Training, training, training

In order to sharpen a knife you must pass it through a honing stone several times over. In order to have a car that performs well, you must constantly tune it regardless of use or weather. In order to have a competitive team of athletes or executives, your team needs to train regularly.

Training, training and more training is the only way you create an environment of consistency and establish your standards of excellence. Unfortunately, most people in management focus or choose to see and think of training as an expense rather than envision the multiple benefits that come from training. Others assume that by placing or employing management hot shots or cowboys, the gifts and talents of one or a few managers will automatically cascade or trickle down to everybody else in the totem pole.

To prove just how wrong this assumption is, all you need to do is look at the government and you will quickly see that hot shot lawyers, top of the class economists and even the best and brightest from western universities don’t necessarily succeed in getting everyone below them to perform with excellence or initiative.

There is always a difference in mindset, in language, perspective and transactional relationships. At the end of the day, the leaders say: “do this” and the staff or employees say: “if you say so” or “I’ll think about it.” The reason for this is the team is never on the same page or, like in sports, they are not in the same court practicing for the real games. They don’t have enough playing or practice time to see and appreciate each other’s individual skills or talents. They have not gauged or adjusted to each other’s speed, strength, intensity and intuition.

In the end, those with authority or who are better at playing the game basically take over or lead and everything becomes all about him or them. Instead of maximizing individual skills and multiplying them to a collective power or strength everybody at the bottom ends up as a pile of employees shoring up one or a handful of bosses.

Further complicating the matter is the Filipino “culture of permission” where people feel the need to ask, get, or receive permission before taking the initiative, to think critically, or simply to act on a matter particularly something not covered by house rules. Once again, our feudal system of Amos, Señorito and Señorita and landlord bosses impressed upon us a mentality of having to ask the Amo before doing anything. I suspect that the culture of permission is directly to blame for our inability to decide, deliver or move forward and for the billions of dollars in lost profits and opportunities.

Sadly that which instills discipline in our children eventually becomes a curse on their creativity, leadership and initiative. For young parents out there, when children ask permission, don’t settle it at: yes or no, or “Because I said so.”  Throw back the question at them and help them learn to become decision makers, not permission seekers.

So while the blooming leaders at the top get all the sunshine, little or nothing is done to develop and motivate those below. The problem is in most if not all companies, customers or the public, make their first contact with the people at the bottom; the security guard, Manong driver, the receptionist, the waitress or some order taker or another. People who are generally underpaid casual employees, poorly educated, given very little training, superficial importance and often overworked and are unappreciated. They know very little about products and services, are first to receive abuse from customers for their ignorance and their incompetence and they are the first to snap, react, or give back the same bad vibes that they get from customers and managers.

Just like in a garden, you can have the biggest and most beautiful blooms or flowers but you have to maintain the bottom of the plants to make sure bugs and weeds don’t outgrow your plants and end up choking them or denying them the necessary nutrients. When you deny the regular employee training and mentoring, it is equivalent to raising weeds because incompetent or unhappy people when ignored by management simply become bigger and more incompetent unhappy employees.

Try imagining your lobby or front office as a room or area full of “talahib” or wild cogon grass. Unless you’re into xeriscaping or selling a natural experience, chances are you won’t have too many customers paying you a visit because you will look more like the bushes rather than a place of business. Nothing turns off a customer than a salesperson or employee who doesn’t know anything about their product, is not excited or enthusiastic about their work. Yet thousands of retail stores and companies all over the Philippines have this problem because company owners and CEOs can’t be bothered or don’t want to invest on improving their people.

It may also interest business owners to learn that many of today’s young job seekers or mobile professionals move from job to job faster and more often than their parents. Realizing that pay raises and promotions are becoming few and far in between, many of these young professionals put a premium on two things: trainings and travel. A number of them stay on the job because of the company paid trainings that would otherwise cost them a bomb to get on their own.

Perhaps, the second biggest benefit from continued training of your partner-employees aside from having a sharper and competitive team is the realization that trainings ultimately bring out real problems, real issues as well as real solutions. This for me has been the biggest bonus from all the trainings and seminars I’ve conducted. From the hypothetical or imaginary scenarios, trainings always move on to real life and real issues. It’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle, everyone finds pieces and connects and you know that it will all come together; you just have to keep connecting the pieces together. The more you do it, the better you get at it.