One Needs Analysis Method That Can Improve Your Nonprofit Training
Are you listening to your learners?
In this episode, our guest is strategic listener Emily Taylor. With a background in human-centered design, Emily is an expert listener. I've worked with Emily before and she's helped me and my clients be better listeners so we can identify skill gaps and create tailored training and resources to support behavior change.
She's sharing some of her best tips in this episode, so you can too.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
00:58 Why listening is so important
07:40 Making listening part of your nonprofit training process
09:49 What makes listening challenging for talent development teams
13:15 The benefits of listening to learners in your nonprofit training
18:09 Do this one thing to improve how you listen to your staff right now
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One Needs Analysis Method That Can Improve Your Nonprofit Training
I'm currently taking a course that's all about cultivating a community. And in this case, I'm really looking to cultivate the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
If you've been here for a while, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It's a free private community of nonprofit talent development leaders.
I want this to be a one-stop shop for nonprofit L&D. It’s a place where:
You can get your questions answered.
You can find recommendations.
You can find connections.
It's a place that allows us to give to each other and receive from each other. And all in the name of the greater good because we're all in the nonprofit space.
So I'm taking this course on creating community. Throughout this self-paced course, the author asks questions about what we're learning. We send our answers directly to her but it's not the same as being on a Zoom call together.
Sometimes that can leave you feeling like there's no one really out there listening or supporting you.
But, this course creator actually reads the responses and replies.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my email and found a video reply from her.
She shared her excitement about what I'm doing.
She encouraged me to look for ways to build community.
She helped me see the impact that I can make through this community.
Her message was specific. It wasn't a generic video. She called me by name. She referenced me serving the nonprofit sector. She shared another community builder she'd worked with in the sector. She gave me specific ideas and encouragement for building my community.
And this three minute video left the biggest smile on my face because it felt genuine. And I could tell she listened.
I don't think we always leave our learners with a smile. But we can. We have the opportunity to, we just have to listen.
That's why I'm so excited to have strategic listener Emily Taylor on the podcast.
With a background in human-centered design, Emily is an expert listener. I've worked with her on past client projects where we needed to do a lot of intentional listening and Emily is amazing at what she does. She creates interview questions, she designs focus groups, and she builds surveys, all in this really thoughtful way.
And she helps me and my clients be better listeners so we can leave their learners with a smile on their faces. She's sharing some of her best tips, so you can leave your learners with a smile too.
How? Because listening can help you create the exact training and resources your learners need to move your mission forward.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
1) Listening to Your Learners in the Needs Analysis Process
Listening is an important part of the training process, whether that be training people within an organization or training an outside community.
“If there's training involved, there are people who don't have some information and people that have it or are looking to teach it or managing it. And those two groups of people can interpret things differently.” - Emily Taylor
Emily and I have done some work together, and in this work, we’ve talked to different groups of people within an organization. From analysts and managers to people who were upkeeping a building.
“Each of those groups had different ways of thinking about the organization, thinking about the work that they do. And so to be able to really understand those groups of people, I think it’s really important to providing customized, engaging training for them.” - Emily Taylor
We talk about needs analysis in training. I think we often do our best to validate the needs that we're hearing, but it’s so important to treat our staff, or whoever our audience is, as a community of people that we need information from, and to allow them to have a voice so that we can co-create something in this training process.
2) What Makes Listening Challenging for Talent Development Teams
Emily provides us with two points here:
1. The curse of the expert
“If you indeed are the expert in the work that you're training, there's this curse of knowledge that comes with it that you can't always un-know that information. And so that's just something to be aware of, is to not have that objectivity that comes with knowing information.” - Emily Taylor
Emily gives us the example of taking your car into the shop and feeling like you have no idea what's going on because the car expert is talking to you in lingo and isn’t breaking it down in a way that you can understand.
“Expertise goes not only into what you know but also the organization culture or the way things have been done before. Some of these things internally can feel like givens but aren't necessarily givens to everyone in the organization. If they're new to training or new to the way your organization does things, you might need to break that apart, because there's some built-in expectations that others might not have.” - Emily Taylor
2. You may be unable to hear true feedback
“Whether it's politics or hierarchy or systems, you might not hear real true feedback when you're doing a needs analysis or listening to people because people don't feel comfortable being critical.” - Emily Taylor
Emily explains that being able to have that objectivity outside of the culture, outside of the topic, and outside of those systems can really help get you to the information that you really need to run a great training program.
Even as a talent development person, we bring our own bias towards what will work or what will resonate with people. Being able to set that aside and be more objective can be challenging, but that’s not to say that it can't be done.
Often when you have someone who can come in and do the whole process objectively, because they have no prior connection to your organization or how things have been done in the past, that can also be really helpful.
This is one of the services we offer at Skill Masters Market. We can be that objective, outside lens. We can conduct a needs analysis for you, help you uncover the primary skill gaps, and make recommendations for creating training or resources to close those gaps. If you are feeling stuck - like you aren't quite sure what your learners need or what the best way to move forward is - schedule a call so we can talk about your organization's needs. You don't have to stay stuck. We can help you.
3) The Benefits of Listening to Learners in Your Nonprofit Training
Emily has seen so many benefits of really listening to learners and building a strategy or a training around what you're hearing:
1. You can learn based on feedback
“Being able to give feedback to then improve training and improve how people understand it is the greatest thing you can do for listening and improving the teaching that you're doing.” - Emily Taylor
2. Training buy-in
“People have to really be bought into why they're doing this training, why it's important to them and relevant to their jobs. So being able to listen allows people to be connected and feel heard, which is a really big part of just being part of your community and making that training feel relevant to you.” - Emily Taylor
3. Uncovering misunderstandings
“A lot of the work that I do usually unveils just different areas where people might not understand the purpose of something, they might not understand the decisions people make. And so being able to listen can help you understand where [...] there needs to be additional education that shows why we're doing this, how it's going to be relevant, what's happening in the future that will help them connect the dots and tell the story of this training.” - Emily Taylor
4. Uncovering training resistance
“Sometimes you can find that people might not feel like they need to know certain information or that a certain style of training they're sick of and they need things to be delivered in different ways. You can find that resistance and address it early on versus just continuing to have the same negative results.” - Emily Taylor
As much as we love training and talent development, not everyone does. And I think that's such an important part of the conversation to think about, why not?
Why are they dreading whatever it is that you're creating?
What are the fears or the hesitations?
Why do they think it's useless?
Why do they think it's not relevant?
Really tap into that and make sure that the training addresses it, but that the communication and marketing also address that resistance.
4) One Tool Talent Development Can Use to Listen More
I asked Emily for one tool that someone in HR or talent development can use right now to improve how they listen to their staff.
Her answer?
Have great questions ready to ask people during the needs analysis process.
“When you're looking for a training solution to solve a certain problem within your organization, ask the staff how they would address that challenge. If they need to learn something, ask them how they would want to learn it and why. This doesn't mean they're designing it for you, but this is intel. What maybe do they say they don't want to do and why is that?” - Emily Taylor
You can also ask questions about previous learning experiences they have had.
“Ask them about a time they enjoyed a learning experience and what they remember about that experience because these takeaways [...] are the things that sit with you. Those are the things you're going to talk with other staff members about.” - Emily Taylor
If you run into resistance in training, this is what Emily recommends you ask:
“How did you come to believe that? And it doesn't have to be phrased that way. But that question really gets into if someone had a bad experience that led them to think about training in a certain way. You're going to want to help them overcome that because it doesn't mean training always has to be that way.” - Emily Taylor
To hear the full conversation I had with Emily Taylor on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 89.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Helping to change the world for good is hard enough as it is. Finding good support shouldn’t be difficult, too.
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work.
Nonprofit L&D leaders have been overlooked for too long. You need a place where you can meet like-minded talent development pros, learn from industry leaders and tech vendors, and find the support you need to make a real impact.
Thankfully, great nonprofit support is no longer hard to find or financially inaccessible.
Welcome to the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – the only community specifically for nonprofit talent development professionals.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
