In addition to being human, you have another problem. While you are away at training, nobody is picking up your slack; your work is just piling up waiting for you to return. That's why you run back to your office during breaks, whip out your cell phone during a lull, bring your laptop to class so you can get some "work" done, etc. Can you see that these conditions do not exactly promote effective learning? Your mind is at least partially somewhere else.

In addition, when you do finish the course and get back to the office, your boss jumps all over you with an emergency that of course only you can handle, and says something like, 

"Am I glad you're back. Look at what happened while you were gone. If I had known this was gonna happen, I never would have let you go to that #%$&^* training. We just don't have time for that stuff." 

Furthermore, it is a rare organization or boss who can tolerate the natural slowdown in your production while you are working at trying something new.

So, needless to say, it's very easy and natural for you to revert to your old way of doing things. It may not be as potentially good as the new way, but at least you're comfortable with it, you know how to cope with these crises, and, well, you'll get around to trying out your new skills when things let up a bit. Yeah, right!!!

The problem is twofold: First, you may be taking the program for the wrong reasons. Second, you have probably not prepared adequately to take the training or to ensure that you fully utilize what you learn.

Let's look first at the reasons for taking the training. Reasons like those mentioned earlier - your coworker thought it was good, your boss signed you up, it's on your employee development  form - just are not compelling reasons. They do not provide sufficient readiness and motivation for most of us to dedicate ourselves to the process of preparing to accept new learning and deliberately and conscientiously apply it back on the job.

If you think about it, the only truly legitimate reason for investing time, effort and money in training is to improve your work unit's performance by improving your own performance. But to do that effectively, you need to know specifically the measurable performance criteria of the work unit that should be impacted by your improvement. In other words, what are the specific business measures -success factors - that will be changed by applying what you learn?

For example, if you are taking a course in interpersonal communications, you need to be able to identify what important work unit performance measures will be improved, and how. How will you, and your manager, know that you are being successful with your new skills, and to what degree? 

If you and your manager cannot specify the business measures that will be impacted, you are not ready for the training! 

The only legitimate exception to this is if you are taking a course for purely developmental purposes with no specific expectation of changing anything in your current role.

Which leads us to the second consideration: adequate preparation. Click Continue.

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