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Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. Hosted by Ryan Castle, along with Dr Mike Ashby, we share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough successes in business and life. In addition to a podcast, The Breakthrough also specialises in delivering management training that actually sticks, is cost effective, and easy to implement at scale to sustain change from the inside out.
Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams, and your business. I'm your host, Ryan Castle along with Doctor Mike Ashby. We share insights, experiences, and stories on achieving breakthrough success in business and life. To learn more, click the link in the episode show notes or go to the breakthrough.com. Now let the breakthroughs begin.
Ryan:Hi, Mike. Welcome along to our newest episode of the Business Leader Breakthroughs podcast.
Mike:Hi there, Ryan. Great to be here as always.
Ryan:Yeehaw. Alrighty. Today, we're talking what is the most effective way to train managers. This is obviously a zone that we live in a lot. Maybe before we dive into the how you go about it, should we start off the why?
Mike:Why train your manager? Somebody asked that the other day. My first thought was, well, what a stupid question, but of course, it's not. And I don't have to. But if they want their managers to get, you know, free up a day a week to work on more important things, they should train their managers.
Mike:It was as simple as that, really.
Ryan:Yeah. And I think maybe the symptom and cause is something we see a lot, which is people are very, very good at a job. They're technically skilled. Someone goes, wow. You're you're showing great attitude and aptitude.
Ryan:Why don't we make you the manager of the team? And that might have happened a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, or a decade ago, but they often are not necessarily naturally skilled as a manager, and then also on top of that haven't been offered any training around those people leadership skills. So I think we see that as a as a symptom a lot in business as well.
Mike:Yeah. And and so I think what happens is that people do the managing on top of their real job. You know, they've still got their functional job that they're doing. They're still the best at their work. So they still get involved in that stuff.
Mike:So they just got they just got overload. You know, they don't actually manage very well because they simply don't have time. And you're right. Or training. But I think the training is you know, I was talking with a group just the other week.
Mike:It was it was fabulous. And what's changed most for them in the program is that sense of having time. And that's that's not what they had before. They came into it busy, flustered, kind of always under stress. And what's emerged is that they're going, I'm a whole lot calmer.
Mike:The actual topic was about stress and stress management, which was fine. They said, we're more relaxed and a lot less stressed. Somebody said this was the quietest, you know, kind of a rush period that we've ever had. And it wasn't because it was less demand. It was just they were just more organized.
Mike:And that is about how they've managed to create time. So the training has really helped them. And they talked about this. They talked about I've got I've got time for higher value stuff now. I do more big stuff now because I've got time.
Mike:That's the that's the key to me.
Ryan:And, Mary Anne, we see that as a ripple effect both prior to acquiring these skills. We see individual managers very time poor, still trying to solve problems by doing the work themselves, working long hours, doing all those kind of things. And then we also see that blow up to their senior leader, whether that be a business owner or a more senior manager in the business, because that individual manager is not operating well. They keep pushing issues up the chain to the next person who then gets buried in more operational detail and then again is not doing the things they should be working on.
Mike:Yeah. And and what do you think the most issues are? What do you think the the heading for the for the most issues that that people have to deal with this?
Ryan:Oh, you know, have a guess.
Mike:Does it
Ryan:start with p?
Mike:It does start with p. Oh. It's not with sis.
Ryan:Does that end with people?
Mike:It does end with people.
Ryan:Yeah. I I was actually at a at a conference not too long ago, and one of the guest speakers said, process is easy. People are hard.
Mike:I was a very a very senior and highly respected, very experienced CEO said in a meeting with senior team. He said, you know, when I was first promoted, my manager said to me, you will find that you spend 50% of your time dealing with people issues. And he said, no way, you know, not gonna. And sure enough, he spent 50% of his time dealing with people issues. If you're not very good at dealing with people issues, they tend to kind of fester and the festering rises to the top.
Mike:And often what senior leaders are getting involved in is really simple people management failures by their direct managers. The issues show up either in personal grievances, performance issues, but they also show up next directly in the, you know, inside a person. But then there's all the other stuff around quality, around productivity, and engagement. And those issues too, are primarily about people. Now quality issues are that either it's a communication issue, or it's a training issue, or it's an accountable, whatever.
Mike:So that's what senior managers have to get involved in. And we think, you know, data sort of tells us that if you train an operational manager, they will get a day back a week. If you train a whole group of those managers, their boss will get four to five hours a week back, and out of the firefighting and into the strategic.
Ryan:And how many organizations have we seen that have had great strategic plans but a complete inability to get it executed because there's no capability and there's too much firefighting, and and that's we clear that away so they can get back to focusing on things that will actually deliver value to the business.
Mike:Yeah. Because if you think about it, you know, if you're adopting a new strategy, you wanna grow your business, and we're working with a company that's got an ambition of doubling the business in the next five years. What did you plan to do with your managers? Because they are clearly not gonna be doing the same stuff they're doing now. And if you want them to work on the projects and the initiatives and the, you know, process redesign and the technology adoption and all those things, as well as do their day job, then you don't lose them.
Mike:They're just gonna burn
Ryan:them out.
Mike:So somehow you have to find a way to free up your operational managers who are the, you know, a key part of the plumbing of of an organization. You need to unblock them so that, you know, it all flows through. And that means helping them create time and space to work on the initiatives that are gonna double the list. Can't do it otherwise.
Ryan:Indeed. I can hear our audience nodding. Is that is that that a thing? Can you hear your audience nodding? I feel like I can.
Ryan:I can feel them. I feel I feel them nodding out there going, yeah. Yeah. Okay. We get it.
Ryan:Training our people is a good idea. Bring them up, having them more productive and engaged would be would be great. Maybe if we turn our discussion to, well, how do we go about training our people the the best way? And it's an interesting reflection. When we first started this program, we talked to business owners and senior leaders and said, are you doing to train your people?
Ryan:The most common response was we're not. So yeah. And then the second one was, oh, we send them off to a one day workshop on how to be a good manager. And we're like, oh, how's that working out for you? And they're like, it was terrible.
Ryan:You know, they come back all enthused for five minutes. No one else knows what they're talking about or what they're doing. And two weeks later they haven't implemented anything in it which really feels like a bit of a waste of money. Yeah. So if we were to give some guidance, obviously we live in this space all the time, we've had a lot of insight into what does work and what doesn't.
Ryan:If you were to frame up a few quality ideas and tips of how people could actually think about training their managers, where would they best start?
Mike:What's the first step? What is the first step?
Ryan:I think we always talk about mindset right, so it's about getting these people to move from thinking about what is a manager and actually having some people leadership skills. So actually identifying what some of those skills might be that they need to develop is a pretty good place to start. Yeah.
Mike:Yeah. I think most organizations who are coming at training who are coming at leadership training for the first time or or in the wake of having done leadership training that hasn't worked, a lot of them have the question of us, we don't know what good management looks like. We don't have an agreed vision of what good management looks like. And I think that's really important. Think the well, fundamentally, I think the answer to that question is your program should convey what good management looks like in practice.
Mike:And I think part of that is the the leadership skills that people need to well, first, to to manage themselves. Second, to manage other individuals. Third, to manage teams. And then fourth, and depending on how senior they are, managing the business. And that could be just processes, or it could be genuine business leadership where you're talking about, you know, you're really talking about commercial acumen.
Mike:But for most people, the operational management piece, it's really about the skills that you need for leadership. Yeah. And it's primarily focused on people, including themselves. So I think that's the the first step is to know the skills and don't I'm always a bit suspicious of gap analyses, you know, that we can sort of see at a glance what the gaps in the organization are. I think it's it's much better to say, look.
Mike:Let's just put everybody on the same page in terms of these leadership skills. Because if you kinda go, well, no, I think we've got some, you know, I think we've got delegation sorted. Well, you might have, but there might be a whole bunch of different approaches to it. And what you wanna do is have a shared understanding of these things because you get a multiplier effect when you get more people sharing that same language. So I think having the leadership skills, being clear about the foundations and the platforms of what those fundamentals look like, and then proceed from there.
Ryan:Yeah. Great. And how should people think about choosing the way the learning is done? So we hear about workshops, we hear about online learning courses, we hear about coaching, we hear about learning in groups, we hear about learning alone. Our experience, what would you suggest is the is the best method?
Mike:All of the above. With the exception of workshops. Workshops are great for solving problems and are great for organization wide engagement and those kinds of things, but they're not good places to learn skills. What we've what I guess when we've designed the program way back when, you know, because we've been running workshop based business for so long and kind of frustrated with what we knew was the potential, but it wasn't hitting the mark. So what we designed was something that had multiple methods of reinforcement, multiple ways of reinforcing the learning.
Mike:And, you know, we started with that kind of flipped classroom. The content is not the most important thing in that sense. You know, the team twenty seventy model says 10% of learning comes from content, 20 from socialization, 70% from experience. So design your methods so that they mirror that, and your content is the smallest part. And I think a lot of providers get stuck in the idea that it's all about how much I know about delegation and how much I can tell you about it.
Mike:And if I just filled your open mind with it, you will suddenly emerge a delegator extraordinaire, and it's not like that. It's actually a few simple things that really matter. And then the like, bring the coaching in because it's really important that they hear from the boss in particular. How do they do it? They're an experienced manager.
Mike:How do they do delegation? And also the accountability piece around, you know, you think you're ready to delegate this to so and so? I don't think you're ready to let go because I don't think you know how to do that job well enough to delegate you. Or, hey, that person, you know, that you've identified, that's not gonna be their kind of that's not gonna be their jam. So customizing the learning and the experiential stuff right there, I mean, is is really important.
Mike:I think we've always taken the view that there's immense power in peer group, especially when it's facilitated by somebody else who from outside who brings the outside in and stimulates those conversations between people. So they are the foundations. And then you can add things like micro learning because it's good to have reminders. You can add short quizzes. I don't really you know, we don't we're not big fans of gamification for managers.
Mike:That's not how adults learn. It's how kids learn, which is fine. Actually, managers don't have much time. So you really don't want to be mucking around with games when you want to know, okay, what's the point? How does it work?
Mike:How do I use it? That's it.
Ryan:We're marketing, we're seeing a really interesting evolution, particularly in the sort of micro learning space around AI. We've developed a AI version of yourself, actually. I know. Doctor Mike Virtual Coach and for people then being able to take very real world situations, plug it into the to the AI Virtual Coach and go, could you give me some suggestions or guidance around how I deal with this particular situation? And I think we're seeing that embed the learning rapidly and allow people to move up that learning curve much faster than they typically would.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, totally. It's stunning. I know the efforts we've gone to to make Doctor Mike AI credible and authentic, but it is fantastic. It just means that people can, in the moment, go, what would Doctor Mike do? What would Doctor Mike say about this?
Mike:What what would you know? So you don't have to go and find your boss and and have a conversation, or you can do both. But it's in the context of what you've learned, how can you apply what you've heard in the program to this situation right here? And then you can actually you can continue it and have a dialogue because it's based on about half a million words that we've written over the last twenty years, and there's practically every situation that most people are gonna encounter. It's in there somewhere.
Ryan:Indeed. And we would definitely advocate for AI as part of the learning toolkit. It's not the only thing because it's still the people aspect. You are dealing with people, humans are human, they are not machines, And so it's a complementary tool, not the not the replacement of other other learning and interactions with coaching and real people to to kinda go with it. Yeah.
Mike:Okay. But the AI has got everything written, but inside your boss's head is a situation that's never been written down, an experience or an insight that's never been written down and never will be, and you need to go and get that.
Ryan:Indeed. Okay. Let's talk about how much time is required. You know, we've seen people sent off to one, two, three day week long workshops in residential. It's a really big commitment for an organisation, not just dollars and the pure time, but then the opportunity cost of their time being away from the business and the shop floor, whatever the scenario might be, what guidance would you give to someone thinking about like how much time should my people should be committing to improving their management skills?
Mike:I'd say a 100% of it. And the way you do that is, again, don't have much content, but get the opportunity to practice it. So the way we operate, the content can be delivered in half an hour, half an hour a month. So long as you focus on what really matters instead of all the peripheral stuff, instead of showing off how smart you are and how much you know, what are the three things that matter most in any given skill set? And fundamentally, it's about behaviors.
Mike:For managers, it's about behaviors. Later on when you get into leadership, it's more conceptual and it's more about judgment and more about how you think. But management, it starts off about behavior. So you can be quite focused on that. So it doesn't need to take long half an hour in that.
Mike:We have a fifteen minute coaching session and I'm in the wonderful position of coaching our team. It's tremendous, you know, from a manager's point of view, the opportunity to spend fifteen minutes and say, like, I have this month, I've said to people, you're on the right track, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there. But generally speaking, you've nailed this, you're doing that well and able to reinforce. And it's done in fifteen minutes. Or to say, yeah, actually, you know, you think you've got this nailed, but the next part so, you know, one of the conversations I had was, you know, I'm delegating really well.
Mike:I think I've got this sorted. I go, yeah. Yeah. You have. And the and the next stage of that looks like getting your people to do the planning rather than you do the planning for them.
Mike:Oh, okay. So, you know, it becomes the idea of delegation is just taking another step forward, which is not just what you do, but how to plan what you do. So in terms of time, what I meant by a 100% was all of these skills are always there's always opportunities to practice them. All day, you've got opportunities to practice these skills. So while the formal content takes half an hour and the leader coach session takes a quarter of an hour and the collab that with your peers takes an hour, there's two hours in formal learning.
Mike:That is all that's needed. We know this. Two hours a month for twelve months will deliver you a transformed management team.
Ryan:And I love that practice, practice, practice analogy, you know, a 100% of the time made me think of Steve Curry, famous NBA basketballer. He evidently takes 500 practice shots every single day, and yet how many shots does he take in a game? I don't know. Someone will be a a better basketball statistician than me, but probably, you know, 30 or 40 shots in a in a game, but he's taking 500 practice every every day. And then we're we're suggesting lean into his content as some of it, coaching as some of it, peer learning as some of it, but it's the practice every day that makes you makes you so much better.
Mike:It is the practice, and it's going from the the first moment of trying something you haven't done before. I think the fundamental principle about helping people get that first shot at the hoop when they haven't ever held a basketball is keep it really simple. Make it and and, you know, one of the great coaches in in any code, Steve Hansen said, this is you know, my job is to make it the player's job as simple as possible. So all I've got to do is think about what they're doing on the field. And simplifying it down to the core elements makes it easier for people to pick up and then they can practice.
Mike:Let's stay with the, you know, shooting hoops analogy. If you overload them with exactly where the feet are gonna go, with exactly how to hold the ball, and exactly what angle your tongue should be, etcetera, etcetera, you're just gonna kinda be like, oh, they got too much to think about. You know, what are the two or three things that if you get them right, then there's an 80% chance you'll get the ball.
Ryan:We see managers' confidence grow across the course of the program, and confidence comes with practice so that you don't have to think so deeply about the thing that's going on at the moment, you've practiced it, so you know, again the kind of athlete analogy, getting muscle memory around what what to do and how to handle the situation. So then, you know, the first time you you might have to think more deeply about it, but the more you practice it, the more it comes naturally to you and you can resolve, you know, whatever that issue might be in front of you far quicker than you used to be able to. So, yeah, we see that confidence is a word that comes up a lot for our learners where they're at.
Ryan:Yeah,
Mike:becomes effortless, really. It just becomes I've just been writing the course on making habits, And, you know, good habits are your path to success. And it means that when you've developed good habits, you don't have to think about what to do, you just do the right thing. And that only evolves through practice and repetition. It's the path from unconscious incompetence.
Mike:You don't know what you don't know. Conscious incompetence. You know you're no good at this. Conscious competence. You're good at it, but you have to think about it around to unconscious competence.
Mike:You don't have to think about it anymore, and that's the path of all learning.
Ryan:Love it. That that's probably a great place for us to wrap this session. I would we'll we have written a short doc on seven best way to train your leaders. We'll put a link to that in the show notes if people would like to capture that as a bit of a summary of what we've talked about today. Thanks, Mike.
Ryan:Good, chat on this session of the podcast.
Mike:Thanks, Ryan.