Improve Customer Care in 2011

As you start to make plans for 2011, consider making customer care a priority in your organization. Rid your workplace of old employees' poor customer care habits and train new employees the right way.

With the current economy and workforce demographic shift, learning programs must be aligned with business goals and challenges. Customer care should be one of those goals.

The 2010 Major Issues Survey from the Institute for Corporate Productivity illustrates the priority. Nearly 37 percent of respondents indicated that focus on the customer service is an issue to a high extent, and more than 55 percent indicated so to a very high extent. However, high-extent respondents indicated that their companies are only 38.80 percent effective in addressing it, while very-high-extent respondents indicated only 21.71 percent effectiveness.

In a Harris Interactive Study of 2,049 U.S. adults, 80 percent of respondents indicated that they have decided never to return to a company after a bad customer service experience. Customer care is a defining issue for businesses, and to grow, organizations must attract new customers and retain their current customers.

Frustrations with customer care have come into focus during the past 10 years, according to researchers at the University of Iowa. Dozens of studies confirm that today's organizations have less committed workers, have made cuts to customer service operations and have reduced hiring and training. To remain competitive, organizations cannot survive on pricing; they must offer outstanding customer service.

The technology revolution has brought new tools and software for customer relationship management, profiles, trends and customer history. But technology can't solve the fundamental need for trained employees to deliver the following:
· Increased consistency in creating positive memorable customer service experiences
· Increased customer retention
· Expanded business relationships
· Increased customer referrals

How They Do It

American Family Insurance recently turned to its education division to revamp internal training to provide a better customer experience. Agents are now required to attend a thorough training program that prepares them to help customers achieve financial security. The new training focused on performance-based learning, multiple learning styles, interactive hands-on learning and measurement. This has brought positive outcomes, including increased efficiencies and cross-divisional work.

The Walt Disney Company is well known for its superb customer advocacy and service recovery principles. "Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends," said Walt Disney. One of Disney's methods is to solicit knowledge of mistakes and rectify them so the situation becomes better than if no mistake occurred.

Aside from a focus on good merchandise at a reasonable profit, L.L.Bean, Inc., focuses on customer expectations, treating customers like neighbors and, thereby, changing the dynamic of the interaction. L.L. Bean said, "Self practical, tested merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings and they will always come back."

Put Strategy Into Motion With Training

Giving customers what they want isn't enough; you must anticipate their needs, resolve their complaints and provide service that electrifies them. Preference for products and services goes beyond selection of the product. You want to rid your organization of poor service and become a company of preference by winning customer loyalty. Permanence in the personal relationships that your service employees create brings long-term commitment from your customers. At this point, customers recognize your value proposition.

Creating this sustainable differentiation involves training employees and communicating with them. Your employees must understand that customers are the center of your business.

Vital Learning provides training tools to assist organizations with their resolution to eliminate poor customer service. Winning Through Customer Service is a program designed to help employees to understand their role as a professional within the organization and promotes a problem-solving culture. Employees will learn essential communication skills and behavioral styles that will help them adapt their personal style. In addition, they will identify and utilize a structured process/model for conducting customer service transactions while at the same time mastering strategies for dealing with difficult customers.

Vital Learning's STAR Service is another program designed to improve customer care. It presents four key areas of learning:
S: Sync-up with the customer
T: Target to determine customer needs
A: Assist to meet the customer's needs
R: Reaffirm assistance and the relationship

Vital Learning and its team of affiliate training professionals offer classroom, online and blended learning options that are easily customizable to fit your training strategies. When your employees understand their role in the customer value proposition, your customers will come back.

Thought for the Day

" A sale is not something you pursue, it is something that happens to you while you are immersed in serving the customer."
---Author Unknown

Sources:

McCauley, L. (Dec. 2007). How May I Help You? Fast Company.com
Hartley, D. (Feb. 2009). Customer Satisfaction Through Training. Chief Learning Officer Media.com.
University of Iowa News Release. UI Business Professor Studies Lousy Customer Service (Nov. 2006).
Winning Through Customer Service (2010). Vital Learning Corporation
STAR Service (2010). Vital Learning Corporation
Preliminary Survey Results 2010 Major Issues. Institute for Corporate Productivity.

Retaining Top Talent in 2010 and Beyond

If retaining talent is not high on your list of concerns in 2010, then it should be. We're half way through year, and to remain competitive, your organization must retain its truly talented people.
Some executives might think that with the current economy and high unemployment rate there's no need to worry about employee retention. This line of thinking brings a false sense of security.

The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent in November and December from 10.2 percent in October. Momentum to pass a new spending package for jobs may offer a fresh view of whether the 15.4 million unemployed people in the United States will start to land the jobs they have so desperately been seeking.

As the nation's job outlook improves, a 2009 Monster.com study of 1,600 workers reveals how the recession affects employee loyalty. Forty-three percent of those surveyed indicated some or significant decrease in loyalty toward their employers. This is a sign that employees may leave their current organizations.

The trend toward the decline in job satisfaction has been occurring for decades, and it may be accelerating. According to Monster.com, employers may be experiencing the "early warning signs of the pain to come" should they fail to manage talent effectively during the current recession. As workplace trends from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicate, no aspect of the economy looks more precarious than the job market.

Two Sides to the Issue

Now is a difficult time for businesses, what with the economically driven burn of layoffs and downsizing along with the need to retain the most talented. Most team leaders are unaware of the total disruptive and financial impact the loss of a valued team member can cause. A key team member may be considering leaving three to six months before actually resigning. In the meantime, the employee's productivity and morale often decline. Some employers may have had to lay off employees and discover that they let go of too many. In this case, productivity and customer service also decline.

Cases in Point

One technical organization in California's Silicon Valley estimates that when just one team member leaves, it costs the company an average of $95,000.

Consider a national sales organization that must make up for millions of dollars in lost revenue due to losing a talented rep.

In health care, retaining talent is paramount. Over the next five years, hospital boards and senior executives face new and different workforce challenges, resulting in dramatic shifts in technology, demographics and economics. These organizations will need to allocate more resources to retain existing employees. The alternative is spending more on recruiting costs to replace employees who have already developed highly valued skills.

Facing an aging workforce, a skill labor shortage and changing demographics, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a national federation of 39 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance companies, began offering a variety of training and professional development opportunities to older workers to extend their engagement. The goal was retain the most skilled and valuable workers and to better equip them to supervise a changing workforce. The result is that many employees now plan to work for the association well past their retirement years.

Washington, D.C., is a marketplace ripe with talent but one drawing on the same talent pool, offering a variety of high-paying public- and private-sector jobs. George Mason University recreated its culture to retain its talented by appealing to workers of all ages, to keep the educational institution's employee satisfaction high and turnover low. Among the strategies implemented were knowledge transfer programs to help with on-boarding employees.

A Time for Creative Culture

According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author, economist and founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York City, in a tough economy, business leaders have greater opportunities to attract, retain, support and engage top talent.

Aside from a huge paycheck, leadership can improve employee satisfaction through flexible work arrangements and re-creation of pride and purpose through volunteerism. However, the most important reason talented people love their jobs, Hewlett said, is because of career development and important assignments that expand their skills and networks.

Retention Strategies Tailored to Your Organization
The factors influencing your talent retention may be similar to those at other organizations, b ut you must tailor your retention program to your organization and industry. The keys to this are creating retention strategies and ensuring that your leaders are responsible for tracking turnover. Companies must continue to invest in leaders; their skills can directly affect the bottom line and employee retention.

Can your organization's leaders identify the visible and hidden costs of losing its top talent, including productivity, missed deadlines, waning morale and poor customer service?

Vital Learning offers Retaining Winning Talent, an eight-hour workshop focusing on team leaders and their effect on the retention of key team members. The workshop teaches leaders to implement a retention action plan designed to increase retention for the entire team.

This program teaches leaders the following:

• Understand the scope, severity and cost of attrition
• Determine the risk of attrition for each team member
• Identify which retention factors motivate each team member
• Increase each team member's engagement and commitment

Don't wait to find out if you are facing a serious staffing shortage when the economy recovers. Develop strategies now to improve your organization's ability to retain its most important asset: top talent.

Thought for the Day

"It's absolutely clear that the reason people stay in jobs are the relationships that they have --- primarily with their supervisors."
---Irving Stackpole, President, Health Care Consulting Firm

Sources:
Retaining Winning Talent (2009). Vital Learning Corporation
AARP Outreach & Service (Feb. 2009). Age Friendly Work Culture Best Practice George Mason University, AARP.org
AARP Outreach & Service (Feb. 2009). Training and Development Best Practice Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. AARP.org
Bauer, J. C. and Flannery, T.P. (Dec. 2009). Strategies for the Hospital Workforce of 2010, Trustee Magazine.com.
CNN Money.com (Dec. 2009). Market Snapshot: U.S. Stocks to Get Another Run At Jobs and Retail.
Hewlett, S. (Dec. 2009). Creative, Recessionary Rewards, HR Magazine.
Kursmaker, L. (2009). What Do Good Employees Leave? Monster
Monster.com (2009). How Loyal Are your Employees?
Stinson, J. (Dec. 2009). Nation's jobs outlook improves. Democrat and Chronicle.com
Ware, L. (2009). The Challenge of Retaining Winning Talent: The Workforce Attrition Crisis,Integral Talent Systems, Inc.

Essential Communication Leads to Employee Engagement

If you were to create a formula for productivity it might look something like this:

ESC + EE = P

Or in more elaborate terms:

Essential Skills of Communicating + Employee Engagement = Productivity

A new study from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) on the subject of corporate productivity and engagement indicates that higher-performing companies are more likely to involve employees in the process of cost-cutting measures. In these uncertain economic times, it is more important than ever to keep employees involved in critical company issues. Communication plus talent management programs supports forward focus and engagement for the future.

The same study showed that 91 percent of higher-performing companies point to communication at the top as a way to reduce turnover.

One way to define employee engagement is to consider an employee's connection to the work, the organization, the leaders, the customers, performance and results. Engaged employees stay with their employers, have higher levels of job satisfaction and make significant contributions. Employee engagement is not a "nice-to-have"; it's an essential requirement to achieve organizational results.

A Glimpse at the Disengaged

Roger is a midlevel manager at a software sales organization. He heads up a team of salespeople and spends his day communicating with his staff by e-mail, even though they are only a few steps outside his door. Roger's main focus is sales, which are down. In addition, the company is suffering financially. Roger has been told that budget cuts, including staff, are likely. He is worried about his own job and is wholly focused on crunching the numbers and figuring out who he might let go to make his numbers look better.

Roger's team spends the day wondering why he isn't telling them what is going on. They've talked among themselves and have some ideas about customer focus groups to help re-energize their sales territories. Two people have scheduled time with Roger this week to share their ideas, but, for the second week in a row, Roger has cancelled because he doesn't have enough time. The team is deflated. They are worried, too, but at this point, they are not sure that talking to Roger will do any good.

What Could Have Been

If Roger had only come out of his office to talk to his team, he might have prevented the members from becoming disengaged. The fact is, employees are better able to deal with company downturns if they know what is going on.

Poor managers fail to communicate. They fail to involve employees in solutions. And because they aren't communicating well, they aren't listening to employees' needs, concerns or ideas.

Good managers share clear strategy and vision. They engage their team in discovering solutions, so employees feel as though they have a stake in making things better. Good managers have a relationship with their bosses, and they want to go the extra mile. They care about their bosses and the organization, and they are armed with the belief that they can make a difference.

Numerous studies indicate that engaged employees work harder to achieve within the organization, and they speak positively about their companies. In the process, they also please customers and are more productive.

One of the Most Important Steps You Can Take

If you are considering where and how to focus your training programs, you should know that choosing to develop managers and supervisors in the area of communication is one of the most crucial steps you can take.

Many managers have never developed skills to deliver clear, concise messages focused on the needs and interests of the listener. These are skills that improve their relationships with individual team members.

In addition to constructing clear messages, Vital Learning's Essential Skills of Communicating teaches managers and team leaders to the following essential skills:

• Communicate with a two-way process.
• Manage nonverbal behaviors to reinforce the intent of the messages.
• Listen actively.
• Create a climate of open communication, which increases team members' motivation and commitment.

The foundation of good communication in organizations rests in managers and supervisors who are open and support an environment that encourages the free exchange of transparent, honest communication. Such managers are able to reflect, probe, support and advise their employees. In return, your employees will respond and become more engaged, happy and productive. Get your managers involved in the essential skills.

Good Leader, Bad Leader

Like the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch of the North in L. Frank Baum's book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , written in 1900, good bosses and bad bosses represent two ends of the spectrum in personality and deed. Some things never change.

It is possible, however, for people to hone their skills and become better leaders through self-understanding and training. One of management's roles is to provide opportunity for employees to learn from others who lead by example, thereby preparing themselves for professional growth. Good leaders create high-performing and high-producing teams. They also create safe and congenial work environments.

The Bad Leader

Poor leadership is prevalent in both the private and public sectors. In her book, Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters, Barbara Kellerman defines seven types of bad leaders:

• Incompetent
• Rigid
• Intemperate
• Callous
• Corrupt
• Insular
• Evil

The paramount nature of poor leadership, Kellerman points out, is compounded by poor followers. These are people who fall into a pattern of bad habits, which they model from their bosses. Thus, disharmony erupts in the organization, eventually leading to financial and productivity challenges as well as public scrutiny.

Poor leadership is ultimately expensive. It diminishes employee morale, and employees feel less commitment to the organization and its mission. They disengage from the business - and then they leave.

It has always been difficult for me to understand why poor leaders can't see that bullying, constant criticism and lack of praise for the team does not motivate anyone to do anything extra. Why would anyone feel eager to work harder under such leadership?

According to a 2000 study, reported in the Harvard Business Review, leadership affects six key indicators of the organization's working environment:

• Flexibility and freedom to innovate
• Sense of responsibility
• Level of standards
• Sense of accuracy about performance feedback and rewards
• Clarity of employee mission and values
• Degree of commitment to a common purpose
Considering these indicators, you can understand the effect that poor leaders have on employees and the business.

The Good Leader

In searching for the qualities of a good leader, we could discuss many qualities and topics. Leadership is a hot issue on millions of Web sites that currently include the keyword "leadership."

Many managers w ill never develop into good leaders. Others will. Good leaders are often prominent within the organization; others are quietly on the fringe but are, nonetheless, great leaders.

Harvard Business School professor Joe Badaracco said, "There are lots of people who look and act like managers, who have excellent managerial skills, and who don't make a lot of noise. Nobody is writing cover stories about them. But after they have been in an organization for a period of time, things are significantly better."

Former GE CEO, Jack Welch identified eight characteristics of good leadership:

• Leaders relentlessly upgrade their teams, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.
• Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, but they also live and breathe it.
• Leaders get into everyone's skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
• Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit.
• Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
• Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
• Leaders inspire risk-taking and learning by setting the example.
• Leaders celebrate.

Making the most of leadership requires that you put the right people in the right place at the right time. It also means evaluating whether an employee has the right qualities and skills for leadership.

Organizations need to learn to measure the qualities and skills of their leaders. In addition, they must build an environment that encourages and develops good leadership skills through training.
The Right Training Tools

Vital Learning offers tools for leadership assessment that allow you to pinpoint individual training needs. One leader might be great in coaching but may have only a cursory understanding of overall leadership. Identifying these needs helps you pinpoint training and tailor it to your employees, so it is focused and relevant.

Vital Learning's Essential Skills of Leadership, for example, teaches participants the following skills:

• Maintain team member self-esteem
• Focus on behavior
• Encourage team member participation
• Listen to motivate
• Good leaders are who you need to drive and support your organization. Helping to develop their skills is essential.

Optimize Your Organization With Coaching

Today's workforce is a volatile workforce. With dynamic diversity, a changing business environment and implementation of ways to re-energize a stressed employee-base, it's time to optimize your workforce.

Organizations must use creativity to resolve current issues while remaining productive and profitable. The way to change employee behavior and improve performance is to develop and coach them.

The Current Job Market

Although some sectors, such as manufacturing and services, expect modest employment gains for 2010, workplace forecasters indicate that recruiting is still difficult, and new-hire compensation rates remain down. The market is still tough for job seekers.

Survivors Need Coaching

What is happening in the workforce today is similar to what happens when a mass layoff occurs in an organization. Workers who remain have "survivor's syndrome" --- they likely feel lucky to have a job, yet at the same time feel bad that others have lost theirs.

At the same time, the tight labor market means that the survivors are probably doing much more work than before the layoff, absorbing the work of others. They are expected to perform better in order to help meet rising demands as the organization strives to remain competitive.

In addition to feeling the need to perform well, many workers may start to feel trapped under the current stress. Burnout and apathy ensue. Productivity wanes.

To combat this situation, employers need to provide training and coaching to optimize what employees' skills and talents and help them become more successful and productive.

Train Them, Then Coach Them

Today's work environment requires employees to use their full spectrum of talents. One way to encourage this is to make sure that your organization is still investing in training. Maximizing training also depends on senior managers' skills in coaching the supervisors they oversee. In addition, other managers and supervisors need to be trained on the same coaching skills in order to transform their teams into successful, productive members of the organization.

Managers who are effectively involved in the growth and development of their employees spark changes in behavior. In a positive and productive environment they practice the following:

• Provide continuous support and coaching for the development of their employees
• Ensure positive experiences before, during and after each element of employee training
• Handle "coaching moments" effectively, so employees are motivated to learn and teach themselves new things

Vital Learning's Developing and Coaching Others program teaches managers, team leaders and supervisors the essential elements of coaching their employees. This program teaches them how to achieve the following:

• Increase every team member's skills and capabilities.
• Handle coaching moments effectively, so team members make learning decisions themselves.
• Maximize on-the-job behavior change that results from training and development.
• Develop a work environment that encourages growth and development.

When these things occur, employees feel empowered instead of oppressed; they feel transformed and energized through training and supported in their jobs through coaching. Your workforce becomes optimized.

When the job market changes, you'll want to ensure that you retain your best employees. Thus, coaching them through these tough times is essential. Let Vital Learning show you how.

Training Needs Assessment: The Doctor Is In

If you could wave a magic wand and give all your people the training they need so they would be performing at peak levels, then that would truly be a magical experience. It isn't, however, the reality. Nevertheless, you use assessment to pinpoint employees' training needs and devise personalized training to them.

For training to be effective, it must be meaningful to the student. The content must resonate with the individual and move him or her further along in career experience and job performance.
According to a Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) white paper, "The results of the needs assessment allow the training manager to set the training objectives by answering two very basic questions: who, if anyone, needs training, and what training is needed?"

The Right Prescription Can Cure What Ails Your Organization

Using a simple tool, you can become the training doctor, able to diagnose employees' training needs and identify and prescribe the cure. After performing a training needs assessment, you can prioritize training based on critical needs. Assessment allows you to determine the number of employees who need a specific type of training, and it helps you determine how to best use your available resources to enhance performance.

The Aches and Pains of Today's Changing Workforce

Providing the right training for managers, supervisors and team leaders is essential to every organization during these challenging times. Identifying areas of strength and growth can improve management in the following ways:

• Leading and developing teams
• Communicating more effectively with an increasingly diverse workforce
• Setting and achieving goals
• Resolving issues

By assessing training needs promptly, you can reduce difficulties in your organization, save time, reduce costs and build a culture that supports training wisely.

Diagnosis Helps Achieve Business Objectives and Goals
Human capital is the most important asset of every organization. Identifying whether leaders possess the skills necessary to lead that capital should be one of the training organization's most important tasks. Training needs assessment also serves to stimulate employees' awareness of their own areas for development. Identifying the gaps and then focusing the training to close those gaps can move your organization closer to fulfilling business objectives and goals.

The New Cure for Leadership
Vital Learning recently introduced the Leadership Skills Needs Assessment to help organizations identify the areas in which employees need training. The assessment's results are based on each employee's self-perception, and the assessment process evaluates certain areas focused on the essentials of leadership and beyond.

This easy, interactive assessment process provides each individual with a development plan that indicates the relative priority of the recommended courses. Combined with the power of Vital Learning's Leadership Essential Series and Leadership Plus Series, you can easily prescribe pinpointed training for any employee, leading to greater performance throughout the organization.

Examine the Vital Learning Leadership Skills Assessment by clicking on this link. It will take you to a brief contact information form, and then off you go!

Leadership Training: Not the Same Old Highway

Your leadership talent is critical to your organization's success. During tough economic times, reaching goals and outpacing the competition is especially crucial. In 2010, the essential move for training divisions is to transform and change in order to keep up with the times. It's not the same old highway.

Investing wisely in new and existing supervisors requires focus on what is happening on the frontline and on the individual needs of that talent. According to Training + Development Magazine, three essential components for training in the New Year include organizational, analytical and interpersonal focus.

Harvard Business School professor and author Michael Beer says that CEOs who recognize the need to achieve "sustained high commitment from all stakeholders," recognize the value of high commitment, high performance (HCHP), and their organizations will stand out among others because of long periods of excellence. Beer points to firms like Southwest, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett Packard and Toyota as leaders in excellence. Achieving commitment and performance is attainable in any industry; however, most companies haven't reached the HCHP club.

The differentiator, Beer says, is that these companies sustain performance because they achieve three goals:

• Performance Alignment: Organizational design, business processes, goals and measures, and capabilities targeted for a winning strategy.
• Psychological Alignment: Leadership toward a higher purpose, challenging work and making a difference. Human resource management policies and practices geared toward leadership "managing with heart."
• Capacity for Learning and Change: Honest communication at all levels about anything that is a roadblock for meeting goals. Creating a performing organization that equally values a strong learning system and a strong culture.

A Case for Changing What Highway Your Supervisors Are On

Consider this scenario: Ron works for a pharmaceutical company in Indiana. He's been with the company for five years as a sales representative. Six months ago, Ron was promoted to sales manager and relocated to the home office in New York. Upper management's rationale was that his success in the field would make him a top manager who would increase the productivity of three other regional teams.

It hasn't taken long for upper management to realize that Ron isn't the manager they'd hoped for. It took Ron's staff only a few months to come to the same conclusion. What went wrong?

Success depends on leaders who can create common purpose, identify opportunities and new markets, and motivate and engage their teams.

Ron is a great salesperson, but he is not a great communicator. He failed to articulate his vision to the regional teams and to involve them in the process. He managed by fear, setting unrealistic goals without input from his team. He sent a message in a memo, "If you don't like the goals, then consider looking elsewhere for a job."

It doesn't take long, either, for today's diverse employees to recognize a poor manager. Some of the company's top salespeople have already left the organization. Ron's heavy hand was his own style and did not reflect the values of the organization. As a result, the regional teams have missed their sales goals two quarters in a row. Ron has blamed the teams for poor performance, and he raised goals again without team input.

Innovation for a New Highway

Upper management at the pharmaceutical company is looking to replace Ron, but the damage is done. Having a great person from the field doesn't always translate to great leadership. The truth is that this situation is not only Ron's fault. This has been a pattern in this company for over a year.

The company has stalled along the highway. Due to the economy the company chose to drop its leadership training program and suspended other training programs, citing a lack of time and resources.

What the company should be doing is practicing innovation and transformation to boost its training division. Ron, and others like him, could have become a better leader if assessment and training had been in place to pinpoint needs for the following:

• Fundamental management and communication skills
• Goal-setting and performance standards skills
• Motivation for productivity skills
• Coaching skills

Time and resources need not be the fallback issues anymore. Today's technology provides innovative training options with blended learning with online training. In addition, asking seasoned leaders or team members to mentor junior leaders and staff through collaborative communication spaces, such as online portals, e-mail, webinars and online corporate communities, can give employees the precise training they need, when they need it.

These solutions can be transformational and cost effective, turning lackluster performance into leadership and teams focused on business processes. Realistic and relevant goals and measures as well as capabilities targeted for a winning strategy are within reach.

According to a study by Jim Trinka, Ph.D. and chief learning officer for the FBI, focusing on developing others and their communication competencies can increase overall leadership effectiveness by 50 to 60 percent.

Study evidence supports the establishment of a performance-managed organizational culture - not from a command and control perspective but rather one that involves a coaching environment and conscious attempts at continuous dialogue within work teams to achieve a balance between driving for results and interpersonal skills.

Transforming Training in 2010

Vital Learning's innovative training tools can put your organization's training on the new highway to optimize learning and maximize your return-on-investment (ROI). Armed with assessment, online programs and training strategies through its affiliate network of professionals, Vital Learning can help you transform your organization with sustainable leadership.