7 Training Program Mistakes & How To Fix Them

One of the most important rules of training is being able to take advice from people who have been in your shoes or know how to get you past the point where you’re at now. You need other voices – experienced voices – to challenge you and move you forward in the areas where you are struggling. If you have a training process in place or if you’re looking to implement one, take into account these common training mistakes that many coaches make.

The 7 Training Mistakes that the Home Trades Industry makes

1. Bad coaches make training about them, not the student

The employees that make up your team should be the focus of your training. If you’re making the training about what you want and not what they want, you are making a mistake that will ultimately not help your team or yourself. 

2. Asking your team to change before you do

You should be doing the work of training before you ask your employees to do it. Practice what you preach by making yourself better, and then showing your employees that you are dedicated enough to change before asking them to. Even new methods in the field are best tested on yourself before sending your team out to use them.

3. Treating training like a Life or Death serious event

Don’t make your training too serious. This isn’t a situation that can be made better by the absence of happiness and laughter. In fact, your team is going to be detached and guarded if they approach training as a grave task. Laughter, jokes and communicating are the things that make lessons stick in your mind. It’s scientifically proven that your team retains more when they are laughing and relaxing. 

4. Making training too broad and general when it should be focused

You have to be flexible enough to teach a group of people the same lesson and also communicate with individuals about their specialized challenges. You will lose the attention of your team members if you don’t specifically pay attention to the hurdles they are facing where they are now.

5. Only using group training without position specific training

Group conversations are great, but beyond that you need to be training according to the different positions your employees hold. Employees on different levels of seniority or in different positions (technicians, installers, etc) should be trained within those groups for maximum retention. 

6. Skipping the fundamentals

Don’t assume that everyone knows the subject as deeply as you do. Skipping the basics to get to the more complex lessons could cause your team’s performance to decrease. Everyone needs to be thoroughly aware of all the basics of the position before teaching specialized methods. At Service Excellence we refer to these as the PRESS PLAY Principles.

7. Not mixing in a new coaching voice

Sometimes you may feel you are the only voice available to teach or train, but unfortunately that means that your words are not always going to be heard. It may be difficult, but rotating out speakers – or finding coaches outside your company – is often a good motivator for people to start listening again and become engaged in the lesson.

Service Excellence can help

If you’re interested in implementing your own training program or process for your company, we would love to help you with that. Whether you need advice or would like to pursue lessons with our coaches, we are here to help. This is our passion! Check out the rest of our resources on our site or reach out to us!