Do Behavioral and Personal Effectiveness Trainings Really Benefit Businesses? Let's Discuss!

"While behavioral and personal effectiveness trainings are highly beneficial on a personal level, they don't contribute to the business (not organization)." - Anonymous

How true do you think this statement is? Could you help me with some inputs and your perspectives on this statement? I would appreciate it.

I think these behavioral and personal effectiveness trainings do affect the business directly. No organization is more than its employees. Working on the employees directly impacts the business growth.

A highly effective and empowered team certainly impacts the business for growth.

The Importance of Behavioral Training

It appears that this "anonymous" person has encountered individuals who exaggerate the importance of behavioral training. This might be why they formed the extreme view that it is useless. However, by doing so, they could be throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Why do two people come close to each other? They come close not because of their qualifications or experience, but because of their behavior. Who would want to get close to someone who is technically very sound but behaves rudely?

Training in behavioral skills helps to build a positive and healthy work culture. Consider conflict-handling skills, interpersonal skills, decision-making skills, etc. Do you think all these skills are useless?

Often, bad managers rub their juniors the wrong way. In retaliation, juniors start quitting. Therefore, occasionally, managers become the cause of employee attrition. But then, who bears the brunt? It is the organization that pays the price of employee attrition, while a manager, even with bad behavior, could get a hefty increment!

An organization's culture acts as glue for the employees. This glue is invisible but helps in retaining employees. To stay competitive, a culture of respect is essential. For this, training in behavioral skills is crucial. Otherwise, ceding ground to the competition is not that difficult anyway!

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Hi Dinesh,

Thank you for your valuable comments. Nothing personal, but it's for research, hence the anonymity. I pretty much share similar views; thus, I have no conflicting opinions. Though in the Indian context, it still feels that there is a certain resistance towards behavioral training.

Dear Noelsinghdias,

Rather than "resistance," we should call it "less acceptance" of the behavioral training. There are a few reasons for this, as outlined below:

- **Inability of Training Managers:** Training managers often fail to calculate the cost of not having behavioral skills. Above all, they do not conduct sufficient research on the impact of lacking these skills and the resulting losses.

- **ROI Calculation Challenges:** Training providers struggle to calculate the ROI of this training.

- **Understanding Soft Skills:** There is an inability to understand what soft skills exactly are. The definition is loose and flexible.

- **Lack of Entry Barriers:** There are no entry point barriers; anyone can claim to be a soft skills trainer.

- **Focus on Tools Over Results:** The focus is on means or training tools like games rather than the end result. Training managers expect positive feedback at the end of the session.

- **Feedback Management Experts:** Due to the focus on feedback, some "feedback management experts" pass themselves off as soft skills trainers. Some trainers even boast about their ability to provide 100% excellent feedback!

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

If you set a clear objective and every move of the training process is towards achieving that objective, then Behavioral and Personal Effectiveness Training could be useful to the organization too. In the past, we had something called "Table light"; light is focused on what we intend to read. This avoids the waste of light. We need to zero in on where training is required without wasting training efforts.

If training efforts are focused on what the organization requires, then the training will be useful. It boils down to effective Training Need Analysis being conducted, putting your heart and soul into it; clear objectives being set, and metrics of measurement being established.

I recall a conversation stated in an MMA meeting. A trainer was asked, "What if the employees leave after getting trained?" The trainer replied, "What if you don't train, and they stay with you for years!"

Disclaimer: Behavior changes take time. If I conduct an FMEA Training for a day or even for four hours, I can make the participant interpret an FMEA chart or create one. However, this is not as straightforward in behavior training. I admit that. But patience and persistence pay off in the long run.

I would be more than happy to help if you contact me by mail or phone.

Regards

The Importance of Training for Human Resources

Employees are also a resource, but they are far ahead of other resources such as machinery and equipment for an organization. They are superior because they can think, act, and perform much better than inanimate objects. This is due to their possession of feelings, emotions, the ability to learn, understand, common sense, and rational thinking, among other qualities. Since their thought process, knowledge, and learning need to be constantly upgraded for the benefit of the organization, regular training is essential.

Untrained human resources are comparable to a computer without a menu or program, welding equipment without an electrode, or an aircraft without Aircraft Turbine Fuel (ATF). It is evident that training is crucial for the optimal performance of individuals within an organization.

The Importance of Behavior in Organizational Culture

'Behavior' is an important component of an organization's culture that drives performance. Behaviors not conducive to organizational culture may derail performance, leading to workplace conflicts, attrition, or non-cooperation. However, the reason I observed, sitting on the other side of the fence as a participant, as to why many training programs on behavioral effectiveness do not achieve the desired behavioral outcomes, or at least the perceptual changes, is that they fail to engage the participants. The content is theoretical, and the methods are pedantic, evoking no interest in learning among the participants. In fact, there is a lot of scope to make behavioral training more interesting by paying attention to content design and adopting methods like role play and humor, etc.

Regards,
B. Saikumar