Training and development are at the heart of a happy, successful team.

Most managers know that training and development are essential for their team to succeed. They build engagement and motivation from the employee and upskills your team adding value and skills to your business. But how should you approach this?

Engage and Build Relationships

I have found the best way to do this is to engage with the individual and build a relationship to understand their individual aspirations. Each person in your team will have different skill levels so will need different training. Each person will have different aspirations for their careers and associated paths. Try to find out what they really want to do so ask probing questions; What’s your dream job? Where do see yourself in five years? From here you can really get an idea of how to get the individual to where they want their career to go.

Where Can They Improve?

Obviously, this isn’t about just your employee’s own growth. Training and developing the right skills will help your team and business improve and develop. So, it’s important to see where they need to develop in their current role. You can do this in several ways, such as analysing performance data, observing them, and asking them what their weaknesses are.  And my favourite, weekly check-in meetings covering the previous week’s performance, what would have made it better and what will make this week fantastic. You should use all of these if you can.

Create a Training Plan

Once you have looked at where they want to go and how they can improve you can get a written training plan in place. Everyone learns differently, so the plan is going to be bespoke. The best way is to ask them how they learn. Find out for example, if they like to learn by themselves or in a group so you can find the most suitable training programmes. It’s all about knowing that persons own learning style.

Followup and Feedback

It shouldn’t end here! Once training is in place, the follow up is just as important. Giving regular feedback on their improvements shows your desire for them to improve. It also allows you to monitor this over shorter periods of time and help keep your employee on the right direction. This ongoing conversation allows regular communication and encouragement to keep them motivated and engaged.

Managing your team and helping them develop isn’t easy. In fact, it’s a lot of work! But if you get to know your team and develop bespoke training and development plans, this will lead to a motivated, engaged and high-performing team. Once you add this to the higher retention rates you’ll see it’s well worth putting in the effort, not to mention making your job easier.