How Do I Love Thee: Modeling & Dimensional Thinking

Modeling is the ability to analyze, abstract and understand the smallest components to the big picture of a subject.

found this activity to be quite overwhelming at first. Not only to look at something like my topic; Adult Learning with an emphasis on Training in dimensions but then to have to make it actually useful to someone. I came across the idea of Return On Investment. The corporate reasoning and arbitrary number that us trainers must use to receive sponsorship. Unfortunately in the world of business everything must be represented by a number as its benefit to the company. This becomes really difficult in the world of training when we deal with so many unpredictable factors. I asked myself; What is the difference between education and training? Most training is compliance driven. Legally companies must educate their employees on certain subjects in order to protect themselves from possible lawsuits later. This is can be great in teaching these employees specific things to know or do. If you think back to high school or college, as a student you were taught theory and concepts so that you could develop, adapt, and customize the information. We lose sight of that in training due to the compliance. What ever happened to soft skills.

In the 1980’s we determined that you could be an absolute genius but if you didn’t have the social skills to communicate and collaborate you would not do as well in the workforce. These are prized skills that we have somewhat neglected the development of. Employers just hope that the people they are hiring have a decent set of soft skills because we have lost sight of how valuable these skills truly are and no longer take the time and spend the resources to invest in their development. So at the true reasoning for investing in soft skills training we have the benefits it will provide the company. Training on soft skills will improve the functionality of teams, group and individual production, the community/communication within the organization and the culture the business has. Some of the most desired soft skills for employees include; time management, flexibility, ability to adapt, work under pressure, communicating, problem solving, using feedback to grow, working well with a team and overall confidence in their tasks and abilities. Once we have trained it is important to measure the results. Not only to report the much desired numbers to “suits” but also to determine possible ways to grow or improve the training and to check employee satisfaction. Before we train and measure we must determine factors that influence soft skills such as; generation or age, experiences, education, socioeconomic status, race/culture, culture within the organization and individual personality types. Knowing about these factors will help develop, deliver and measure the training. At the end of it all we have our ROI. I think this graph could be helpful in trying to obtain buy in for the development and implementation of the training. It may also be helpful to visualize the idea as more than a number. That soft skills training is the ultimate investment in employees. This kind of education helps grow the employee not just in their position but in their own possibilities.