Designing an Effective Learning Journey

Why Maximizing Manager Involvement Can Boost Performance Impact by More Than 40%

The Learning Journey

You’ve seen the technology, you like the customization options, and you understand the impact, but before you implement a learning journey in your organization, what are the key “must haves” that ensure new skills are effectively applied and transferred to the job? Manager support and coaching get results, but which approach is actually proven to boost learning transfer, drive application, and improve performance?

Wilson Learning’s research, drawing on nine rigorous studies, found that organizations that provide their managers with the same training as their employees, in addition to training on an effective coaching process, can boost the impact of a program’s learning transfer by more than 40%.

In fact, training managers on both content and coaching skills is shown to be more than twice as effective as coaching skills training alone—and four times more effective than just encouraging managers to coach.

The Six “Must-Have” Manager Skills

Managers whose training leaves them ill-prepared for developmental coaching will fail as coaches. In order to coach effectively, managers must practice these six critical skills:

Provide specific and constructive behavioral feedback.
Use effective communication skills, such as listening and questioning.
Motivate and hold employees accountable for improvement.
Establish trust.
See different perspectives and show empathy.
Clarify employees’ roles and responsibilities.

These skills highlight two key points. First, managers need an effective coaching process to follow and the underlying skills to carry it through. Second, managers need knowledge of the skills to which they are coaching. Without this knowledge, they cannot provide the behavioral feedback or role clarity their employees need.

The Power of Knowledge

Our own research supports these findings. Across the nine studies we reviewed, adding manager coaching to a learning journey clearly increased performance outcomes—but there was a stark difference in the percentage improvement based on the type of manager coaching delivered. We analyzed the three types of coaching support to reveal a more insightful result:

When an organization focuses on encouraging managers to coach but does not provide new coaching skills, performance is boosted by less than 12%.
When an organization equips managers with new coaching skills, performance improvement jumps to about 18%.
When an organization provides managers with a combination of new coaching skills and training in the specific skills their employees learned, performance improvement skyrockets to 41%, on average.

What Should You Do Next?

Focus on preparing your managers to coach to the skills your employees are learning—providing coaching skills alone are not enough. Unless your managers can provide meaningful, constructive feedback and role clarity, based on their knowledge of the job and the desired competencies, you will lose more than half of the potential impact of the manager coaching. So, as you develop and launch any manager coaching program, ask:

Do my managers have an effective coaching process?
Do my managers have the necessary leadership and communication skills to coach effectively?
Do my managers know enough about what their employees are learning to provide constructive feedback and advice?
Have my managers had an opportunity to practice these skills before coaching employees?
Have my senior leaders created a supportive coaching culture for our managers?

A Learning Journey That Works

Wilson Learning’s blended Learning Journey increases managers’ involvement in the learning, with embedded application challenge assignments to promote and track this approach. In fact, our research shows that adopting this feature doubled the percentage of assignments completed by learners, with 82% of assignments completed. And, 91% of learners received manager feedback and coaching, a 45-fold increase. These results clearly show the value and impact of the Learning Journey approach.

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