Ep-36 - Is your learning development plan aligned with your business strategy? - Business Coach in Dubai for Small Business owners

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🤔 Are you upskilling daily as a business owner? Is your team upskilling daily?

Learning and development strategy is highly important for you and your team for better performance in your business. So, you need to constantly spend some time upskilling daily for your personal growth, your team, and for your small business.

We see a lot of paid courses, and online resources in our daily life, right? But do you think everything is beneficial to you?

For every small business, to have steady growth and high performance, you need to consider a proper learning and development strategy that is aligned with your business strategy. The requirement of your small business may not be the same for a different business. You have to invest in learning resources according to what is required for your business.

Today, we have our guest speaker with us, Ms Debbie Sears Barnard, who is a Leadership Coach. Debbie specializes in Leadership Development, Keynote Speaking, Leadership Coaching, and Professional Development. She is also a Maxwell Method Certified DISC Behavioral Analysis Trainer.

Debbie will take you through some value-packed information regarding, how to have a learning and development strategy that is aligned with your small business strategy. Let’s get into it.

– Instagram – Diamond cut leadership

– You can now book a 30 Minute Free Coaching Session with Debbie

The importance of a learning and development plan.

As a small business, you may know what your performance goals are for a year. The targets you want to achieve for the company. But, not all companies go forward for the second step, where they need to decide who they have to become as an organization to achieve those goals.

The stats they need to have, the resources they should acquire, and the skillsets they need to get on an individual level. Learning and building the right skill sets needed for your business helps you achieve your business goals faster. If your company lacks a skill set that is inevitable for your business, then you are never going to achieve your company goals.

Every business owner should learn how they have to grow so that they can lead the entire organization to reach those goals. Ask yourself this question to know “Who do I have to become to achieve those big goals for my organization?”.

The areas you lack knowledge, the skillsets you need to improve, both soft skills, and technical skills that can give better results for your company. Consistent updates and upskilling of these are relevant when it comes to growing your business. Or else, your business growth would be stagnant.

Know your why for constant motivation.

There may be hardships while running a small business on your own. Not every business witnesses constant glory. There may be ups and downs. When starting a small business, you may have an idea about what your products are, and how you want to take them forward, but the reason WHY is highly relevant more than anything.

Why you are doing what you are doing?

Do you have a vision that is going to impact the world? Or is it either to earn some money or to get some freedom? This clearly indicates no real passion, real purpose, or real core. When we look back at many business startups that have failed miserably so early, we have to realize that there wasn’t any true passion or true purpose behind them.

So as a business owner, you need to clearly understand why you do this. What’s the purpose! If you don’t, then you may not have something that motivates or pushes you forward in the rough times.

Learn from a mentor

When I started my business, even I had my own coach to whom I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out, what my true passion is, whom am I going to help, and why am I doing this. This has indeed given me much clarity on what my purpose is.

It is always ideal to have your own coaches. When we talk to people who are a few steps ahead of us, they can be an eye-opener at times. They give you more insights into many things, which will help you in the long run. They may find the blind spots in your business that you are not seeing.

Learning from a mentor can direct you to the right path, which is aligned with your business.

Do you wish to learn from a mentor, and have a group of awesome womenpreneurs have your back? Join our homepreneurs club now! Learn from us on how to start, grow, and scale your business, Join our Homepreneurs Club to learn and upscale your business!

How to understand what we should learn for our business

What are your performance goals as a business? Is it the number of customers you want to work with and how they should experience your service, the amount of money you want to make, the business process, your personal growth, growth of your team’s skillset? These are some metrics I can think of. You can arrive at yours based on your business.

Now, you need to look at yourself, your team, and your business model and understand if you have the capacity, skill sets, and capabilities to achieve all of these. And that’s where the learning plan is going to come out.

You have to figure out what skillset is lacking in you and your team, that is highly needed for achieving your goals in the coming time. Accordingly, you or your team should focus on building that skill set.

For eg: If I am working in a corporate field, I will have separate teams for all aspects of my business. As a CEO I don’t have to focus on other tasks like marketing.

But when you are a solopreneur or a small team, then you need to master other skill sets as well. Suppose if there is a gap in the marketing part of your business, you need to learn about it, or you have to train your employee to learn that skill set. Because you won’t be able to achieve your targets if you miss that part.

🔥 Would you want to have a strong marketing team for your small business? We as a marketing agency can be your go-to option, to build your brand awareness, and generate sales for your business. To know more, get on a free discovery call with us right away.

Importance of Soft skills

Soft skills are much needed as a leader or a business owner. They are power skills. They take your technical knowledge and pack it in a way that you can connect with your customers. One among the important ones is communication skills.

A lot of job roles like a physician, and a healthcare practitioner, can find it difficult to converse with common people. The language used might not be easy for them to understand. You have to make sure that your customers understand what you are saying, how you are helping them.

Similarly, this can happen to an artist, a skilled craftsperson, or any other creative artist. If you don’t know how to communicate with your clients well, your work will never reach them. It will stay ideal in your home. As a business owner, make sure you and your team members have relevant soft skills that can help.

Do you want to know if you are ready for a business? Check our podcast episode.

Time management to learn and upskill

You all have enough time on your hand. It is more about prioritizing. You have to be intentional. Push yourself, and think about the options. Think about how you can integrate learning with things that are already happening.

For example, if you are in a networking group or an event where you talk about your business, connect with people, and network with each other, you have a chance of learning a lot of other things from fellow entrepreneurs, right?

You are not only networking there but also acquiring knowledge on different topics.

Where should you learn from?

First, have a self-assessment. Know what your strengths are, what are your weak points, and Understand what skills you are missing in your life. Many individuals may not have a high budget to invest in big training sessions.

You can start with free resources, and subscriptions, and start learning. Gradually, you can take up resources that you find beneficial for your business.

How do you align your learning plan with your business strategy?

Your team, clients, you and business processes, are the four quadrants in your business. You need to ask relevant questions to each of these quadrants of your business. That is how you find the voids you need to fill in order to achieve the goals for your business. You have to review your business weekly, monthly, and quarterly.

Ask yourself these questions:
Did you succeed? If yes, ask why did you succeed? Because you can repeat the same steps then.
If you didn’t, ask why not? Then you will understand where you have gone wrong.

These answers help you understand if you are learning the right things, or if your learnings are helping you reach your goals.

How to measure the outcome of learning

All the learnings are not tangible. The knowledge acquired can be measured by seeing how it is carried. The skillsets you and your team have gained should be seen and reflected in your further processes.

You can also measure the outcome of your learning by other means such as the inquiries you received, the sessions you have attended, and so on.

Quick tips

Make every process of your business fun. Learn, upskill, implement, review, repeat. Be consistent. Make reading a divine part of your daily life. Be a model for your team. When the team sees you do it, they will follow you.

We hope you have got some amazing learnings through this episode. Are you ready to take action now? Start learning, and implementing. Go for it!