PRACTICE THE CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER
THE GYM OF FIRST-TIME MANAGERS
It’s clearly in front of us. A new generation of workers and future managers is on the rise.
And this new generation is different from those in the past.
Most of all, they are giving a new meaning to the word LEADERSHIP.
WITH MILLENIALS
A NEW MEANING FOR LEADERSHIP
IS BEING INTRODUCED
INFORMAL
HORIZONTAL
TRUSTFUL
BASED ON CONVERSATIONS
What they associate to this word is a more informal, horizontal and trustful relationship, based, essentially, on conversations.
By the way, have you ever reflected on how managers – in particular first-time managers – spend their time during the day?
Well… 80% of the time of a first-time manager is spent in conversations!
DID YOU KNOW?
CONVERSATION IS WHERE
LEADERS SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME
THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE FOR FIRST-TIME MANAGERS.
Thus, as first-time managers step-up, providing them with the opportunity to master leadership conversations is the most effective way to support them in making a difference.
WHAT HAPPENS IF MANAGERS ARE NOT GOOD IN CONVERSATIONS?
Look no further than this research done by The Ken Blanchard Companies for the answer:
When we look at how first-time managers feel six months and one year after accepting a role, clearly training they have received for their role was probably not very actionable and practice-based.
There is obvious area for improvement.
Don’t forget that a Manager who doesn’t feel prepared for the role will be less confident, and therefore less effective, as we know that confidence drives performance, and performance drives results.
NOW, the problem is: how do you deliver effective training on conversations?
Delivering knowledge on how-to is certainly important. However, when you choose a typical one-shot training strategy (with limited scope and follow-up), the result looks like this:
WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
TRADITIONAL L&D
IS "ONE-SHOT" LEARNING
And the same applies if, instead of class training you do online videos, webinars, inspiring articles or more blended but still monodirectional and knowledge-transfer like solutions – yes, even if they are digital.
DOES IT LOOK LIKE YOUR STRATEGY?
If you answered yes, you generate a spike of attention that quickly fades into the daily routine.
If you have the resources, you will likely run another session later on, maybe adding new contents on top of refreshing the previous one. You will often have the feeling of starting over and over again.
THEY ARE NOT WRONG
THE PROBLEM IS THAT OFTEN...
OFFER DOES NOT MATCH DEMAND:
Too often we observe a misalignment between what L&D can offer and the real need of trainees is about when it comes to leadership training.
Maybe you think that it makes good sense to provide trainees with a course in communication to help focus and enhance their efforts to be an effective leaders.
Well, I fully agree, but it’s not enough. What really makes the difference is Consistent Practice.
Practical immersive training is what can make all the difference in your first-time managers upskill strategy: they practice, learn and gain experience. Fast.
However it is very difficult to provide actionable experience in class-oriented training programs.
Do you still plan classes where you will just “talk about” conversations?
If your answer is yes, then you are in trouble.
This isn’t just because of COVID-19 – which alone is forcing you to find new strategies for delivering effective training remotely:
Situational Analysis - PANIC!
- COVID-19 is like nothing we’ve ever seen
- Major physical events dropping fast
- Little choice but to cancel live attendees for near-trm events
- Three choices:
- Cancel the event completely and wait until next year
- Postpone and be in limbo indefinitely
- Pivot to digital
It’s also because class-oriented training design is too unbalanced toward delivering un-actionable knowledge instead of actionable practical experience:
THE OLD WAY
IT'S TOO UNBALANCED
ON DELIVERING JUST KNOWLEDGE
MORE SPACE TO PRACTICAL TRAINING ON CONVERSATIONS IS NEEDED
With 80% of a first-time manager’s time spent in conversations, the problem is that conversations are left behind in today’s training design.
Conversations are dealt with in the class-based, how-to approach.
It’s time to change this approach and turn conversations into the core skill you need to develop.
A NEW MINDSET IS NEEDED
WE NEED A SHIFT
FROM KNOWLEDGE TO EXPERIENCE
YOU SHOULD FLIP YOUR TRAINING STRATEGY.
Ok, now let’s look at the WAY you should deliver leadership training to your first-time managers.
Let’s start at the end: what goal do you want to achieve? How do you measure the success of your training?
Let me be clear: in an actionable and practice-based training approach, only two measures actually matter: Confidence and Self-Awareness.
THE KEY OUTCOMES
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO BE GREAT AT CONVERSATIONS?
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THESE TWO METRICS
Now look at this case study.
CASE STUDY
LEADERS GROW WITH
CONSISTENT PRACTICE
We supported a bank in training 250 new managers.
They practiced for 6 months using digital role plays.
The results were clear: Confidence and Self-Awareness improved dramatically in a set of eight key conversations
The question is:
how did we get there?
You are probably thinking about one of the most popular ways to deliver practice on conversations – Role Playing.
Unfortunately, TRADITIONAL role playing is not the right answer:
THE THREE MAIN LIMITATIONS
ROLE PLAY
DOESN'T LET YOU:
ROLE PLAY
DOESN'T LET YOU:
SCALE
YOU CAN’T DELIVER CONSISTENTLY
MEASURE
YOU CAN’T MEASURE OBJECTIVELY
PLAY SAFE
TRAINEES FEEL OBSERVED
THE THREE MAIN LIMITATIONS
ROLE PLAY
DOESN'T LET YOU:
SCALE
YOU CAN’T DELIVER CONSISTENTLY
MEASURE
YOU CAN’T MEASURE OBJECTIVELY
PLAY SAFE
TRAINEES FEEL OBSERVED
Our experience has shown that the three primary limitations of Role Plays are:
-
- They don’t scale. This limits opportunities for trainees to practice over and over again. Like in sports, practice must be done over and over.
- They don’t measure objectively, since evaluation is based on human opinion.
- Trainees worry too much about mistakes. Role Plays make trainees feel as if they are in a fish bowl, which causes overthinking.
Traditional Role Plays are not what you need for consistent and effective practice.
Let’s give a look now at this comparison table. Here we benchmarked the five most popular types of practice-based learning activities.
Column one lists the main pillars you should look for when selecting your solution:
As you can easily see, what really makes the difference is Digital Role Play.
Wait - what is a Digital Role Play?
At its core, a Digital Role Play is a Role Play similar to ones you have done in your learning programs. So let’s see what the word ”DIGITAL” adds:
- Your trainee interacts with a digital or virtual character through a screen, instead of sitting in front of you while each of you play one role in the conversation in real time.
- The trainees will play alone, without the need for you to attend or to participate in the conversation. This is very important for at least two reasons:
-
- It reduces the stress of being «watched»
- It allows to plan for multiple sessions in a scalable way.
- It is based on sophisticated AI-driven algorithms that control the interaction, adding a life-like unpredictability in situations.
- Finally, as a digital, it tracks the interaction, enabling you to monitor the ongoing practice, gaining an overview of both the effort spent and the results achieved.
SkillGym is the Digital Role Play Platform you need to move from volatile knowledge to rock-solid experience.
HAVEN'T TRIED SKILLGYM YET?
SkillGym is the first and most powerful AI-based platform for practicing leadership conversations.
To succeed, you need to ensure engagement, consistency, curriculum-based scenarios, effective feedback and crystal-clear metrics to monitor the trainees’ improvements.
SkillGym helps you to introduce practice-based training as a pillar of skill development, taking care of all the steps required to deliver great value.
Each trainee is automatically engaged from enrollment with extensive tutorials, digital role-plays, individual scheduling, reminders, metrics and feedback.
SkillGym helps you to introduce practice-based training as a pillar of skill development, taking care of all the steps required to deliver great value.
Each trainee is automatically engaged from enrollment with extensive tutorials, digital role-plays, individual scheduling, reminders, metrics and feedback.
THE SKILLGYM EXPERIENCE
Conversation mastery requires consistent practice.
No man is an island. Unless people inside your organization live in a vacuum, they need to communicate with other employees, clients and stakeholders. Each of us can and should change the world, one conversation at a time. But first we must practice to master our skill of dealing with conversations that matter.
Start today to deliver Authentic, Immersive, Real-Time Practice
THE GYM OF FIRST-TIME MANAGERS
THE PERFECT PROGRAM FOR NEW LEADERS
We turn Leadership Conversations into Stories in which each trainee’s goal is to discuss and solve business-related issues with members of their teams.
Through these eight empowering conversations, first-time leaders can grow employee mindsets, engage employees and foster performance and continuous self-improvement
Previous
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The Gym of First-Time Managers specifically addresses the most critical business conversations to develop experience through consistent practice.
- Give feedback to Mark to improve his sales performance.
- Help Yumi to work better in teams.
- Boost Danielle's motivation in completing a strategic project.
- Improve Luke's performance helping him set priorities.
- Boost Sonia's confidence to optimize the team's performance.
- Delegate an action plan to Robert to implement.
- Investigate with Melinda about negative feedback from the client.
- Assign Amy & Ted's next-year objectives to aim higher.
It’s tough to transition from an individual contributor who does the work well to a leader who must continue to do the work, plus lead others. Leaders are expected to give directions to team members and monitor the team’s work to stay organized and meet deadlines.
They need to develop the ability to build a team, maintain or enhance team chemistry, inspire team members to complete assigned work, encourage others to surpass expectations, understand what motivates others, and motivate without monetary incentives.
- Give feedback to Mark to improve his sales performance.
- Help Yumi to work better in teams.
- Boost Danielle's motivation in completing a strategic project.
- Improve Luke's performance helping him set priorities.
- Boost Sonia's confidence to optimize the team's performance.
- Delegate an action plan to Robert to implement.
- Investigate with Melinda about negative feedback from the client.
- Assign Amy & Ted's next-year objectives to aim higher.
HOW DO FIRST-TIME MANAGERS LEARN IN SKILLGYM?
They meet authentic characters.
AI ensures that the characters’ reactions reflect, in real time, the intensity of the dialogue. The result is an authentic conversation, where trainees meet all the shades of intentions, hesitations, fears and feelings that they would expect from a real person.
They interact in real time in challenging scenarios.
We turn Leadership Conversations into Stories in which the trainees’ goal is to discuss and solve business-related issues with members of their teams. Each available sentence is written by professional storytellers, showing one aspect of a typical behavior that you may want to apply at each point in the conversation.
They can measure their progress and understand their gaps.
SkillGym turns the conversation into sharp metrics to quantify the results of performance. Confidence, Self-Awareness, 50+ communication-related Skills and effort-based indicators are tracked, monitored and benchmarked on the way. This makes evidence do the talking.
They can review their conversations in details.
Augmented Replay lets you select any conversation played in the past and review it, watching the entire scene from a third party point of view. You can pause, skip, move forward and backward. The overlaid Performance Wave gives you one “at a glance” overview of the conversation’s flow quality. Call-outs let you analyze the details and impact of each behavior, including the counterpart’s relevant reactions.
HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM SKILLGYM*:
Better conversations improve the business environment as a whole.
Thanks to improvements made in leadership conversations, our customers quickly achieve significant results that profoundly affect the quality of the work environment and motivation of others, which therefore improves business results.
In a sense, they are ‘compounded effects’: positive results that stem rom upskilling conversation skills in leaders. What we see is most often is a combination of six elements impacting the entire organization, with improvements* including:
+3%
INCREASE
Direct report
customer retention
+18%
INCREASE
Direct report
productivity
+35%
INCREASE
Quality of
internal relationships
-25%
DECREASE
Manager burnout
-12%
DECREASE
Team turnover
-30%
DECREASE
Internal conflict
* These figures are estimates from some of our clients. Results may vary according to the type of organization and the users’ learning agility, leadership approach and consistency of training effort.
The reason SkillGym is so effective?
Neuroscience inspired all our field research.
Our brain is very powerful.
It can turn volatile learning into enduring experience through consistent practice.
SkillGym activates the receptors that accelerate the excitement of our limbic system.
The limbic system is known as the emotional brain and contains the amygdala, which is located inside the frontal temporal lobe. This means that it is part of the so-called deep brain, where basic emotions and survival instincts stand out.
The reactions generated while stimulating the amygdala are faster than the ones generated when we use the parts of the brain that act rationally. Moreover, the use of emotions in training has been proven to improve retention and recall of what has been learned.
The limbic system is known as the emotional brain and contains the amygdala, which is located inside the frontal temporal lobe. This means that it is part of the so-called deep brain, where basic emotions and survival instincts stand out.
The reactions generated while stimulating the amygdala are faster than the ones generated when we use the parts of the brain that act rationally. Moreover, the use of emotions in training has been proven to improve retention and recall of what has been learned.
We work with the best.
From machine learning to conversational models, we love to work with the best universities to develop the most advanced solutions for practicing conversations.
Our most recent awards:
