This is Part 1 in a series looking into how the U.S. is wasting millions on professional development, and how we solve it
Houston, we have a problem
We have a cost-wasting epidemic in the U.S. Managers keep green-lighting their people for professional development and it’s backfiring. Why? Because most administrations, from the CEO to the VP’s of HR on down, have a misconception about what type of professional development will produce, not only the highest ROI but job satisfaction and organizational longevity. As a result, companies are losing millions in revenue, having high turnover, and all but handing their edge to the completion.
How did those companies get into this situation? Hopefully, this doesn’t sound familiar to you: Direct reports get approval by leadership to take professional development courses, ones that the administration believes will serve the company through improving employee hard skills.
For example, let’s say Tom in creative is approved to spend money to buy an Adobe Classroom in a Book for Photoshop. A few weeks later Tom finds himself in a conflict with another employee and, in a fit of unchecked emotions, a situation is escalated, and poor Tom and another employee are fired.
Kathy from accounting is sent on a two-day course in The City to learn about Excel Macros. Kathy questions the expense of this training but didn’t want to question her boss’s eagerness to send to spend the money on her. Months after, Kathy continues to be passed up for promotion.
Tyrell from purchasing gets sent to Lousiville to gain FedEx official certification in packaging safety and goods. A very important client calls angry a few weeks after Tyrell returns from Lousiville. Unfortunately, Tyrell’s social skills are not enough to keep said, seven-figure client, he wishes he could have handled the situation better..
If only Tyrell had received customer service training but hey, FedEx taught him flammable have to be insured the same as inflammable. If only Kathy, who’s very savvy but lacks the confidence to speak up, had taken leadership training. If only Tom had received team training because, as I officially worked on the Classroom in a Book during my time at Adobe, I could have told him nowhere in any of the software training resources are there any chapters about conflict resolution.
Tom, Kathy, and Tyrell have a pretty good grasp on the minutiae of their jobs. To be honest, they could have skipped the company’s idea of “professional development” and just used Google, maybe watched a few YouTube videos, and accomplish their tasks, for free.
Soft skills, however, are best discovered and built up by trained professionals such as myself. People educated and certified in methods where we treat each person and case differently, customizing training specifically to the situation: The person, their company, and their industry.
Anyone can learn how to create an Excel macro online, but having access to evolving tools that measure an individual’s emotional intelligence, personalizing training to a specific situation, then ensuring there’s follow-through, that’s what a talent strategist such as myself does for people in various industries every day.
Smart, profitable companies spend money on professional development that treats an individual as a vital part of the organization, viewed as a person, not just a list of skills. Those are the companies that you find in Fortune Magazine and U.S. News top 50 places to work in the. The companies that spend on individual and team professional development are the ones you read about having low turnover, high revenue, and lead their industry in innovation.
I develop in others professional development soft-skills holding leaders and teams accountable both professionally and personally ensuring they reach their strategic goals and edge over their competition, revealing people’s superpowers each and every time.
See, It’s not hard skills these many people lack, and it’s not the hard skills that create revenue, it’s the soft skills. It’s the ability to not just do their jobs, but make good decisions, communicate well with internal and external audiences, work to elevate others. That’s the professional development area the U.S. is lacking, and it’s the area I work in every day.
Professional development of soft skills can take a mediocre company to greatness, and great companies to that of a global leader, a household name. You’d think this is hyperbole, but I assure you it’s not. I’ve worked for and with companies that invest in people’s soft skills: Coca-Cola, Adobe, Philips, Baird Capital, and others.
Not only have I received education and professional development to train in these vital soft skills, but I’ve also trained organizations that understand the value of having employees with the mental discipline to be great. It’s that discipline
Let’s return to Tom, Kathy, and Tyrell. Soft skill training can be accomplished in a short time working with a talent strategist such as myself in the following, and more, areas.
Leadership training to bring Kathy to a full understanding that’s applicable to positioning herself as the leader she is? I do that.
Team training with Tom and others so they learn how to communicate, solve-conflicts, be resourceful and generate revenue through working together and getting along? I do that.
Training to understand one’s own emotional intelligence that would have helped Tyrell understand others through empathy that could have saved the six-figure client? I do that too.
The kicker? The type of professional development training Tom, Kathy, and Tyrell went through for their respective employers actually cost far more money than if they were sent to me for soft-skills.
Value-added, individualized, personalized, training is also more enjoyable, engaging, and engrossing than learning about most other hard skills that companies think are professional development, but do little for the employee or the company.
Skills taught that are guaranteed for their and the organization’s success. Helping each of these people grow in their current jobs, making for a more resilient, more revenue-centered through people, competitive-edge focused company.
Instead of Tom’s firing costing the company over $7,000 just to hire and train a new person to fill his role, Tom now has become a team leader, responsible for more engagement and better morale in his department, an area of the company that’s become so efficient, his area is getting moved to a larger space so that they may hire more workers to fill customer demand.
Instead of Kathy being passed up, her leadership abilities are recognized by her upper management and she’s given a chance on a new project, heading up a team who, in two short years, leads sales and is getting industry accolades, the attention has netted the company millions simply through her visibility as a take-charge sales leader that came from her training.
Tyrell? Not only did he diffuse and angry customer, he was so good on the phone with her, smoothing things out, and she was so appreciative of how emphatic and kind he was, she’s decided to give even more work to the organization he works for. She figures, if everyone is so service-driven as Tyrell, why not give them another ten million in business.
Next in this series: How Harvard Business School’s “Great Training Robbery” proved conslusively soft-skills training in leadership, teams, and relationships, build solid companies, while skills training does little to nothing to aid a business’s bottom line.