I read an article in People Management the other day written by a CIPD Advisor who was giving top tips about how to run effective management away days.  The author was saying that in today’s economic client, and with organisations having to justify spend on people development, management away days need to be well planned in order to be truly viable.  And I thought, what a refreshing change…. this man has really got a handle on how training budgets should be spent so that organisations can actually see tangible improvements in management performance.  But then I became quickly disappointed when I read further down the article and realised that he was actually only giving top tips about venue, agenda and facilitation of management away days.  Whilst that’s all quite interesting, I think he missed the critical point! In my opinion, it is only ever worth investing in management development (or in fact any type of development) if there is tangible and measurable evidence of learning.  It’s simply not enough to send a group of managers off to an outward bound jolly or pack them into a training room and expect them to have a sudden moment of realisation about how they can improve their management skills and develop as a collective team.

Rather than concentrating on the fine details of how management away days should be planned, there is a bigger issue here for HR to think about … do we know what we want the managers to learn, what behaviours do we want them to demonstrate and how do we want them to perform as a team?

The best way to develop managers and build effective management teams is to first be absolutely clear about the required learning outcomes.  HR needs to recognise that learning has limited success when delivered as a short course in a classroom or when teams are sent on jollies.  In order for managers to truly develop and for management teams to ‘gel’ there needs to be a ‘blended learning’ approach which recognises that sustainable changes in behaviours can take a long time and may take a few different approaches. 

If HR are going to spend money on effective management development they need to identify what management skills and competencies will have a long term and sustainable impact on leadership in their organisations.  Coaching and mentoring are of course excellent ways of supporting long term change in management behaviours over a period of time.

It’s a challenge for HR to justify the cost of management development with the current squeeze of budgets – so it’s more important than ever before to ensure that money is appropriately used and which results in tangible and observable improvements in management behaviours.