By Nigel Donovan from Partnercorp Pty Ltd
How do you measure ‘culture’, ‘attitude’, ‘leadership’? There are really two questions here: What are the current leadership behaviours displayed by your employees and what difference would changing that behaviour make to them, their colleagues and the organisation?
It can be a tough decision to spend thousands of dollars on training that may make someone a better leader. When considering investing in your people it is important that you understand the case for the investment – what will you get out of the process? The answer must link back to the business strategy.
Let’s look at Sales and Marketing as an example.
What are some of the specific skills and behaviours you would want to see demonstrated by your people? They might include:
- Pro-activity - energy and initiative applied to their role
- Communication skills – listening, presenting, understanding customer needs
- Courage – how they approach potential clients
- Relationship managers – how well they maintain positive relationships with potential clients
- Attitude – professionalism and engagement
- Organised – awareness of people/tasks they need to achieve their goals
How will improvement in these behaviours show up in KPIs and productivity measures?
- New relationships/enquiries generated each month
- Number of presentations of your service offering per month
- Conversion rate of presentations/enquiries to sales each month and the value of the sales
Improvements in pro-activity, courage and organisational skills should improve contact and proposal numbers. Improvements in communication skills, listening and relationship management skills should improve conversion rates.
This highlights the relationship between your employees’ personal leadership behaviour and the business sales outcome. The same applies to all aspects of personal and team leadership. By clearly articulating the behaviours you want in your leaders you can then draw a clear line to the desired outcome for the company.
The process of putting this into practice can be quite simple.
1. Identify the specific skills needed for the role and the skills employees need to acquire
2. Identify where improvements in productivity can be seen (e.g. sales numbers, units per day)
3. Build or outsource training and coaching to target required skills
4. Measure the changes
There are definite links between targeted training and coaching and business performance outcomes. Clear communication about the improvements you require will allow you to tailor an PD program to suit. This will make sure your training spend is a genuine investment with real return on investment.
Partnercorp can help you generate growth in your business and your people. Contact us to discuss how you can implement these powerful people development processes with genuine, measurable return on investment.
Nigel Donovan
0404 199 888
Partnercorp Pty Limited
Contact: nigel@partnercorp.com.au