One afternoon, John Q Employee decided to visit the circus. While there he sat and watched the usual fanfare of clowns, trapeze artists, and men being shot out of cannons. But the one act that truly caught his attention was the Bicycle Riding Bears. Somehow, the circus’s animal expert had taught massive Grizzly Bears how to ride mini-bicycles!

John was so impressed that after the show he made his way back stage, navigated through a throng of practicing jugglers, avoided feeding time at the lion cage, and found the circus’s animal trainer. Shaking his hand, John exclaimed, “Wow that was some impressive training!” referring to the expert’s work with the bears. The animal expert paused for a second and then smiled. He looked at John and said, “That’s nothing, this morning they rode down to the supermarket to buy some honey – now that’s development!”

This story serves to illustrate a couple of points (not least of which is that we are terrible story tellers):

• First, training is something that someone else tells or shows you how to do. Development is something you do for yourself. Though there may be some overlap here, think of training as the formalized learning activities you take part in (i.e. university training, career skills seminars, etc.). Development is the act of taking those learned skills someone has taught to you and engaging in diligent practice of those skills to improve and get to where you want to be (i.e. – the store to get honey).
• Second, training and development go hand-in-hand and build upon each other. For example, to develop into a world class negotiator, a person needs training in skills such as active listening, negotiation strategy, risk management, etc. If an organization needs skilled negotiators, it is important for organizations to put employee curricula in place that addresses these skills. But it is equally important for the organization to encourage employees to diligently practice the newly acquired negotiation skills in order to develop into world class negotiators. This is of course predicated on an employee’s passion and desire to achieve such a goal to help their career (get the honey).

Training and development are not mutually exclusive concepts, however it is important to distinguish between the two in order to understand how to help you employees reach their maximum potential.

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