Leadership as you know is a topic near and dear to my heart. I believe there are certain qualities in great leaders, and I also am a firm believer there are distinct differences between management and leadership. That being said, both management and leadership has a responsibility to insure those that follow or work with them have the tools and knowledge to exceed and excel. We can complain that someone is not performing or meeting goals, however, what are we doing to insure support is provided that leads to greatness. That support comes in training.
Training and education is never done, but it is an evolutionary process. It also means following up on what is taught to insure clear understanding, and keeping an open mind to finding new resources and ways of teaching and seeing the benefits. The moment we believe we are done with training or supporting from an educational standpoint, we have failed both ourselves and those working with us. Fair Housing is one example of an area we "assume" our team members know. We give them an online course to complete or on occasion send them to a workshop if the funds are in the budget. I have in the past written about the trend witnessed related to this topic. When interviewing managers or anyone that is already in the business I always ask, "What are the protected classes in Fair Housing?" I have yet to have more than two candidates in ten able to easily give me the correct response. Our industry has many resources for education and training from site led reviews, regional workshops, Internet based courses, corporate conferences, and apartment association events. So why is it our people do so poorly in this and other areas we "assume" they are trained in?
The answer is in several areas all critical to benefiting our teams, creating a motivational environment, and raising the skill levels of our associates. First is follow-up. How often do we confirm understanding of what is taught? What I have found when talking with industry trainers is we seem to be lacking in training trainers and leaders/managers to verify educational success. We instead assume they get it! The key to great education is not that they can pass a test on an Internet required course, but they "retain" what they have learned and can use it effectively. Second, we fail miserably at conditioning the training over time. Humans for the most part need conditioning. Our people pass that Fair Housing poster many times a day, why don't they know what is on it? Because we fail to provide reminders and conditioning over time about the importance. Third, we fail to explain the importance of the training and what they should expect. This is to not only insure they have a clear understanding, and they won't be surprised as to why we will be following up with occasional testing.
These points are also true when it comes to closing, troubleshooting for maintenance, risk management, and so many other areas. Make education a process and condition your teams to expect it and you will probably find they desire it. Help them identify with how this will help them move up the ladder of success, and you will no doubt find yourself being more successful. Great leaders also have willing and great followers. Since we cannot do the job alone, it is the great followers you develop that will raise your ability to lead further as well.
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