Performance Consultants Go Beyond Training
Knowledge and skills are not the only factors in optimum performance.

By Kevin Brown

Growing companies often employ trainers to assist in their evolution. A business with new people, new processes and new information provides a trainer with plenty of work. In addition, trainers often fill the role of catalyst, morale-builder or cheerleader for employees in young companies.

However, employees from a variety of non-training backgrounds often end up in trainer positions. This puts the training function—and ultimately the overall performance of the company—at risk. Hiring a performance consultant can be a better option than hiring a trainer. A performance consultant can help a growing business build a solid performance foundation. Although “trainer” is often a one-dimensional role, “performance consultant” is much broader in scope.

Dan Weatherly, supervisor of training development, Sprint University of Excellence, said, “The trainer’s world is focused on the transfer of skills and knowledge, which ideally transfer back to the job. The performance consultant is focused on analyzing barriers to performance beyond skills and knowledge.”

Trainers by Default
The focus on the transfer of skills and knowledge, or delivery, is the reason many young companies draft subject-matter experts to do the training. Some employees inherit the job because of their great sense of humor and knack for yak. Other companies default the training function to their human resources department, claiming it falls under the employee development umbrella.

Both of these approaches can be flawed. A subject-matter expert or a gregarious employee may be nothing more than an energetic talking head who knows nothing about adult learning principles. Usually, the human resources umbrella in growing companies is folding under a downpour of too many other duties to handle training effectively. In any of these cases, there is the danger of training becoming a sort of informal handoff with little real skill and knowledge transfer taking place.

A young company can’t be blamed for a stopgap solution. The company wants to get its training programs in place and show its employees some movement forward. Hiring the perfect training professional is not always a priority.

However, a performance consultant can offer a company a world beyond subject-matter experts or other would-be trainers skilled only in the art of delivery. “Performance consultant” is not a newly created position in the job world, but most of these well-rounded professionals are hidden by a “trainer” or “training specialist” title. Although performance consultants may use training to reach their goals, their capabilities are not limited to training alone.

Overcoming Barriers
The barriers that stand in the way of performance all become targets for the performance consultant’s interventions or solutions. Training is an option, but other options can be communication, changes in incentives or other motivational tools, changes in employee selection criteria, or changes in work processes, procedures or tools. The training-only role is unable to tackle these areas.

For companies wanting quick results, here’s another way to look at it: Hiring a trainer instead of a performance consultant is like drinking diet soda because you want to lose weight, instead of consulting with a dietician on a diet plan that will produce desired weight loss goals. Most skilled trainers know how to measure training results, but skilled performance consultants can help your company determine what performance will provide the most benefit to the company.

Kevin D. Brown has been an educator, trainer and performance consultant in the Kansas City area for 18 years.