Written by Last week, I met with Jim, a manager of a technology company. We started talking about the challenges he was having leading his team. Jim had been working with his team on positioning a technological advancement in their product. During his research he came across an article that would help his team do just that. Jim emailed the article to his team and anticipated they would absorb the information, learn something, and share in his excitement. Instead, he got crickets – radio silence.
Jim thought maybe his team just need the opportunity to collaborate, so during his weekly meeting he brought up the article and all of a sudden everyone was acting like he was Medusa – averting their eyes from his gaze. They hadn’t read the article. In fact, more than half of them couldn’t even find the email when searching back through their inboxes. As you can imagine this left Jim pulling out his hair in frustration. He knew he had found valuable content for his team that would help them improve their performance.
I shared with Jim that he wasn’t alone. Creating content that will engage and educate teams isn’t easy. It can seem like a daunting process. Copying and pasting a link is simple, but it’s worthless if the content isn’t be used, and you’re unable to track and measure who’s doing what.
That’s why we came up with 4 ways to train smarter not harder:
- Create Video-Based Content –Your phone’s camcorder is all your need to create your very own video-based training. Map out what you want to say then point and click. Employees much prefer to learn from someone they know and trust than from an unknown source. They are also more comfortable than ever to consume amateur video. Need some help? Check out this article we wrote about shooting video
- Refresh Current Content – If you’ve found an article or video you want your team to learn from, why not spruce it up and customize it. They’ll appreciate you adding context and making it relatable. Bonus points for adding quiz questions that focus on the concepts you most want your team to retain.
- Curate Content – Pull content from different sources to create a succinct message. The common mistake most leaders make is to send the whole resource to a learner when on average under 50% is relevant.
- Don’t Over Do It – Pace yourself. If you’re sending content every 5 minutes, your employees are going to disengage and you’ll find your message lost. Instead try to get in a rhythm and spread content out over time.
By following these simple steps you can train your team, increase results and you won’t be pulling your hair out in frustration.
If you have team members and want to quickly an easily distribute training to your team sign up for your free LearnLoft Account. Get a Loft. Train Your Team. See Results.
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