How to Launch a Great Virtual Leadership Training Program
Karin Hurt and David Dye help human-centered leaders resolve workplace ambiguity and chaos, so that they can drive innovation, productivity and revenue without burning out employees.
When you are planning on launching a virtual leadership training program, you want it to achieve the same great results as your traditional in-person programs. So, what makes for a great leadership training program?
The best leadership programs create long-lasting changes in managers, teams, and overall business results. To be successful, a leadership training program needs to be sustainable. The tools and techniques need to ‘stick’ and create lasting behavior change.
Fortunately, done well, virtual delivery can make sustainability easier because of the opportunity for spaced learning over time so that managers can practice with their teams in between sessions.
Here are ten great questions to ask yourself before launching your program to make sure it will be effective:
10 Vital Questions to Ask Before Investing In Virtual Training
How will this program provoke new ideas and critical thinking to improve our business?
The best leadership training will fire up your managers with new ideas.
Will the program leave them empowered and excited to execute? Or frustrated about great ideas that “will never happen.”
Work with a leadership development partner who understands your culture and how things get done. The best leadership programs don’t just teach skills. They create chances to apply what they’ve learned to improve the business.
Read more about the latest research and approach to psychological safety and problem-solving.
How will we sustain learning over time?
A single half-day workshop doesn’t produce game-changing leaders.
Even if you have a limited budget, find creative ways to build live-online programs that combine learning with practice, reflection, and feedback.
How will this leadership development program provide daily and weekly reinforcement of crucial behaviors?
How will we know what’s working and where managers are struggling?
What should change as a result of this program? Don’t start training until you have a strong vision of what will be different as a result.
What behaviors do you want to shift?
How will that affect your MIT (Most Important Thing—strategic goals)?
Don’t stop at “We need better team leaders.” What does that mean? What will they do differently? Get specific.
Work with a training partner who understands your business and builds a program to get you exactly what you need.
How will participants apply what they’ve learned with their teams?
No one wants to feel like an experiment as their manager comes back from training and tries four new ideas without any explanation.
You’ve probably lived through a manager who tried a new idea, did it for a week, then forgot about it.
That frustrates the team, and the manager’s credibility suffers.
Does this program include a process for re-entry?
Will your managers get tools to communicate what they’ve learned and to transfer their knowledge? For example, if they come back eager to improve accountability, do they know precisely how to start to hold people accountable if they never have before?)
How will we include the participant’s leaders?
You’ll need real buy-in from your participants’ managers, or you’ll get a minimal return on your investment.
Conceptual support isn’t enough. Managers need insights and specifics about what their people are learning and how they can best support it.
This is even more important when the participant’s managers are not sitting nearby.
Ask for an executive briefing session before the program begins, so leaders understand the ROI, prepare strategic questions for their participants, and have a clear path to support their teams’ learning and application.
Be sure you have the commitment from participant’s managers to give them the time they need to participate fully in the program.
Live online leadership development gives you a chance to maintain your momentum and equip your leaders with the tools they need to build their teams and transform results.
Now, if you are thinking about making your program a live-virtual development program, you should also include these questions:
Does our training partner have experience with live online leadership development?
Online facilitation requires different preparation, different ways of engaging participants, and the confidence to work through problems that technology inevitably presents.
Participants know when they’re working with a rookie and will quickly lose interest and engagement. Make sure your leadership development partner has ample experience in training and leading remotely.
Does the program feature real-time interaction with facilitators and other participants?
The best virtual leadership development features live engagement with your facilitators and real-time participant discussions.
Be sure you’re working with experienced virtual trainers.
Will our online leadership development program leverage technology beyond traditional classrooms?
One of the common mistakes with online meeting technology is to replicate a traditional classroom training environment.
For instance, in a traditional face-to-face program, only one person can speak at a time.
But when you leverage virtual meeting tools, you can have small groups meeting simultaneously and sharing their findings and questions. You can also integrate feedback in real-time via chat and whiteboards in ways that would lead to chaos in an in-person situation.
Virtual learning allows you to break up your day-long training programs into smaller 60-90 minute sessions over several days or weeks. This gives more time to apply learning in between sessions.
Can our people take part via video?
When everyone can see one another, they pay attention and resist the urge to multi-task.
Plus, it allows facilitators and participants to respond to confusion, enthusiasm, and questions.
Make sure your participants can appear on camera and be heard well. For more tech recommendations, check out How to Take Charge of Your Remote Meetings.
How will we create the head-space for people to focus on their live online leadership development?
When your manager physically goes to another location for training, it’s evident that they’re gone.
But with online leadership development, those boundaries can blur. Does their Slack messenger still show them as available? What are the expectations for answering phone calls, emails, and instant messages?
To give your leaders the best experience, work with your partner to create best practices in how participants notify their peers, colleagues, team (and remind their boss) that they’re attending the training.
You can create a consistent set of guideline reminders for every session that will help people focus (e.g., turn off your email, social media, office messenger – everything but the one way someone would contact you in an emergency).
Live online leadership development gives you a chance to maintain your momentum and equip your leaders with the tools they need to build their teams and transform results – whether your leaders work around the globe or from home.
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