The manager population is not an easy target for training: little time to devote to training, situational challenges that are not always easy to target, a level of experience in team management that sometimes varies depending on the team or headquarters. 

Distance learning is a good tool for addressing the challenge of time constraints, since it is generally shorter than face-to-face training and involves fewer logistics for the learner. Nevertheless, whether face-to-face or distance learning, manager training presents certain challenges that remain: how do you address the right content to the right target group of managers, depending on their level of experience? What type of training is best suited to managers' constraints and challenges? How can we make them want to take part in a training course, given the time available and the already heavy mental workload?

To answer these questions, we share with you in this article how to make your manager training a success, by following 4 key steps.

1. Select target

In marketing, it's customary to start every thought process with the target: who is it? What are their needs? Why do they need us?

When it comes to training, the approach is identical. Before defining which training courses you need to add to your training catalog, it's key to map the target learners you have within your company who might need to upgrade their skills, before defining what you're going to enable them to acquire new skills in, and how.

Take managers, for example. The results of a survey carried out by Opinion Way in March 2021 for Indeed among 1,006 French managers show that 20% of managers do not wish to manage a team. Managers can therefore be a learning target for you, as there is clearly a need for management & leadership training. Your company needs managers, but managers don't want to become managers any more, because it's too complicated, too constraining. 

For example, at Bouygues Telecom, 10% of training initiatives are devoted to coaching managers, with the aim of sharing the keys to management with them. Now that you've defined who your training target is, you can define which managerial skills you need to train them on.

One of the first challenges of management training is therefore to convey enthusiasm for a role that involves exciting challenges. No, a difficult conversation doesn't always end in a dialogue of the deaf, but can (and must) bring value to the employee. Yes, becoming a manager goes hand in hand with a busy schedule, but you can protect your time and energy by organizing your diary and communicating your moments of productivity. Your challenge is to train them in the fundamentals of management & leadership with enthusiasm.

The manager's job must be learned in the same way as the executive's, otherwise the transition is likely to be sudden, or even to fail. One of the pre-requisites for correctly assisting new managers in taking up their new posts is practice in realistic cases, to put them in real-life conditions. 

Clearly define your target audience, here in our example that of managers: in addition to being perceived as a token of trust, training creates a frame of reference that managers call upon on a daily basis, when they need to give feedback or coach an employee, for example.
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2. Choose your format

To create a training program that works, the second key step is to choose the right format for your training. Criteria to consider when selecting the type of training program you will choose include:

• What are your learners' operational constraints?
• Is the targeted skill best learned alone or in a group?
• How long do you think it will take your learners to assimilate the targeted skill?
• Are there any peripheral skills you need to train your learners in to help them better assimilate managerial skills?
• Is your training program designed to enable learners to network with each other? Or, on the contrary, is it designed to create links between them through the collaborative sharing of managerial practices and questions?

Depending on the answers you give to these questions, you can then move towards one type of training rather than another. The most important thing is that the format you choose enables you to meet the training objectives you've set yourself, and makes sense in terms of the reality of your learners.

Here is a summary table of the different types of training courses on the market, evaluated according to 6 teaching methods, to guide you in your considerations: 

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3. Deploy your training at the right time

To return to the parallel we drew with marketing: we're less likely to sell you a trip at a time when you don't have a budget and/or your head's not in it than, for example, just after your summer vacation on the way home when you're thinking "when are we going to leave again? can't wait for the next vacation!".

In training, the logic is the same: you need to offer your target audience training at the most opportune moment, so that they say to themselves "I really need this training right now, I need to take part right now!

There are several ways to think about this:

• Use end-of-year interviews to identify future training needs
• Identify the key moments/pivots before and during the assumption of a position that require training.

Let's take the example of a manager taking up a new post. A strong need for training and support is likely to be felt in the few weeks before and after taking up the post, as this period is accompanied by many questions, unknowns and the need to start changing one's posture in order to take up the position successfully.

At Bouygues Telecom, for example, management training takes place within 6 months of taking up the post, as managers need the tools to develop managerial reflexes. An annual training plan is far from sufficient, as employees join the company throughout the year and need to be equipped quickly. This need for modular training programs that can be activated at any time can be met by a distance learning program, which is more flexible and less costly.

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4. Encourage participants to take part

In marketing, to make people want to buy a product, it's not enough to offer it to the right target at the right time, you also have to generate desirability when you present it to them or talk to them about it. The same logic applies to training.

The final step in the process of creating engaging distance learning courses is to market your courses. What does it actually mean to market your courses? 

• Attracting attention
• Make people want to
• Creating links

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But marketing your training courses is difficult because : 

• This is not initially your job, nor that of your service provider.
• It requires resources (time, budget, sponsor contributions)
• You sometimes don't have a handle on the product and its market fit

So how do you go about marketing your training offers? There are 3 simple but key actions to take:

• Put yourself (really) in the shoes of your customers, the learners
• Making the most of "customer success
• Creating links

Action #1: Put yourself (really) in the learners' shoes

Putting yourself in your customers' shoes is a key marketing principle. In training, this principle should be the starting point for your thinking about how to communicate your new training program to learners. In concrete terms, this means trying to really understand what your learners would expect from such a course, and what would make them want to take part. Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to identify your learners' expectations:

• What's in it for the learners?
• What in your training particularly echoes the issues they're currently facing?
• What are the key learnings that would be particularly useful for them and that you could highlight right away?
• What impact will your training have on their day-to-day life? (and our what will be the HR impact of your training, which is often what training managers emphasize).
• What are the immediate benefits of your training in their daily lives (rather than the theoretical impacts)?

To do this, it' s important that you really understand the challenges managers face on a daily basis. Some of these issues are (non-exhaustive list) : 

• Set clear objectives for their teams
• Implement and communicate action plans
• Good decision-making skills and assertiveness
• Good public speaking skills
• Leading and motivating a team on a daily basis through engaging rituals and effective communication
• Manage the demotivation of their teams and handle difficult situations
• Encourage employees to embrace the company's values and culture
• Encouraging team spirit and collaboration
• Provide individual coaching for their teams
• Managing day-to-day performance
• Help their employees manage their time more effectively
• Have the emotional intelligence to adapt their management style to the different profiles of their employees
• Making agility a key aspect of work culture
• Delegate projects to employees
• Create a skills development plan for their teams
• Supporting change

In short, the manager's role is multi-faceted, and it is key to understand this in order to provide managers with the right training programs.

Let's take the example of a virtual class on change management that you set up for a population of managers of managers.

• A poor formulation of the benefits for learners would be :
• "You're about to learn how to successfully manage change sequences."
• A good formulation of the benefits for learners would be :
• "I'm going to share with you the 2-3 things that changed everything / the places where I completely screwed up and why."

The way in which you - or the coach-trainer you've recruited to run this virtual classroom - also counts for a great deal. It's key to adopt a mentor rather than coach posture in your communication.

A coach's posture would be :

• "You have to use such and such a managerial practice or behave in such and such a way".
• "You must adopt this posture" / "The manager must engage his teams!"
• "The solution lies with you, my role is not to tell you how to react". 

Conversely, a mentor posture would be :

• "I'm going to share with you 2-3 managerial practices that have worked for me".
• "I'm going to share with you some of the times I've screwed up and what I've learned from it."
• "Like you I was skeptical, especially as it's difficult, but in fact I realized that impact was key."

Action n°2 : Communicate on your successful training courses

Just as in marketing, it's customary to highlight positive customer reviews of a product to emphasize how well it works, its positive effects, its benefits, you as a training manager can use positive feedback from your learners to highlight the success of your training courses.

Take the example of Orange, which has set up a management training program with NUMA to train 55 Orange Sector Sales Directors in the OKRs method of deploying innovative projects, and in a manager-coach posture.

Despite strong skepticism among experienced learners about dry methods or methods perceived as "coming from above" at the start of the training, the course was a success. To encourage even more Area Sales Managers to take part in future cohorts, Delphine ANTOSZKIEWICZ, Training and Customer Culture Team Leader at Orange, has invested in highlighting the success of the first edition of this training course. One example of implementation was the production of learner videos, with which future learners can identify, in which they talk about their experience, what this OKR methodology has brought them and how they now use it on a daily basis.

Highlighting your successful training programs can also go beyond the internal framework, by sharing your successes at HR conferences such as RH&M or LTD, or in the press. This was the case, for example, of Delphine ANTOSZKIEWICZ, Leader of Training and Customer Culture at Orange, who spoke to Europe 1 about the success of the training program deployed by NUMA. The benefits of these external actions will make your training programs even more credible.

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Action n°3 : Creating links with learners

The last key action to adopt to make your future learners want to take part in your training course is to take care of the way you address them. Your challenge is to create a bond with your learners. To do this, there are several postures you can adopt: 

• Put yourself on the same level as the learners, i.e. don't adopt the posture of a know-it-all who is going to share information or managerial practices in a purely top-down fashion. You need to show in your communication that the training will also be based on an exchange, and that their feedback/experience/sharing will be just as important and useful as that of the coach-trainer. 
• Speak normally and truthfully to learners: rather than using complicated jargon and acronyms in all directions, prefer simple language that everyone can understand and that doesn't exclude any learner. 
• Be naturally enthusiastic: if you, as the training manager, and the trainer-coach you call on to run the course aren't enthusiastic, how can you expect your learners to be? Share your enthusiasm, without overdoing it, to get participants on board and make them want to join your course.

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Here's an example of a message sent by a trainer to participants in Switch Collective's new-generation skills assessment:

Without overdoing it, the use of emojis, simple language and language elements like "I can't wait to read your shares" help to spread this enthusiasm to participants. 

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Managing a team is a role with its share of challenges. Training is an indispensable tool for transmitting the keys to management and putting managers in a position to succeed. For this to work, it is essential for training managers to put in place the right training system by choosing the right target, the right format, delivered at the right time with the right communication.

To find out more, discover the distance learning courses on the fundamentals of management & leadership that NUMA offers in the form of virtual classes in cohorts of 12 learners on our training page.