How many of you are willing to admit that you've experienced this scenario: You needed someone to train a new hire, automatically chose the person who was the best performer in the job that needed to be trained — and were disappointed with the results? Unfortunately, I think we've all done that at one time or another.
On the surface, our actions seem logical. After all, we knew that Bob was the best cheesemonger in the store, and we wanted the new person behind the cheese counter to benefit from Bob's knowledge. However, not only were the results disappointing in terms of getting the new person up to speed, but often we ended up with a frustrated trainer and an unhappy trainee on our hands. In the worst case, the trainer declared the trainee "incompetent" and the trainee started looking for another job because the situation became so uncomfortable. Why did this happen, and how can we avoid it in the future?
Lack of Training for Trainers
While there are lots of things that can help a trainer be more effective, understanding the Stages of Learning a Skill is something I've found among the most useful. Explaining these stages is a key element of ZingTrain's Train-the-Trainer class.
The Stages of Learning a Skill
Stage 1: Unconscious/Incompetent
When someone is completely new to a task, he doesn't know what he doesn't know. For example, a 15-year-old who is watching his parent drive the family car (and anticipating getting his learner's permit in the next couple months) often thinks, "That looks easy! I'll be able to drive as soon as I get behind the wheel." Of course, simply operating the vehicle (turn the key, release the parking brake, press the gas pedal) is just the tip of the driving iceberg. Obviously, the 15-year-old does not have a clear grasp of all that is involved in driving safely (rules of the road, unpredictability of other drivers, how weather affects driving conditions, etc.) In training jargon, we say the 15-year-old is "unconscious" and "incompetent."
Incompetent in this context doesn't mean "stupid;" it simply means "not competent." Every new hire you have starts in this stage. Even someone with prior retail experience has to learn the processes and procedures that are unique to your environment. What cheeses do you carry? Is there a minimum size piece that you'll cut to order? What is the procedure for taking orders over the phone? How do you handle a customer complaint? When your new cheese department employee starts, he doesn't know any of these things, but he's typically excited about the new job and confident that he'll learn quickly.
Stage 2: Conscious/Incompetent
As your new hires begin to understand the processes, procedures and expectations of your store, they move into Stage 2. It is not unusual for someone's morale to go down during this stage, because he is starting to recognize how much he doesn't know and has a better idea about the amount of learning ahead. Being conscious of what is expected is a good start, but it does not mean being able to meet those expectations. If you don't know what it's supposed to look like when you split a big wheel of cheese, there's little chance you'll do it correctly. On the other hand, knowing how it's supposed to look doesn't mean you can make it happen.
Stage 3: Conscious/Competent
The way to move from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is practice — lots and lots of practice, under the watchful eye of someone giving positive reinforcement of what's going well and constructive criticism of what needs to be improved. Without useful feedback, the trainee can feel abandoned during this stage. And beware! Practice is only really effective after the trainee has reached Stage 2. If the trainee still is in Stage 1, he isn't clear on what is expected and will practice doing things the wrong way. With practice and helpful feedback, the trainee reaches Stage 3, and we consider him "trained" — i.e., he understands what is expected and consistently does the job correctly.
Stage 4: Unconscious/Competent
So here is the paradox: Although people in Stage 4 are the best at performing a skill or doing a task, they are not very good at teaching others to do that same skill or task. Why? Because they have forgotten what it is like to do that job for the first time. All the details have become "second nature" and seem so "obvious" that it doesn't occur to the Stage 4 trainer that the Stage 1 trainee must hear about those details in order to learn what to do.
Becoming a Consciously Competent Trainer
When we choose our best performer to be the trainer, we are choosing someone who is, almost certainly, in Stage 4. This is not bad. It just means that to be a more effective trainer, said performer needs to get back to Stage 3 so that they are more conscious of what exactly they are doing and can share that with the trainee. In a Zen context, the trainer wants to get back to "beginner's mind."
How to do that? Here are a few suggestions:
- Write down all the steps to the task (and ask a Stage 3 or another Stage 4 person to edit your outline).
- Force yourself to do the task a little bit differently, and explain out loud what you're doing differently and why.
- Watch a Stage 3 person perform the task, and take notes.
- Make sure to share what you're thinking, not just what you're doing. For example, "See how that customer is wandering back and forth? That makes me think she's looking for something specific. I'm going to go ask how I can help her." Or "OK, I hear the phone ringing a lot. That makes me think that we're about to get hit with a ton of lunch orders. I'm going to call for a second sandwich maker now, before we get buried."
Recognizing training as a skill — separate from the content of the training — and providing training to our trainers so that they can more effectively transfer their knowledge to their trainees is great way to improve the bottom-line results from your training investments.
 |
Maggie Bayless is the managing partner of ZingTrain: the consulting arm of Zingerman's, a specialty food retailer in Ann Arbor, Mich. If you have specific topics you would like to see addressed here, please send your suggestions to Maggie at mbayless@zingermans.com. |
