Let's continue with the topic of the difficulties of training middle-level heirs which brings up at my friend's promotion dinner last month. A friend who is starting a business said that he is facing the problem of lacking middle-level staff. His startup team has more than 20 people, and he can't manage it alone. He has tried to hire people to manage it, but the outcome is not good, and the work cannot manage well so the expected result cannot be achieved. 

In recent years, the company structure tends to be flattened to quickly respond to market changes and concepts such as flexible organization (Adhocracy) and enterprise team collaboration platforms continue to rise; thus, the trend in the need for middle-level management for enterprises is increasing. The value of the middle-level lies in being flexible, able to turn the company's policy into a specific plan and leading colleagues to implement the company's policy. Therefore, the biggest difference between the middle-level and the junior level staff is not the skills and experience, but the way of thinking. 

We have different opinions on how to train our way of thinking. Some people think that it will be learned naturally at work, so there is no need for special training. Some think that thinking ability is a talent, and those who understand will also understand naturally. For me, I think any ability can be trained. As people are all different, you can't use the same method, and they have to be trained from person to person. 

However, the company is not a school, so we need to focus on cost-effectiveness. When it is found that an employee is not suitable, let him find other suitable places for development. When I meet a potential employee, I will choose to use the coaching method to cultivate. Although it will require a longer time, it will be more suitable for the company culture than employing externally. 

Coaching is different from teaching. The main body of the teaching is the teacher, who imparts the skills to the students. On the contrary, the coach takes the students as the main body and explores the skills according to the potential of the students. The problems faced by managers will change over time. What we teach will be out of date. Therefore, using the coaching method to guide employees on how to face problems, understand problems and find solutions is a cure for the root.  

There are many courses or theories in the market about how to achieve the effect of coaching. Most of which are guiding students to think in a more ideal way. We may have the opportunity to elaborate later. We next talk about the conditions for successful training, and there are two main conditions. 

The first one is the trainee's trust. This trust can be trust in the tutor or trust in the learning content. The former one is because they believe in the tutor's judgment, recognize some of their shortcomings, and are determined to follow the teacher's method to train. The latter is because they believe that what they learn is useful to themselves, and they decide to learn it to the end no matter what kind of method it is used. 

Another condition is repeating. When people learn skills, they will use lots of resources from the brain and need to be very focused. However, the brain can operate automatically like an unmanned driver once you get used to it. The situation is like riding a bicycle and swimming, and you don’t need to pay special attention to it. Therefore, as long as you keep repeating it, it will be written into the brain's program no matter it is a skill or a thinking pattern. Then it will follow naturally without much effort. 

Many people think that some abstract concepts are difficult to train, such as creativity and thinking, etc. They often only have training goals without relevant training content, and let the trainee think about how to do it by themselves. But in fact, we only need to decompose the target into the basic elements, and then train for each element according to the situation. The effect of the target will then be combined.  

To give a simple example, when we need to cultivate the ability to be careful, we only need to add a step and re-examine each time before completing the work, which can naturally reduce error. As long as we meet the conditions of trust and repeated training, we will naturally incorporate this program into the trainee's consciousness and become his thinking habit. We will then see the effect inadvertently.

Simon So Head of Digital Marketing