Senior or expert employees are often reluctant to publicly
admit their need for skills input in areas where they feel they
‘should’ know everything already. Having reached a responsible
management position on merit, it can be tough for high-ranking
employees to admit that they don’t have the basic management
knowledge and skills that a recent Management Studies graduate
working in an entry-level position takes for granted.
Often organisations lose out as their senior team don’t coach
employees, or have difficulty delegating or managing effective
appraisal interviews. The assumption is often that senior managers
don’t want to carry out these management tasks as they see them as
a distraction or waste of time. Managers are also accused of not
wanting to develop their teams in order to protect their own
position. The immediate response of the managers tends to be that
they don’t have time. Admitting to not having time is acceptable,
even approved in the workplace, like being rubbish at maths, but
people will rarely admit that that they simply don’t know how to
manage people.
Those that do recognise their own development needs often do not
want to attend workshops with more junior colleagues for fear of
appearing weak or foolish. Training & Learning Managers know this
and often the acceptable option is to sign up a senior employee
for a Masters or Executive Development programme at a top business
school. Whilst this can provide useful contacts, networking
opportunities and cutting edge theory it doesn’t address the input
of fundamental people management skills. This can further erode a
manager’s confidence as s/he assumes that the problem lies with
their inherent and unfixable lack of people management skills
rather than an easily addressed skills development need.
E-learning allows all mangers at all hierarchical and experience
levels to experiment with new knowledge and skills, discreetly
discovering the fundamental management knowledge they lack without
being placed in an embarrassing position. The material is pitched
to address the development needs of all managers.
Interestingly we have found that whilst senior managers initially
expect to be able to whiz through e-learning material skim reading
and missing out sections, they tend to fare less well than others
when it comes to assessment. Quickly, however, we see learning
times increasing along with test results.
Structured Training’s e-learning modules can be made available to
everyone, everywhere, at any time. Everyone can experiment and
learn whether out of urgent need or simple curiosity. The truly
shy learner can even make the most of the web based nature of the
learning to study at home.
Find out more by selecting one of the
options on the right.
