Ensuring that your team is properly trained is vital to the success of any project your business takes on. It’s especially important today. Technology moves fast and we’re all expected to keep up with latest and greatest tools. This requires time and effort (and sometimes a little money) but it’s not as difficult as many of us have made it out to be. In fact, there are three little tips you can use to train your team for success and they’re so easy you’ll wonder why you never thought of it yourself.

1. Represent the concept in words, audio, and pictures. The Hebbian principle tells us that “neurons that fire together wire together”. Put simply, the more regions of the brain that are engaged, the greater the chance for learning. Talking stimulates one region of the brain. Writing stimulates another region. And illustrations stimulate yet another region. Gathering everyone around the conference table and lecturing them won’t always be as effective as you’d like, and everybody learns differently. Representing whatever you want your team to grasp through words, audio, and pictures will make the training process a lot smoother. Moral of the story: appeal to all learning types when training new team members.
2. Avoid enabling the “lone wolf” approach. All of the work we do on projects here at Commercient is ultimately collaborative, and thus so is our training. Now, you don’t have to group everybody in a room together and do trust falls off the conference table or anything. It’s just a good idea to give your team a mix of sit-alone-at-their-desk time and community time. This gives team members room to review training material, ask questions, build relationships and highlight who should be tasked with what based on their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Ask your team members to take ownership of their learning. When they ask you how they’re supposed to do this, give them this answer: metacognitive control. That’s an impressive word that means you reflect on what you’re learning and your thought process as a whole. Set goals, put together training schedules, and make things easier on yourself (and your team) for future projects. You shouldn’t ignore training in your business, but you shouldn’t overthink it either. Proper training can help boost project success rate and promote a more efficient work environment. You just have to find what team building methods work best for you and your team.