As with all projects, successful training development requires the right mix of skills, knowledge and personalities. Fulfilling these requirements entails a proactive and selective recruiting effort to obtain resources best suited for the specific project needs. Designing and developing an effective training product requires building a qualified training design and development team by:

• Identifying the required skills.
• Determining the optimal team size.
• Recruiting the right personalities.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these team-building elements.

 

Identifying the Required Skills

An important prerequisite to building your training development team is recognizing and becoming familiar with the key skill areas required in developing a successful training curriculum. Once familiar with these skill areas, it is necessary to focus on achieving and maintaining the proper balance of skills throughout the recruiting process.

Let’s proceed by examining some techniques for recognizing key skill areas, then achieving a healthy balance of skills on your training development team.

Recognizing the Key Skill Areas

A successful training development team will collectively possess skills in four distinct areas:

• Conceptual skills.
• Analytical skills.
• Technical skills.
• Administrative skills.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these skill areas.

Conceptual Skills

Conceptual skills are those pertaining to the ability to grasp concepts and think in abstract terms. This thinking benefits the training development process through the ability to see the “big picture” and how other components will fit in.

Conceptual skills are essential for:

• Scoping out the projects.
• Determining an approach.
• Building the team.
• Formulating high-level curriculum design.

 

Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are characterized by the ability to proceed according to analysis of information and circumstances. The use of analytical skills in training development includes:

• Determining specific learning and training needs based on careful assessment of the organization, the training audience and the subject matter.
• Reviewing, filtering and packaging potential curriculum content obtained in the information gathering phase.
• Formulating learning objectives based on identified needs.

 

Technical Skills

Technical skills are those pertaining to an ability to perform specific tasks in a particular discipline, for example a science, a trade, an engineering or manufacturing process, an art form or any other specialized field or process. The “technicians” provide a specialized perspective that is essential for:

• Determining highly specific subject-matter training needs based on familiarity with the corresponding products or processes.
• Injecting real-world subject matter expertise into the curriculum.
• Providing an expert perspective during the curriculum design and review process, allowing for proper refinement and presentation of content.

 

Administrative Skills

Individuals possessing administrative skills are characterized by an ability to be organized and get things done. Both are critical factors throughout the entire training development process.

Strong administrators are able to:

• Establish a solid plan.
• Hold the team accountable to the plan.
• Facilitate communication among team members.
• Track and report team progress.

 

Achieving and Maintaining the Proper Balance of Skills

Since the training development team must comprise a healthy balance of conceptual, analytical, technical and administrative skills in order to properly facilitate learning, some significant attention must be given to the recruiting process

This recruiting process requires finding individual team members with complementary skills that will collectively provide the necessary balance for creating a successful training curriculum. This balance can vary depending on the current training audience and the subject matter upon which the curriculum will be based. For example, some projects may require more technical skills, while others will rely more heavily on analytical skills.

A good team leader will create and maintain a healthy balance of skills for each training development effort by focusing on the following:

• Careful evaluation of project needs.
• Proactive recruiting.
• Proper skills application.
• Ongoing monitoring.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these skill-balancing techniques.

Careful Evaluation of Project Needs

Different projects may require different degrees of the various skill types. The team leader must carefully evaluate the learning objectives, subject matter and training audience to determine which skill areas may require a higher presence on the team.

Proactive Recruiting

The team leader must then proactively recruit team members in accordance with the required skills. Some individuals may be able to satisfy requirements in more than one area, but very few can satisfy all of them. It is worth the extra effort to find those with the specialized skills required in meeting the training needs.

Proper Skills Application

Once the desired skills are obtained, the team leader must properly apply them by ensuring that the right skills are assigned to the right tasks.

A team member recruited based on administrative skills, for example, would not be assigned a significant role in the conceptual design of the curriculum.

Ongoing Monitoring

The team leader must continually monitor team member performance throughout the entire training development process. If a team member’s performance is not adequate in meeting the project’s skill requirements, the team leader must initiate a role reassignment or replacement.

 

Determining the Optimal Team Size

An important consideration when building a training development team is the number of people required to obtain the desired results. A good project manager will strive to obtain a properly sized team capable of optimal efficiency and productivity.

Determining the proper team size requires an awareness of the often overlooked ramifications of having too many or too few people on your team. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Too Many People

In order to achieve a high degree of success in any training development effort, the project leader’s comfort level must be derived from the quality of the work, not the number of people doing the work.

There is a natural tendency to think that more people will expedite completion of the training development process. However, a large team does not necessarily translate to more results, and in fact can actually diminish results.

Since most organizations have few members with the specific skills required in developing quality training materials, larger training development teams will involve larger numbers of unqualified team members who can clutter, dilute, or otherwise impede the entire training development process.

The key to proper team sizing is to find the right number of team members that can support each other without getting in the way of one another.

A small, skill-balanced team with a network of “as needed” subject matter experts can often yield far better results than a larger, unfocused team.

Not Enough People

A team that is too small for the required training development tasks will also be unlikely to succeed.

Team members will be spread too thin and subject to stress that will cloud their ability to maintain a focus on determining and fulfilling the needs of the training audience.

As a result, an understaffed training development effort will likely see team members cutting corners or simply skipping required steps in an effort to meet plan requirements. The quality of the resulting training curriculum will be significantly impacted under these circumstances.

 

Recruiting the Right Personalities

We’ve discussed the need for a healthy balance of skills on the team, and the importance of controlling the number of people involved. Now let’s focus on the need for a healthy balance of personalities.

Training development is a collaborative effort. To obtain and present the best possible information in your curriculum it is essential to recruit those capable of working together and contributing at a level required for a quality training product.

The following are among of the most essential personality traits comprising a successful team:

Knowledgeable
Possesses the required degree of knowledge in the subject matter area and in the training development process itself.

Cooperative
Demonstrates a willingness to collaborate with others in reaching a common goal.

Innovative
Possesses the creative ability to develop applicable curriculum content in a variety of subject areas.

Pragmatic
Is able to see sees the benefits and value of the training project.

Flexible and adaptable
Will make procedural adjustments as project circumstances dictate.

Objective
Is able to perform research and develop content accordingly with no preconceived notions of how things “should” be.

Insightful
Is able to look at individual aspects of the project and see how they relate to the “big picture.”

Communicative
Presents information in a way that is easily understood by the training audience.

Motivated
A low-maintenance self-starter.

Reasonable and rational
Properly recognizes his or her role in the project, and has no unrealistic expectations of other project team members.

As with recruiting based on required skills as described earlier, recruiting for the desired personality traits must also be proactive. The right personalities will not come to the team on their own. A successful team leader puts a significant amount of effort into actively seeking out members possessing the essential personality attributes required of a healthy team.

Summary

The effectiveness of your training design and development effort will be dependent upon the competency of the individuals involved in all aspects of the process. Be sure to allocate sufficient time and effort to identifying and recruiting the right people for your team.