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Coaching, Training & Culture

Organizational culture refers to the personality of your organization, which guides and limits how employees communicate and work. Although organizational values and ethics may be communicated in mission statements, codes of conduct, web sites, office décor, work clothes and employee titles; it is most profoundly communicated by employee attitude.

Organizational culture reflects the history, customers and management structure of an organization. Although industry information can help communicate your organization's growth, strategy, opportunities and performance, the following questions offer insight into your organizational culture:

•  Are organizational values aligned with local cultural values?
•  What are the consequences to employees who show initiative?
•  Are employees expected to be mobile?
•  Who can be trained? Does training bring respect or alienation?
•  Do line employees generally trust management?
•  Do employees and managers communicate easily?
•  What must people do to be promoted?

Whether your organization is a military unit, an international bank or a small computer shop, if you violate or ignore cultural rules, you may alienate yourself from your peers and managers. To be effective, your efforts to improve employee and organizational efficiency must integrate cultural differences.

If you want to create and maintain a consistent corporate culture across many locations; if you want standard procedures, objectives and staff attitudes to apply to people in different areas, you have a major, yet essential, task.

Accelerated Learning & Expert Modeling

You can help create and maintain corporate culture by training and retaining staff. If you commit to employee development - your employees are more likely to commit to you. Quality in-house training and coaching can help you maximize cost-effectiveness, content quality and employee retention.

Systemic in-house coaching and training offers accelerated learning solutions for many skill gaps in both entry-level staff and older managers, while expert modeling can minimize the time for individuals who show high potential to acquire expertise.

In-House Coaching & Training

Coaching is a new profession. Success, relationship and team coaching is little known in most of the world. The word coaching is difficult to translate into many languages, while avoiding the words for counseling, consulting and therapy.

Although a single coaching and training company may not satisfy every need, in-house training offers many benefits. Cost-effective in-house skill training can be integrated into daily work, and a training program may immediately improve bottom line profits - sales training, stress management and communication for example - and can expand to fill other organizational and management needs.

Employee orientation and follow-up training can reinforce corporate culture, policies and objectives while contributing to operational efficiency. However, few smaller and mid-size organizations can create a dedicated in-house training program.

Finding Good Trainers

One challenge is a scarcity of good local trainers. A potential trainer with business experience can earn far more as a manager than as a trainer; and inexperienced trainers are often ineffective. Although many qualified managers would make good trainers, they are too busy. Most organizations avoid to relegating their most competent managers as full-time trainers. Instead, they often hire young university graduates as instructors, and hope that these inexperienced instructors somehow develop into experienced trainers without messing up their employees.

After finding competent trainers, a company needs a curriculum and training materials tailored to its needs. Although some trainers may be excellent program developers, most trainers use materials supplied by third-party providers - usually book stores.

Training materials that do not reflect your corporate culture and organizational needs may negate the benefits of local training. Many commercial training aids in Polish, Mandarin, Hindi, etc, are translations of outdated English manuals, with limited relevance, quality and cultural applicability.

The best in-house training programs generally rely on experienced expert trainers, who create customized training packages, and who mentor local trainers as assistants.

Local Outsourcing

Most training companies offer basic staff development, language instruction and clerical training. Local training companies can be a resource for teaching core skills and are useful for smaller companies that cannot maintain training departments.

It may be difficult to find training companies that provide qualified trainers who can teach in the local language, with culturally specific training aids. Outside large cities this may be impossible. (Training companies also have trouble finding and keeping competent trainers.)

Overseas Training

While local training programs can be effective, overseas work and study programs help develop high-potential staff. In addition to the benefits of education and cultural understanding, foreign training often brings status, which can boost a manager's effectiveness.

Although overseas training can be transformative, transformed individuals may leave the organization.

Combine Strategies

Training strategies require an intimate knowledge of goals and resources. Some questions to help identify training goals and both systemic and non-systemic management resources are:

1. What is the organization's size and overall objectives?
2. What are the attrition rates amongst professionals?
3. What are the performance objectives for each workgroup?
4. What will likely happen if each workgroup is not trained?
5. What are the essential missing competencies?
6. What curricula and training aids are required?

Successful organizations often combine development options to maximize the number of staff trained, cost-effectiveness, quality of content, and employee retention. In-house and locally provided training are presently the most popular options for staff development.

Local training companies often provide low-cost and ready-made solutions. In-house training is often the most cost-effective way to reach the broadest number of staff. Many organizations combine outsourcing with in-house training, and organizational coaching is slowly becoming mainstream.

Organizations can order tailored coaching and training programs to meet their needs. Email us with your organizational goals and some answers to the above questions.

In-house Training . Emergency Planning . Home Study

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