaching engages the uniqueness of the individual. Coaching is an on-going relationship that raises awareness, connects the client with their passions and deepest desires and holds them accountable to get the results they want. People grow and change with a coach. Coaching doesn't just get results; it gets the most meaningful results. These results are in business, sales , revenues & even personal areas too.

In my journey as a Learning & development professional & as an Executive Coach in past 3-4 years, I have noticed a clear trend in Indian companies. 

1.  The Major IT companies use coaches (Internal and external) extensively for working with their technical leaders who to be effective & aligned to their client needs, need to develop social & emotional skills as well communication style.

2.     There are these large Indian companies who have built academies to nurture and grow their talent and retain them. Each Year the cost of hiring new talent is growing. These companies have used coaching “ as a perk” to groom their high potentials and also make their leaders move from “ good to great”

3.     Then there are some companies who get funded / PE investments from abroad. Since Coaching is quite prevalent in US/UK, these companies insist on talent development and therefore coaching is introduced by them as a tool for achieving desired new behaviours.

It may be debatable to say but let me hazard saying that these companies could well do without coaching. They can still get the desired results with traditional ways of people development. Some may argue that these organizations can afford it. My counter argument is that while they can afford it, they very well could do without it too.

Let us see now whether coaching could help the smaller companies, owner/promoter driven listed & non listed companies in meeting their challenges like:

a.      Hiring best talent. Small organizations can either not afford them or this talent is not willing to move to either company and / or the city

b.      Old loyalists. They have served well over the years but in this age of competition and innovation they are unable to change and in fact resist and dissuade and drive away new talent. Some promoters even share that these old loyalists do not recruit teams who are better than them, fearing a challenge to them.

c.    Leadership behaviors at workplace continue to be hands-on driving away talent who would like to have freedom along with accountability

d.      Promoter’s family members joining the business. Generally these are youngsters and need to be up & running quickly. However they are put under some mentors where because of proximity to power, their mentors tend to be soft. They are unable to manage their way through, unless they come with great education. In fact even those from promoter’s family who come with Engg. / MBA degrees from rated colleges do get frustrated with organization culture and people (b & c above).

Large organizations with deep pockets create systems and processes in people management space which smaller companies cannot afford. These systems are best in talent acquisition, management and development. They understand people quality impact top & bottom line.

The argument for smaller companies is therefore that even in absence of best & bench-marked systems you would do well to address some of the challenges that I talked about earlier. These are addressable without elaborate investments in HR automation. All you need are expert coaches who have the ability to identify the solutions holistically including some bit of support training for change management but mostly to work with each of senior leaders to help them develop new behaviours aligned to expectations and market requirements. The Coaches must be selected carefully. I say this because there could be a tendency to hire an old senior retired employee. While they may be good, they are not coaches who are specially trained and certified to work with people & help them move from where they are to where they want to be or their organizations desire them to be.

It is an idea worth exploring by the smaller companies who should never spend a single rupee without seeking to know the return.Coaching is the only tool whose impact can be measured. Perhaps the only people development tool to help you calculate the return on investment. Is that not what matters?