I will say it until I'm blue in the face: training is an investment, not an expense. When your team stops learning, they stop growing and so does your company. If we want to grow our business, which we do at Grunder Landscaping Co., we must grow our people.
Our goals for this year and the next few are ambitious, and our team will be the key to their success. As president & CEO, I am personally championing training at our company because we believe it is so critical to our success this year and in the years to come. This week, I wanted to share how we structure our training at GLC to make it as effective and memorable as possible.
It's common for trainings to be structured so that participants are first told, then shown, then allowed to do whatever they're being trained on. We take it one step further at GLC by following the Tell - Show - Do - Teach formula:
Tell: Quite simply you tell the group what they are going to learn. Ensure you tell them WHY they are going to learn this, and explain how this training will benefit them.
Show: Next you show them how to do what you just told them. Ensure everyone can see you, hear you, and that the demonstration is clear.
Do: Now the team gets to take action and do for themselves what they were just told and shown. We often do this step together during the training so that we can help our team with the task the first time they do it.
Teach: They have been told what to do, shown how to do it, they have done it themselves, and finally, they must teach it to someone else. Only when you truly understand how to do something can you teach it. We do extensive trainings with our team leaders, with the expectation that they teach their crews the same skills. This has been fantastic for deepening our leader's knowledge and for efficiently providing training for the whole team.
At GROW! 2021 in New Orleans on February 24-26, I will lead a breakout session dedicated to how successful companies can create training programs for their teams. I'll share the details of our own training programs at GLC, including the topics we cover, how we schedule our trainings, and the strategies our teachers use to keep training fun and memorable.
I hope to see you there!
Marty Grunder
President & CEO
Grunder Landscaping Co. & The Grow Group
Join ambitious landscape pros from around the country in New Orleans for this one-of-a-kind conference led by award-winning entrepreneur Marty Grunder and The Grow Group, along with some of the most successful leaders in the green industry. You’ll enjoy three days of innovative programming focused on real-world solutions to the challenges owners and their teams face; a behind-the-scenes tour of Mullin, a stand-out company that is transforming the landscapes of New Orleans; and a truly inspiring line-up of speakers.