@isabellayuill6
Profile
Registered: 5 months, 2 weeks ago
How Professional Training Enhances Leadership Skills
The Professional Development Mistake Every Australian Business Makes
Companies are slashing training costs everywhere while simultaneously throwing away thousands on programs that achieve nothing.
Nearly two decades of delivering development programs across the country has shown me how terribly most businesses misunderstand what works. Just last quarter, I observed three Melbourne companies waste a total of $220,000 on executive retreats when their supervisors struggled with basic meeting coordination.
The uncomfortable truth? Most professional development training fails because it treats symptoms instead of causes.
Consider interpersonal skills development. Every company schedules these programs because they appear fundamental and satisfy compliance requirements. But when I dig deeper with clients, the real issue is not that people cant communicate. The issue is organisational environments that discourage truthful dialogue, where highlighting problems means being seen as difficult, or where knowledge is strategically hoarded to maintain power.
Development programs cannot fix fundamental structural dysfunction.
This became clear during a challenging project with a Sydney banking firm approximately five years ago. Their customer service scores were collapsing, so naturally, they booked customer service training for the entire customer facing team. Following six weeks and forty five thousand dollars later, the scores had not budged. The actual problem wasnt capability their platform demanded three distinct access points and four separate screens simply to find basic client information. Staff were spending more time wrestling with technology than helping customers.
Resolved the system issues. Scores jumped by 40% in less than a month.
Now here's where I'll lose some traditionalists: I actually believe in structured professional development. When executed properly, development can enhance performance, strengthen confidence, and generate real skill enhancements. The key is understanding what "done right" actually means.
Genuine professional development commences with acknowledging your actual circumstances, not your hoped-for results. Many initiatives commence with executive aspirations for the business, instead of candidly examining present conditions.
I recollect partnering with a production company in Adelaide that aimed to establish "flexible leadership approaches" throughout their business. Appeared forward-thinking. The issue was their existing culture relied on strict hierarchies, comprehensive processes, and directive management that had succeeded for years. Seeking to apply agile methods to that structure was like trying to add smart home technology to a building with outdated electrical systems.
We spent three months just documenting their existing decision making processes before touching any training content. Once everyone understood how things actually worked versus how they were supposed to work, we could design development that bridged that gap intelligently.
The most effective professional development I have observed emphasises developing systems understanding, not merely personal capabilities.
Commonwealth Bank manages this remarkably successfully throughout their retail network. Instead of just training individual tellers on customer service techniques, they develop people to understand the entire customer journey, identify bottlenecks, and propose improvements. Their supervisors arent simply managing staff they are constantly enhancing workflows.
This produces a totally different approach. Instead of "how do I do my job better," it becomes "how do we make the whole system work better." That transformation changes everything.
Course, there's still heaps of poor training happening. Basic leadership training that employs scenarios from American businesses to instruct Australian supervisors. Communication workshops that focus on personality types instead of workplace dynamics. Team development activities that overlook the reality that groups have basic resource or objective conflicts.
The most problematic are the motivational speaker series programs. You understand them pricey half day seminars with speakers who maintain they have found the "ten keys" of something. Participants depart feeling motivated for roughly a week, then return to identical problems with identical limitations.
Genuine development occurs when you provide people with resources to understand and shape their work environment, not simply manage it more effectively.
Hands-on skills are important too, clearly. Skills based training, project management, financial literacy - these create concrete capability improvements that people can apply immediately. But even these work better when they're connected to genuine business challenges rather than theoretical scenarios.
Last year I consulted with a retail network where shop managers required improved stock management capabilities. Instead of classroom training about stock rotation principles, we had managers work on actual inventory challenges in their own stores, with coaches providing instant guidance. They learned faster, retained more, and executed changes immediately because they were solving their actual problems.
The scheduling element gets ignored frequently. Teaching someone performance management skills six months after becoming a manager means they've already established habits and methods that need changing. Significantly better to offer that development as part of the progression process, not as a later addition.
Smaller companies actually hold advantages here that big organisations regularly miss. They can be more flexible, more specific, and more hands on in their development approach. No requirement for complex structures or company endorsed programs. Just emphasise what people must understand to execute their jobs better and offer them opportunities to practice with guidance.
Telstras methodology for technical development deserves recognition. They combine formal learning with mentor relationships and project assignments that require people to apply new skills immediately. The learning sticks because its immediately relevant and continuously reinforced.
Yet the glaring reality that no one wants to acknowledge : sometimes the problem is not absent skills or knowledge. Sometimes people understand precisely what requires action but cannot execute because of company restrictions, resource shortages, or competing priorities.
No amount of training resolves that. You have to resolve the organisational issues first, then develop people within that better framework.
The ROI question comes up constantly with professional development. Reasonable point development requires money and time. However, assessing effectiveness demands examining business results, not merely training statistics. Did customer satisfaction enhance? Are projects being executed more efficiently? Have safety incidents decreased? Are people staying longer and functioning better?
Most training reviews emphasise whether people appreciated the course and whether they feel more secure. Those metrics are essentially useless for determining business impact.
Here's something contentious : not everyone requires professional development simultaneously or identically. Some people require technical capabilities, others need management development, while others need assistance grasping business basics. Generic approaches waste resources and irritate participants.
The future of professional development is likely more customised, more practical, and more connected with real work. Less classroom time, more coaching and mentoring. Reduced generic programs, more personalised solutions. Reduced focus on what people should understand, greater emphasis on what they can genuinely do differently.
Thats not automatically cheaper or easier, but its more efficient. And effectiveness should be the only metric that matters when you are investing in peoples growth.
Website: https://penzu.com/p/7c03e53dfe50e51a
Forums
Topics Started: 0
Replies Created: 0
Forum Role: Participant