What is the technically ideal training for managers and collaborators of the XXI century? How to teach and protect it, with eLearning support ?.
Please take a moment to examine this real example of performance appraisal.
Note: Table attached at the bottom of the article.
Knowing that these people work in a large corporation, who was the professional best considered by the Human Resources Department of that organization? The answer is: Nuria.
This may surprise you, as it has the lowest arithmetic mean. However, it is the most complete, it defends itself in all areas, it does not have a single score of less than 7. It is not the brightest in anything (no 10) but it is very correct in everything: it is the most valuable collaborator.
This must be the manager and the professional, at any level, who wants to be very competitive in a current leading company and, in general, in the 21st century labor market: figuratively speaking, they should not have any score lower than 7. The all-terrain, the regularity, the sustained level, the absence of gaps are rewarded. Ups and downs are highly punished. If you are a goalkeeper, your coach will prefer that you stop, with sufficient solvency and sobriety, any type of shot (although it does not give too much show), to stop all penalties but hesitate in the corners.
How many Nurias are there out there? Very, very few. Regularity is very difficult to achieve. We are all by nature extremely complex polyhedral workers, and we tend to have several weaknesses, weaknesses.
In this scenario, professionals should try to identify and level the gaps that exist in our skills profile. The saying goes: take care of your weaknesses and your strengths will take care of themselves. The companies we work for can help us achieve this: if they do, the average level of their teams will improve enormously.
This will not mean developing only in specific disciplines (marketing, English, accounting, office automation, etc.): it will also involve acquiring or improving global skills, as has been said (communication, leadership, decision analysis, negotiation, etc.). This process of continuous training and permanent recycling can last a whole career and is absolutely essential.
It is also very difficult to adapt the intensity of education, by areas, to specific professional profiles: we are all different. But, with a large set of activities to be carried out and with the help of eLearning, continuous training plans can be segmented to fit, almost perfectly, what each individual, each functional team, or each hierarchical level of the company needs.
The process will begin, for example, every new year (it must be done periodically, a general medical check-up), with an evaluation of the results of the continuous training received the previous year. Then, the evolution of our global knowledge, techniques, skills and competencies will be measured, comparing them with the optimal ones to perfectly carry out our functions in the company. Whatever our level in the organization and considering that our history is well known, this can be accomplished in one morning: a personal interview with us and our immediate superior (s), who should be involved and, perhaps, some online attitudinal or fitness test (currently, very advanced), if there is still any specific doubt. Of course, our concerns and requests will be especially appreciated.
Our updated profile will be kept in a confidential file (with our Vº Bº), and then our training plan (different activities focused on strengthening ourselves) will be scheduled for the coming year.
For example, Mr. X, a very stable manager, will need:
- one eLearning course in finance, attendance at three lectures-colloquium on leadership, reading a book on organizational behavior, two eLearning modules on communication techniques, 20% classroom - 80% virtual, English for business, participation in a virtual pan-European community project. (15 participants from 8 different countries), organized by a business school, on time management.
All these activities will be tutored virtually by an expert (generally, a professor from a business school or a university center) who will measure our achievement and answer questions.
At the beginning of next year, the process will be repeated: medical check-up and mental gymnastics plan for the next course.
All this programming can be very adaptable, since there is a lot of virtual content and very little face-to-face, and it can be individually planned (in general, for senior managers) or systematized for functional and hierarchical levels of very similar requirements (in general, for middle managers and collaborators).). The effectiveness is extremely high, as this à la carte polyhedral training reinforces our weakest aspects.
Science fiction? Not at all. In the United States and Central Europe it has been established for a long time. The good news is that in Spain it is also beginning to be implemented (in very specific companies, which I am fortunate to follow closely) and should continue to develop if, really, individuals and organizations want to greatly improve their competitiveness.
