Is a Professional Business Skills Seminar Quality Training?
It depends on your standard and desired R.O.I.
What do seminar companies really provide?
If you were to closely evaluate the return on investment of attending a seminar, you actually probably waste more in salary expense of the attendee by attending a seminar than the course costs your company. I contracted for several years to the largest business skills/seminar companies and it was an eye opening experience.
It has to be understood, first and foremost that the professional business skills/seminar companies first concern is profit! While pursuing a profit is an admirable thing, so is delivering a tangible and useful product. Some of the big business seminar companies have been bankrupt several times due to the fact that their business model to this point didn’t generate a sustainable profit. Their business model hasn’t really changed substantially either so it’s become a recurring cycle. They do not focus on giving you the best information or even the most up to date information, they focus on giving you what they can within the confines of their business model that may help you, if you pursue it and make maximum effort to make use of the information. They just want you to feel entertained and positive about the day so you will attend other seminars with them. If you doubt it at all, get on their mailing list. They will advertise to you mercilessly offering you every course they can think of even though it has nothing to do with your profession.
Professional Business skills seminar companies provide a lot of information at a seminar knowing that if they do not some people will complain that enough information wasn’t provided. Unfortunately, they know based on the learning abilities of human beings that we cannot absorb most of the information provided in the six or seven hour duration of the training session. They try to put some fun into it to make it seem more valuable to you but know that you will only retain bits and pieces. In fact, research shows we only retain about 5% of the information from a seminar even if we are really trying to retain it!
Lack of expertise creates lack of results
Seminar companies do not have and training or teaching staff. Their instructors are all contractors paid minimally to keep expenses down for the seminar companies. The contractors can earn adequate money if they commit to selling the seminar company’s audio and video training products. This tends to focus the contractor more on selling that providing the best training possible. Often the materials offered for sale are outdated and of questionable quality.
The contractors the seminar/training companies hire do not necessarily have any real experience at all in the subjects they teach. Their only real requirements are: can they make it credible and fun and can they sell lots of the seminar company’s products. Often the person in front of the room knows less about the subject than the audience! It’s the nature of the business seminar company model. Many “experts” will not work cheap and travel all the time on a moment’s notice while taking no action to gain their own customers because the business seminar companies make them sign a non-compete. One of the major complaints people attending the seminars make is, “they spent the whole seminar trying to sell to me.” If the contractor is not adept at what they are doing that is how it will feel. However, without the sales the seminar companies would not be in business at all. In truth they have become products sales companies much more than quality training companies.
Because popularity is their judge, their biggest challenge is that they focus more on whether the training is fun and liked than if it actually provides real world solutions to the challenges the participants came to alleviate. Their feedback forms are geared toward “did you like the instructor and did you have fun”. True, we do learn better when we are happy but laughter doesn’t overcome many leadership and skills challenges.
I once had a participant come to me at the end of a seminar. It was a seminar designed by one of the business seminar industry leaders and using their materials. The course was titled something about becoming a master of Excel. After the training, the participant came to me and said that he was good with Excel and came here to become a master. He shared he did not become a master during the course of the day’s training session. In another instance, teaching a leadership course, a participant told me she went to seminars all the time and she was disappointed because she hadn’t learned anything new at this one. The course was about coaching and leadership skills.
When you have the inside scoop, what you find is the seminar companies do not often update their materials. Much of their materials are very outdated, often decades behind the research and data. When a company offers everything from leadership to marriage communication and has no high skilled training staff, quality is not their focus! Its sales!!
To get quality individual development requires finding a proven expert in the field that is also a proven expert at teaching their expertise! Unfortunately, most training companies started with the founder teaching OSHA or some specific body of information and when someone liked their training class and asked them something like, “Do you teach leadership too?” The OSHA trainer thinks of the potential dollars and says, “I certainly do!” Now the OSHA expert has become a leadership expert! It happens all the time. Unfortunately, just because you can put together a decent training course and make it enjoyable doesn’t make you’re an expert on the subject matter, nor can you provide top quality leadership development!
How to get real training and change
The word ‘Expert’ highlighted in green
First, to produce positive leadership results change requires employee and leader development – not rote lecture training. Secondly, to develop and mentor people requires proven leadership skills and success as well as proven training/coaching and mentoring skills and success! If the developer cannot attach the concepts to the audiences real-world needs and scenarios then the learning will be disjointed and not very effective! To get top quality leadership development:
- Verify the training provider’s expertise and success
- Verify the training provider’s training/mentoring success and expertise
- Ensure the program provides immersion and long term development
- Ensure the program provides a sustainable standard to follow and maintain
Training should transform not just entertain. To effectively train people to ensure their success and that of the organization requires expertise, understanding of needs and commitment to the results, not a sale!
