Leverage cohorts to supercharge your training
Jun 24, 2020
A city leader recently told me, "I don’t like to delegate because my team isn’t as skilled in the work as I am and they can’t do the task as well as me. Maybe I’m a perfectionist."
He went on to say that he went to training to learn the basics of delegation and the best practices yet he doesn't want to delegate and receive the benefits of doing so. He's stuck as a leader….he's not learning and growing.
His training was great but he's not adopting the ideas he learned.
Learning cohorts are one element you can add to your training to become a city or county that builds a learning culture. Cohorts are assigned groups of 4-5 people who meet on a regular basis to journey through a training concept together. Cohorts enable action, questions and adoption of ideas.
Cohorts are about honesty, accountability and vulnerability….they’re about learning and growing and facing challenges to the new concepts…and that can be tough and it can get personal. Cohorts are not for sissies.
Here’s how cohorts can work.
Assuming you have an ongoing leadership development training program, you simply group people in teams of 4-5. You ask them to meet at least once per month to discuss the specifics around whatever topic you trained on that month.
We just completed the “Growing Accountability” workshop for our clients, so our city and county cohorts this month will focus on that topic. Here's what the cohorts would be asked to discuss:
- What part of the topic (of accountability) is hardest for you or confusing?
- What part of accountability can you apply to your life now?
- What part of accountability can you improve on now?
- If you tried some aspect of accountability this month, what happened?
To close the loop on this topic, someone takes notes at the meeting and the team comes to the next month’s workshop where someone shares the cohorts' collective update on what they are adopting, uncertain about or thriving in. Ideally, cohorts include people from different departments, so you get a cross section of experience and perspective.
The cohort is asked to challenge each other, help each other find resources and encourage each other to keep digging and keep fighting. Growth can be hard, but the payoff is great!
For cohorts to work, you need a regular training environment where leadership and other topics are presented regularly…to give the cohorts something to work on.
If you want to become a learning organization and provide regular workshop training to your team, give us a call. We’d love to learn more about what you are doing today and what your goals are.
