Wrong question!
Let me try again: Do we need more leadership now?
Oh yes, more than ever before! We need leadership to provide guidance, orientation, future perspective and encouragement in a time ahead, which will be full of challenges and uncertainties.
So the right question regarding leadership training is, whether it leads to an effective increase of leadership.
Does it?
Classical classroom training in leadership is not an option in times of travel restrictions, crisis-reduced budgets and social distancing. And let’s be honest: classroom training was on decline long before the Corona crisis started: Often travel cost and travel time were higher than the cost of the training itself, and last-minute cancellations contributed even more to the ineffectiveness. In addition there is always a lot of administration necessary to make classroom training happen.
So online video tutorial seemed to be the solution: 24/7 available, low cost, perfect! Really?
There is are lot of high-quality online tutorials available, some of them even cost-free. It is a great resource
· to prepare a learning experience
· to add to a learning experience or
· to follow-up to it.
It just doesn’t replace the learning experience itself, not when it is about leadership.
In an effective learning experience in leadership, the learner connects content with her own reality and applies the content in her reality afterwards.
To make this connection between learning content and own reality, a learning experience in leadership has to be interactive. And this is exactly what online tutorials are not. Elaborate versions might check your knowledge acquisition with a multiple choice and send you back to start if you got it wrong, but they can not help you in transferring learning content to your current leadership challenges.
In-between highly interactive / high cost classroom training and low interactive / low cost video tutorials are webinars, in other words: virtual classrooms.
Webinars are relatively low-cost because participants can learn from wherever they are. Still webinars are highly interactive with screen sharing, audio- and video connection, shared virtual whiteboards, instant polls and more.
In the past 20 months I trained about 1,500 managers in leadership via webinar. In the beginning it was not always easy, because both trainer and participants have to get familiar with this new format.
Step-by-step, however, all learned to use the new features: commenting via chat function, playful usage of the shared whiteboard, anonymous polls about sensitive questions, here and there a short video sequence to include some entertainment – just to name a few.
Personally I still prefer to be with a group in a real room, walk around, look people in the eyes when I talk with them.
A webinar, however, is a great second winner: still not as good as the original face-to-face experience – but over time with more experience in using all features almost as effective.
If you have not yet experienced a leadership training via webinar:
Simply try it:
HRMnext 