You're facing pushback from a senior executive on your training approach. How can you win them over?

Listen to overcome resistance. Understand the senior executive's concerns about your training. Identify worries about costs, time, or effectiveness. Show respect by actively listening. Open a constructive conversation. Tailor your response to their issues. Demonstrate you value their input.

Start by actively listening to their concerns and understanding their perspective. Clearly articulate the benefits of your approach, backed by data and success stories. Show how your training aligns with the company’s goals and addresses specific needs. Offer a pilot session or a small-scale demonstration to showcase effectiveness. Highlight testimonials and feedback from past participants. Emphasize flexibility, showing your willingness to adapt based on feedback.

For trainers, listening is key from start to finish. Listen to those who request the training and ask copious quantities of questions to ensure understanding. Effective training is always presented as a solution to a problem, but what problem? I've had Senior Executives ask my company to provide 'communication' training to thousands of employees. When asked why they wanted that topic, the response was "because our people don't talk to each other." After more questions, we discovered the problem wasn't a lack of understanding about how to communicate, but rather a lack of productive relationships within the organization. Ask questions, listen, ask more questions. Often, the problem that needs a solution, isn't the first one identified.

Present data-driven results, align your approach with company goals, highlight benefits, and address their concerns with clear, evidence-based solutions. Foster an open dialogue to understand their perspective and demonstrate flexibility.

To win over a senior executive, listen to their concerns and show data proving your training works. Explain how it helps the company meet its goals. Be open to changes, discuss openly, and share positive feedback from employees to gain their support.

Goal alignment in training is imperative, but the trainer must understand that she/he often is NOT the person setting the goals. Senior level staff are the decision makers and in the best scenarios, they provide the goals to training staff who then develop their approaches, activities, etc. In my experience, once it is clear "what" is to be accomplished and the trainer is able to articulate "how" he/she will make it all happen, then they are free to develop the training experiences and get to work. In a situation where a senior leader pushes back on the design or specific approach of a trainer, there is often more happening behind the scenes with a lack of commitment or political situation. Trainer beware...

Facing pushback from a senior executive on your training approach? Show value to win them over. Align your training with the executive’s priorities and the organization’s goals. Present data and case studies that highlight tangible benefits like improved productivity and engagement. Share success stories and emphasize the ROI, showing long-term gains in efficiency and retention. Open a dialogue to understand and address their concerns, and propose a pilot program to demonstrate effectiveness on a smaller scale. Demonstrating clear value can turn skepticism into support.

This is the key aspect when discussing training approaches. Once you have examined what the needs are and the training goals are aligned, it is important to show how your programme adds value: by explaining the methodology, examples, benefits and case studies. As a trainer, I also consider it important to work with assessments that provide a data-based approach (like for instance Global DISC and Growth Zone for the topics of psychological safety, motivation and cognitive diversity) and can measure and visualise the current state, rather than working with assumptions. Working with such tools can add extra credibility and trust to your programme.

It’s a gift when a trainee pushes back because my approach doesn’t suit them. I can learn from this. I can adapt/ adjust my service. This widens my experience and my perspective. My response would be to offer a ICQGlobal DISC profile assessment. That way I can discover preferences and tendencies then work with those and develop new ways of viewing things from different perspectives.

Junto a uma equipe senior, vc precisa demonstrar que é flexível as solicitações de mudança, caso seja necessária. Não hesite em ouvir e sugerir novas ações.

It would be unwise and corporate suicide to ignore feedback from senior executive[s]. However, a mature trainer must be willing and able to dialogue with executives to ensure complete understanding of the training session's goals, audience, current methodology, and how a proposed change would impact all of the above. Assuming that one or more sessions have already been run using the original approach, it would also be wise to gather feedback from the trainees to see if it aligns with that ideas of the executive. Being flexible in one's approach is admirable, however, departing from an approach that is working without full examination of the issues is more like political 'caving', then it is professional adjustment.

There are different ways to 'measure' the effectiveness of training. The first is the most basic. Did the trainees "like" the session? If the post training evaluations are positive, one could conclude that the training was effective...but was it? All that proves is that the session was enjoyable, stimulating, and/or challenging, but will it bring about positive change? For years, I have been asked by clients how I propose to measure the success of our training processes. My answer is simple: I will measure success using YOUR metrics. If the clients measures productivity, quality, and engagement, then if our training improves communication, relationships, and process, it will show up in the client's bottom line indicators.

I am in full support of a collaborative approach to the development of a training process...however, it is important that those involved stay in their respective lanes. Assuming the participants are all competent professionals, then the role of senior leadership is to identify the problems or issues to be resolved AND then to set goals for improvement. Conversely, the role of the trainer[s] is to create the process to be used to attack the problems and reach the goals. Trainers are not the goal setters and senior leaders are not the designers of a training process.

Anishinaabe people have unique challenge as the circle life has been broken. Many hurt feelings due to past trauma, Broken treaties, department of war, the first 24 presidents being against Native American, tribes, anger, fear, shame, and guilt. boarding school (operated by Catholic and Methodist religion) removal period, freedom of religion act. Anishinaabe people are trying to understand culture what has been taken away from due those traumas. running to learn truth.

Uma das formas significativas em treinamento é dar exemplos e insights sobre aquilo que você está a falar. Através disso, o treinamento fica dinâmico e prazeroso a todos.

Basic truth. Organizations are composed of people who have agendas, some personal and some professional. Not everyone is sincere. When providing training, you must consider the motives of all parties. Does senior leadership truly care about staff or are they implementing a training program to simply show a level of activity? As a trainer, you must present the course content without making promises UNLESS you personally know that senior leaders are serious about the topic and the proposed benefits from it. Early in my career, I made the mistake of serving as unofficial spokesperson for a management initiative that promised great things for staff...but failed to deliver. My credibility within that organization suffered as a result. Ouch!

Establish a rapport, a sustainable connection based on mutual trust with the seniors. Know that their stamp, signature or aproval, whether for finance or other administrative facilitation depend wholly on mutual trust, ofcourse steered by guiding policy framework. The encouraging thing is that, they are also aware that without you they will not achieve their preset performance criteria. It is a contemporary management requirement which you should not worry about. They are actually in pursuit of your support too. But demonstrate vigor and enthusiasm in meeting targets. Show proof of last targets met. Your result oriented creativity and innovative strategy will place you high. And will securely establish a solid link with your seniors.