LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT QUIZ ANSWERS + RATIONALE

What statement best describes the 70 in the 70-20-10 rule of leadership development?

ANSWER: 70% of managers time must be spent on challenging assignments. RATIONALE: The 70-20-10 rule proposes that to develop leaders it is important to engage them in challenging assignments (70% of the time), developmental relationships (20% of the time), and coursework and training (10% of the time).

A company is interested in enhancing knowledge retention while providing "boomerang" employees the opportunity to reconnect with the company. Which information sharing system would best fit a company's goal of enhancing organizational retention?

ANSWER: Alumni network RATIONALE: An alumni network is an example of a softer system that will assist with knowledge retention and provide networking opportunities to keep departed employees engaged with the organization, setting up the potential for the return of those former employees. While both mentoring and communities of practice are also examples of softer systems for organizational knowledge retention, they would not be as effective at generating opportunities and interest for former employees to rejoin the organization. Learning management systems are primarily designed to deliver needed training to current employees, which may be distinct from the goal of organizational knowledge retention.

How should an HR director start a leader development needs assessment?

ANSWER: Assess current leaders in relation to organizational strategy and goals. RATIONALE: For a needs assessment, the HR professional must start with assessing current leaders in relation to strategic goals and objectives. Competency development is addressed after the initial assessment is completed and used for comparison to determine gaps. 360-degree assessments and interviews are common types of competency assessments that support developing competencies in identified gaps.

What tool uses in-basket tests, role plays, and psychological inventories to gauge the abilities of a company's leadership team?

ANSWER: Assessment centers RATIONALE: Only assessment centers are integrations of in-basket tests, role plays, and psychological inventories.

Which of Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation is represented correctly?

ANSWER: Behavior evaluation measures the effect of improved performance on the organization. RATIONALE: Behavior evaluation uses various tools to determine if a learner's behavior on the job has improved after training. Reaction evaluations seek learners' evaluations of the training experience. Learning evaluations use pre-/post-tests to measure increases in knowledge. Results evaluation assesses training outcomes in terms of impact on the organization's strategic objectives. Results in this sense tend to be broader and more long-term than behavior.

What statement about career development is true?

ANSWER: Career development is most effective when aligned with the needs of the organization. RATIONALE: Career development is most effective when an employee's career goals and objectives support the mission of the organization. Employees need to be active participants in their own career development, and supervisors need to give active support to their employees' plans for career development. Having only a verbal agreement is not acceptable when formulating an employee's career development plan.

At an employee development meeting, a retail employee discusses her desire to pursue a law degree. The company supports her by offering more flexible scheduling. She resigns at a follow-up review, saying that she wants to pursue her degree full-time. What does this example depict?

ANSWER: Career planning RATIONALE: In career planning, the focus is on the employee's career plans and her personal responsibilities in developing those plans and achieving those goals. This is distinguished from career management, which is the process of preparing, implementing, and monitoring an employee's career path with a primary focus on the goals and needs of the organization. The goal of career management is to retain the employee. Coaching aims at improving specific performance through demonstration, observation, and feedback. Mentoring is a longer process of one-on-one sessions between the employee and an advisor or guide.

An organization has an aging workforce. What is the best method listed that can reduce the risk of bottlenecks forming because only one or a few individuals know how to perform an important process?

ANSWER: Develop a knowledge map. RATIONALE: Knowledge maps visually represent the inventory of knowledge and where it is spread throughout the organization. They can identify when one or a few individuals are the only ones who know how to complete a specific process or activity.

A manufacturing organization is struggling with employee engagement and with filling open management positions across its manufacturing facilities. Part of its struggle in filling open positions in management arises from a requirement that floor managers have detailed knowledge of the processes associated with each position and manufacturing line in the building the manager works in. HR is tasked with addressing these issues. What action should HR take?

ANSWER: Develop a training and development program using job rotation. RATIONALE: The best option to address all identified issues would be to develop a training and development program using job rotation. Job rotation allows employees to learn multiple different skills throughout an area, which can both increase job engagement and satisfaction while also providing a larger pool of trained candidates that could be promoted to manager.

To improve low yield rates, a talent acquisition team must take a proactive approach to recruiting. The team was trained on a new process for sourcing and screening applicants, but many say they don't have time for the additional tasks. What should their manager do first to address this?

ANSWER: Emphasize the benefits of the new process for the team members. RATIONALE: Emphasizing the benefits of the new process is correct because explaining to team members how the new process benefits them (the "What's in it for me?" factor of learning initiatives) will encourage the employees to begin using the process. If the employees don't trust that the learning is worthwhile, giving them more time or expressing confidence in them is unlikely to change their minds. Working with the trainer is incorrect because the employees were already told the information and are not using it; therefore, more training would be a waste of resources.

An HR VP is looking to drive the organization to improve as a learning organization. How can the HR VP help create a culture that supports organizational learning?

ANSWER: Focus on instituting quality and continuous improvement to drive the organization moving forward. RATIONALE: A culture that supports organizational learning will inherently focus on quality and continuous improvement as organizational needs and training methods change over time. Organizational learning should embrace creativity and reward both group and individual learning. Learning should be seen as something that happens concurrently with work activities, not separate from them.

A high-performing employee is unexpectedly absent, and no other employees know how to handle the absent employee's responsibilities. As a result, several compliance deadlines are missed, and the organization loses a large account. Which action should the company consider taking to reduce this type of negative impact in the future?

ANSWER: Implement knowledge retention technology. RATIONALE: Implementing knowledge retention technology is correct because it can store necessary knowledge and information; therefore, when an employee is absent or leaves the organization, the knowledge isn't lost. Requiring advanced notice doesn't guarantee that someone won't need unexpected time off. Strategic workforce planning doesn't address this type of situation, and job descriptions may state the duties but not how they are accomplished.

An HR VP is looking to implement a program to enhance career development in the organization's employee base. Feedback in a recent employee survey indicated that employees don't know very much about the function of other positions within the company, which limits the ability of employees to explore career paths that are not immediately related to their current position. Which program should the HR VP implement?

ANSWER: Job rotation RATIONALE: Job rotation is a career development method that rotates employees between different positions within the company on a regular basis. It enhances career development opportunities while addressing the employee feedback about lack of awareness of other positions in the company, and it allows employees to better explore career paths that may interest them within the company.

The director of HR has created a training program that allows learners to participate in a live crisis management simulation. Which adult learning style does this support?

ANSWER: Kinesthetic RATIONALE: Participation in a live simulation provides the hands-on approach that is preferred by kinesthetic learners. Auditory learners prefer hearing or reading information about the crisis, and visual learners would be best suited to seeing pictures or observing a video of the crisis. Gustatory perception or learning occurs through the sense of taste and is not related to this example.

What is true regarding global leadership development?

ANSWER: Leadership theories developed in one culture cannot be applied indiscriminately to other cultures. RATIONALE: Leadership theories are not universally applicable and cannot be indiscriminately applied from one nation or culture to another.

In Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, which discipline discusses our assumptions that influence how we understand the world and take action?

ANSWER: Mental models RATIONALE: Of the five disciplines, mental models are our deeply ingrained assumptions that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

Which option is an example of what leaders should do to establish a culture that fosters career development?

ANSWER: Place value on and reward managers and supervisors who help employees with career planning. RATIONALE: By placing value on and rewarding managers who help employees with career planning, leaders can help encourage a positive outlook and create importance around career development. While career development can assist with retention, it is a separate aspect of the business and should be treated separately. Hiring solely from internal sources, regardless of qualifications, may damage organizational performance. Leaders' own individual development plans wouldn't necessarily illustrate the importance of regular employees creating one and may contain personal or confidential information unfit for sharing with the larger audience.

Which disadvantage should an HR director of a small organization consider when determining whether to implement a dual career ladder?

ANSWER: Potential effectiveness of the program due to the organization's size. RATIONALE: While each option may be a drawback that occurs with dual career ladders, the program may be entirely ineffective if the organization is too small or too revenue-restricted to successfully implement it. Resistance, resentment, and sheltering of low-performing managers can all be addressed and mitigated when rolling out the program.

An organization is designing a leader development program. Which would be the most important experience to include?

ANSWER: Project assignment that is difficult and has some risk of failure RATIONALE: According to the Center for Creative Leadership, challenging assignments with a risk of failure are more important to developing leaders than opportunities to develop relationships or attend training. These assignments take the individuals outside their usual competencies and challenge them to develop teamwork and resilience.

HR has created instant feedback surveys to gauge employees' responses to a set of diversity awareness training sessions. Which type of measure do these represent?

ANSWER: Reaction RATIONALE: Reaction measures indicate how participants felt about the program.

Which of the following leadership assessment tools offer the highest usefulness and validity at the lowest cost?

ANSWER: Situation judgment tests RATIONALE: Work sample tests, situation judgment tests (SJTs), and other tools that require demonstrations of leadership exhibit high validity. However, these also have the highest development costs and, except for SJTs, the highest administration costs.

Which type of needs analysis should a training director undertake to identify gaps between actual and desired transactional output in a customer service call center?

ANSWER: Task RATIONALE: A task-level needs analysis compares job duty and task requirements to employee knowledge and skills to identify areas requiring improvement.

A global organization invests heavily in learning and development. It has country-specific learning and development departments, each creating its own programs, all of which seem highly successful. However, the HR VP notices that training issues common to certain countries do not appear to affect other countries. Which of the following likely represents the cause of the discrepancy?

ANSWER: The organization focusing on each individual part of the learning and development system instead of the global system RATIONALE: By focusing on the parts of the global system instead of the whole system, the organization is susceptible to divisional silos preventing the sharing of information. A global focus would help ensure consistency between the learning and development efforts from country to country, helping to prevent issues that have already been solved and addressed in one location from occurring in other locations.

Too frequently, a survey response from a training course is that the information is not pertinent to the employee's job and that the course seems more like a pet project of a particular manager. Often there is also no practical component for experiential learning. What is the best response to these issues?

ANSWER: Use action mapping to form a project goal linked to a specific problem. RATIONALE: Action mapping is a technique proposed by Cathy Moore in response to her observation that learning and development tend to participate in information dumps, where a stakeholder has information that they wish to share and requests that training be built around that information. Action mapping instead ensures that training is tightly focused on specific performance measures. The process includes a step where one identifies how to help people practice the skills and behaviors that have been identified.

A sales organization has set as a short-term goal that all sales team members achieve a standard level of proficiency. The HR director has been tasked with implementing a sales development training program. What step should the director take first?

ANSWER: Work with the sales manager to define the benchmark for sales team performance. RATIONALE: The first step in any overall training plan is to analyze the gap between desired and current performance. This means that HR and the sales manager must define a standard level of proficiency. Then they can determine the KSAs required for sales representatives to achieve that standard of performance. Next, objectives can be set, delivery constraints and vendor qualifications identified, and learning designed.