What to do in a learning needs analysis conversation

2 days ago

4 min read

I won’t start this post with how important doing a learning needs analysis is. If you’re here, you already know that. But what you might not know is what to actually do once you walk into the room with a stakeholder. This is what we’ll cover here.

Greeting

It might seem weird me telling you how important greetings are. But there is a reason I’m adding it here. The Greeting stage is where you agree on the agenda and, most importantly, explain the purpose of the meeting.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a stakeholder – you walk into a room, and someone suddenly asks you “what doesn’t work in your team?”. I don’t know about you, but I’d probably get quite defensive. However, if I have been told in advance that some of these questions might be uncomfortable and the only reason for asking them is so that the person in front of me can help me become a better (insert any noun here – leader, employees, person…), I’d be more willing to be open and honest.

Another important thing to remember – taking notes. We’re all used to people taking written or typed notes, that shouldn’t be an issue. But you can do that with the assistance of AI or a wearable. It is important to inform the other participants that you will be recording in some shape or form. Voice recordings may be something people don’t feel comfortable with. You need to put their minds at ease – if you insist on recording, explain where the recording will be stored, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. If someone is still uncomfortable, offer written notes as an alternative.

Structure

Knowing what the structure of such meetings are is important to both parties – L&D and the stakeholder(s). Typically, you want to start from the more general to the more specific. In practice, this means asking first about how the team is doing and then drilling down into the specific issues and their root causes.

Once you have discussed all possible performance issues, it’s important that you summarize what you’ve learned and agree on the next steps. We’ll return to this in the closing section.

Questions to ask

This is a big one. And the reality is that there isn’t really a single most important question you need to ask. The types of questions will largely depend on:

· Who you are talking to

· What has prompted the meeting

· What do the stakeholders hope to achieve

A few questions I come back to in most LNA conversations are:

What prompted this conversation now?
What are you hoping will change?
Can you walk me through a recent example of the issue?
What did the person do, and what would you have expected them to do instead?
What might be getting in the way of doing that?
What have you already tried, and what happened?
How would you know things had improved?

You don’t need to ask them in this exact order or use them as a script. They’re starting points for understanding the problem before deciding what support might help.

We actually have a nifty little LNA Question Bank that lists specific questions you can ask for all of these different situations. You can download it here.

What to look out for

There are several things you need to look out for during an LNA. The list below is not extensive:

Issue	How to address it
The request is too broad (“Our employees need better communication skills”)	Ask, “In which situations are employees struggling, and what would you like them to do differently?”
The manager cannot give specific examples of problem behaviours	Ask them to describe a recent situation where the problem showed up, including what the employee did or said, and what the outcome was. Then ask them to explain how they would have liked for the situation to have been resolved.
The issue isn’t something that can be addressed with training or another L&D intervention	Explain what you’ve identified as the barrier and discuss who is best placed to address it. A useful tool to identify what/who else might be able to help is the Performance Analysis Quadrant.
The stakeholder has already decided that training is the solution	Ask what they need people to do differently, then explore what currently prevents them from doing it. Ask follow-up questions about what prevents people from doing the work as expected. Take time to explain why training may not be appropriate in this case.
Success is described only as attendance or course completion	Ask what change they hope to see at work and how they would recognize it after the intervention. Be specific with the behaviours and/or outcomes, make them measurable.

Verify

This isn’t strictly something you’d do during the actual meeting (although it absolutely can). But you need to make sure that the information you’re getting isn’t just one person’s opinion.

Verify their observations through additional conversations with other stakeholders, review performance metrics, look at the engagement survey results for the team and so on.

As for verifying during the actual meeting, simply ask them to describe more than one examples or instances of the problematic behaviours or actions showing up in the day-to-day. One example may be an exception; several examples give you something to investigate and check against other evidence.

Closing

Again, this may come off as too on the nose, but you need a good closing. And there are several things to do here.

Firstly, summarize the discussion. Make sure to pause and ask if there is anything else they think is important for you to know. This is time for them to hear back the conversation and look at everything from a bird’s eye view.

Secondly, list all the steps you (and they) will take going forward. They need to agree and commit to these, otherwise the whole conversation was for naught.

Finally, explain what the overall process looks like going forward. This may include additional research (including interviewing other stakeholders), designing the learning intervention, getting preliminary feedback, development and delivery, and evaluation and monitoring. Stakeholders need to understand what their involvement would be. And it’s not just sitting down with you to discuss their needs. In for a penny, in for a pound.

And there you have it – some of the most important things to do during an LNA conversation. If you want to learn more about the overall process of an LNA, check out our Learning Needs Analysis mini course.