Education Critical to Career Advancement but Training Not Delivering Mindsets for Success

21-Jun-2011

A recent survey of 879 Australian executives identified that most executives believe education is of critical importance to advancing their careers but the vast majority of organisations are failing to deliver in-house training that satisfactorily meets their needs. Mark Huston of Mindset Group thinks he knows why. “Most training focuses on external skills without due attention paid to what’s going on inside. Yet sport, success and positive psychology have all shown success and satisfaction inevitably boils down to Mindset.”

Despite most executives already being highly educated, 50.9% of those surveyed in the report ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they needed additional training and qualifications to progress their career. The importance placed on ongoing personal development to career progression was reinforced by the number of already highly qualified executives who continue to seek new training. Of those with a Masters degree (48.1% of respondents), 56% said they needed to pursue further training.

This lies in stark contrast to another finding of the report that showed 26.4% of the executives surveyed were ‘not at all satisfied’ with the training provided by their employers. The report identified that, for the large part, in-house training provided by employers was mostly considered unsatisfactory with only 4% of executives saying they were ‘completely satisfied’ with their current in-house training programs.

That’s a remarkable disconnect when you think about it. On one hand we have executives screaming out for further skill development and training, and on the other we have organisations pitifully ill equipped to provide it. In a business environment where attracting and retaining critical talent is increasingly becoming a top priority for CEOs, this is a disconnect no organisation can afford.

Research in Sport, Success and Positive Psychology have all shown that action, choice, success, satisfaction and engagement all arise from, and are impacted by our mindset. As such, mindset largely determines the results we experience as individuals, teams and organisations. This is no different in corporate training environments where the benefits of any training acquired are determined by our ability to apply them to the workplace, embedding operational and strategic practices that sustain improved outcomes for our organisation.

So, why the disconnect? Why do Australian executives largely feel so dissatisfied and under serviced by their organisation’s in-house training programs? Mark Huston, Senior Transformation Consultant at Mindset Group explains.

“Tied to training success, mindset is essential. Believing we can implement new skills, we likely will. Believing we can’t, we likely won’t. Taken further, success in any new skill set requires its own mindset. For example, a leadership mindset, a performance mindset or a sales mindset are all supportive mindsets necessary for success in each of these skill areas. They are as important, if not more important to success within the given skill-set than the external skill training itself.  Skills without the necessary supporting mindset cannot be guaranteed to succeed. However, a person with a necessary supporting mindset will find a way to succeed. But how many training organisations ensure their clients get the mindset to succeed in the area in which they are skill training?”

Organisational culture is essentially the sum of the mindsets of those engaged in it, starting most influentially with the mindsets of those at the top of the organisational food chain.  To shift culture; to create a high performance culture, a customer service culture or a sales culture requires, foremost, organisation-wide mindsets that can support it.  Mark adds, “The fact we are not getting those results already says the mindsets necessary for the culture wanted do not exist sufficiently or it would already be manifesting. Therefore, the success of any cultural change initiative will be defined and delimited by the ability of the organisation-wide mindset to support it.

“For permanent improvement or culture change, a permanent shift in mindset is required. It must be the objective. Without the shift in mindset to support it, any change or improvement achieved through training and development will be temporary at best with people, teams and cultures reverting or gravitating back to the delimiting dictates of their unchanged mindsets.”

The Mindset Group have launched workshops that provide best practice skills combined with the Mindsets necessary to succeed at those skills. Don Holley, Managing Director of Mindset Group, says, “We will initially roll out seven programs to our clients - Performance Mindset, Team Mindset, Change Mindset, Change Mindset for Leaders, Sales Mindset, Customer Service Mindset and Facilitator Mindset. Our commitment is to provide not only best practice skills in each of these areas, but to provide the attitude and behaviour changes that are necessary for success.”

Mindset Group are management consultants with offices in Melbourne and Sydney that provide integrated people solutions to maximise performance by assisting leaders to transform organisational culture, source talent, develop capabilities and enable technologies.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Don Holley or Mark Huston, please call Erryn Worth at (03) 8676 0590 or email eworth@mindsetgroup.com.au

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