By John Lim, CTO
Professional Growth > Training
In the last few months, I’ve spent a large chunk of my time working with our technical staff. We call it training but really I think the focus is on personal/professional growth.
Our working title for the programs are TekU One and TekU All. TekU One is where I spend time with specific individuals to identify what we need to work on, come up with some strategy, execute on said strategy, and keep each other accountable.
TekU All is a program that I developed with Tina, our Supervisor of Services, to provide training opportunities for all technical employees at TekTegrity. The training encompasses tools, testing, labs, and most of all, accountability.
Besides the training tools, we also do Lunch and Learns on specific topics with our staff in SLO, Fresno, Costa Rica, and one of our clients’ IT department. So far, we’ve seen solid progress but training/learning is a long game that involves commitment and dedication and grit.
Four Levels of Learning
Novice —> Apprentice —> Journeyman —> Master
Novice
Leadership style: Director
-Give plenty of detailed and specific Direction
-Give plenty of Examples
-Do not allow Consensus/Discussion
-Offer few Explanations
Apprentice
Leadership style: Teacher
-Give plenty of detailed and specific Direction
-Give plenty of Examples
-Allow for some Consensus/Discussion
-Give plenty of Access to Teacher
Journeyman
Leadership style: Coach
-Decreasing amount of Direction
-Offer fewer Examples
-Allow for more Consensus/Discussion
-Give plenty of Access to Coach
Master
Leadership style: Mentor
-Offer few Direction
-Offer little to no Examples
-Offer plenty of Consensus/Discussion
-Generous amount of Explanations
Empower Your Own Replacement
The key here is to identify where your employees are at in the Levels of Learning and pair them with the accompanying leader be it Director, Teacher, Coach and/or Mentor. I see training and learning as a Pay it Forward process. You should always push yourself to do more and train someone to replace you.