Measuring the impact of learning and development (L&D) initiatives is crucial for organizations striving to stay competitive. As traditional metrics fall short, innovative approaches - such as leveraging employee engagement survey questions - are emerging.

The evidence is compelling: one week after the standard didactic workshop, 64% of participants could demonstrate coaching skills at the required standard. However, with two hours of deliberate practice, that number rose to 76%—a 22% increase. For critical skills like asking open questions, inviting suggestions, and guiding the coachee to define the way forward, the improvement was as high as 41%.

Successful organizations understand the importance of developing and nurturing their future leaders in today's ever-changing business world. To create successful leadership development programs for a new generation of leaders, organizations focus on five key elements: personalization, hands-on learning, ongoing support and guidance, social collaboration, and deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice holds profound implications for skill development in many domains. Whether it's getting better at skiing or mastering other skills like leadership and communication skills, the principles remain the same. With each deliberate repetition, new neural pathways are forged, and long-term memory retention is enhanced, paving the way for non-conscious and more effortless performance.

The bottom line: to effectively use High-Impact Questions, you must do your homework. Understand your client's business, their industry, and the challenges they face. Combined with the High-Impact Question formula, this knowledge will enable you to craft questions that resonate, challenge, and engage.

Bottom line: the key to effective leadership training isn't just about completing training - it's about building relevant knowledge, bridging to application with practice, and supporting retention… all within a supportive eco-system.

Seven Compelling Reasons to Incorporate Deliberate Practice into Manager Skill Development Programs

Understanding the Four Crucial Skills to Develop and Why They Are Critical to Manager Success

Which skills are chronically underperformed and how to close those gaps

Each year, Manage HR recognizes the top and emerging diversity and inclusion service companies in Canada based on solution innovation and client outcomes. This year, Practica Learning made the list.

Years ago, we started wondering why sales training never seemed to stick. The companies we worked for invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in well-respected, well-researched training. But when we went back three months later to measure application, it was immediately apparent that salespeople didn’t implement what they’d learned.

Just a few short months ago, as the lockdown was ending, we were all looking forward to returning to restaurants, shopping, and travel. Now, almost overnight, we’re all hearing stories about customers behaving angrily over minor inconveniences — diners blowing up at waiters over slow service, shoppers furious about shortages, travelers refusing to obey flight attendant instructions, and bankers facing increasingly irate customers with complaints.

The prospect is a market leader in customer experience and is known for product excellence. Today, however, the marketplace is shifting. To continue to be successful, they need to be excellent at serving an increasingly diverse customer base.

As senior leaders explored their own unconscious biases and acknowledged their lack of experience in diverse environments, the need to shift behaviors became a priority.

Participating leaders were new to having conversations about equity, inclusion, and belonging. As the organization became more diverse and inclusive, it was anticipated that these conversations would arise more frequently…

If you are an HR Business Partner, Learning Consultant, or Director, you bring strong technical or business skills to your role, but you may be missing a set of skills crucial to your success: influencing skills.

Training designed to improve the customer experience for diverse customers often teaches key concepts like racism, oppression, privilege, bias, and microaggression. Addressing these knowledge gaps is essential. But just as important, maybe more so, is teaching new skills and behaviors.

The COVID-19 crisis offered an opportunity to innovate and to test new approaches to virtual skills development, some of which were extraordinarily successful. Here’s what we learned from those studies.

Many organizations have begun to prioritize improving diversity and inclusion. Over the last five years there has been a 113% increase in the number of executives that hold diversity and inclusion titles.

With a unique and challenging year behind us, now is the time to reflect on how the pandemic is bringing digital conversations to the forefront in 2021. Sales success will be determined by how well these conversations flow and convert.