The Winning Teams Blog

Key trends in the US training market in 2008

It’s always useful to know what is happening in the learning and development space around the world.

Some of the key facts and trends in the US training market are:

• Corporates are focusing heavily on current and upcoming leaders as a result of skills shortages in management ranks.

• Approximately 21% of training program dollars is spent on leadership development and management/supervisory training.

• The US training market is worth approximately $58.5 billion.

• The average company spends $1,202 per employee on training per annum.

• The corporate learning market grew slightly from 2006 to 2007 by approximately 4%.

• The highest spending sector is finance and insurance, and the lowest is retail.

• E-learning has grown dramatically, driven largely by an increase in online training among small organisations.

• The younger generation of learners is driving changes in learning strategies toward social media.

These are the findings contained in the just-published 2008 Corporate Learning Factbook, by Bersin & Associates.

Are we on the same team?

Photo courtesy flickr

Business sees coaching as an essential part of training and talent management programmes, offering real commercial benefits. This was confirmed following recent research undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the International Coaching Federation, which found that the approximate annual worldwide revenue produced by coaching was $1.5 billion.

This is despite the fact that the coaching industry is un-regulated, there is no one governing body that has authority over coaches, and there are no specific laws and regulations covering how coaches practice. Coaching does not legally require any training, which is a significant contrast to the legal requirements for practice in psychotherapy, counseling, or any of the other recognised professions.

Coaching is a huge industry, and receives a great deal of attention, but it seems that there is a lot of confusion amongst coaching professionals as to who should actually conduct the coaching. A recent article in Training Zone, raises the point ‘Do managers make good coaches?’ The widely differing opinions in this article and the responses seem to indicate that the answer to this question depends on whose interests are being served.

Some professionals, who offer external coaching services, argue that no manager can coach:

“This inability of ANY manager to simply step outside the responsibilities of their managerial role - as compared with an externally-sourced coach whose primary responsibility is …. to the coachee - precludes the ability of the coachee to be completely open on ANY topic.”

Whilst other consultants, who provide courses on how managers can be better coaches, offer the following advice:

“The whole idea of a coach is that everyone is part of the same TEAM. Therefore, the role of the coach is to develop their people so that they can reach the goal and win. It's that simple. Reaching the goal is a win-win-win. That is, it is a win for the player, the coach, and the organization.”

My opinion is that not all managers are good coaches, but all good managers are good coaches. But I’m not a qualified coach.

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Congratulations to Old Mutual Bank

We would like to congratulate Old Mutual Bank on completing another hugely successful Winning Teams programme. We wish all staff well in their transition to Nedbank. It has been a pleasure working with South Africa's No. 1 bank in Customer Service.