Over lunch, one of my
clients asked me one of the most profound questions I have ever been asked. “In your training,” he asked, “do you focus on instilling new skills into people, or do you focus on removing the internal hindrances to the use of those skills?”
Wow. From my perspective as a professional trainer and educator, I had
never met anyone else who even thought in those terms. The issue was, of course, that which is at the heart of every educator/trainer of adults. If our job is ultimately to change behavior, his question was, more or less, “What is the best way to change behavior in the adults with whom you work?”
He was the head
of an international non-profit association, and the focus of the question were those social workers in his employment whom I was training in better communication skills. The question is much broader than just that group of folks, and can be applied to any adult occupation.
Most of my work for the last two decades has
been with sales people, sales managers, and executives. In that context, the question could be rephrased to this: “What is the best way to change the behavior of a sales person, and unleash that person’s potential?”
Let’s make this personal. What holds you back? What is it that prevents you from
achieving your potential? Is it a lack of skills, is it internal hindrances that keep you performing at less than your optimum, or is it some combination of both?
