Ingaged leadership is a new approach to leading that I have developed. It is based on a simple concept . . .

When you align people and create an organization where everyone works together in partnership, that organization becomes vastly more successful.

There are many business settings where organizations can apply this new way of leading – when coaching individual employees, for example, in regular staff meetings, during annual reviews, and the list goes on and on. But there is another setting where Ingagement strategies can be extremely productive: training.

Why? It is because training offers unique opportunities to create organizational change, because it . . .

• Brings your current employees into setting where they can get away from day-to-day responsibilities, think about bigger issues, and change the way they frame problems and do their jobs.
• Can encourage your new employees contribute ideas and visions that can transform your organization and the way you do business.
• Provides settings where people are free to get outside the structure of reporting relationships and suggest highly innovative solutions to complex challenges that your company is facing.

In short, training of all kinds offers a setting where new solutions are aired. If you create the right atmosphere in the classroom and capture the best ideas, they could transform the way you do business.

First Steps to Using Ingagement in Training Settings

It all starts with your trainers and your training design. To tap the power of Ingagement during training, here are some practices to adopt:

• Encourage your trainers to make the process a two-way street where they both convey information and listen openly to discover promising new ideas from trainees.
• Don’t only teach processes and procedures, but also invite people to think big and bring their best ideas to the table.
• Present real-world problems you are facing to break-out groups of 5-10 employees, let them develop innovative solutions and then bring their best ideas back into the general discussion.
• Capture the best new ideas on whiteboards, in notes that you distribute to trainees at the end of the training day, or in other ways.
• Follow up by creating task forces to develop the most promising ideas for further discussion and development.