We were engaged by a growing primary industry company to increase staff skills in managing relationships and delivering results.

We developed a tailored training programme to address these needs, and as we delivered it, we created space to explore issues that were affecting employee engagement and reducing productivity. We encouraged staff to be open and scrutinise their own behaviour. By listening carefully and collating the feedback from different sessions, we were able to report back to top management that the staff were loyal, knowledgeable and had many ideas for improvement, but that their morale was low. Matrix management across several countries was creating tension due to differing cultural norms, staff felt disconnected from the leaders, and no-one was receiving adequate feedback on their performance.

During the programme, as well as increasing their skills in relationships and delivery, staff on the courses developed a better understanding of international colleagues and their ways of working, and collectively designed a set of desirable behaviours for all staff to follow. They welcomed the opportunity to feed back their views to top management and to improve the working environment.

We were asked by a global capital goods company to deliver a Train The Trainer session to staff. A survey had shown that this client’s dealers were not sufficiently familiar with some of the products, so we were asked to increase the confidence and competence of staff so that they could train their dealers.

We prepared a three-day training programme to help staff understand how to deliver effective training sessions. The training was designed to cater for staff with variable levels of product knowledge and variable experience of presenting / training. We rolled out the programme in 5 countries and in English, Italian, German, Spanish and Polish over a period of two months.

During the 3 days we explored how to welcome and engage a group, how to understand your audience and maintain their energy, how to manage questions and objections, and how to adapt your training style for different participants. We combined this with technical sessions to familiarise everyone with the products to be sold, and encouraged closer working with colleagues from other teams. Everyone had the opportunity to contribute to the design of a new dealer training package and to practise delivering it several times. During the practise sessions, our consultants gave detailed individual feedback to delegates and suggestions for improvement.

After our Train The Trainer sessions, the staff rolled out the training for dealers as planned. The feedback from dealers was excellent, with all dealers reporting increased confidence in selling the products and some reporting up to 80% increases in product sales.