The Role of Middle Managers in Learning

The learners within the organizations supported by chief learning officers are no different. Often these learners’ visits to available learning offerings are viewed as breaks from a very busy and demanding world of “real work.” CLOs and their teams typically aren’t viewed as living there or carrying much influence. The “parent” equivalent of today’s training world is the learner’s manager. Managers dictate, control and reward the day-in and day-out activities of the students. They hold the ultimate motivation in their hands—the student’s job. If we as a learning industry want to be effective, we have to better understand how to work with this highly influential group. We need to engage them, educate them, and support them. Let’s explore the role this powerful resource can and should play in instructional programs.

The irony of this situation is that many managers don’t understand this responsibility, or if they do, they’re not sure how to honor it. A colleague of mine once said that his company did an amazing job of promoting product or process experts out of their area of expertise and into a role that manages the people who do the work. He said he thought these were two completely different skill sets, and he’s right. Many expert widget-makers are now managers of other widget-makers, and they feel ill-equipped to tackle the human-capital side of management. An employee’s learning needs are a subset of the many demands on these managers. Learning leaders need to step up and help these managers understand this important aspect of their responsibility.

This starts by helping them understanding the value of learning to their employees. Managers need to see how learning impacts outcomes. With times as they are, many organizations have matured past the point of tolerating training for training’s sake. We all agree that learning is a good thing, but unnecessary learning isn’t. Learning leaders need to work with managers to help them better relate daily projects and outcomes to learning needs and programs. To do this, it is imperative to start talking at a broader level than we have in the past.

At a recent conference I attended, a fellow attendee shared that he can’t even mention the word “training” in his company because the immediate response he receives is, “Well, we’ve cut the training budget, so I have nothing to talk to you about.” For many training professionals, this would be the end of the dialogue, and possibly their job, but to this colleague it meant that he needed to start speaking a different language. What he found was that the organizations he worked with still had a lot of mission-critical projects going that were not associated with relevant training initiatives. Instead of talking about training dates and classes, he started talking about these projects and the skills each manager’s employees would need to help complete the job effectively. We can help middle managers better understand the competencies their employees need to do their jobs and, more importantly, complete these projects.