Sometimes managers say: Can people change? Do they, in reality? Well, I have had at least 6 conversations just in the last week that reinforce my certainty that people can and do change with the right people change intervention.

One person, who I had thought would probably not be able to change his situation, has indeed done so in the three weeks following a one-day workshop. He is taking the action required, and this will now have a flow-on effect to others and their actions. Another person, a team leader, came on a course I ran a week ago. He had six months earlier attended a people management course. He said: “Remember that staff member who was so difficult? I have solved that issue.” He explained that he had applied the techniques from the workshop, and she had completely changed. Imagine what this did to his confidence and resolve. Of course, she was just reacting to his communication approach – once he changed this, so did she.

Another manager relayed to me this week how she had held the performance conversations she needed to, and had been putting off. She had a few more questions about how to activate peer pressure and we were able to generate approaches likely to work in that situation specifically.

Another manager, three weeks since his attendance at a one-day people management course, told me about the conversations he has successfully conducted that had given the outcomes he wanted. He spoke about the value the new skills would have for licensees of their products (who run small businesses with all the associated people challenges) and his intention to arrange this.

Email contact with a supervisor who attended the same programme has led to her arrangement for 4 other people to learn this information – she said she has been telling everyone who will listen about her new knowledge.

The sixth person I have spoken to will be featured in next week’s post: Cost-justifying training spend. It is an amazing example of the tangible return on money spent improving people in a business.

These are all leaders in very different types of business, and they all have one thing in common. They came into a course as one type of person, and they left a day later having made significant CHANGE to themselves. This in turn led to a CHANGE in their behaviour. This in turn led to a CHANGE in the behaviours of the people on their team. The flow on effect is to the performance of the business.

The bottom line: People can and do change. I hear these sorts of stories every week. It is why I do what I do. It takes two people to keep an unproductive dynamic going and just one person to break it, and change it into a productive performance partnership.