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As technology creeps into our lives and workplaces affecting our communication pathways and corporate training, isn’t it nice to know something as simple and technology free as Baseball is still there for us to enjoy.
Baseball can also teach us something about how to communicate with our
employees/subordinates, to support and effectively assimilate corporate
training and e-learning.
Every spring the most talented baseball players in the world fly to warm
locations in the southern States to participate in their boss’ training &
development programs (wouldn’t that be nice for the rest of us). After their
educational meetings and knowledge transfer exercises they get to practice what
they’ve been taught on the field with role-play and behaviour modeling[1] (Ohhh, to role-play a home run). Once the
educational session is over they depart the training facility (Florida,
Arizona… poor guys) and go to work like the rest of us after a corporate
training session. There is one thing that they do differently though, and have
done so for a lot longer than the vast majority of businesses and organizations
around the world. That is, they bring their instructors with them to coach[2] their daily duties after
completion of their training classes.
They do it this way because they inherently know that it is the only way
to reinforce lessons learned during the (spring) training session. The coach
can reward the players (your employees) for new practices well done and even
better a coach can continue the player’s development in a natural holistic way
that caters to the employee’s (and the companies) individual needs on a daily
basis if necessary, As an added bonus, when it comes to performance review time you are ahead of the game because much of the required information is readily available from the recorded coaching conversations.
MLB team owners who certainly value the ROI on their multi-million dollar players have evolved from one or two coaches to many full-time ones, Spring training, as with corporate training, has also become more focused to improve and hone the player's skill sets, but without effective coaching to assimilate lessons learned in training up to 87 cents on the training investment is wasted, [2] On the job coaching practices, well done, ensure maximum benefit from all training processes and helps your employees to grow, to become the best that they can be and consequently the best that your organization can be.
MLB team owners who certainly value the ROI on their multi-million dollar players have evolved from one or two coaches to many full-time ones, Spring training, as with corporate training, has also become more focused to improve and hone the player's skill sets, but without effective coaching to assimilate lessons learned in training up to 87 cents on the training investment is wasted, [2] On the job coaching practices, well done, ensure maximum benefit from all training processes and helps your employees to grow, to become the best that they can be and consequently the best that your organization can be.
E-learning and classroom training can transfer information and
knowledge, but when it comes to further developing and actually applying
training learned, follow-up coaching is absolutely necessary for your
organization to achieve its full potential.
Baseballs’ humanity and focused simplicity exemplified by people assisting people to grow, that is coaching, has had it right for a long long time…
Baseballs’ humanity and focused simplicity exemplified by people assisting people to grow, that is coaching, has had it right for a long long time…
Peanuts & Crackerjack anyone?
Wayne Pajunen
Wayne is an HR consultant, political affairs columnist and former employee of Canada’s House of Commons and the Liberal Party of Canada. His work also appears in The Hill Times, The News Lens, Taipei Times and AMCHAM Business Topics magazine.
Wayne is an HR consultant, political affairs columnist and former employee of Canada’s House of Commons and the Liberal Party of Canada. His work also appears in The Hill Times, The News Lens, Taipei Times and AMCHAM Business Topics magazine.
[2] Neil Rackham, The
Coaching Controversy, Training and Development Journal, November 1979, Richard
E. Kopelman, Executive coaching as a transfer of training tool: effects on
productivity in a public agency, Public Personnel Management, Winter 1997, and
