Looking for Team Building? Look at Training

Even in the best of times, it can be a challenge to make sure your staffers are getting the training they need to perform at a higher level and to grow in their roles. When your world has turned upside down, it can be next to impossible. Until your entire team is back in the office, training is going to be online.

There’s no dearth of online technical training. Your trick is to incorporate team building, so you get the best of both worlds.

• Choose topics of value to the greatest number of your team. Even if the subject is elementary to someone, you can raise the level of complexity in other ways.
• Have your team log in to a ZOOM session with you, 30 minutes before the training starts. Set the stage for the training. Why is it relevant? What should they listen to?
• Bring the team back to ZOOM for 30 minutes after the close. Prepare questions that pose scenarios and ask how to apply the content. As an alternative to this second meeting, assign a two-page writing project that relates the material to a project on the team member’s desk.

Remember, though, no amount of online technical training is a substitute for training that comes from you, the boss. Because your training will be online as well, It’s even more essential to add tactics that increase the team-building potential.

• Quick icebreakers can be fun and don’t have to be cheesy. Google “five-minute icebreakers.”
• Different people learn in different ways. Make material accessible individually, so anyone who needs time to prepare is ready to participate fully in a team conversation.
• Take time to make it clear how the training relates to an ongoing project or problem or to qualifying for advancement and higher pay.

Invest in training as an opportunity for team building and get the reward of a team that carries your practice to success.