Practical Methods to Reinforce Skills after Training After training is over and participants have learned how to do improved leadership skills, the real work begins. Now they have to replace their old, habitual ineffective responses with newly learned effective responses. That will take a great deal of reinforcement, and they’ll need support. We recommend using a combination of peer groups, mentors, weekly reviews, online reinforcement, follow-on surveys and coaching. None of these initiatives involve a significant investment in time or money. Peer groups are powerful. Groups of three seem to work well. If you set them up during the training so that people have an opportunity to work with each other as they are learning the skills, the participants tend to form powerful bonds and develop real trust. That trust can be very useful as they move into the practice and reinforcement stage of the program. If you have successful graduates of the program, assigning one as mentor to two peer groups also produces good results. The mentor's role is to be a role model, help the groups sort through difficult issues and be a coach and cheerleader for their success. The goal is for participants to actually practice the skills in the workplace and be prepared to talk about what is happening. Weekly reviews conducted by the Training Department (or mentors on a rotating basis) during lunchtime (brown-bag lunches) don’t take time away from work, and they produce incredible reinforcement for change. During these sessions, participants review the skills for a single module along with the video of those skills. Then they discuss what is working and what is not working, and they get feedback and help from each other. Over the course of 12 weeks, participants get a chance to review each module. Going through this sequence twice (a six-month project) does a lot to ingrain long-term behavioral changes. Online refreshers, when available, are another very powerful way to reinforce training concepts and skills. We recommend a one-year access to each of the online modules. Finally, surveys of the team members (direct reports) are a great way to measure progress and where work is still necessary. Surveys can be accomplished at any time, but we’ve found that an upfront survey, followed by surveys 90 and 180 days after class give good data without tiring the respondents. The training department and individual managers use the results of the surveys during one-on-one coaching and mentoring. These practical reinforcement strategies take participants from knowing to doing. Leaders emerge with improved skills they not only can do, but that they will do. Bud Cummings, Professional Development Associates