152. The Top Three Reasons Most Training Doesn't Work
Most business leaders and business owners feel like they spend a ridiculous amount of their time repeating the same things over and over again. Simultaneously, those same business owners and leaders feel like they're not making meaningful progress on the embarrassing and costly problems and mistakes consistently hamper progress. Today, we're gonna dive into top three reasons I think that happens and how to fix each one of them.
Narrator:Running a service business can be hard. It is not unusual for business owners in industries like contracting, home repair, auto repair, Business to business services like janitorial, IT and accounting, and many others to feel overwhelmed by all the priorities facing them at any given time. Between addressing the needs of the customers, managing the employees, figuring out the financials and getting processes in place, Feeling like you're making significant progress on your business journey can be difficult. Welcome to service industry success, hosted by Brian Harding. Each week, Brian will look at real world strategies for building the business you are dreaming of while also sharing tactics to get Through some of the most frustrating parts of business ownership with a lot more ease.
Narrator:Let's get started.
Brian:One of the most feeding feelings we can have as we spend a huge amount of time teaching, explaining, begging, threatening, and trying to problem solve to get what we need. We talk about things like, hey. Here's a problem we had last week, or here's mistakes we're making. Here's things we gotta get better at. We wanna reiterate.
Brian:Here's how we do the thing, and, simultaneously, we feel frustrated. We just keep facing the same issues over and over again. Of course, there's like anything in life. There's a number of reasons this happens. But today, I'm gonna cover what I think are the top 3.
Brian:I'm also gonna show you how to overcome these things and offer you a solution that will change your entire approach to training as well as the results you're getting by a nearly unbelievable amount. So we'll get to that later on. But for now, let's just let me tell you. My life changed when I figured out a few things, specifically about how to teach, educate employees, get them to understand what we're trying to accomplish, how we would know we're on the right track, you know, tons of things that we talk about here on a regular basis. Now some of the things I was taught by great mentors and a couple of them, not very many, couple of them, I stumbled upon myself out of sheer luck and desperation.
Brian:So The first one we wanna talk about today, the first biggest mistake I think we make in training and education is conducting ourselves as if just telling them to do the thing will work. So let me say it again. We conduct ourselves, and we we approach things as if just telling them would work. My number one rule in training is if just telling them worked, I wouldn't be having this conversation. I probably wouldn't be having this problem.
Brian:There's a very high likelihood that I've just told them this thing before at least one time. And if we're having this problem again, that means just telling them doesn't work. This is something I tell folks I work with, like, Tattoo this on your forearm and read it every single time you're gonna have a conversation with an employee or group of employees about something you need done. What do you mean just telling them doesn't work, Brian? What I mean is if I tell them I tell Johnny or a group of employees, hey.
Brian:Here's how we need to do the thing. You know, here's how we do this. Here's how we all say we're gonna do that, whatever it is. And they nod and smile at all the appropriate times. They walk out of the meeting.
Brian:There's a very high likelihood it's gonna the problem's gonna happen again. It could be hours later. I've literally had conversations with employees where I say, we literally talked about this less than 3 hours ago in our in our weekly meeting, and they sheepishly look at the ground, kick rocks, and go, yeah. I know. In those meetings, there's a very high likelihood I just told them, and it's a very high likelihood that they nodded and smiled all the appropriate times and and then went out and do what they really wanted anyway.
Brian:So I mean is by just telling them, like, I have to ask a bunch of questions. I have to not talk very much because I can't diagnose where they get it and where they don't get it if I'm the one talking. The entire time I'm talking, I cannot diagnose a single piece of where they get it and where they don't get it. And if I can't diagnose where they get it and where they don't get don't get it, I have no idea what kind of conversation I should be having with them. So common question I get when I ask when I talk to people about about this is, do you mean 1 on 1 or in a group, Brian?
Brian:I mean, both. If I'm standing in front of Johnny and I say, you know, we're talking about a thing we need done. If I'm just telling him and and he doesn't get it, how would I know? If I just tell him and he thinks he got it and he's completely wrong, how would I know? And then I have the frustration because later on, the thing doesn't happen the right way.
Brian:And then I'm pissed, and I say, what what happened? I told you. And he says, I know, and the problem still happens. So what are the kind of things we do besides just telling them I ask a lot of questions? I I I I don't allow myself to talk more than, you know, hopefully, 20% of the time because if I'm talking, I can't diagnose things.
Brian:And the only way I can diagnose things, the only way I can even know that we have an agreement on on what we're trying to accomplish is when they say so. So that's what I mean when I say if just telling them worked, we wouldn't be having this problem. Because I can tell you from my experience, both as a person who's done this myself countless times and as an employee, seeing this done countless times with peers and bosses and subordinate managers, all the whole range. What happens is we say, we have a 30 minute meeting or a 60 minute meeting, and we have these 7 topics to cover. Oh, yeah.
Brian:And we screwed up this thing last week. We gotta make sure we get that in there. And to say quote, unquote save time, we squeeze a bunch of things in there. We don't have time for questions. We don't have time to really get into a conversation.
Brian:It's going to be re be me reiterating, reminding, explaining. Like, we have all these euphemisms for just telling them, and just telling them doesn't work, in my opinion. So that's the first thing. 2nd biggest mistake is using general or nebulous words and phrases. So I'll give you some examples that are pretty common, but I'm just making these up.
Brian:There are descriptors that sound really good, like good, amazing, 5 star, excellent, coupled with nebulous actions or abstract ideas like customer service, great communication, quality. And when we put all these things together, it produces phrases that sound really good, but they have no objective identifiable meaning, like excellent customer service, amazing quality, 5 star of communication. Now. These things all sound fantastic. But if I asked a 100 people what each one of these phrases means, how many different answers you think I would get.
Brian:If I asked a 100 people, what is excellent customer service? How many different answers do you think I would get? I, Conservatively, we guess I get well it would get well over 80. Some would focus on the outcome. Some would focus on the how.
Brian:Some would focus on, well, here's what happened to me last Thursday, and a a Coke. It would go in at least 80 different directions. Same thing if I had said, what is amazing quality? And so if I'm asking a question to a 100 people, and I know I'm gonna get 87 different answers, when I stand in front of the groom and say, you know, We need to focus on excellent customer service, and I know that if I asked a 100 people, I'd get 87 different answers on what that means. I know right out of the gate, We're not likely to be aiming for the same thing.
Brian:But I have to shorten the amount of time. I I commit to this topic in, quote, unquote, training. I I I get to I get to save time. I get to be more efficient. I get to squeeze more things in.
Brian:And all the things I squeezed in, We make 0 progress on getting better. And I also get to check the box and say, I did my part by giving the direction. So my part is done. Now it's on them. Well, it's my opinion.
Brian:You probably know this by now that I don't think that's great leadership. If I'm doing check the box activities and so I can relinquish myself of the responsibility of the outcome, I don't consider that great leadership. Great leadership to me is figuring out what we need to do, figuring out where we're at relative to that expectation, outcome, or goal, and facilitating the behaviors and processes to reach the goal. There's no part of that that says, I explained the thing, and then it's on them. That is not my philosophy.
Brian:So this is why I say, like, this this stuff is not going to work most of the time. Why is it not gonna work? Well, If I have a group of 30 people and I say something like great customer service is what we're aiming for, and and there's 20 different out of my group of 30, there's 20 different ideas on what great customer service is. Well, how likely is it we're all aiming for the same thing? Not very.
Brian:Yeah. There's some basic things that we would we would get agreement on, but not not consistently. Right? So one of the things that, you know, when I when I start working with folks, I'll, you know, they say why is you know, they they come to me, generally, and they have frustration that there's pain points that, you know, things are not efficient. They're not consistent.
Brian:Employees are just kinda not on board with things, and it's costing time, money, energy, frustration, whatever that so a common thing that I will be told is I need my employees to do a good job. Some some version of that. Right? And I say, when you say do a good job, what do you mean? And oftentimes, I get silence, and they don't really even know.
Brian:Like, they in their gut, they kinda have a feeling what they mean, but they've never actually put into words what they mean when they say, quote, unquote, a good job. Well, If we're not gonna have any kind of clarity or specifics about what is good customer service or excellent communication or a 5 star quality or these things, what would we expect? So we have to explain things specifically. Like, here's what I mean. Instead of saying these these generic phrases like good communication that we've historically used.
Brian:You know, like, I do I broke this down on episode 142. What is good communication for your company. If we ever, like, had a conversation about here's the kind of communication, and for each one, here's what quote unquote good communication is. Then we have a path to go down. Then we have a way to have meaningful conversations where people could actually all be aiming for the exact same thing.
Brian:Same things for great customer service. We They have to ask questions like, what does that mean? What comprises good customer service? How will we know we're doing it or not? If we don't ask those questions, I can't have any idea if we're all aiming for the same thing.
Brian:And and I know for sure that on these more generic kind of phrases, we're likely not. Or probably not even for the same things. But I get to check the box and say I explained it, and I get to check the box and say I crammed 7 things into a 30 minute meeting. Look how efficient I am. And, listen, I I joke about it because I've done this stuff countless times.
Brian:I mean, for for a decade, probably, I did it this way. And then for a decade, I was pissed when things didn't go well. I was frustrated. So it may sound silly or unnecessary to you, but I promise There are things that are not being done to your standards because your people don't know or don't think it's reasonable that they do certain things. And if you don't know what those things are, you're dead in the water.
Brian:You can't determine what where that is the case if you don't even playing what those things are in a more specific manner. You use things like good customer service, and you rely on that to be the the way we explain things to people. We're just setting ourselves up for failure. So the third thing is that that changed my life was learning how to get the team to want to do the right thing instead of being required to do the right thing. Now you've heard me say this before probably.
Brian:That's my goal. But once I really learn, like, specifically, there's a a specific thing I do to get this, where they sincerely want to do the right thing instead of needing to be required to do the right thing. I can just tell you, I'm gonna to tell you, my life changed in ways I can hardly explain when I when this happened. Once I knew how to get the employees to truly care about the things we needed done and I don't mean in a BS, nod and smile at the appropriate time and then do what they want again kinda way. I mean, once I got I knew how to get them to truly care about the things we needed done.
Brian:Everything get easier and better. I hear all the time business leaders and owners say employees nowadays just don't care, and I understand your frustration. If you have that feeling, then you know exactly what I'm talking about to feel this like, the things you're explaining or teaching, you're just falling on deaf ears. This is a critical problem that must be solved. Now if you have a small team, you know, 1, 2, or 3 people on your team, You can address this by figuring out what drives each individual and helping that that employee connect the dots and how in doing what we need done helps them reach their personal goals.
Brian:That a little bit of time investment on your part. They kinda what makes make figure out what makes your people go, which, by the way, I strongly recommend. If they wanna retire with 20 acres in Montana, and I say, like, hey. You know, how do you think you can do that? Well, I wanna make extra money.
Brian:Why do you think you can do that? I can promoted. Well, how do you think you do that? You can do these certain things really well. When we say good customer service, what do we mean?
Brian:If you do those things really well, you're gonna get promoted and you'll be able to etcetera, etcetera. Now that's a really fast, you know, completely made up example. It would obviously be much more deep than that, but you kinda see what I'm getting at in a in a generic sense. So we wanna help them connect the dots in how doing what we need helps them reach their personal goals. Now that's that's one on one for a small team.
Brian:That's one modality. If you have a larger team, more than just a couple or a few, you kinda have to do something different. Not completely different, but that's not true. It's completely different. It's similar, but different.
Brian:Let's put it that way. And I'm gonna do something I've never done before because I've now helped many business owners and leaders do the same thing I did to solve this problem of having a team that you think doesn't doesn't care as much or buy in as much or willingly participate as much as you would like. I can't teach this on a short form podcast like this. I try to keep these episodes down to 15 or 20 minutes. We're gonna be along the longer side today.
Brian:We're already We're already bumping up against 15 minutes, but I can't teach this on a short form podcast, but I can teach it in an hour. So So I'm gonna be doing free webinars where I teach this to business owners and leaders. Now why am I doing this? Because it has changed how how business owners and leaders have been able to get buy in and willing participation more than just about anything else I've ever helped them with. And I don't hear about any other solution like the one I offer out there.
Brian:And showing people how to get their team to truly buy in is probably the single most effective and valuable gift I could any business owner or business leader. So whether or not you attend my free webinar where I show you how I got my team to truly buy in, speaking to your team without knowing how to get genuine buy in from them makes everything you wanna teach or get compliance on with immensely harder. Let me say that again. Speaking to your team without knowing how to get genuine buy in from them makes everything immensely harder. So know what I'm offering is not some kinda weird thing where you just show up and I tell you to change your pay program or your bonus schedule or something like that.
Brian:What I'm gonna show you will not cost you a single penny, and you can do it with your group in less than 90 minutes. This is one of the first things I do with people I start working with because if we if we don't have sincere buy in, a lot of things don't really matter anymore. If I don't have sincere, like, a team who wants to do the right thing, a lot of things I would talk about are kinda moot now. Alright. Enough on that.
Brian:To quickly recap, the first thing is to stop just telling them. If just telling I tattooed this on your forearm where you can look at the inside of your arm and read it before you do any kind of conversation with a team or an individual about something you need done. If just telling them worked, I wouldn't be having this problem. If just telling them worked, I wouldn't be having this conversation properly. The second thing is we have to stop using generic, meaningless phrases like, great customer service.
Brian:And the third thing is to get them to truly care and to figure out why they would truly care. So If you're interested in those webinars I'm talking about, here's a couple quick notes on those. First of all, they're a 100% free. Yes. I will show you a coaching product product I offer, but no purchase is required.
Brian:We're gonna spend the vast majority of our time making sure you know exactly a 100% how to implement this thing in your company and solve this problem you have of employees who don't care as much as you would like. Yes. I'm gonna show you some coaching stuff I offer. Nothing I show you will cost more than a $100 a month, This is not some kind of bait and switch. The focus will absolutely be getting you to know exactly how to do this with your team.
Brian:Just like you, though, I'd be kinda foolish not to let people know how to buy products and services I offer. So, yes, I'm going to share those things that are or a thing I offer, but this is not a No purchase is necessary. This is not a bait and switch. I promise you that. So if you're wondering who this is for, it's for business leaders and business owners who have a team of at least a handful and and people who who, feel like they want their teams to care more than they do.
Brian:They they don't feel like they have a team who wants to do the right thing. They feel like a team who must be made to do the right thing. If you fall in that category and you have a handful of employees, this is for you. It's not just for business owners. I have a client, a friend who runs a division of a bank he doesn't own.
Brian:He has a team of about a dozen. This is perfect for him. It's for people who want, probably just like you, who who need their team to start getting on board with things like right now. Like, things are changing out there. We we don't have the luxury of just having unlimited at bats anymore.
Brian:We need our teams to perform at a higher level, and that means they have to start carrying at a higher level. I'm gonna show you how to do this. It's with your own group in less than 90 minutes. It'll take me an hour to teach it. The vast majority of our times will be showing you exactly how I solved this problem and have helped many others now solve the exact same problem of having employees who don't care as much as you would like.
Brian:By the end of the webinar, you will know exactly how to solve this problem for yourself. It's a simple three step process. I promise you can do it. Webinars can last about an hour depending on questions. You can implement them.
Brian:I'm gonna show you, like I said, within 90 minutes with your own team, probably less than an hour, but I'll say 90 minutes to to to be conservative, and it will not cost you a penny. There's not there's no part of this where I say, give them more money. That's not how what this is about. I can promise you, though, This will change your life. It will change how you go about managing people or leading people or teaching people.
Brian:It will change all of that overnight. And so many things that you struggle with right now of trying to get buy in in compliance, those problems will go away. It It will change your life. I promise. So to get dates and other information on how to attend, just send me an email to hello at serviceindustriesuccess.com.
Brian:Just put webinar in the subject line. Give me your name and title, little bit about your company, you know, name of the company, industry, geographic area if you want, any other pertinent information you feel like sharing. If you're the person who's gonna send me an email that just says webinar in the subject, and that's it, this probably isn't for you. I get stuff like that regularly. Just again, I'm not looking for 4 paragraphs.
Brian:Just tell me about who you are and what your company is that you do. So, again, I'm doing something different here I don't normally do because times are changing. This is a solution to a very specific problem that many people have, and I have that this has a a very high batting average. In fact, there's only one time I can think of where it didn't work as well as I wanted. And it's not like it didn't work.
Brian:It just didn't work as well as I wanted. Only one time out of doing this now many, many times with many people in different kind of industries. So, Hope you check it out. Again, this is kind of a deviation from how I normally do this thing, but this is an important piece right now more than ever, and this will literally change people's lives. So I'm I'm really excited.
Brian:I have it all dialed in on how to teach it into a group format. I'm gonna do webinars. I I don't know how many a month yet. Might be might be weekly. I don't know.
Brian:We'll see we'll see how, how that unfolds, but just send me the email. Again, hello at service industrysuccess.com with your name, company name, a little bit about the industry, put weather on the subject line, and we'll call it good. And I'll get back to you with the next webinar time. Again, they're gonna be Fridays, probably around noon Pacific is my guess. So I'm excited to share this with you, and, I hope you're not bashful about it.
Brian:Reach out and let's, let's get you on there. Let's really help you make the change here. Anyhow, if you find the information I share helpful, Please share this podcast with a friend or colleague you think could benefit. Of course, public sharing is appreciated also, but if you got a friend who you're who you're hearing this, you're like, hey. You have a team of people.
Brian:I've heard you complain that they don't care as much as you would like. It's a great episode to share with them. So, anyhow, that's it for this week, and I'll talk to you all next week.
