How to Effectively Run Global Enterprise-Wide Training
In today’s post, we delve into the world of leadership development programs with none other than Stephanie Constant, a seasoned Senior Consultant and Lead Facilitator at ModelExpand. With over a decade of experience designing impactful programs for global giants like Amazon, Adobe, and Apollo Group, Stephanie is a treasure trove of insights and best practices. In this post, she shares her expertise on implementing training across various clients and her tips and tricks for effective learning programs:
Before diving into how to run impactful programs, why is Learning and Development deemed fundamental in organizational structures?
Global enterprise-wide training programs help align all employees, regardless of their location, to the company's values, principles, and practices. This ensures consistency and helps build a shared understanding among employees about the company's goals and objectives. At ModelExpand, they are a critical mechanism when working with clients to instill fundamental organizational values such as managing teams in a hybrid world, upholding hiring processes, and leading inclusively across teams.
Why is manager training, in particular, a powerful mechanism for leadership and organizational growth?
Managers are the carriers of culture. Our leaders have a ripple effect and their growth is directly connected to organizational growth. The more we elevate and support our leaders, the more we move toward the culture and ultimately business impact we are trying to achieve. It takes strategic partnership, thoughtfulness and collaboration, but leadership training is an incredibly powerful mechanism for growth and change.
What do you consider the top three factors for impactful enterprise training and workshops?
The first factor required to have a successful training is that there needs to be buy-in from the senior leaders of the team. Leadership needs to be in sync on the need for the training and skills development, as well as the expected outcomes of the workshop. Without this level of buy in, there may not be enough motivation participants to truly engage.
Once there is clear alignment on the need and outcomes, it is important that the participants feel safe in the learning environment. Since everyone is in a different place on their journey, psychological safety is paramount. Each learner will have opinions and thoughts and they need to be able to safely share them with their peers and their leadership team.
The last thing that makes the workshop successful is participation. We can teach participants a lot of concepts, but they need to figure out how to put the concepts into action. I always tell participants that they will learn more from each other than they learn from me and I am convinced that is true. My job is to set up time for interactive learning, in-the-moment problem solving with this new skill and ultimately empowerment to put this new skill into practice as soon as they leave. This at scale is incredibly powerful for both leadership, and ultimately, organizational growth.
“My job is to set up time for interactive learning, in-the-moment problem solving with this new skill and ultimately empowerment to put this new skill into practice as soon as they leave. ”
How do you measure success?
Ensure that you’re collecting data before the training and after the training to 1) understand where participants started and 2) provide insights about how attitudes, knowledge and/or behavioral metrics change after the leadership development opportunity. Focus groups are a powerful way to better understand participants and leaders in a region to understand where they are on their journey and what is most important to them before and after training. These focus groups are easy to conduct virtually, which is especially beneficial for geographically distributed teams.
At ModelExpand, you deliver training across the world. How do you ensure the training incorporates a global approach and recognizes regional nuances?
Global training requires more planning and research. Every country and region are on their own journey, especially as it pertains to a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion-focused training, and it is important that we honor that journey. Focus groups are an impactful way to better understand participants in region and illuminate where they are on their journey and what is most important to them. Additionally, we often work with a client contact within that region to ensure on the ground insights and partnership. Using this collective discovery process, we tailor the training. One important difference for ModelExpand training is that we provide practical resources as part of our training, and we specifically tailor these resources for each region that we are holding the training in. For example, if we’re conducting a workshop on sourcing strategies, the sourcing partners and resources we provide are specific to the regions we are working with.
The resources, research cited, and communication forum within the training take regional dynamics into account. These efforts help build trust with global audiences and allow for learning to truly occur.
What has been your favorite ModelExpand moment during a workshop? What topic do you think garners the most “aha” moments?
One of my favorite moments in the workshops is when someone suddenly realizes that there are many ways to be inclusive that they did not even think about. With Diversity, Inclusion on Equity, I love when we talk about the importance of giving yourself grace and acknowledging that we all make mistakes. People have an “aha” moment when they no longer expect themselves to be perfect. They realize that we are all on our own journey and that by simply building greater awareness and committing to doing better, it can help move the work forward and make a big impact.
How do you recommend embedding on-demand learning modules in Learning and Development?
On-demand learning modules can be a very useful part of a Learning and Development strategy. When used in a blended approach along with a live training, online modules can be used to teach the core concepts allowing the training to be focused on hands-on learning and application of the concepts. Varying modalities of learning is often the most powerful way to get all learners involved. Below is an example of how to embed online modules into a broader strategy. We often recommend cohort-based learning:
To learn more about ModelExpand’s training programs, you can view our case studies or set up a call with one of our consultants.
ModelExpand is a strategic workplace advisory firm that helps companies put their ideals into action. We partner with organizations to implement, operationalize, and scale their Culture and People initiatives in a way that improves performance across the organization. The ModelExpand team is composed of people from all walks of life. The diversity of the team’s lived experiences, robust industry knowledge, and research acumen fuel ModelExpand’s innovative and tailored solutions. ModelExpand’s work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and CultureAmp.