What A Training Assessment Should Show You

Most training assessments are not only statistically unsound, but they are often designed and executed in a way to make things worse. Asking managers to prioritize competencies or training programs against each other takes the conversation a giant step away from the business. Sure, I can tell you that presentations skills sounds better than influence skills, but I need to understand how development options help to drive my strategy forward.

Unfortunately, typical training assessments do not provide the kind of data that are useful in terms of what specific problems the training is designed to solve/enable, what follow-up is needed, and where you need to go from here.

Effective assessments target three key areas:

1. Critical Strategic Skills: What Are the Key skills that are most important with respect to your strategy/initiative? Which ones, if adopted, will have the greatest impact? What scenarios are the most common where you need the participants to excel? Focusing on anything else is a sure recipe for diminishing returns.
2. Key Team Gaps: Once you know the handful of skills that will make the biggest impact on your strategy, it is time to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your target audience, the delta between your high and low performers, the key barriers to success, and core development priorities.
3. Individual Development Plans: After identifying the most strategic skills and the key gaps in your target audience, you next step is to provide participants with a specific plan for success. An effective plan, both before and after a training initiative, answers the questions - What should I do differently? And “What can I do about it?” And “What resources are at my disposal?”

Be sure you don’t settle for an assessment process unless it provides data that enable sound decision making and forward progress that is 100% aligned with your key strategic priorities.