Whether you have finish training your trainees or have had a performance talk with your subordinate, remember to always do a follow-up. One common mistake a trainer or a supervisor does is not doing this and just think that the training done or the talk done is good enough. News flash – it is not! For a trainer's perspective, how do you know that the trainees will apply what they learned from attending the training? For a supervisor's perspective, how do you know that the subordinate will do what you have both agreed on? Well, you will probably say “I trust my staff” or “I trust my trainees.” The issue here is not about trust. The issue is about knowing that whatever discussed between you and your subordinate or trainee was understood. Whatever message you have conveyed was interpreted the way that you need them to get interpreted. Sometimes, along the way, the time gap that you have last seen each other plays a major role on the takeaways or advice given being misconstrued and by the time you do check-up on them, it is not a surprise that they are doing something wrong or that they are just plain confuse on what to do. You will then find that all this time was wasted. If you had done a follow-up immediately, then they would have been on the right path from the very beginning. I have encountered supervisors who say did a follow-up on a performance issue with their team members and yet the monthly performance results were still on the problem areas pointed out before. No surprise there that there were no changes. That is another thing that follow-up does. It reflects the results in the end. If your supervisor says they have done a follow-up to a subordinate on the problems areas and yet, every month, the same problems areas are still the same, then you have to look closely at your supervisor's way of following-up. Ask them, how do they follow-up? What do they say? How do they get their subordinates commitment on the performance improvement? Do the same if you are handling trainers instead of supervisors. Do the next step. Join them on their sessions with the subordinate or trainee. Observe how it goes about. Observe behaviors and reactions or the lack of it from both your supervisor or trainee and the person concerned. You can get a lot and learn a lot from these interactions. After the concerned person has been talked to and you have observations regarding the exchange, talk to your supervisor or trainer. Give feedback, give them advice on what went well and what did not. Give suggestions then observe them in the next exchange as they apply those suggestions and feedback that you have shared with them. It is not that you do not trust them, it is more of how all concerned parties will benefit from the follow-up once it is done properly and simply get done. Keep in mind that the follow-ups you do and how you do them will yield the positive results you want to see.