How to Manage Your People Well: Tips for Managers of Training

As a training manager, there are two important aspects to managing your people well: hiring, supervising, and motivating (managing with your people) and building up corporate support for your department (managing for your people). Unfortunately, training is not well understood by some executives, and its benefits can be hard to assess. Even a good training manager's department risks cuts by cost-conscious administrators convinced that training is an unnecessary expense. In The Secret of My Success, a cinematic fairy tale about life in corporate America, Michael J. Fox gets scolded his first day on the job for speaking to a senior executive: "Never consort with a suit unless the suit consorts with you first." As a training manager, however, you had better be prepared to consort with "the suits" from Day One. Managing for your people is a pro-active strategy that constantly demands selling your department's services and widening the base of organizational support for the training function.

All of our experts agree that the actions of the manager of training are critical to the department's survival, and important for the long-term health and continuity of the organization itself. In an era of cost cutting and corporate mergers/takeovers, a training manager must make sure his or her department is 1) visible, 2) credible and 3) perceived to be as integral to the organization's growth as it really is. This can be accomplished by means of two different approaches that boil down to either response or outreach. Some managers find it effective to combine some of each into a very personal brew. For example, Mary Belle GrosJacques, Trainer Coordinator at CH2M HILL, characterizes her department's approach as essentially "reactive .[We] satisfy needs brought to us" .Yet she also notes that "[we] try to think of needs they didn't bring to us," indicating that it is possible to respond creatively by anticipating future needs, and using the feedback from existing programs to extrapolate new directions. Susan Warshauer, Manager of Training and Development Programs, at M.I.T., acts on the premise that building up organizational support "...takes a conscious strategy. Cultivate relationships with senior people, find out what they perceive as needs, and have a yearly process of needs assessment. Keep in touch with your community and be responsive to them."

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CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.