I remember doing some selling for a company where I was getting a small base remuneration that covered some salary, sales cost, car and travel expenses. It would run out in seventeen weeks, after which "commission-only" would kick in. Because I brought in with me a lot of management knowledge, the company kept putting me on managerial tasks. In addition, I was expected to learn training materials and get certified in order to deliver seminars as well as sell them.
Soon I could only spend 50% of my time in sales which meant that, if reaching a quota took 3 months, it would now take 6 months. The more I had to do outside of sales, the less time I could spend in sales. My prospecting and follow-ups were falling behind every day. This, of course was costing me money because I had seventeen weeks to build it up beyond the base salary. I took my prospect lists home at night and entered them in my data base on my own computer in order to try and keep up a minimum contacts of calls during the little prime day time I had left.
One day, two of my colleagues and myself, were asked to attend a 3-day course certification training. A "master trainer" was flown in from the US affiliate company. The event was arranged under a tight schedule to meet a client training coming up in the following week. I was the one who was to deliver the seminar to a group of Japanese engineers at a large corporation. The course was three days in length. This was now Wednesday, which meant that we were going through the materials for the first time on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the week before the training.
The normal way to train trainers required several steps. Step #1 would require a trainer to participate in a course while it is being delivered at a client's place of business by a certified company trainer. If the prospective trainer had a personal interest in delivering the particular course, he/she would then proceed to step #2 which is an instructional train-the-trainer course delivered by one of the organization's master trainer. Then step #3 would be for the trainer to do a personal run-through of the course, making his/her own notes and clarifying any questions that might come up. Step #4 would be to present his/her course internally the first time and get critics from the colleagues, making necessary adjustments. Ideally, Step #5 would be to make a perfect final internal presentation for certification prior to delivery to a client. With a 3-day course, the training would take at least 12 business days if one skipped Step #5 (3 days X 4 steps).
However, in this case there were not 12 days. There were not even 9 days, if one skipped step #4. There were not even 6 days. There were only 3 days left because the three-day course was to be delivered at the client's place of business beginning on the following Tuesday, Monday being the preparation day.
Because time did not allow this proper sequence of training, the three of us were taken directly into step #2 without having seen the course before.
To make matters worse, top management (the partner-owner/president of the company), made the mistake of letting us have the student material ONLY. This normally happened at step #1 where a prospective trainer attends the course as a participant at a client's location. The next time the prospective trainer goes through the course as a train-the-trainer session, it is with both the instructor's and the student's material.
During our training, I asked if we could have the instructors manual as well, since we were doing Step 2 (both steps 1 and 2 at the same time) and there would be no time to go through it a second time, before our own review. Besides the logical reason, this would also allow us to mark our notes directly on our instructor's manual, etc., saving us having to re-write the material given to us during the training.
My request for the instructor's manual was denied. On what basis? Pride. The president could not admit he had made a mistake (he was out of context on the material needed at Step #2, even though this was our 1st training on that course; but now he wouldn't admit it). I argued my case, on behalf of myself and my colleagues who agreed with me that the manuals were necessary, offering all the constructive reasons for the situation we had been placed into.
At one point the president resorted to the pathetic excuse that the material cost money (?!) which made no sense whatsoever -- again totally out of context, because he was getting desperate to try and cover his mistake. This I promptly countered with our offer to pay for the material -- because we simply needed it and we were running out of time. But I had to back down when the dialogue became a public dual between my suggestions and the president's refusals. This is a Classic example of an ultimate top-down-only communication.
We had to finish the 3-day training without the instructor's manual. The president refused to come down to our level at the cost of jeopardizing the company's own need and reputation. An example of top management not trained in growing with the position. The ultimate contextual part here of course was the good of the company. Forget about personal pride and ego, what is good for the company?
How did we make out you wonder? Well none of us was ready to deliver the program at the appointed time and the master-trainer had to be brought back from the US to do it. And all because of personal pride and lack of training and growth on the part of corporate management communication./dmh
http://business-square.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5606381
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