This Week in HR the Crescent team took a “Listening Skills” test. It was one of those canned tests where you add up the value of all your answers and then you get lumped into proficiency-ranges. Each range then has a list of interpretations and recommendations for the individual tester. I scored a 49, landing me on the precipice of greatness, but stuck nonetheless in the OK Listening Skills range, 30 – 49: “needs improvement.” But I was only one point short of a good listener! It just isn’t fair.
I couldn’t help myself. I started manipulating my answers until I scored closer to 70. But that felt inauthentic and even tragic. I thought to myself, are these kinds of tests really even useful? How does landing within one 20-point span versus another really tell anybody about their listening skills and needs for improvement? How can I be as bad at listening as someone who scores a 30? Before I start spiraling, I’ll move on to the point.
The real value of the test isn’t in the questions and scores, it’s about the exercise of self-evaluation. As an HR professional, finding ways to engage employees in the endeavor of self-evaluation is one of the most productive things I can do. It effectively promotes learning, corrects bad behaviors as they are observed developmentally, and increases employee engagement in the overall goals of the organization or initiative. For me, it wasn’t even as much about the team members’ personal journeys down Listening Lane as it was about my own ego. Each time I assessed and scored anew, soothing my poor self-esteem, I read and reread the interpretations and recommendations on listening.
I may have very well become a more skilled listener by the time I took the test 3-4 times.
When you can make training and learning meaningful to the individual, you win. While Learning Management may be the rustiest of HR provinces, it is arguably the most strategically important. There is no better way to give back to employees—to advance your own mission, than training and molding them into the employees you need them to be IF the mission is to be achieved by technically knowledgeable, resourceful, productive employees.
Learning Management transcends duty to become art only when the learning manager synergizes the things that motivate people, like Relevancy of Topic and Career Application with Personal Meaning and Job Purpose. I only enjoyed the Listening Skills test because it was relevant to me. If there isn’t some carrot dangling, I mean a personal incentive, there is less personal meaning in the pursuit, whatever that may be. Applying this principle to Learning Management is the only way to keep folks engaged and interested in whatever you’re trying to sell them, anything else just boils down to making you richer or look better to your managers, et al.
