Building effective partnerships with leadership is central to the CLO's role. But what if those partners don't want to dance? There are several strategies to help convince reluctant but crucial team members to join in.
by Site Staff
March 27, 2006
We all know that building effective partnerships is essential. It’s hard to be a contributing member of any organization without being perceived as a business partner. We’ve all been instructed on how to dance—taking dancing lessons, teaching the elephant to dance and so forth. But what if the partners don’t want to dance? Dancing with a reluctant partner is a big challenge for CLOs.
Although most professional managers nowadays see learning and development as necessary, they don’t get excited about it, viewing it somewhat as they do budgeting. It’s something they’ve got to do, so they go through the motions, but without enthusiasm. On the other hand, really terrific learning and development can be achieved when key managers get excited, see the value and get involved. Igniting that spark of enthusiasm is an important competency for CLOs. Executives and managers report that they’re too busy to partner. “I support learning,” they say and then ask, “Why should I worry about partnering?” Or they remark, “Consider me a partner. Now, go away.” Or they grumble dismissively, “We get the picture.” The unspoken, “Whatever,” echoes through the learning and development corridors.
Classify Your Managers
It can be helpful to categorize key managers in the organization into four categories: destructive, unresponsive, responsive and supportive. (See Figure 1.) To build support in one organization, the CLO and key members of the L&D staff classified the middle and top executives into these four categories. The percentage of managers in each category are indicated on the before column. This assessment was an eye-opening exercise as far too many managers were in the non-supportive and destructive areas. This group began a very formal process of developing effective partnerships with all key managers. A year later, the categorization changed dramatically as the non-supportive and destructive categories were reduced, and the supportive and responsive categories increased. This categorization is often the first step in building the kind of partnerships needed for productive organizations. When this is done, you can begin to plot strategy to deal with each manager on a case-by-case basis.
Reasons for Lack of Support
Before a partnership can be developed, it is helpful to understand why executives and managers are reluctant to support learning and development. Some reasons are valid, while others are based on misunderstandings about L&D and its impact in the organization. An analysis of the current level of support will usually reveal the most common problems. In the organization described here, the first step was to understand the reasons for lack of support. Figure 2 shows a list of reasons obtained directly from an internal survey of managers. The total percentages are greater than 100 percent because some managers selected more than one reason.
Collectively, these reasons for non-support equate to challenges for organizations and represent opportunities for managers. If these issues are not addressed in an effective way, management support will not exist, implementation will be diminished and consequently, results will be severely limited or nonexistent.
Key Strategy: Developing Partnerships With Managers
Building a partnership with key managers is one of the most powerful ways to increase management involvement and support. A partnership relationship can take on several formats. With some CLOs, the relationship is informal, loosely defined and ill-structured. With other CLOs, the process is formalized to the extent that specific activities are planned with targeted individuals, all for the purpose of improving relationships. The quality of the relationship is discussed and assessments are typically taken to gauge progress. With a few CLOs, the process is very formal, where individuals are discretely identified for relationship improvement and a written plan is developed for each individual. Sometimes a contract is developed with a particular manager. Assessments are routinely taken, and progress is reported formally. Although these three levels of formality are distinct, an organization can move through the different levels as the partnering process matures and achieves success.
For the process to be effective, the CLO must take the lead and involve others as appropriate and necessary. The direction must come from the top. Rarely will key managers approach the CLO to nurture these relationships. In some organizations, key managers do not want to develop relationships because of the concern about the time it might take. Although this responsibility cannot be delegated, it can involve many other L&D staff members if not all. Steps to develop an effective partnership include:
- Assess the current relationships. A candid assessment of progress with the quantity and quality of relationships is important.
- Identify key individuals. Building a partnership works best when it clearly focuses on a few individuals. Too many individual targets could dilute the effort.
- Learn the business. An effective partnership relationship cannot be developed unless the member understands the operational and strategic issues of the organization.
- Consider a written plan. The process is often more focused when it is written with specific details for each manager. A written plan enhances commitment.
- Offer assistance to solve problems. The organization supports managers and provides assistance to solve or prevent problems. Managers are usually seeking help with problems.
- Show results of programs. When results are achieved, quick communication with partners is important to demonstrate to them how a program achieved success. In addition, the results achieved from other programs, where partners might not be directly involved, should be communicated to these key managers.
- Publicize partners’ accomplishments and successes. At every opportunity, give proper credit to the accomplishments of the partner. The organization should not take credit for successes.
- Ask the partner to review the needs analysis. Whenever a needs analysis is requested or undertaken as part of the development of a new program, the partner should review the information and confirm or add to the analysis. This, of course, assumes the partner is knowledgeable about the issues in the analysis.
- Have the partner serve on an advisory committee. A helpful approach to provide guidance and direction to the organization or a particular program is to establish an advisory committee. If appropriate and feasible, the partner should be invited to serve on the committee.
- Shift responsibility to partner. Although the success of programs rests with stakeholders who have major responsibilities, the primary responsibility must lie with the management group. When it is appropriate and feasible, some responsibility should be transferred to the partner, if the partner is prepared for the responsibility.
- Invite input from the partner about key plans and programs. Routinely, partners should be asked to provide information on issues such as analysis, program design, use of new technology, program roll out and follow-up evaluation.
- Ask the partner to review program objectives, content and implementation. As a routine activity, these managers should review objectives, content and planned implementation for each new program or major redesign.
- Invite the partner to coordinate a program or portion of a program. If appropriate, the partner should be asked to help organize, coordinate or implement a part of a program. It is important to do this without “dumping” work on the partner and being sensitive to other tasks and priorities.
- Review progress and re-plan strategy. Periodically, the partnership process should be reviewed to check progress, adjust and re-plan the strategy. Continuous process improvement should be the focus.
When exploring the critical influence of managers and their role as partners, it is easy to see that CLOs cannot be successful without the positive and supportive influence of the management group. Using critical strategies should have a high payoff of increased commitment and support for those destructive and unsupportive partners or renewed commitment and support for those who are responsive and supportive, thus creating an environment to dance with a partner.
Jack J. Phillips, Ph.D., chairman of the ROI Institute, developed and pioneered the ROI process and has written more than 15 books on the subject. He can be reached at jphillips@clomedia.com.