Why training doesn't work

Since the beginning, the consistent dilemma we face is that we pop open significant conversations for our clients in one-day or half-day workshops and then we leave.  With the challenges clarified, the dysfunction uncovered, the dream articulated - at the very moment the real work begins, we leave.

 

What is our responsibility to our clients? Are we truly serving their needs when we leave them exposed, knowing they will re-enter the patterns, the demands of the day-to-day rendering them incapable of making the changes they desire?

 

The real task of organizational change is one of re-patterning: taking small consistent steps toward a specific intention. The steps themselves are rarely difficult. Identifying the intention and clarifying the steps is the first challenge and in this The Circle Project has been very effective.

 

However, organizations are like people, chief among the obstacles to progress is the belief that the revelation (the awareness) is all that is required to motivate and make change ("we'll change because we see the problem"); as any smoker can attest, this is a flawed assumption.

 

In times of growth we experience conflicting desires: the necessity of change meets the craving for safety and the known; old patterns are always stronger than new intentions because they are known and, therefore, easy. As financial guru Rich Keal proclaims, "people won't change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the fear of changing."

 

Single day workshops are incapable of supporting businesses in long-term efforts of re-patterning. We watch clients, year after year, experience significant revelations in our workshops. Following the session we provide a written evaluation and offer specific suggestions of "next steps" for them to take, but within a short period the old patterns of operation will overwhelm their good intentions and we'll start the cycle over again with another one-day workshop the same time next year.

 

We've never been good at doing anything in same-old-way and expecting new results. Stirring the pot and leaving our clients to re-pattern themselves will not serve them in 2009 any better than it did in 2008 so we're changing our strategy.

 

We believe to be of real value we need to support the activation of our client's revelations by helping them re-pattern and achieve the change they desire. In this economy, no one can afford to buy a day of training that leads nowhere. We are building long-term contracts, multiple sessions over the course of a year or more, designed with our clients, with individual coaching as connective tissue between the sessions. The coaching is key to the success of our new strategy.

 

Coaching is a designed relationship in which the power lives with the client; the coach isn't a repository of answers but is there to support for the client in gaining clarity, articulating their goals and taking the necessary steps over the long term to achieve their intentions. Helping our clients achieve their intentions is our intention.

 

So, The Circle Project is evolving. For information on our new model of coaching opportunities, contact us. We would love to explore how our new work can make your workplace more productive, more innovative, more effective, and--dare we say it?--more human.