Recruitment and Training

Yesterday I conducted the last of four training sessions with Delarc supervisors. There were two groups and each group participated in two four hour sessions. It had been a few years since this training was offered so the groups contained both fairly new and some well experienced supervisors.

Both groups impressed me in many ways including:

1 All the bright eyes. I didn’t notice one “dud” in the lot. Every single person, 35 in total, actively participated. At one time or another, every single person asked questions, offered opinions and contributed important insights. People were alert and stayed alert.

2 Eager learners. The purpose of the training was to impress upon them the critical importance of their jobs and to increase their mindfulness of key issues. Issues which I need to count on them to continually address in order for our organization to maximize employee productivity and retention; which in turn will lead to the satisfaction of the people we serve and their families and in the longer run accomplish our mission.

At the conclusion of the sessions I was convinced that each person left the room having learned important information, gained important insights and increased the mindfulness we were looking for. They came in with the right mind set and left better equipped and motivated to provide world class levels of coaching and support to our world class staff.

3 The benefit of proper recruitment. This lesson continues to shine through in so many ways. There were several times during the sessions when I couldn’t help think of prior training sessions we have conducted with many different audiences across the country. While there were always bright and motivated people in attendance and while, with humility, I can say there were other, more borderline performers we were able to captivate and bring around, all too frequently there were people in the audience who quite clearly didn’t belong there. In too many cases, they outnumbered those that did belong.

Our emphasis on proper recruitment and selection pays off in so many ways. The caliber of those 35 supervisors proves it once again.

4 The children and adults we support come first. This principle is so simple; yet, so profound. Easy to say; extremely difficult to actualize. It is the bottom line of this organization. The key to that actualization is the partnership between our staff and the people who coach and support them.

I slept well last night (at least until 3:00 when I started thinking about the day ahead) knowing that partnership will be even stronger.