An Examination of the Major Variables in the Management Training Process

A basic assumption of many management trainers and course promoters is that the training/learning event — the lesson — is the major variable on which the success of their work depends, subject only to the need to have some degree of homogeneity of trainees if it is a group event. Thus many courses are designed in detail before places on them are offered for sale, before the individual trainees have clarified what each of them is prepared to learn. The burden of this article is that there are in the management training process five interdependent variables: the new behaviour required, the trainee's work environment, the trainee himself, the lesson that he experiences, and the trainer. So that the lesson — the trainer's input — needs to vary in each case according to the other four variables. And so that the actual behaviour which results — which may or may not be the new behaviour that is required — will in turn reflect the mix of the remaining variables too.