Real purpose of Training

The real purpose of behavioural training
An oft repeated quotation goes : “You can’t be a good employee unless you are a good human being.” That perhaps is the real reason why companies invest so much of the perennial scarce resources on Training and Development; or Learning and Development programs.
Take the most popular development program – Leadership Development. The common pedagogical content is around subjects such as Coaching, Delegation, Development Plans, Managing Conflict, Motivation and so on. Carefully examined,each of these subjects is really about adding value to the lives of people around us – in a narrow perspective about adding value to the lives of our direct reports at work, but, not missing the larger perspective - it is also about adding value to the people we come into contact with daily whether at work or at life.
Are trainers and trainees then missing the context ? We must be – given, that most of these program bring very little significant change in the trainee or in his immediate circle of influence. In fact most often the trainer himself seems untouched by the experience of teaching such life – changing concepts and makes no effort to ‘walk the talk’. In fact such program quickly degenerate to ‘subject teaching’ such as employed in schools and is delivered by rote, or at ‘best’ by power point assistance. Not a wonder then that the trainees walk away from the program unmoved by the experience. The whole intervention is comparable to enjoying an all-expenses paid holiday with an official ‘cocktail dinner’, invariably thrown in as a motivational bonus !
It should be wake – up time for everyone in the training community – it’s time all those involved agonised a lot more on what is delivered and what is learnt and more critically what is carried forward into real life.
The world desperately awaits our enlightenment !