Are you getting value from your management training? When considering this question, there are a few areas that might be useful to focusing on. First is what are your outcomes from your management training? If you are clear on how you’ll know when you are getting value from the management training then that’s a fantastic place to start. If we’re just feeling that it’s just another task that needs to be ticked off to get some management training then that is unlikely to produce a good ROI.

Invest a little time in thinking what could be the best possible outcome that you could get from this management training. How would you like people to be after they’ve been through the training? What would make a difference to the organization or to the individuals going through the process? That would be the best starting point setting you up for the best ROI.

The second thing is thinking about what management training really is. What does it mean for people to be exquisite managers? What does it mean for the management training to be hugely successful? For me, being an avid neuroscience fan, it’s important for people to understand how their brain & mind work. If they can understand how the mind works then they’re in a much better position to work with other people and understand how other people are thinking then subsequently how they’re making decisions and how they’re acting on those decisions.

Once we can work out what another person is doing and why they’re doing it then we have a wealth of information that’s valuable to us. We’re in a far better position to work with people through knowing how their mind is working. Common problems aren’t problems anymore, things like conflict, motivation, decision making and a lot of classic challenges that managers encounter on challenges once we come from a place of how a person is thinking, deciding and acting.

That would be the second important component that is worth considering around this topic. The last thing to be aware of is the individuals themselves and whether they’re managing themselves effectively. People sometimes jump straight to managing others but returning and looking at whether the individual is managing themselves well and what needs to happen for that to be the case can be really important.

If a person isn’t getting the results that they want then it may be that they aren’t able to work in a way that they want to work. They haven’t understood how to work well with themselves optimally which makes it a bit more challenging to work with other people optimally. Also, from a good role model perspective, it’s useful if the managers have got the foundations of how to work with themselves first rather than jumping straight into working with others. These are the basic 3 things you need to look at to pave the way for a good ROI on management trainings.