How to Develop Your People Managers with Off-the-Shelf Courses & Customized Conversations
Providing off-the-shelf courses is a common approach to training and development. But one of the limitations is the lack of context which is often needed to make the training relevant and meaningful.
When I heard about Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and how they were combining off-the-shelf courses with more contextualized learning, I knew I wanted to bring this case study to you.
Is it possible to combine off-the-shelf learning with tailored content? That’s what we’re exploring in this episode with Alberto Garcia, a rising L&D professional.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
02:59 Alberto’s career - from teaching high school history to human resource development
05:39 Learning and Development at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston
08:39 Developing people managers with off-the-shelf training
10:29 Identifying the needs of your people managers
15:22 Tailoring off-the-shelf training to your people managers
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How to Develop Your People Managers with Off-the-Shelf Courses & Customized Conversations
Purchasing and providing off-the-shelf courses is a common approach to training and development.
Off-the-shelf training providers like LinkedIn Learning or Udemy have a fully stocked library of courses on pretty much every topic imaginable and many times it's cost-effective.
So it makes sense that organizations are drawn to them.
But one of the limitations of off-the-shelf training is the lack of context.
The scenarios and skills are going to be more general because they need to appeal to a larger audience. And my concern is that context is often needed to make the training relevant and meaningful.
So when I heard about Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and how they were combining off-the-shelf courses with more contextualized learning, I knew I wanted to bring this case study to you.
Is it possible to combine off-the-shelf learning with tailored content?
That’s what we’re going to explore today with Alberto Garcia - a rising Learning and Development professional dedicated to helping individuals grow in their careers. He is the Learning and Development Coordinator at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
1) An Inside Look at Learning and Development in This Nonprofit
Alberto shared that Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston (IMGH) is a nonprofit that focuses on four main missions.
A Meals on Wheels program to help feed homebound seniors and their pets.
Refugee services.
Interfaith relations and community partnerships.
Volunteer Houston which helps connect people to volunteer opportunities across the Houston area.
There are currently over 280 employees all supported by an L&D team of one.
Alberto explains that there is a huge amount of diversity within the organization.
“For example, in the refugee services area, we have 18 languages spoken at our organization. We've also even hired refugee services clients as staff members, which adds to that cultural diversity in general.” - Alberto Garcia
There is also diversity within the different kinds of work that they do.
“So to meet everyone's needs, our training approach needs to be multifaceted. And I think from a DEI perspective, it's great because it challenges us to think about the inclusivity and consider all these different layers that go into our different audience members.” - Alberto Garcia
2) Developing People Managers with Off-the-Shelf Training
IMGH is currently focused on developing their people managers.
To do this, they use a UK based learning management system called HowNow.
“They have given us access to over 9, 000 pieces of content, which covers a lot of soft skills, but then also things like Microsoft Excel, Lean Six Sigma, a lot of different areas to pick and choose from. It is a huge library that has been great to utilize when at first we didn't have all that content created.” - Alberto Garcia
Alberto explains that having that content already created, made things a lot easier when previously, IMGH had no one who could create that content.
Before this, IMGH was using LinkedIn Learning, but it was not being fully utilized.
“Having somebody who is dedicated to marketing the LMS has been really helpful. So now we get anywhere between 50 to 70% monthly utilization on the platform, and we have been doing a lot of different work to push content to staff and use it as a space of learning.” - Alberto Garcia
3) Identifying the Needs of Your People Managers
To identify the needs of their people managers, Alberto used survey data, exit interviews, and engagement surveys, among other things. The HR team is also very active and communicates well with the different departments one-on-one.
“With all the different surveys and all the different things that we've been doing, we identified these core areas to start for our training.” - Alberto Garcia
These are the core areas they identified:
1. Interviewing
Alberto explains that they structured the training in the same way that you build a team - you start with the interviewing process.
“There is a skillset with knowing what questions you can and cannot ask, how to be fair, and knowledge of requirements.” - Alberto Garcia
2. Providing Feedback
Once you have your team, Alberto explains that you're going to have to provide feedback to help with their growth.
“That takes a lot of communication and listening.” - Alberto Garcia
3. Performance Management
Alberto shared that this section is about teaching how IMGH does the performance management and goal setting process.
4. Coaching
Alberto explains that they do a great series that goes from the skills of having coaching conversations with newer employees to more experienced team members. This is a series that has gotten a lot of good feedback in particular.
“Being a coach is a little bit different than just giving feedback.” - Alberto Garcia
5. Conflict Resolution
This is a skill that Alberto believes is key not just for managers, but for everyone.
“Conflict is inevitable in teams.” - Alberto Garcia
6. Meeting Management
Alberto explains that as managers start to climb the corporate ladder, they attend more and more meetings which some people may struggle with because they feel less productive.
“Setting agendas, having action items and meeting minutes helps cut down on that fluff that happens.” - Alberto Garcia
7. Employment Law
Lastly, Alberto explains that they want to make sure that their managers are not violating any laws. So this section is just an overview of some laws, like the Civil Rights Act for example.
“It doesn't go super in-depth, but I think just having a lot of that information in the back of your mind helps when a manager is going through their day-to-day with their staff.” - Alberto Garcia
4) Tailoring Off-the-Shelf Training to Your People Managers
While off-the-shelf training is an easy go-to training approach because it's cost-effective and scalable, it often lacks context.
Alberto shared the steps they are taking to ensure that the off-the-shelf training they are using is tailored to what their people managers are experiencing in their organization and community.
1. Send Weekly Emails
Alberto sends weekly emails with PDF guides, blog posts, and news articles on the different topics being covered that week. Examples include a one-on-one agenda template, a coaching self-assessment, or a blog post about conflict in the workplace.
“It can serve as an extra resource that they can use instead of just watching the videos online and it's something that they can immediately implement into their work as well.” - Alberto Garcia
Alberto explains that it also serves as a reminder to complete the training for that week.
“Managers are busy and taking time to watch some videos isn't always the most top priority thing for somebody. But I like to say that I'm that cheerleader in the background, motivating them to finish everything.” - Alberto Garcia
Alberto has received a lot of positive feedback from this and people are utilizing the resources he has sent out.
2. Host Monthly Virtual Meetups
Alberto also hosts monthly virtual meetups to discuss the topics that the people managers learned in the previous month.
“Last week we met and discussed coaching conflict resolution. So during the meetings, we do conflict scenarios.” - Alberto Garcia
3. Develop Dialogue Between Leaders
Alberto explains that the executive team meets every week and the director level staff also meet regularly, however, they want the lower and middle managers to have that same dialogue happening regularly.
“One of the goals that we have for this manager training is to develop a dialogue amongst this level of management.” - Alberto Garcia
So far they've had great discussions come out of these meetings that may have not happened otherwise.
4. Utilize Alumni Learners
IMGH are currently in the middle of training their second cohort of managers.
“I do want to bring the first cohort and the second cohort together and see if they can also start learning from each other as well and continue that dialogue beyond this cohort.” - Alberto Garcia
I love that Alberto and IMGH are building those relationships.
Social influence and relationships are important for any behavior change.
We have an opportunity in training to build those relationships cross-functionally because we bring people together who might not otherwise sit in the same room, be in the same team, or be doing the same tasks.
So not only are Alberto and IMGH providing resources, but they are creating relationships that are going to last the learners the entirety of their career at IMGH, but also potentially when they leave the organization. That's incredibly valuable for them.
To hear the full conversation I had with Alberto Garcia on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 109.
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