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Designing a Training Course for Having Good One-To-One Meetings – The Performance Goal

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Photo by Kouji Tsuru on Unsplash

Ola has been working on developing a mini-management development programme for a group of new and inexperienced managers at OpenNoviz. The programme consists of four modules which are:

  • Setting expectations
  • Giving effective feedback
  • Having good coaching conversations
  • Having good one-to-one meetings.

Ola has already developed the first three modules and the last one to develop is, how to have good one-to-one meetings. As usual, she starts out by identifying and writing out the performance goal for the module. The performance goal should identify the reason why the training is needed. It should identify what performance gap will be closed if the training is successful. There are a number of performance gaps that people can have that prevent them from performing as required and these are knowledge, skills, motivation, habits, environment, and communication gaps. While training can mostly help with knowledge and skill gaps and may influence motivation and habit gaps, environment and communication gaps can’t be dealt with through training.

For this particular development area, Ola has identified these gaps:

  • Knowledge gaps: They need to have good information about how to have good one-to-one meetings.
  • Skill gaps: They need to be able to use the information they have about having good one-to-one meetings to conduct an actual meeting successfully.
  • Motivation gaps: Motivation defines our willingness to do something. These managers have never done one-to-one meetings before so they may not be motivated to do them. Giving them the right level and mix of knowledge accompanied by practical skills can help them build more confidence and hence improve their motivation to do one-to-one meetings.
  • Habit gaps: One-to-one meetings need to become a habit for these managers. Something that they do consistently.

And here is Ola’s performance goal for the session:

The managers will have frequent and consistent one-to-one meetings with their team members which allow them to support their team members’ wellbeing, performance, and development.

Now that Ola has written the performance goal, her next step is to define the learning objectives for the session.

In the next post, we will see Ola write the module’s learning objectives.

Designing a training course for setting clear expectations – The performance goal and communication plan

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Photo by Bypaul on Unsplash

Ola, the L&D Manager for OpenNoviz has been tasked with helping some new and inexperienced managers develop some key skills that they can use to lead and manage the performance of their teams. Ola has decided to focus on three core skills which are:

  • setting clear expectations
  • giving effective feedback
  • able to have coaching conversations

This mini management development programme has the buy-in of the CEO and the rest of the senior leadership team but Ola knows she must communicate what she wants to do and why to key stakeholders which in this case are the CEO, senior leadership team, managers to be trained, and their managers.

Before she puts her communication plan together, she wants to be clear about what her performance goal is. This is her first step in designing and developing each of the courses for the programme. It will also help her to communicate her purpose to the key stakeholders.

Her overall goal for the programme is to,

support new managers to be able to guide and engage their teams in a supportive way that allows their team members to perform as required.

The Performance Goals

The performance goals she has written for each of the sessions are:

Setting clear expectations: Managers will work with each of their team members to set clear expectations which clarify what level of performance the team members is expected to achieve and how they will be supported by their manager.

Giving effective feedback: Managers will give frequent feedback to their team members which tells them about specific behaviour, the impact of the behaviour and what they need to change or continue doing?

Having coaching conversations: Managers will take a non-directive approach to support their team members by using listening and questioning skills to guide them to solve some of their problems and overcome challenges.

The Communication Plan

Now that Ola has an overall goal for the programme and three performance goals for each of the training sessions she plans to deliver, she now wants to put a communication plan together. This is important because she wants to make sure that her key stakeholders know what she will be doing, why she is doing it and what their involvement and commitment will be.

After thinking for a while and asking for some advice from the HR Manager and two other senior managers in the company (and some external colleagues too), she sets outs the following plan.

  • Meet with the CEO to ask whether he can join a 30-minute Zoom meeting to talk to all the managers who will be trained.
  • Write a script for the CEO about what the purpose of the programme is. The script will contain information about what the programme is about, the purpose of the programme (covering the overall goal and the performance goal for each training course), the commitment expected from each manager and how the programme will be delivered.
  • Book the Zoom meeting and make it clear in the invitation that the CEO wants to meet with all managers.
  • Have the Zoom meeting
  • Send out a welcome and introduction letter to all managers involved in the programme after the meeting.

It’s a Wednesday and Ola wants to start the programme on a Monday as promised. The first part of the programme will be the Zoom meeting with all the managers. Ola speaks to the CEO about her plan and she (let’s call her Cheryl) agrees to it. With that in place, Ola sends out an invitation for the Zoom meeting to all the managers. In the invitation she makes it clear that they will be meeting with the CEO.

The next Monday as planned, the Zoom meeting with the managers happens. Altogether, there are 15 managers who should attend the programme (the focus is on first-line managers at this point). Twelve of them attend the meeting and Cheryl delivers her message by telling them why the training is important, what is expected of them and that they must all attend. She asks for their support and commitment. The HR Manager and operations director also attend the meeting and they speak too about the importance of the programme.

Ola is satisfied with how the meeting went, she has got the buy-in for the programme from the senior leadership team, HR Manager and the managers who will be trained.

The ball has started rolling.

Now, it’s time for design, development and delivery.