Leadership Training in Singapore is a Learning

JOURNEY

Great leaders aren’t made overnight. Just as there’s no magic potion for turning anyone into a beloved manager, idolised director or inspirational CEO, there is no single learning event that can guarantee that anyone who attends it, automatically becomes the leader their organisation needs. Training great leaders takes an entire, carefully designed learning journey. At Kaleidoskope, we focus on making the leadership learning journey as rich and as memorable as possible. So that when the journey’s over and our participants are done and dusted, your organisation will benefit from having stronger, resilient and more effective leaders. In this discussion of our leadership learning journeys, we’ll be detailing

• The Learning Journey
• Measuring the Effectiveness of the Journey
• The Levels of Leadership

Leadership Training Singapore: The Learning Journey in Detail

Learning journeys at Kaleidoskope may be customised according to an organisation’s particular needs, but, in essence, they follow the following itinerary. 1. Pre-work. Nobody goes on a planned journey without any preparation, and leadership and management training is no different. About three to four weeks before the learning journey gets underway, our participants and trainees get ready. This could take the form of pre-workshop reading, online assessments, or simply just getting to know the trainer, or the rest of the folks embarking on this journey with you. 2. The Journey: Customised Workshops. Skills training workshops vary between organisations, but the learning journey typically and formally kicks off with the first workshop. This workshop can be done virtually, or in-classroom. During this part of the learning journey, our trainer and facilitator focuses on “application of concepts”. Therefore, be ready to expect learning methods such as experiential activities, facilitated sharing, discussions, group or individual presentations, action planning and reflections. After the workshop, our participants will be assigned a “project”, and a quick “let’s try this out at work and see if it works!”. This is directly related to applying what they have learnt at the workshop. 3. The Mid-point Check-in. This part of the journey takes place about four to eight week into the learning journey. Remember that quick post-workshop project our participants were assigned? This is when we check in. We ask pertinent, and specific questions on translating the learning from the workshops onto the real-world work situation. Typically, this is done in a more relaxed, and informal style and take the form of a quick webinar, or a lunch-and-learn session. Our trainer and facilitator checks in with the travellers. Were you able to apply your learning in the real-world work situation? What your experiences? What has worked well? What were the challenges? This is a platform for peer-to-peer shared learning, and reflections. 4. The Journey’s End. This is the part where we document all the lessons learned. Learning analytics, and evaluation is a big part of the journey. “How did you find the learning pace?”…“Were the materials suitable, and addressed your learning objectives?” …“Was the trainer effective in translating the concepts to your work situation?” Participants critically evaluate the effectiveness of our workshop. These learning analytics and evaluation are important on 2 fronts: It is a good starting point to have that “returns-on’-investment” conversation with the sponsor or the stakeholder of the learning journey. And its insights are valuable to adjust, and re-calibrate future learning journeys.

Measuring Effectiveness

How do we make it easier for you? We help you evaluate the impact of the learning journeys, and the return on investment on your learning and development initiatives. And to achieve this, we work with Metrics-That-Matter (MTM), which critically evaluates learning metrics and analytics, benchmarking learning impact, and communicating ROI to the business, and this all takes place at the end of all our learning journeys. Let’s look at this a targeted health check on our learning journeys, and programme effectiveness. Why is this important? Learner satisfaction does not translate into performance improvement because it is not a good indicator of application on-the-job. An organization of about twenty-five thousand employees that is not actively managing wasted learning is losing over $13 million in L&D spend each year. Furthermore, the average employee is spending 11% of their workday on unproductive learning, costing companies over $130 million dollars in lost productivity. (*data from www.explorance.com) In today’s resource-constrained environment, L&D functions are struggling to measure the overall performance and impact of their learning programs. Yet, the gains from getting it right are huge. Organizations that engage in effective measurement can dramatically improve the impact of their training on employee performance. Measure beyond satisfaction to uncover application, waste, value, and return. Compare to benchmarks to bring context to your results and attention to areas of improvement and success. What does this all mean for you? These benchmarks allow you to compare the training investments you’ve made, against international benchmarks, collected over billions of data points. This context, together with the collected data may be used to inform your decisions when planning your investments into training initiatives. It provides a comprehensive and third party objective analysis of the learning results. So that you can effectively communicate effectively to your stakeholders. Measure better. Do better.

The Levels of Leadership

Having detailed what takes place during a leadership development learning journey, and how we assess its effectiveness, we move on to how such a learning journey may be adjusted to the different levels of leadership. Our Point of View at Kaleidoskope breaks leadership levels down into three levels:

Managers

Whose learning journey is designed for new or aspiring managers with no or one to two years of relevant experience. Their training is meant to equip them with the leadership and people management skills they need to boost their personal effectiveness as managers.

Leaders

Whose learning journey is designed for more experienced or middle managers with five to six years of relevant experience. Their training is meant to help them move beyond fundamental leadership skills to lead their teams toward reaching their full potential.

Shapers

Whose learning journey is designed for senior managers with more than 10 years of relevant experience. Their training is geared toward helping them to think for the longer term, which in turn helps them to set the future direction for their organisations. The focal points for each level of leadership can differ either in intensity or and depth or in the competencies required. For example, both Leaders and Shapers need to focus on their Leadership Executive Presence. For Leaders, this focuses on self-awareness of their leadership styles, and communicating within the organisation. Shapers, on the other hand, will need to focus on their Executive Presence as a part of the organisational brand, and/ or its strategic intent and impact, to a wider, and external audience. Another example on Leading High Performance Teams. The emphasis for Shapers in a Leadership Development Journey may now focus on leading multiple teams, and dealing with the wider, and deeper aspects of team development, as compared to a Leader in the organisation. Whether customising the leadership learning journeys to Managers, Leaders or Shapers, we employ different modes, and a variety of learning formats, platforms, and methodology to engage and support our learners. Coaching can be done in groups or on a one-on-one arrangement, on-site or virtual, and learning methods can include gamified learning solutions, webinars, brown bags in addition to the traditional in-classroom workshops. Go On a Leadership Training Learning Journey at Your Organisation: Start training the strong and competent leaders who will guide your organisation toward success, today. Get in touch with us at Kaleidoskope for customised leadership training. Contact Us