Cultural Trendz

This post is my third summarizing some of what I learned during the ASTD International Conference and Expo that wrapped in Dallas last week. This theme, a strong one at the conference, deals with some of the basics of training delivery and how to make it more engaging. I’ll focus here on three excellent sessions:

*  Simple strategies for creating more engaging elearning with Cammy Bean
*  Creative training techniques with Bob Pike
*  Flip your training – designing for practice with Koreen Olbrish

Cammy Bean

Cammy shared great insights and simple strategies for creating engaging elearning. She began by offering three reasons for a learning experience: to inform or raise awareness, to improve knowledge or skills, or to change attitudes and behaviors. On the subject of creating engaging elearning, she began with this:

“When designing elearning, remember there will be someone on the other end either suffering through it or enjoying it.”

She continued to share seven great tips with examples and plenty of good suggestions; here slides are here so you can view them at your convenience. My take-aways are these:

*  As in so many other situations, good writing is important. Get to the point quickly. Keep it short and snappy, but add a little fun. Nothing loses interest faster than boring, passive writing. And don’t forget that audience members are busy professionals; it’s equally important to avoid patronizing, passive voice. First person, active voice works best.
*  Object to learning objectives! Well, it’s still important to use them, but sharing them with those using your elearning stuff is another way to lose interest quickly. Use creative approaches to describe what’s in store for the user.
*  Think outside the course: Give users/participants things to “take away,” opportunities to relearn and refresh. One great tip, Cammy mentioned setting up a course so each completion automatically triggers her team to reconnect two weeks later.

“I don’t mind having a “Next” button…but make me want to go there.”

BobPike

Not surprisingly, Bob Pike led two sessions to nearly packed (600+ people) rooms on the topic of creative training techniques. Much of Bob’s material is readily available (his worksheet is here and his redacted presentation is here), but here are a few of my takeaways.

“Training is a process not an event. It starts before and continues after an event until we see results.”

*  Separate content into need to know, nice to know, and where to go
*  Your opening should raise the BAR – Break preoccupation, Allow networking, and be Relevant to content.
*  The closing ACT should Allow celebration, Create action planning, and Tie things together.
*  People forget quickly; be sure to take breaks every 90 minutes, break things into 20 minute segments, and engage the audience every 8 minutes (more often online).
*  Revisiting is key!

“The goal is to get people to learn, not pass the test.”

*  Five ways to squelch motivation: (1) Have little personal contact; (2) Get people in a passive mood keep ‘em there; (3) Assume the class will apply what is taught – don’t bother with examples; (4) Be alert to criticize; and (5) Make them feel stupid for asking questions.

Koreen Olbrish

The concept of the “flipped” classroom has gotten a lot of attention the past few years, but like many other buzzwords it may not mean quite the same thing to every person. I’ve even heard people equate it with Salman Khan and the Khan Academy, rather than see the latter as one of many sources of content for learning outside the classroom. I very much appreciated Koreen’s simple definition of flipped training:

What does it mean to flip? Lectures OUTSIDE the classroom.

Koreen began by sharing three resources that can help with flipped training:

*  TedEd where you can can build instruction and interaction around video
*  Bloomfire, a knowledge sharing tool for the modern workforce that surrounds content with social engagement functionality
*  Lynda.com with a large library of course content (note Koreen is a Senior Product Manager at lynda.com)

Koreen blogged about her presentation here and included her slides. I won’t rehash it all, but highlight these thoughts:

*  What is the business problem you’re trying to solve? I know, right?
*  Who is driving the need for training?
*  Do they need coaching or feedback?
*  Immersive learning is practice with feedback
   *  Virtual practice is as effective as, or better than, real-life practice
*  Design for practice. Focus. Analyze. Iterate. Boom.

The question was then posed to the room: what happens if they don’t do the pre-work? This precipitated an interesting discussion with the audience, which seemed eager to tackle the subject. Koreen suggests simply have them sit out. Go do the work now. They don’t participate until prepared. It’s important to stop thinking about training as an event and more as a process (see Bob Pike above); we do our pre-work, others should too. Communicate the WHY of the pre-work. Give participants a scenario or a problem to think about before coming to class.

“Good tools allow participants multiple ways to engage in the context (around) the content.”

“One challenge in flipped training is you don’t see participants’ faces while they’re interacting with material. Add a forum for people to ask questions.”

All three of these speakers walk the talk of the process, rather than the event, of training.

Thanks for reading!
@tomspiglanin

Fourteen ways to please the patriarch in your life, all for under (or around) a single Benjamin

Power is seen as an important component of corporate leadership. Effectively using that power is critical to women’s success in the workplace. However, many women in corporate leadership are uncomfortable with power and the varying roles it plays in their careers, according to Joann Eisenhart, Ph.D., Northwestern Mutual Senior Vice President of Human Resources.

Eisenhart’s doctoral dissertation explored the meaning and use of power among female executives, revealing that women in leadership roles understand how to use their influence, though they don’t always equate this to power.

“When I asked for examples of how women use power, a number of women reacted negatively to the term. They were far more comfortable describing situations in which they used influence without labeling it as power,” says Eisenhart.

Three Leadership Essentials
According to Eisenhart, women need to get rid of the mind-set that power is a negative thing. The key is to know how to use power effectively. There are three things women can do to become more skilled, effective and powerful in corporate roles. First, women should know their business and their profession, Eisenhart advises. “This should give you credibility in any organization and allow you to rise above internal politics. Recognize that politics aren’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. They’re just how organizations work.”

Second, know your company’s culture. Understand how you fit in and what you can do to be the most effective inside it. Cultures can be different, and not every culture is a perfect fit for every person. If you find you can’t be mostly yourself at your company and in your position, then get out. This doesn’t mean you’re “selling out.” You need to be clear on who you are and find an environment where you can have the greatest impact.

Third, become proactive about expanding your knowledge beyond your particular area. Volunteer to get involved in assignments that expose you to other parts of the business, and communicate your interests so that others will watch out for opportunities for you.

The Decision Makers
“We know that women are the primary financial decision makers in more than 75% of American households,” Eisenhart says. “Northwestern Mutual’s studies point out that women generally take more time to make major financial decisions and require more information before deciding. Companies with diverse perspectives in their leadership ranks begin to think differently about their business. When they place a higher value on the voices of women at all levels, they’ll be more successful in reaching women customers.”

This BrandVoice story appeared in the September 10, 2012 issue of Forbes.

"The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less." The meaning of life.

Annie Dillard on presence over productivity.

Aristotle may have it wrong here, gaining freedom from our thoughts doesn't have to do with education, but instead about cultivating a wiser brain.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days.

Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days.

Home
1. Create a “100 Days to Conquer Clutter Calendar” by penciling in one group of items you plan to declutter every day, for the next 100 days. Here’s an example:

Day 1: Declutter Magazines
Day 2: Declutter DVD’s
Day 3: Declutter books
Day 4: Declutter kitchen appliances

2. Live by the mantra: a place for everything and everything in its place. For the next 100 days follow these four rules to keep your house in order:

If you take it out, put it back.
If you open it, close it.
If you throw it down, pick it up.
If you take it off, hang it up.

3. Walk around your home and identify 100 things you’ve been tolerating; fix one each day. Here are some examples:

A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.
A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.
The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out.

Happiness

4. Follow the advice proffered by positive psychologists and write down 5 to 10 things that you’re grateful for, every day.

5. Make a list of 20 small things that you enjoy doing, and make sure that you do at least one of these things every day for the next 100 days. Your list can include things such as the following:

Eating your lunch outside.
Calling your best friend to chat.
Taking the time to sit down and read a novel by your favorite author for a few minutes.

6. Keep a log of your mental chatter, both positive and negative, for ten days. Be as specific as possible:

How many times do you beat yourself up during the day?
Do you have feelings of inadequacy?
Are you constantly thinking critical thoughts of others?
How many positive thoughts do you have during the day?
Also, make a note of the emotions that accompany these thoughts. Then, for the next 90 days, begin changing your emotions for the better by modifying your mental chatter.

7. For the next 100 days, have a good laugh at least once a day: get one of those calendars that has a different joke for every day of the year, or stop by a web site that features your favorite cartoons.

Learning/Personal Development
8. Choose a book that requires effort and concentration and read a little of it every day, so that you read it from cover to cover in 100 days.

9. Make it a point to learn at least one new thing each day: the name of a flower that grows in your garden, the capital of a far-off country, or the name of a piece of classical music you hear playing in your favorite clothing boutique as you shop. If it’s time for bed and you can’t identify anything you’ve learned that day, take out your dictionary and learn a new word.

10. Stop complaining for the next 100 days. A couple of years back, Will Bowen gave a purple rubber bracelet to each person in his congregation to remind them to stop complaining. “Negative talk produces negative thoughts; negative thoughts produce negative results”, says Bowen. For the next 100 days, whenever you catch yourself complaining about anything, stop yourself.

11. Set your alarm a minute earlier every day for the next 100 days. Then make sure that you get out of bed as soon as your alarm rings, open the windows to let in some sunlight, and do some light stretching. In 100 days you’ll be waking up an hour and forty minutes earlier than you’re waking up now.

12. For the next 100 days, keep Morning Pages, which is a tool suggested by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages are simply three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning.

13. For the next 100 days make it a point to feed your mind with the thoughts, words, and images that are most consistent with who you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to achieve.

Finances
14. Create a spending plan (also known as a budget). Track every cent that you spend for the next 100 days to make sure that you’re sticking to your spending plan.

15. Scour the internet for frugality tips, choose ten of the tips that you find, and apply them for the next 100 days. Here are some possibilities:

Go to the grocery store with cash and a calculator instead of using your debit card.
Take inventory before going to the grocery store to avoid buying repeat items.
Scale back the cable.
Ask yourself if you really need a landline telephone.
Consolidate errands into one trip to save on gas.
Keep track of how much money you save over the next 100 days by applying these tips.

16. For the next 100 days, pay for everything with paper money and keep any change that you receive. Then, put all of your change in a jar and see how much money you can accumulate in 100 days.

17. Don’t buy anything that you don’t absolutely need for 100 days. Use any money you save by doing this to do one of the following:

Pay down your debt, if you have any.
Put it toward your six month emergency fund.
Start setting aside money to invest.

18. Set an hour aside every day for the next 100 days to devote to creating one source of passive income.

Time Management
19. For the next 100 days, take a notebook with you everywhere in order to keep your mind decluttered. Record everything, so that it’s safely stored in one place—out of your head—where you can decide what to do with it later. Include things such as the following:

Ideas for writing assignments.
Appointment dates.
To Do list items

20. Track how you spend your time for 5 days. Use the information that you gather in order to create a time budget: the percentage of your time that you want to devote to each activity that you engage in on a regular basis. This can include things such as:

Transportation
Housework
Leisure
Income-Generating Activities
Make sure that you stick to your time budget for the remaining 95 days.

21. Identify one low-priority activity which you can stop doing for the next 100 days, and devote that time to a high priority task instead.

22. Identify five ways in which you regularly waste time, and limit the time that you’re going to spend on these activities each day, for the next 100 days. Here are three examples:

Watch no more than half-an-hour of television a day.
Spend no more than half-an-hour each day on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon.
Spend no more than twenty minutes a day playing video games.

23. For the next 100 days, stop multi-tasking; do one thing at a time without distractions.

24. For the next 100 days, plan your day the night before.

25. For the next 100 days, do the most important thing on your To-Do list first, before you do anything else.

26. For the next 14 weeks, conduct a review of each week. During your weekly review, answer the following:

What did you accomplish?
What went wrong?
What went right?

27. For the next 100 days, spend a few minutes at the end of each day organizing your desk, filing papers, and making sure that your work area is clean and orderly, so that you can walk in to a neat desk the next day.

28. Make a list of all of the commitments and social obligations that you have in the next 100 days. Then, take out a red pen and cross out anything that does not truly bring you joy or help move you along the path to achieving your main life goals.

29. For the next 100 days, every time that you switch to a new activity throughout the day stop and ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time at this moment?”

Health

30. Losing a pound of fat requires burning 3500 calories. If you reduce your caloric intake by 175 calories a day for the next 100 days, you’ll have lost 5 pounds in the next 100 days.

31. For the next 100 days, eat five servings of vegetables every day.

32. For the next 100 days, eat three servings of fruit of every day.

33. Choose one food that constantly sabotages your efforts to eat healthier—whether it’s the decadent cheesecake from the bakery around the corner, deep-dish pizza, or your favorite potato chips—and go cold turkey for the next 100 days...

* Click on the image or tile above to view full, original post.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  –Eleanor Roosevelt

In my last column I shared the seven simple principles that have transformed me, my company, and a growing number of people throughout the world. They are also the focus of my book, The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning: Tying Soft Traits To Hard Results, due from Wiley Publishing on July 29.

Today I’d like to take the discussion further by telling you about the keystone of the 7 Non-Negotiables: Respect.

As you may be aware, the “keystone” is the central stone at the summit of an arch that locks the structure together. It is also the term to describe the central principle or part of a policy or system on which all else depends, and without which the 7 Non-Negotiables structure would collapse.

Respect must play the most important role in any personal or working relationship. One of our most important statements at our company, Fishbowl, is, “I’ve got your back.” This single phrase carries all of the Non-Negotiables with it. We are not perfect. No one is. But we hone the skills to get any situation, no matter how difficult, back on track – to course correct and move forward.

The Start: Empathic Listening Skills

Part of the building blocks of respect at Fishbowl is the importance of listening to each other empathically. This doesn’t mean listening until someone is done speaking. It requires that you listen with your eyes directed at them. It is listening to what they are saying without judging, or expending our mental focus on how we intend to respond while the other individual is speaking.

Here are a few suggestions for developing good listening skills: Make authentic eye contact and turn towards the individual who is speaking. Sit up straight, not slouched down or leaning back, and even lean slightly towards the individual so they know you’re listening to them. Nod and let them know you are with them. This doesn’t mean you are agreeing, necessarily. This physical attention lets the other person know you’re not engaged in anything else, such as looking around, typing, texting, or anything besides listening fully.

"I've got your back." David Williams with Fishbowl Controller Chris Mitton

This lets a speaker know that you are respecting them, which is then reflected back. This kind of reciprocal engagement always strengthens relationships. Another part of empathic listening is waiting until the person is finished speaking to begin sharing your thoughts, which can be difficult if the individual talks a lot. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to say something like, “Can we stop here and take a little break?” or, “Let me try to understand what you’re saying” to get the conversation back on track. That’s a part of empathic listening as well, and it is respectful when done properly. Repeat back what you think you heard the person say to be sure you interpreted their message correctly. It’s okay if you don’t interpret perfectly. You will be corrected, if necessary, and can respectfully thank the individual for helping to clarify the areas you may have misunderstood.

These actions often take a conversation to a deeper level because they help people clarify information, send the right messages, and provide another perspective. An engaging, respectful conversation involves seeking to understand first before being understood. That is a “Covey-ism.” Stephen Covey taught us much about empathic listening. We may not be as efficient when we take the time to understand others fully, but we will be more effective.

The Essential Step: Pressing Pause

Another tool that helps to foster respect is to place a gap of time between the stimulus that comes from someone or something, and your response to the stimulus. Sometimes it only takes a few seconds; other times it can take a day or even a week to defuse the emotions. For example, let’s say I’m driving down the road and I get cut off. My natural tendency is to get upset at the person who is being so disrespectful while driving. However, I notice that if I just breathe deeply for a moment and ignore the person, the stressful emotion passes. But if I engage in a reaction immediately, I want to do something I may regret later, such as press on the gas, accelerate and pass the car, or look over at the driver and give them a glare – all of which are immature and sophomoric (or even dangerous, if the other person escalates the emotion as well).

Think about how many times we do something similar at work. We get angry at a coworker over something small and let it ruin our entire day. Someone may say something that we choose to let hurt or offend us. However, if you simply put some time and distance between your initial reaction and your decision to do something about it, you’ll be far more prepared to respond in a way that is professional, mature, optimistic, and respectful. That doesn’t mean you avoid the issue; it simply means that you air out a little bit before you say or do anything.

Be sure that what you say and do is uplifting. You may have misunderstood someone else’s emotions or reacted inappropriately because what you thought you heard is not really what they meant.Once you put some time between the stimulus and the response, the next step is to make an effort to seek to understand that person. This has always been a positive experience for me. Failing to go to the source and get to the bottom of things, however, usually does more harm than good. If you hold the negative emotions inside, you harbor ill will against that person that will drive a wedge in your organization, hurting not only you and perhaps the individual, but also everyone around you. It is a form of emotional cancer that can spread into behavior and output.

Though it’s difficult, you must have the courage to share your thoughts and feelings directly. Approach the misunderstanding as a subject matter or an issue rather than as a challenge to the individual. This approach will bring great things into a relationship. These principles are timeless and universal. They’re not complicated or difficult to grasp. Most of us practice them outside of work every day. Seek to understand the individuals who bring up issues, and take the emotion out of it.

Get ready to have your minds blown, StyleWatchers. Salma Hayek is… 47! Now, once you pick your jaws off the floor, check out how amazing the actress looks on the July cover of InStyle magazine, where she opens up about dressing to impress her French husband, François-Henri Pinault.

“I actually wear a lot of leather on the red carpet,” the actress shares. “My husband loves when I wear it.” (We bet François really loved when his wife stepped out in this Bottega Venetta leather dress last week!)

Hayek also reveals that even though she’s in her forties, there are certain styles she won’t give up.

“When I turned 40, I started thinking, ‘This is the last year,’ whenever I’d wear a strapless dress,” she says. “I always thought you can’t wear them after a certain age, but I’m still getting away with it.”

PHOTOS: See more bold star style in Last Night’s Look

And despite all the haute couture looks she’s stepped out in over the years, the hot Hollywood mom isn’t looking for validation from the fashion community, just her husband.

“I’m not really a fashionista,” she shares. “I have an eye. I can pull it together, but a lot of the effort I make is for my husband, because I want him to be attracted to me.”

For more from Hayek, check out InStyle.com and the July issue, on stands June 14, and tell us: What do you think of her fashion outlook?

–Brittany Talarico

Smashing Pumpkins - Luna Acoustic Studio Version

The emotional intelligence model can be looked at in terms of what it means to be intelligent about emotions, which is being self-aware, knowing your own feelings, and why you feel that way. It’s about managing those emotions. But it’s also sensing how other people are feeling, knowing the other person's emotions, and then finally managing all those emotions in the way that is best for everyone.

How does managing emotions come into play when building high-performing teams? I spoke with IMD professor, George Kohlrieser for my Leadership: A Master Class series about the importance of a leader’s EI skills in creating solid, dynamic bonds within a team.

“Managing emotions is how you build a team, an organization. It’s the ability to get team members inspired. It’s about dealing with emotions, building high emotions and creating an inspired team. If you've ever been in a high performing team, it just inspires, even though there's stress and challenge. And there's always going to be a leader, as part of that process, to build that creativity. So it’s essential for leaders to understand how team bonding works, and how bonding in a team will build energy.

Sense of belonging

The leader has to make everybody feel like they belong - even if you don't like them. Of course, typically after creating a bond you learn to like the person. You discover some part of them that brings you together. With team members who don't want to belong, you have to put the fish on the table and say, “Do you really want to belong to this team? If you are ambivalent, it’s going to be a source of conflict.”

Build mutual respect

Again, if you don't like somebody, it’s OK, but you have to show respect, and you create high energy by being respectful. Use your mind's eye like a flashlight to look for what you can learn from somebody.

Offer choice

People want to feel they have power over themselves. That's why asking a question is so important in any leadership activity, and being able, where possible, to give people choice and power over what they can do. When you delegate, you open up possibilities to let people shine. Think of it like your children. You want your children to be smarter than you. You want the people who follow you to be smarter than you, to do better than you. If you create that sense of support, that foundation, then you have these explosions of creativity.

Empathy in bonding

Being able to understand grief is very important. When people don't get over something, there's going to be a negative consequence somewhere up the road. Help everyone - including you - get over whatever happened. The future is the future. The past is the past. Put the fish on the table to deal with conflicts. Understand that it’s better to be slapped in the face by the truth than kissed by a lie. Be a leader who says the truth, but say it with empathy. Say it with bonding, because tough leaders who bond get good results from their teams."