Your Home Business Leadership Needs to Grow in Competence
I’m talking about you! You are the leader, remember?
My grandson is in the first grade. His teacher has just begun the daily reading homework plan which consists of 15 minutes of reading at home with an adult, using carefully selected booklets that are sent home daily. She explained that the goal is fluency- the ability to read the short “book” without stumbling or error. This means re-reading. It means practicing repeatedly. It’s amazing how quickly word attack skills, word memorization, and fluency grows through practice!
We all have a good idea of the meaning of fluency when we use it in a sentence like this: “George speaks Mandarin fluently.”
Fluency is a higher level of performance than competence. Competence means performance of a given task according to exacting predetermined standards. It means getting it right and doing it right repeatedly. Fluency ups the standard to doing it under a tight time restraint and without the aid of any reference.
I have spent the bulk of my life in public education and workplace training and have studied the variables in developing fluency in different skills. Critically important for learning any skill:
- Practice with appropriate feedback.
- Repeating the practice, with appropriate feedback.
Critically important for gaining fluency in a skill:
- Repeating the practice without any reference aids, with appropriate feedback.
- Repeating the practice with a time deadline, with appropriate feedback.
When you think of fluency, think of learning to speak a foreign language, learning addition and multiplication facts, learning to keyboard, learning to give CPR, many sports skills like foul shots, learning musical instruments, and so on.
Now let’s think of what it takes to learn business skills. There are literally thousands of tasks needed in business; fortunately, it is not critical to learn them all (most businesses have a staff, with different individuals specializing in different tasks that require different skill sets), and though all tasks require competence, not all tasks require fluency.
The home business entrepreneur however works alone. Very few beginning entrepreneurs are initially competent (never mind fluent) in all the tasks required for even one business type or niche. Michael Gerber addressed this issue several years ago in The E Myth Revisited.
What about focusing on one type of home business: network marketing? How about one aspect of network marketing, namely, internet-based marketing? Even here, there are a huge number of tasks. Over at the Renegade Professional, a subscription-based internet training service founded by Mike Klingler, there are over 240 video tutorials that provide instruction on individual tasks. This list continues to grow as Klingler’s partners drill down into the details of various marketing systems. Few, if any, home businesses need to master all of these tasks, but when any marketing “system” is broken down into individual tasks, there will typically be dozens if not hundreds of tasks.
The Renegade Professional is only one of several network marketing training sites available online. Each has a somewhat different style; for example, some or more “lecture based” while others, such as the Renegade Professional site, are more “demonstration” based.
As a professional educator, and more importantly with 25 years experience in corporate equipment training, I will make this blanket evaluation:
- Demonstrations are better than straight lectures for learning.
- Demonstrations are not sufficient for gaining competence.
Most of the Renegade Professional tutorials encourage the learner to stop the video and perform the task, step by step. This is good. It is “practice.” However, because of the nature of the training, there is little by way of feedback. Feedback includes answers to these questions:
- Did I get it right?
- How can I do it better?
Feedback is important at the end of a task, but is measurably more crucial during the performance of a task (that is, after allowing time for reflection following a step of a task).
These observations point out the increased value of having an instructor with whom you can engage, not just watch; that is the role that a real live tutor (guide, superguide, coach, mentor, …) can play. Providing performance feedback may or may not be part of your understanding of a “coach” or “mentor.” Nor is it the whole of my own definition. No doubt the meaning of these terms needs to be clarified by whoever is using them.
So how do internet training services provide “practice with appropriate feedback,” without which it is difficult or impossible to attain competency, let alone fluency? Here are two examples:
- At the 90 Day Marketer, an internet marketing training service provided by McKay Earl, a series of 90 video demonstrations with accompanying written instructions and templates is provided. The feedback is provided by weekly coaching calls during which questions are answered. However, the more effective feedback can be purchased from McKay as a premium: monthly personal interaction and feedback regarding the development of blogs, squeeze pages, autoresponders, and the like.
- At the Renegade Professional, already mentioned, feedback is one potential service available from “Superguides” – again this is an extra cost service beyond the demonstration videos. In recognition of the extreme importance of feedback and engagement, the Renegade Professional is developing a whole new program to train marketers in the role of a coach; the program is called Coaching Cognition.
I began this article by describing the nature of “competence” and “fluency” and what is required to attain those things. Today, there are many of us who offer some form of business “coaching” or “mentoring.” What should be your criteria if you are looking to pay for such over-the-phone mentoring?
- Cost. You can expect to pay anything from $10 to $100 an hour, maybe more. Presumably, the price is higher for the services of someone with more experience or greater qualifications. However, you need to ask questions to determine whether that is really the case. Most mentors allow for a free initial consultation (like other professionals). This is the time to ask your questions and to determine whether your initial information about the mentor’s skills and assets was correct.
- Success Level. Some people advise that your mentoring should come only from those who are already millionaires or close to it. I disagree. First of all, do I really need the mentoring of a millionaire to provide feedback on the linking strategies I have used on my blog? No. Consider the type of advice you need before paying a premium. Secondly, not every millionaire marketer is a good mentor. Have you ever had a college instructor who was a genius in his field, but couldn’t teach at all? I am not totally discounting success! I am just saying that it needs to be put into perspective. You need to know what you are looking for, what your questions are.
- Knowledge and Proficiency. If your goal in a mentor is to have someone provide support in your training, then they should be competent to provide training in the tasks for which you need help. In that way, they can certainly be counted on to provide feedback on your performance of the same or similar tasks. The good mentor should be willing to point you to a different mentor, if your needs go outside the area of their own competence.
- Ability to Mentor. Mentors need to have good people skills and training skills, along with the knowledge of the tasks with which you want help. Without such skills, you will waste a lot of time, and learn little. Since you are paying for their time, you may be wasting a lot of your own money and time. Good mentors know how to ask the right questions, know how to listen well, and know how to provide feedback on both your good accomplishments and the areas which require your improvement. They know how to help you prioritize these things. A good mentor is prepared: they review your materials ahead of time; they take notes so that they will not waste your time during a subsequent session; and they maintain a respectful and confidential relationship.
- Connection with Training Resources. Most of the time, a mentor is selected to augment the training received from another source; with respect to our focus, internet marketing training, it is best to have a mentor who is familiar with the training program you are following. So, for example, if you are working on the Renegade Pro tutorials, it makes sense to find a mentor that knows the list of Renegade tutorials and what the tutorials include. They should be able to maximize the money you are already spending for training without requiring that you switch to a different program. Likewise, if you are studying from the Traffic Formula II series with Mike Dillard, it makes sense to utilize a coach that is very familiar with the contents of that training. (If you are not currently utilizing a training program, than this bullet point is moot.)
So grow in competence. You probably didn’t enter the home business field knowing all that you need to know. Get the tutorials you need and get the feedback you need. Both are a part of performance-based training.
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