Ep 56: #AskAkua // Tired of Wasting Money on Building Your Team's Capacity? Coaching May Not Be the Answer

NOTE: Please excuse any errors in this transcript; it was created using an AI tool. Akua Nyame-Mensah 0:07 Welcome to the open door podcast. My name is Akua Nyame-Mensah. I also respond to Aqua and I'm a certified executive and leadership coach recognised facilitator and former sort of leader that loves supporting reluctant buyer fighting and overwhelmed leaders. I've worked with them to help them clarify where they should focus their time and energy each and every day so that they can love themselves, love their work, and ultimately love their life. If you're looking to learn leadership information and hear different perspectives, you are in the right place. My aim in this podcast is to help you see that one of the most productive and profitable things you can do is deeply understand yourself. Understand how you show up, understand how you thrive and allow yourself to align everything in your work in your life, and in your business to support that think of this podcast as your weekly opportunity to receive leadership support. And remember, there is no one right way to lead yourself or others. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the open door conversations podcast. This week is a hashtag ask Akua episode. And I'm really excited to be bringing you part two of a three part series I actually did via livestream all about hiring service providers. So this particular week is all about how to make sure you're investing in the right service provider to build your capacity or your team's capacity. So if you've ever thought to yourself, I'm not sure where I should be investing Should I not be investing? What's the difference between a training and workshop? And you know, do I get what I pay for this is the podcast episode for you. Please let me know what you think of this part two, and make sure you look out for part three of this three part series on coaching and facilitator support. Let's get into the episode. Hello, hello hello Akua Helios respond to Aqua and a Korea. I'm a certified executive coach recognised facilitator and speaker. And I'm really, really excited about today's topic. I think I named this something along the lines of tired of wasting money on building your team's capacity. If so you need to watch this. So with this particular episode, this particular live stream, I really wanted to dive a little bit deeper into what you should be thinking about if you're interested in investing in a facilitator or a trainer, or someone that you want to come in and support a member of your team. As someone who does this full time, I have started to see a lot of patterns and a lot of things happen in relation to sharing more about the work that I do, the results I get through the work I do and how I support leaders and their teams. So this is part two of a three part series I'm doing around service providers that includes coaches. So with the first episode, or the first livestream I did within this series, I talked about being coachable, and how I believe that everyone deserves a coach or everyone deserves to have coaching, but everyone might not benefit from it. And so what I did within that live stream is really break down the elements of coaching and how everyone can definitely benefit from coaching tools and techniques. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to work with an external professional coach, there might be more opportunities to leverage coaching tools and techniques, from existing managers, from peers from mentors, right? There's so many ways in which you can support people and give them once again, access to those coaching tools and techniques where it doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive external professional coach. Right. And that's one of the things I wanted to make sure everyone kept in mind and I thought would be very helpful for helping people think a little bit about how coaching can be used to support members of their team with this particular live stream. Today, what I wanted to talk a little bit more about were more of the group oriented or more team oriented ways that you could support your team. So if you are a founder or CEO or team leader or department head, or CHR o someone who's typically thinking about how to support members of a team with capacity building, this is the live stream for you. Alright, so I just really wanted to look down really quickly as always, I have my notes and my iPad and I want to make sure I cover everything if you have any questions, any thoughts feel free to reach out to me in the DMS you're also welcome to leave a comment. Even if you are watching this recording, you're welcome to leave a comment or a message as well. So there are so many ways in which you can support your team, right? And I'm sure, especially now that we live within a world where there's so many more options online, it might be a little bit difficult for you to really figure out what makes sense and what's really going to have an impact. So my hope is that by the end of this livestream, you have some questions that you can reflect on to help you move forward. Alright, so within this live stream, I'm going to want to walk through the difference between training and a workshop, there actually is a massive difference. And as a service provider, I actually know that I sort of do a disservice to these two different very these two very different ways of serving groups, because I use them interchangeably, I will approach them very differently, right. So in my mind, I might call something a workshop, but it's actually more of a training, and vice versa. So I will go in with the intention. And I'll define them a little bit later on. But they are very different. And so if you are a founder or a team lead or an HR lead, and you're looking to support a team, it's really important that you know the difference between the two, and that you ask the right questions, if you're looking for a service provider that's going to support you with either one of those. And so that's really the first bit I want to define a few things. So much of what I did within the first series within this live stream related to training and workshop, I'll also talk a bit about courses as well, because I think those are increasingly becoming more popular. And then the second part is really around asking, you know, giving you the key questions that you can ask as a decision maker prior to hiring an external service provider to support your team. Alright, so those are the two things I really wanted to do within this live stream, the last live stream within this series, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into Do you get what you pay for. So within the last livestream, within this three part series, I will talk about how to hire a facilitator, coach or external service provider. And really what to keep in mind, right, what every coach, external supervision, external service provider, or facilitator wants you to know, that's really what that last conversation will be all about within this three part series. So let's let's really get into this. And why I really wanted to do this was because I was, you know, an MD, I was someone who was in charge of teams between two different countries. And I didn't really know the difference between the two, when I was looking to support my team. And so there always are options, of course, to do this internally, right. So that's one way the internal capacity, building options within your company might be there, especially if you're a bigger company, or a bigger startup that has a bigger budget. And sometimes that can be good enough, right? That can be useful. But there are some benefits to leveraging an external team and external thought partner, and then no external facilitator to help bring people together because they don't necessarily have the same baggage as an internal team or internal support would. So really just keeping that in mind. So what I've just got down here, do you want to invest in your team members, right, and I'm sure everybody listening to this is like, yes, I want to invest in my team members, I want to make sure that they have the best skills, right, that they have the confidence they need to go out there. If you're working within a startup, you're probably thinking about it from the perspective of, hey, I want to make sure they can go out there that they can fail fast, get up, try new things and help us make money as quickly as possible. But here's the thing. And if you listen to my first live stream within this three part series, you know, this is something that I sort of alluded to all support is not created equal. And as I mentioned earlier on, I used to believe that all trainings, workshops, all trainers, facilitators, speakers, were pretty much the same, right? That you know, you could call anyone in and they'd pretty much have the same impact. But as a full time coach, facilitator and speaker, I have seen firsthand that there is a massive difference in the quality of support given and the results of the support given as well. And that's why it's super key that if you're a founder or someone who's making a decision about whether or not to invest, and you know, groups support a facilitated support a training a workshop, it's really, really important that you make an informed decision, and that you learn about the difference between the different types of support that are available, so that you can make sure that your team is able to really benefit from that engagement, right? It's super, super important, especially if it is something that's going to take up a little bit more time and energy, right. So a key part right is recognising that you need to make sure that you're engaging with that team or that department to figure out what they actually need, right? Because it might not be what you think it is, it's also very important that that team is open to consuming that information are open to participating actively and whatever engagement right that you invest in. And finally, that they have the capacity to actually implement and test out those new skills or the new confidence or whatever they're looking to build within that engagement. So those are really key key pieces of making the most of investing in your team and making sure that your team is getting the capacity development that they need from the right service provider, right, making sure that one you've engaged them and you've actually built awareness around what they need to that they're open to consuming and actually have the capacity to implement and test out whatever they've learned within In those engagements, alright, so let's jump into the difference between a workshop and training. Because the first bit is just really recognising that there's so many different ways to support your team with building new skills. So the first one I have on here is a training. So what is a training, a training typically is a lot more direct, it's really about teaching, it's about instruction skills, specifically are taught. And this is meant to improve capacity and capacity performance. Okay. So that's what a training is, it's typically a lot easier to do training on things that are a little bit more harder skills, right things that maybe aren't as ambiguous. So that's a huge thing. Of course, you can do training on things that are less ambiguous as well. But it's really important to recognise that with training, there typically is a standard approach that that facilitator might take that facilitator or consultants or whoever, whatever sort of title they want to give themselves, but really just recognising that a trading is a lot more about teaching, it's a lot more about instruction. It's not necessarily as much about engagement or creating something new within a framework that's been built. All right. The second one I have on here is a workshop. So what is a workshop, a workshop typically is where a group engages in an intensive discussion and activity. So things really get done, it's hands on. And there's typically an outcome, that's not as directed, right, as not as prescriptive as a training would be, or eight. So I just want to repeat that really quickly. Right? So a workshop is typically where a group is engaging with each other, right? So a training typically is more of that teacher to that participant. That's not to say all the participants within that training, don't engage, but it's not at the same level. And it's not necessarily to create something new or something that's more customised to that individual. That's part of the workshop, I would probably put group coaching, and the impacts of group coaching in something such as a container that similar to a workshop, right group coaching can be a little bit different, because even within group coaching, you might be using more coaching tools and techniques, but it probably has more of a similar outcome to a workshop because it's more of a personalised approach, more of an understanding of how we can do things differently as an individual, and how the group can also move forward and do things differently as well. Right. So as you can see, there are two very distinct two very different ways to support your team with building their capacity. And typically, those types of approaches aren't necessarily done by the same type of service provider. So what that means is there are some service providers that might be very comfortable with training. So that is instructed right giving direct, more prescriptive, right, a lot more direct and prescriptive approaches to building a skill, while with a workshop or group coaching, that individual or service writer has to be very comfortable with more and do give it and a lot more facilitation, right and a lot more of allowing people to go on their own journey so they can get to a specific outcome. Right. So two very distinct ways of supporting individuals, and two very different sets of skills needed for that facilitator or consultants or whatever type of service provider. So it's really important that you understand the difference between the two, because the outcomes are going to be very different. The last one I just wanted to put on here, just because I think it's increasingly becoming more important within this space is a course right. So really just recognising that a course is typically a little bit more like a training, of course, you can incorporate some workshop approaches or group coaching approaches, if it does have some level of engagement. So for example, there are some courses that might have a q&a component that's live or some courses that might have a form component that is live. So that does allow some additional personalization and some additional learning. But for the most part, of course, right has a very structured curriculum, right, there's a certain angle that individuals want to get to, but you might not have the opportunity to practice it in the same way. So really just recognising that, of course, can be a really great way potentially to learn a hard skill or be introduced to a soft skill, but it's not the easiest type of yeah, it's just not you know, the place where you'll necessarily be able to practice it right or roleplay. Within a workshop and training, there might be opportunities for roleplay, there might be opportunities for other ways for you to really practice that knowledge or even practice that new confidence that might come from having gained this new information. That I do think, of course, is a really great way to introduce people or to reinforce something that might have been learned. And another space, especially as it relates to building soft skills. Once again, with harder skills, those typically are easier to test. And so there might be a way to be able to make sure that things have actually made its way to being something that you can actually use moving forward. And also with courses there's so many different types of courses, so many different types of approaches, right they can be more are self paced or they can be dripped over time. And so someone is only going to benefit from a course, once again, if they have the capacity and desire to actually go through the content, and they have the capacity and desire to implement as they go. So this course option is not the best for individuals that don't have good time management skills aren't very good at pacing themselves, and maybe don't have the discipline, right. So just really recognising once again, as you are choosing between different ways to build the capacity of your team, it's very important that you recognise that some of these might be better suited for specific individuals versus others. So just really keeping that in mind. So if you have any questions about that, or thoughts about that, please feel free to reach out and let me know. But I just wanted to share some initial thoughts on that, I'm happy to dive a little bit deeper. But just keeping in mind as a decision maker that there's so many more options beyond these three that I've shared, but I just felt like these were probably the most important to share. And as it relates to the type of work I do the first two, right, the the training and the workshops, and that there really is a difference between the two. And then if you are looking to get support, it's important that you work with someone so they can support you with deciding, you know, what makes the most sense, and really educating you on those elements. And that really brings me, I think, to the second session, or the second part of this live stream, where I just wanted to talk a little bit more about the key questions that you should be asking yourself and getting real clarity on before you start to approach a service provider or think about investing in a service provider. All right, so here are some questions to help you reflect before you start reaching out to service providers, right? Because there is you know, as someone who does this for a living, it's really difficult to support people that haven't taken the time to build their awareness around these people. And once again, it just makes it a lot easier for both parties, if you're aware of these pieces, or if you're not aware that you mentioned that these are some areas that you might need some support with prior to make a decision about what is necessary to really help to build the capacity of your team. Alright, so the first thing that you always want to ask, and I'm not gonna go through these, I think there's more than 10. But I really want to go through all them because I think they're super important. So the first thing you probably want to keep in mind is is this for one person? Or is this for multiple people? So you want to just get really clear on where did this thought to hire service provider get this external support come from? And is this something that I'm seeing and just one person? Is this something that other leaders maybe see, just do my board members see this? Does HR see this? Right, you just want to gain some perspective on whether or not this is something that you know, individuals really have an issue with? Is this something across the entire company that people have a problem with? Or issues with or challenges with? Or is it a specific team. So that's probably the first thing that you want to ask yourself, right, just to get an idea of, you know, how many the numbers and all those elements because those are, that's probably going to have also an impact on you know, whether or not this is feasible financially for you. But another thing you want to ask yourself, and this is really why it's important to think about these different ways in which you can support your team, right? And the different types of engagements there are is from your perspective, you know, this challenge or issue that you're looking to, to really improve? Is this potentially about attitude, right? So there might be an element of attitude or confidence, right? And those are a little bit more intangible. But sometimes it's not really a skill that people need to develop, it's more of that confidence or shifting their attitude towards it. Is it around soft skills? Is it around hard skills? Is it around just not having enough experience? Because if it's not enough experience, right, a workshop training, of course, is really not going to solve the problem, there might be an opportunity here for them to buddy up and maybe be mentored that might be a better solution than investing in a facilitator or workshop facilitator or trainer. Right? So it's really important that you start to reflect on those, those pieces. Because about implementation, right? So if it's about implementation, there might be an opportunity here more for a workshop that's around how do you actually implement something, as opposed to a direct training? Because with a workshop that will allow them to have more of a personalised approach that will make sense for their own, you know, personality and the way they show up and engage with the world? Is it a team engagement issue? Right? So is this about people relating to each other relationships, once again, that might help to dictate whether you invest in a training a workshop or a course? All right. And then the last bit on here is, is this a capacity issue. And I always talk about capacity, because you can't learn new things or implement new things you've learned, if you don't feel like you have the capacity and support to do so. So it's really important also to reflect on that and even asking yourself, do you as the person who's investing if you are the person who directly managed to that individual, or that direct manager had the capacity to reinforce the skills, right? They're learning or the new confidence that they're building? Because that's a huge part of making sure that whatever you've invested in, actually brings about results because As that facilitator or trainer is going to do that, that engagement, and they're ultimately going to lead because they're external. So it's really important that you have the capacity within your company right within your business to reinforce the skills that they're learning and reinforce the confidence that they're building as well. All right, the next thing that you want to keep in mind is with that particular team, are they actually open to getting support? Are they willing to be supported, because similar to being coachable, you also need to be open to being trained, and you'd be open to participating in a workshop, right? It's not going to work. If everyone's there and their arms are crossed, it's not going to work. everyone shows up late, it's gonna be a waste of your time and a waste of your resources. All right. Another thing that I put on here are what are your team members or learning styles. And once again, this is what's also going to help to dictate or should help to dictate whether or not you invest in a training a workshop, or a course, if someone needs actual engagement, like they need to actually try something on or, you know, kind of test it out within a safe environment, a workshop or a training might be better suited than a course, right? Especially if it's a course that doesn't have the engagement of a facilitator, right, it's a self paced course, or something that someone takes online, there's no real engagement by a professor or a facilitator. If that's the case, right, you need to be very clear, and, you know, start to understand the different members that are going to benefit from this engagement to see whether or not that's actually good investment of your financial resources and a good investment of their time and energy. All right. Another thing that goes along with thinking about the learning styles is also reflecting on with those skills that you're looking, you know, to have them build or gain more confidence in, do you feel that they need that support? You know, is it just a sort of a direct one off training? Or do they need support over a longer period of time, and this is something that I love to leverage technology for. And I think that this is one of the ways that you can really distinguish yourself really, as a facilitator, because, you know, especially if you do things online, is that you can provide additional support beyond that initial engagement right beyond that initial facilitation, because it does take time to build skills, especially leadership skills, facilitation skills, presentation skills. And so just having that one and done may not be good enough. So giving your yourself that time to really reflect on that, once again, will help you make the most of the time that you engage a service provider, and you're having a conversation about what that proposal or what that support can actually look like. Alright, the next question you want to ask yourself is, what outcome Do you want. And it's really important to be very realistic. And you know, make sure that that outcome is also achievable, you're not going to have, you know, amazing results with a one and done. That's just the reality of this type of, you know, external support. So that's why it's so important also, for you to recognise that, you know, with the training, someone might come out and have a really good idea of the pieces and have a good idea of the information. But with a workshop, they might have a really good idea of how to implement based on their own personality, and based on their own capacity. If that's how the workshop is set out, right, once again, I'm talking about these in sort of generalities, it's going to look somewhat different, there's going to be some overlap, but it's just really important that you have an idea of what outcome you want. And that's something that you communicate very succinctly to that service provider that you're looking to engage, once again, a good service writers also to be able to help you think about our work through what the objectives of any engagement would be right? And what those outcomes would look like the intangible and tangible outcomes. All right, the next thing I have on here, before I get to the last question that everybody probably starts with, but I don't recommend that you actually start with. So this is the next question I have on here. Do you want support in person or online. And I think for a lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, a lot of people making decisions about how money is spent on capacity building, there is this idea that if something is done in person, there's going to be more of a positive impact that the results are going to be better. As someone who has been doing this for about four years now, I do think that there are some individuals on teams. And once again, this goes back to learning styles and understanding people's personality. I do think that there are some people who maybe do a little bit better in person. But if you have a good facilitator, a good consultant that comes in a good service provider, they should understand how to use different approaches to make sure different members of your team are leveraging different ways of learning and different ways of engaging, of course, it's not going to be exactly the same as being in person, especially for someone who likes to have things you know, touch and feel that sort of elements to it. But a good facilitator, a good service provider is going to be thinking about these different things that they can implement within an online setting. And once again, as someone who's been doing this for about four years now, I honestly don't think that there's much of a difference between the two. I think that there are a lot more advantages actually doing things online because you can start to incorporate things such as having access to the facilitator beyond that initial engagement, leveraging forums, I'm using video, right? So there's so many different ways in which you can leverage different types of media, different types of engagement, to really make it a more sustainable engagement, where people can learn that skill and really test it, and implement it over time to really build their confidence. But you know, I've done things in person, I've done things online, you know, it really will depend on your team and the individuals in that team. But I really would recommend, if you have the story that you're telling yourself, or the thought that comes to mind is that in persons better, I would really recommend that you take a second to really reflect on that, because based on what I've seen, that is not necessarily always the case. All right. The last question on here that probably most decision makers, most founders most CEOs start with, but it's not the right question to start with is, what is your budget? All right? If anything, all the questions I asked previously, should help to drive what you're willing to invest in your team, because what you'll start to realise is that there are so many opportunities for your team to really improve, and that will ultimately improve your bottom line, if you do invest in the right type of support. So what tends to happen is that, you know, CEOs, founders, decision makers, invest in the wrong type of support. And so they jump to this conclusion or have the story they tell themselves that all support doesn't work, all external support doesn't work, or workshops don't work, or trainings don't really work. Therefore, I'm not willing to invest X, Y, and Z. But if you work through the questions that I shared, you'll get to a point where you realise that possibly, you might have not made the best decisions to truly support your team. And you weren't actually connecting with the right service providers or the service providers, more given the right information they needed to put together engagements that would lead to the results that you want. So this is just another way to reflect on it. Another way to think about it. I'd really love to hear your perspective on this. Am I missing anything? Do you have any stories you want to tell about investing in service providers or getting support? As someone who does this full time I know I'm not perfect, I've made many mistakes over the last four years in terms of providing the support. And I'm also always working on getting better and improving. But these questions I've shared, I think, would be really helpful for any founder and deep, you know, any decision maker who's looking to invest in external support, whether it's a workshop, whether it's a course, whether it's a training, and as someone who used to make these decisions for my team, I think it would have been incredibly helpful to have this perspective before starting to do this. Alright, so I just wanted to share to finish off that next week, I'll be finishing off this three part series, I'll be walking through how to hire a facilitator, coach, external service provider, the things that you really want to keep in mind, especially as it relates to building your capacity or building your team's capacity. And I sort of alluded to this before, I mentioned this before, but that question of do you get what you pay for? I believe you do, you definitely get what you pay for. Also, you get what you you get back sort of what you've invested in in terms of reflection, right, that outcome piece these questions I talk through because if you do think about these questions, and you actually provide this type of insight to the service provider that's going to support you with these engagements, you're going to get much better results. Alright, so we're going to be going over the questions that you need to ask the service provider or the things you need to keep in mind as you look for that service provider that's going to support you with building your capacity and your team's capacity. All right. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to listen, stay safe and stay safe. Bye. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please share it with your friends. We can continue this conversation on social media the links to my socials so that is LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can find them in the show notes. If you tagged me in a story and include the hashtag hashtag ask Akua I will share a special little gift with you. Thank you so much once again for your time and I cannot wait to share my next episode with you stay safe and sane.