Are you teaching your people to land before you expect them to jump?

Imagine this…

… you’ve volunteered to do a parachute jump. It’s for charity, so it’s all in a good cause.

You turn up on the day, terrified but rationalising that many people do this, it will be fine.

You get a short briefing, watch a safety video and a quick demonstration of how to land, then one of the instructors throws you your chute and says, off you go, get on the plane!

What are you thinking?

Besides the colourful language in your head (or maybe you’re even saying things out loud!) I imagine you’re probably thinking, “is that it? Where’s my training? What if my chute doesn’t open? How do I land when…? Where’s my practice jump? I wanted to have a go at jumping from a reasonable height to test my technique!”;

Undoubtedly you will have loads more questions, and probably a whole host of other thoughts too!

Let’s face it, we only know, and I mean really know, that our people can do what we’ve trained them for when they choose to do the right thing in that moment of truth.

Take the customer service agent that sticks to the rules when the customer just wants that bit of empathy and flexibility.