Patio Pondering: Trust Before Training
This morning the sun is trying to break through the haze as I enjoy my coffee. I have several calls scheduled for the day but am taking a few moments to enjoy the sounds and peacefulness here on the patio.
When I sat down to write this morning’s Patio Pondering, I intended to focus on pork industry profitability, how pig farms are in a rare position to recoup lost equity with the unprecedented profits of autumn hogs. But as I sat there, I couldn’t stay with the numbers. A memory from years ago kept scrolling across my mind like a headline ticker, refusing to be ignored.
A new sales manager had come on board and was tasked with leading a fresh sales training program, a tough assignment for anyone. Part of his job was to give each team member an initial assessment on skills like communication, negotiation, and cold calling. Months later, after implementing new tools, he would reassess us to measure growth.
I was young in my career then, and when I received my initial assessment, I was crestfallen. The manager had never even met with me. His grades were based entirely on one person’s opinion, with no input from me or from colleagues who actually worked with me. Some scores were fair; others were so far off-base that I entered the training with a chip on my shoulder. I wasn’t the only one. Many of my teammates also questioned their value to the group after seeing how they had been graded. Without context, many of us questioned our value to the team. The missed opportunity wasn’t about toughness; it was about leadership, knowing your team well enough to recognize who needs context, who needs conversation, and who can run with blunt feedback.
The manager was a classic “High D” personality: direct, black-and-white, and uninterested in conversations he saw as unnecessary. To him, the assessment was nothing more than a baseline. To us, it felt like a judgment carved in stone. Instead of leaning into the training as a chance to grow, the team sat through the sessions distracted, grumbling about how wrong the scores were. What he thought was a starting line turned into a minefield.
Had the sales manager taken time for short, individual meetings with each of us to explain the assessment as only a starting point and to outline how the training was designed to build up weaker areas, the program could have been far more effective. A little context and recognition of different personalities at the beginning might have shifted frustration into buy-in. The company invested in a training program that never got traction, not because the tools were bad, but because trust was broken at the start.
The final blow came when he recycled those baseline assessments in our annual reviews. What had begun as a misguided shortcut ended as a failure of leadership, a failure to understand his team, and a waste of resources. Maybe this was a failure in leadership by the new sales manager, but maybe it was also a failure by the bosses who forced him to lead a new team and launch a new sales training program at the same time.
Looking back, the whole thing could have been avoided. A few conversations, tailored to the personalities on the team, could have changed the outcome entirely. Instead, a lack of awareness about who he was leading derailed the program before it even began. In the end, leadership starts with knowing the people you’re leading, then shaping your communication so each person can hear it in the way that makes sense to them.