Last week, we discussed how leaders might be limiting hiring pools and therefore potential competitive advantage by being too stringent on the hard and fastskills required for a job.

I think one of the main reasons we do this as leaders is because we don’t want to take the time to train people.

We hire people, assume they are up to speed on day one (and we make this assumption because they met our requirement of five years of experience in such and such), and then we throw them into the fire and expect them not to burn.

Want people to succeed long term with your organization? Here are some ideas for doing so:

Set up a training plan for them before they arrive. Connecting them to the people they need to learn from in order to do their job well and communicate to these trainers that their most important responsibility during that period is getting the new hire trained.

Allow time for training. And that doesn’t mean a day.

Document processes and procedures that are critical to the job and share with new hires. Set up a time after they have reviewed them to be able to ask questions.

Use the model: I show you how to do it, you ask questions while I’m doing it, then you show me how to do it. Retained knowledge and ability to apply that knowledge is best assessed by whether or not someone can teach it back to you.

Be available.

Remember, real leaders make more leaders. This can’t be done without a leader taking training and development seriously. Meaning, it is his or her top priority.