As a professional business trainer and facilitator, I am tasked with one thing: to impart knowledge and ensure participants leave the room having had an ‘aha’ moment – a moment where they move from being unknowing about something, to then having the desired knowledge.
It is a skill which requires shaping the learning process and the journey to get to the desired learning outcomes. It is necessary to take often complex information and breaking it into smaller, chunks and imparting it in an easy-to-digest fashion. This then has to be assimilated by participants.
Specially designed exercises and role-plays often give the necessary clues and indicators to whether this has occurred or not. Of course, long-term behaviour change ensues as the learner practices the new techniques in their daily life.
The same skill-set is needed for when undertaking any digital corporate transformation project. The fundamental steps for digital transformation include:
- Shaping the vision
- Devising the strategy for the desired behaviours to be assimilated (yes, digital and corporate transformation always require for people to do something differently)
- Communicating it in an easy to absorb fashion and
- Setting parameters by which to execute and measure success of the new digital strategy.
The critical element in both contexts (the learning environment / training room and the company) is making the content or topic relevant for the participants.
In both cases, the ‘why is this relevant to me’ or ‘how does this affect me?’ questions need to be answered. Most digital transformation projects fail because this ‘what’s in it for me?’ question from internal stakeholders remains unanswered.
As a trainer you become experienced in picking up any potential resistance and dealing with it head-on, there and then. The skill comes in in being able to step into your delegates’ world and understand where they are coming from and them contextualise the response in a way that is relevant to their work, working practices and mindset.
This is why I personally revel when working with corporate transformation projects. However, the reality is that most of these projects are run by process-orientated professionals who often have a blind-spot for people-related matters.
This emotionally intelligent approach to corporate transformation is fundamental. After all, people buy from people…. The same is true when selling a digital or corporate transformation project internally.