What is meant by Laboratory Training?

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What are the methods used in Laboratory Training?

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Laboratory training adds to conventional training by providing situations in which the trainees themselves experience through their own interaction some of the conditions they are talking about. In this way, they more or less experiment on themselves. Laboratory training is more concerned about changing individual behaviour and attitude. It is generally more successful in changing job performance than conventional training methods. There are two methods of laboratory training—simulation and sensitivity training.

A. Simulation—An increasingly popular technique of management development is simulation of performance. In this method, instead of taking participants into the field can be simulated in the training session itself. Simulation is the presentation of real situation of organisations in the training session. It covers situations of varying complexities and roles for the participants. It creates a whole field organisation, relates participants through key roles in it, and has them deal with specific situations of a kind they encounter in real life. There are two common simulation methods of training: role-playing is one and business game is the other.

(i) Role-Playing—Role-Playing is laboratory method which can be used rather easily as a supplement to conventional training methods. Its purpose is to increase the trainee's skill in dealing with other people. One of its greatest uses is in connection with human relations training but it is also used in sales training as well. It is spontaneous acting of a realistic situation involving two or more persons under class room situations. Dialogue spontaneously grows out of the situation, as it is developed by the trainees assigned to it. Other trainees in the group serve as observers or critics. Since people lake roles every day, they are somewhat experienced in the art, and with a certain amount of imagination they can project themselves into roles other than their own. Since a manager is regularly acting roles in his relationship with others, it is essential for him to have role awareness and to do role thinking so that he can size up each relationship and develop the most effective interaction possible. Role-playing has many advantages. By this method, a trainee can broaden his experience by trying different approaches, while in actual situation; he often has only one chance. In evaluation of role-playing in sue firms, it was found that such sessions resulted in an increase in sensitivity and improved quality of actions of a work sample involving a human relations difficulty. Role-playing also has weaknesses which partly offset its values. It is time consuming and expensive. It requires experienced trainers because it can easily turn sour without effective direction.

(ii) Gaming—Gaming has been devised to simulate the problems of running a company or even a particular department. It has been used for a variety of training objectives, from investment strategy, collective bargaining techniques, to the morale of clerical personnel. It has been used at all levels, from the lop executives to the production supervisors. Gaming is a laboratory method in which role-playing exists but its difference is that it focuses attention on administrative problems, while role-playing tends to emphasise mostly feeling and tone between people in interaction. Gaming involves several teams, each of which is given a firm to operate for a number of periods. Usually the period is a short one, one year or so. In each period, each team makes decisions on various matters such as fixation of price, level of production, inventory level, and so forth'. Since each team is competing with others, each firm's decisions will affect the results of all others. All the firm's decisions are fed into a computer which is programmed to behave somewhat like a real market. The computer provides the results, and the winner is the team which has accumulated largest profit. In the light of such results, strengths and weaknesses of decisions are analysed.

B. Sensitivity Training—Sensitivity training is the most controversial laboratory training method. Many of its advocates have an almost religious zeal in their enhancement with the training group

experience. As a result of criticism and experience, a somewhat revised approach, often described as 'team development' training, has appeared. It was first used by National Training Laboratories at Bethel, U.S.A. The training groups themselves called 'T Group'. Since then its use has been extended to other organisations,universites, and institutes.

Sensitivity training is a small-group interaction under stress in an unstructured encounter group which requires people to become sensitive to one another's feelings in order to develop reasonable group activity.T-group has several characteristic features: (i) the T-group is generally small, from ten to twenty members; (ii) the group begins its activity with no formal agenda; (iii) the role of trainer is primarily to call attention from time to time to the on going process within the group; (iv) the procedure tends to develop interspection and self-examination, with emotional levels of involvement and behaviour and the possibility of colleagues and some breakdown of established insulation and self-defence on the part of individuals. The objectives of such training are increased openness with others, more concern for others, increased tolerance for individual differences, less ethnic prejudice, understanding of a group process, enhanced listening skills, and increased trust and support.