Opportunity for Learning Leaders to Enhance Collaboration for Employee Engagement

By: Heather Meeker Green

In the world of talent development, employee engagement is a high priority. Learning leaders have a unique vantage point from which to usher in, facilitate, and revise strategies that affect a large part of the organization, particularly as it pertains to preparing people affected by large-scale change. However, they can’t do this in a vacuum. They need collaborators who trust them, and that requires internal negotiation skills that allow them to overcome objections, explore mutual interests, and commit to a win-win outcome through a joint problem-solving process.

Experienced learning leaders are savvy about the importance of drawing as many correlations as possible between learning activities and outcomes achieved. To do so, they often follow an important sequence when considering a strategic learning initiative:

1. Identify challenges/business pain points in need of a new solution

2. Define desired/needed competencies of employees to address challenges

3. Design and implement the learning initiative

4. Evaluate the results over time

5. Reinforce and modify the learning over time

Interestingly, these five steps for a strategic learning initiative parallel an effective negotiation process:

1. Identify challenges/business pain points in need of a new solution through negotiation

2. Define or consider the relevant parties and their interests

3. Design and implement the negotiation initiative

4. Evaluate the agreements and outcomes over time

5. Reinforce, support, and modify the agreements as needed over time It takes two to do the negotiation “tango.” Learning leaders and their counterparts in functional areas of the organization whose employees would be participating in training both need to collaborate on the entire process in order to demonstrate to employees a commitment to their improved performance.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the above process gets stalled somewhere between steps 1 – 3 for a variety of reasons. For one each of these steps is time consuming and sometimes their priority status drops off for more urgent matters. Also, companies fail to carry forward momentum from earlier phases of the learning cycle in order to support the “stickiness” of new skills and gather evidence of ROI. Analysis and reinforcement don’t happen by themselves and they’re not necessarily easy. They have to be intentional parts of the process, which reflect the company’s culture in terms of commitment to employee development through caring and transparency.

Learning leaders are encouraged to think strategically from the beginning about how to get all parties on board and committed to the learning initiative. This is a negotiation requiring thoughtful joint problem- solving actions. In order to prepare well, there are three key areas to consider:

The Who? Crucial Relationships

An important first step is to identify the key internal parties with whom learning leaders are negotiating.

Ask these questions:

 Who will be affected by this problem/opportunity?

 Who is interested in this problem/opportunity?

 Whose support will be necessary to address potential solutions?

 Who are the decision-makers?

 Who will serve as your best ally/coach/sponsor?

How to maximize these relationships? Once learning leaders have considered the relevant parties, it is important to communicate well with them. Three top-level strategies for doing so include:

 Build internal working relationships.

 Avoid surprising internal partners.

 Enlist internal partners in joint problem solving.

The What? Critical Interests

A second key ingredient to effective internal negotiations is considering the important interests of all parties in order to find mutually satisfying outcomes. This involves defining interests, sharing examples of interests and exploring interactively the critical interests in typical situations and scenarios relevant to the learning leaders.

The How? Creative Options

A third strategic component is the ability to consider all of the interests and then creatively brainstorm possible options or solutions. What issues can be resolved and which pieces to an agreement can be crafted to form a solid, mutually-satisfying outcome for all parties? Following effective brainstorming guidelines and taking into account the important interests of all parties, learning leaders develop expansive and value-added solutions to attain mutually-satisfying agreements.

Engagement in their own progress is a key objective of employees since many soft skills involve a continuous cycle of learning, application and evaluation rather than a fixed point at which someone has achieved full mastery. As much as executives are demanding ROI to justify the time, expense and positively impact performance, so are employees who want to know their commitment to learning and application was valuable and not spent on a fad or misaligned goals. Therefore, it is important to the success of the initiative and all the involved parties to anticipate the need for and provide appropriate reinforcement activities.

Like any new skill, practice makes competent, repetition breeds confidence and new skill sets are more likely to become ingrained into the company culture if encouraged outside of silos. When they are strategically implemented, comprehensive learning initiatives can foster employee engagement and retention of top talent, which in turn fuels high performing teams, overall performance and ROI.

If organizations are to move beyond lip service and actually break down the silos that hinder successful enterprise learning initiatives, it is crucial to recognize the importance of effective internal negotiations (as opposed to imposing one’s will or maneuvering a power play). By tearing down those walls, learning leaders, managers and front-line employees can identify common objectives for mutual gain and come to impactful agreements.