Corporate psychological training

Job&Careers

Spring 2006

The popularity of corporate psychological training courses is now so great that there are no longer any managers who do not have at least some experience of taking part in some sort of training programme. So it may seem that everything that there is to know about these methods is already known. There are special training companies, training departments in large consulting companies and internal company trainers. It has reached the level of an entire industry. The range of options on the market is huge, from extreme team building exercises, such as jumping off trees into cold water and being buried in the ground, all the way up to precisely structured sales training courses.

Sometimes psychological training courses are perceived not so much as an essential method of working on staff, but as a panacea for any problem in the company: "If I send the lads on a sales training course, the volume of sales will increase straight away," "I'll go on a leadership training course and that'll turn me into a charismatic leader, "On a Life Spring course they'll turn me inside out and my life will undergo a fundamental change for the better." But there is no one received view, as some people consider them as a tiresome obligation, while others look on them as no more than a managerial fad, and others yet see them as just a bit of fun. But there are some who regard training courses as downright harmful, having had bad experience of them. What is a corporate psychological training course actually?.

There is no doubt that corporate psychological training is an effective way of successfully carrying out tasks aimed at dealing with an organisation as a whole, its separate subdivisions and individual employees. It involves more active, more intensive work on developing and improving personal skills than many one-off corporate approaches. Psychological training makes use of all the advantages of group work - a powerful emotional charge, group energy, multiple ways of viewing a situation, constructive feedback, intensive sharing of opinions and accumulation of experience from all the participants of the programme, a safe atmosphere for dealing with complex communication issues, and the opportunity to get different people to work together. All members of the group are placed on an equal footing, as here there are no managers and subordinate, and everyone is united in the magic circle of a psychological training course. Hence psychological training is a very powerful tool and in the right hands it can provide a real possibility to develop. But the more powerful the means, the more harm they can bring. Training sets a kind of benchmark, such as for a successful salesperson, which bears no relation either to an individual person's character or to his capabilities, or indeed to the nature of the company. As a result, people return to the real world not only feeling unable to measure up to the benchmark, but also with diminished self-confidence and even afraid of clients.

Having borne all this in mind, a executive manager who has decided to conduct a psychological training programme in his company should firstly ask himself what the goal of the training is: what is the reason for conducting it and what does he hope to get out of it? Only then can he choose the topic of the course, the type of programme and the training company, and only then can he be sure that the time and emotional and material resources invested it this exercise are not wasted. But how do you choose the right kind of psychological training necessary to yield some kind of benefit? To make it easier to make sense of the myriad opportunities on offer, training programmes can be roughly divided into three types.

The first type consists of standardised training courses for specific general programmes, and for very particular types of employees (such as sales managers, operations executives, cashiers, insurance salesmen, realtors and so on). Training programmes like these can be focused on the psychological basis of effective work with customers, raising the effectiveness of sales pitches, the psychological laws in play behind telephone conversations, the SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) technique, how to behave constructively in conflict situations with customers, improving standards of service and so on. In large companies there may be more than 100 training sessions like this based on one standardised programme. They involve mass instruction in particular skills, abilities and even learning certain words and phrases. As a result, people start talking the same language and thus work in a mutually beneficial way. Particular elements of the corporate culture are instilled in employees, which not only allows the level of it to be raised, but also for it to undergo a fundamental change. Training programmes such as these can be undertaken by internal company trainers, who do not necessarily have to be psychologists, and this is also beneficial from a financial point of view.

The second group consists of training courses for executives. In this case a special programme is worked out for each specific group, which takes into account the particular problems of the company in question, the basis and direction of its business activity and corporate culture and also the individual character of each participant. The topic of the programme can vary - forming a mission and strategies for the company, correct positioning of the company on the market, team building, developing leadership potential, developing core manager skills, resisting manipulation, how to conduct business negotiations effectively and so on. Drawing up a programme like this should start with the head of the company setting the task and a detailed talk with him. An assessment is then conducted, whereby interviews are held with each participant in order to clarify the aims of the training exercise. It is only then that the programme can be actually drawn up.. After the training session it is very important that a third meeting take place with the head of the company for feedback, analysis and discussion of the results. Special post course materials are given out to each participant in the group.

Obviously only external consultants with experience of working with top executives can carry out training sessions on this level. Hence the cost is significantly higher than for the first type described above.

The third type of training is a one-on-one session with the CEO or a member of the board. Although the session is only directed at one person, a group effect is also created and used - a system of "mirrors," feedback, publicity, raising the emotional temperature and so on. In order to reproduce all these group phenomena it is essential for a group of consultants made up of five to 10 people to take part, as well as a head trainer-cum-consultant.

A training session like this will last for anything from two to six hours and works both very powerfully and effectively on an executive. Obviously, the standard of the consultants who work with methods such as this with CEOs has to be incomparably higher than in the other cases described above, and so is the cost. The number of specialists like this on the market can virtually be counted on the fingers of one hand. But such in-depth, painstaking work provides a powerful impulse and drives forward the resolution of issues facing a CEO. A training session like this is precision-focused on the development of a concrete individual. It virtually amounts to coaching. During the session the trainer does not focus on working out what mistakes the subject has made, or on his psychological problems and looking into their root causes, but rather focuses on his potential, on his fundamental values, goals and ways of achieving them. A training session like this can help someone to see what has made him successful, and which personal qualities and behavioural strategies should underpin him. The training is founded on optimistic models of personal development and helps the subject to find his strongest quality, to activate his inner resources, to bring on stream a system of motivation, and teaches him how to position himself correctly. This allows a executive manager to accept calmly his own limitations and problems, to see himself as a complete personality in all his diversity and to work out along which lines he should grow.

	Главная Публикации 2006 Corporate psychological training
Компания Новости Программы Коллектив Публикации Книги Контакты	Все публикации за:— 2011 год — 2010 год — 2009 год — 2008 год — 2007 год — 2006 год — 2005 год — 2004 год — 2003 год — 2002 год — 2001 год Corporate psychological training Job&Careers Spring 2006 The popularity of corporate psychological training courses is now so great that there are no longer any managers who do not have at least some experience of taking part in some sort of training programme. So it may seem that everything that there is to know about these methods is already known. There are special training companies, training departments in large consulting companies and internal company trainers. It has reached the level of an entire industry. The range of options on the market is huge, from extreme team building exercises, such as jumping off trees into cold water and being buried in the ground, all the way up to precisely structured sales training courses. Sometimes psychological training courses are perceived not so much as an essential method of working on staff, but as a panacea for any problem in the company: "If I send the lads on a sales training course, the volume of sales will increase straight away," "I'll go on a leadership training course and that'll turn me into a charismatic leader, "On a Life Spring course they'll turn me inside out and my life will undergo a fundamental change for the better." But there is no one received view, as some people consider them as a tiresome obligation, while others look on them as no more than a managerial fad, and others yet see them as just a bit of fun. But there are some who regard training courses as downright harmful, having had bad experience of them. What is a corporate psychological training course actually?. There is no doubt that corporate psychological training is an effective way of successfully carrying out tasks aimed at dealing with an organisation as a whole, its separate subdivisions and individual employees. It involves more active, more intensive work on developing and improving personal skills than many one-off corporate approaches. Psychological training makes use of all the advantages of group work - a powerful emotional charge, group energy, multiple ways of viewing a situation, constructive feedback, intensive sharing of opinions and accumulation of experience from all the participants of the programme, a safe atmosphere for dealing with complex communication issues, and the opportunity to get different people to work together. All members of the group are placed on an equal footing, as here there are no managers and subordinate, and everyone is united in the magic circle of a psychological training course. Hence psychological training is a very powerful tool and in the right hands it can provide a real possibility to develop. But the more powerful the means, the more harm they can bring. Training sets a kind of benchmark, such as for a successful salesperson, which bears no relation either to an individual person's character or to his capabilities, or indeed to the nature of the company. As a result, people return to the real world not only feeling unable to measure up to the benchmark, but also with diminished self-confidence and even afraid of clients. Having borne all this in mind, a executive manager who has decided to conduct a psychological training programme in his company should firstly ask himself what the goal of the training is: what is the reason for conducting it and what does he hope to get out of it? Only then can he choose the topic of the course, the type of programme and the training company, and only then can he be sure that the time and emotional and material resources invested it this exercise are not wasted. But how do you choose the right kind of psychological training necessary to yield some kind of benefit? To make it easier to make sense of the myriad opportunities on offer, training programmes can be roughly divided into three types. The first type consists of standardised training courses for specific general programmes, and for very particular types of employees (such as sales managers, operations executives, cashiers, insurance salesmen, realtors and so on). Training programmes like these can be focused on the psychological basis of effective work with customers, raising the effectiveness of sales pitches, the psychological laws in play behind telephone conversations, the SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) technique, how to behave constructively in conflict situations with customers, improving standards of service and so on. In large companies there may be more than 100 training sessions like this based on one standardised programme. They involve mass instruction in particular skills, abilities and even learning certain words and phrases. As a result, people start talking the same language and thus work in a mutually beneficial way. Particular elements of the corporate culture are instilled in employees, which not only allows the level of it to be raised, but also for it to undergo a fundamental change. Training programmes such as these can be undertaken by internal company trainers, who do not necessarily have to be psychologists, and this is also beneficial from a financial point of view. The second group consists of training courses for executives. In this case a special programme is worked out for each specific group, which takes into account the particular problems of the company in question, the basis and direction of its business activity and corporate culture and also the individual character of each participant. The topic of the programme can vary - forming a mission and strategies for the company, correct positioning of the company on the market, team building, developing leadership potential, developing core manager skills, resisting manipulation, how to conduct business negotiations effectively and so on. Drawing up a programme like this should start with the head of the company setting the task and a detailed talk with him. An assessment is then conducted, whereby interviews are held with each participant in order to clarify the aims of the training exercise. It is only then that the programme can be actually drawn up.. After the training session it is very important that a third meeting take place with the head of the company for feedback, analysis and discussion of the results. Special post course materials are given out to each participant in the group. Obviously only external consultants with experience of working with top executives can carry out training sessions on this level. Hence the cost is significantly higher than for the first type described above. The third type of training is a one-on-one session with the CEO or a member of the board. Although the session is only directed at one person, a group effect is also created and used - a system of "mirrors," feedback, publicity, raising the emotional temperature and so on. In order to reproduce all these group phenomena it is essential for a group of consultants made up of five to 10 people to take part, as well as a head trainer-cum-consultant. A training session like this will last for anything from two to six hours and works both very powerfully and effectively on an executive. Obviously, the standard of the consultants who work with methods such as this with CEOs has to be incomparably higher than in the other cases described above, and so is the cost. The number of specialists like this on the market can virtually be counted on the fingers of one hand. But such in-depth, painstaking work provides a powerful impulse and drives forward the resolution of issues facing a CEO. A training session like this is precision-focused on the development of a concrete individual. It virtually amounts to coaching. During the session the trainer does not focus on working out what mistakes the subject has made, or on his psychological problems and looking into their root causes, but rather focuses on his potential, on his fundamental values, goals and ways of achieving them. A training session like this can help someone to see what has made him successful, and which personal qualities and behavioural strategies should underpin him. The training is founded on optimistic models of personal development and helps the subject to find his strongest quality, to activate his inner resources, to bring on stream a system of motivation, and teaches him how to position himself correctly. This allows a executive manager to accept calmly his own limitations and problems, to see himself as a complete personality in all his diversity and to work out along which lines he should grow. Marina Melia

Corporate psychological training

Marina Melia