Wow! A branded shirt.

During the holiday season many managers choose to give their employees a gift.  I use the word “choose” lightly since in some companies it is somewhat expected, mandated, etc. along with the amount you are told to spend.  I have received ham certificates, steak certificates, or other edible things from companies including team lunch (which does not seem like a treat if your team does lunch for all occasions).  I am not poo pooing free things or the gesture but after listening to Dr. Paul White speak at our ATDKC Fall Conference, I think we can all do better.

Dr. White and Gary Chapman wrote a book called “The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.”   The book overall is a connection between employee engagement, their feeling valued, and how they receive appreciation if given at all.  The authors point out that every person has a different way that they like to be recognized and/or appreciated.  Options include public recognition, private recognition, notes (handwritten or electronic), gifts, help in duties, and focused time.  Their main message is that the gesture of appreciation needs to be personalized.  It shows you know and value and the person. Blanket company certificates get an out here and should be recognized as a gesture overall of general gratitude.  But the branded company shirt given by a manager to the whole department of folks who may already have several branded shirts is 1) not individual and 2) a cop out.  (How many branded shirts have you donated after you left a company? Use as a dust rag?)

Taking your team to lunch for the holiday season?  Use the opportunity to get to know them.  Then choose your gifts appropriately if you are giving them.  A night of bowling to a family that likes to spend time together.  Tickets to an exhibit for the member that likes museums.  There are all kinds of gift cards or certificates that would encourage them to enjoy their time away from work and could be personalized by your paying attention to what they enjoy.  Tangible gifts can include everything from an emergency car kit for your worker who has a long commute to a book about something you and your employee spoke about.  Does this require extra effort? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.  This holiday season show your employees that you know them, value them, and appreciate them with thoughtful effort.  Oh and if you already ordered the branded stuff then get creative with your additional personalized item that you are now aware you should add.

Personal Development Seasons

Which stage are you in today?  Are you full of colorful show or bare?  Somewhere in between perhaps?  I think we are constantly in a stage of evolving just like trees in the different seasons.  We show a big ah ha moment and follow it by drawing into ourselves for reflection.  This can be uncomfortable and unwelcome by many of us.  We do not want to bare our inner self, possibly unveiling a part of ourselves that we do not want others to see.  Forget that! We do not want to see it ourselves! Isn’t life better when we are performing at a high level, striving for perfection, and the world sees us at our best?  All living things rejuvenate; better to do it by choice than exhaustion.

Cold winter days are good for reflective activities, growth, and rejuvenation.   Inside a temperature controlled office (yeah, mine either but go with it), you can do a little rejuvenation any time.  Work it into your day or over your lunch time.  Maybe you attend a class put on by your training department or outside vendor.  What are you personally doing though–not stuff you have to or are expected to sign up for in your office?  Do you have a Personal Development Plan?  Not the one your boss uses for performance reviews, a development plan you created for you and the development of your strengths and passions?  Hmm now we are back to that bare tree that will never really have the full green of summer or glorious colors of fall in its leaves.  How do you create a PDP?

First steps are to find your passions and your strengths that you can grow.  Simon Sinek says to “discover your why.” (  https://www.startwithwhy.com/  )  You have to know why you do what you do, what drives you.  His books and YouTube videos are good for inspiration.  Checkout Tom Rath’s “Strength Finder 2.0.”  Take the assessment and evaluate how you are using those strengths and where you might develop them further.  Create an idea map to begin to plan and visualize your path.  See Jamie Nast’s website for examples and articles on the technique, http://ideamappingsuccess.com/aboutus.cfm.

Once you know what you want to develop, look for resources.  I have gained valuable insights that have added to my knowledge by using massively open online courses, otherwise known as MOOCs.  These courses are often free or can often earn college credit with some additional requirements from you, including fees. I have used the on-line site and mobile app from Canvas.net to learn more about social media, digital literacy, and girls in education.  Check them out here:  https://www.canvas.net/.  Many of my friends know that my other favorite learning site is http://www.lynda.com/.  Via short video on this site I have improved my office suite skills and learned how to use my first iPhone.  For less than a full day class in one software I have access to a library for a year.  Well worth the expense.

You are the source for your own growth and development.  You have to choose what you want to develop.  Learning and development should really not be a forced venture in our workplaces.  It should be self-driven and chosen based on our own desire to improve.  Plant your tree.  Start preparing for your glorious color to show in a way that only you can design.  Then enjoy the reflection time so you can follow the cycle again.

Traditional College vs Minerva Project

Wired posted a thought provoking article about a “college” that is putting an interesting spin on higher education.  See the article here http://www.wired.com/2014/10/minerva-project/ to read the full story.  The founder, Ben Nelson, argues that students can get the information offered in many standard core university classes anywhere.  His project wants to teach students how to critically think, creatively think, and effectively communicate.  The curriculum does require work in those basic courses but in an interdisciplinary fashion.  What they learn is expected to be applied in an experiential way like helping to create a law.  The students do have “habits of mind” that have to be learned in the freshman year in order to apply them in the next year.  Seems traditional to me even if the habits are not traditional topic; rote memorization?

Even with that shade of doubt, I think I would have enjoyed the college experience more and maybe learned more from this type of curriculum.  My friend Jeanine O’Neill-Blackwell, 4MAT for Business owner, taught me to recognize the different ways people learn.  Her program, based on research by Bernice McCarthy, pegged me perfectly.  If I could not tie the course concepts to something I could use or apply, I did not retain it. I and others like me, need to apply what we are learning, not just memorize and regurgitate.  The what if style and the relationship oriented learners would also probably thrive in a program that was more experiential.  But just like the universities we all attended might not have met all of our needs, the Minerva Project would not be a good fit maybe for many of the analytic type that has a need for all the data and information they can get before doing anything with it.

So is one better than the other? I think not.  Maybe the answer lies somewhere in between.  My favorite course at Purdue was my student teaching.  The work I did to prepare the sections of history we were teaching stayed with me much longer than the overview courses on portions of history, history of education, or child psychology.  Those courses were reading, lecture, and testing–retained long enough to pass the test.  Classroom management, lesson planning, and parent interaction all were more enjoyable and retained due to the combination of experience and coaching.  So at what point will we meld the blended approach needed in our colleges?  Maybe when the learning and development profession leads the way?  We are not doing it now. We want to and many do it in snippets but we do not have management and SME’s with us really.  So I will cheer on the Minerva Project and its students.  They are making the first steps for all of us.

Defined by the Grade

“Don’t define what you know by what others give you.” Neil deGrasse Tyson

I picked up this quote from a tweet.  The person was listening to the keynote at the DevLearn conference.  Tyson was discussing science education in our schools and children.  In this case he was also referring to the grades you receive.  You could take this and apply it in several ways.  I will focus on parents and professional learning and development folks today.

As parents, where is the line between encouraging the learning style of your child and urging them to conform for grading purposes?  As learning and development professionals, where do we draw the line in our work when management demands narrated Power Point eLearning that we know deserves grade F.  Maybe a D since it causes suffering to the L&D person–throw them a bone since it is done under protest.  Meanwhile the learners give us an F.  Well they would if they were awake.

Making the change in focus for both of these situations requires patience.  I suck at patience.  Can’t the directors of this see the “learners” (used loosely) just clicking and not absorbing, not caring, NOT LEARNING? Don’t the teachers notice that students are taking notes like robots, spitting out answers as a, b, or c? Apparently not. In both cases they see a report or test results that show completions and scores. Did we meet the time requirement? Great!  Did they learn anything that they can apply? “huh?” “what?”

Parents there are a multitude of resources on the World Wide Web to help your child learn in a different fashion.  Check out https://www.khanacademy.org/ for instruction on topics they did not understand in class.  Want a problem solver? A builder? Let them play Minecraft.  Games teach critical thinking so let them play.  Connect with their teachers to stay on top of their progress; not the grade, the improvement and progress.

The workplace? Don’t give up the fight.  Begin by adding well balanced, visually pleasing templates. Don’t know how to create them? Get a library of templates and visuals through  http://elearningbrothers.com/ where they have built them for you.  Add visuals to attract the eye and support the message.  I am not referring to the stock photos of business people–no one looks at those and relates to them. Choose photos that relate, support and generate connected thoughts for the participant.  Keep going.  Keep working to improve the actual learning.  You will be reaching for your own grading system because their system of pass/fail is not sufficient.

Follow the Leader

Follow the Leader?

It is Boss’ Day.  Have you thought about what kind of boss you are?  Not in that type of position you say? I disagree.  We are all the boss at times; at work, at home, in stores, or other venues.  What type of boss are you?

A former company president I worked for issued a few leadership principles to help guide the leaders in the company.  My favorite one was to be present.  In this I had to ask myself if I really listened to my staff, co-workers, my family, or people I came across in my day.  I kind of suck at this sometimes.  To be a true leader that is worthy of being followed I think you really do need to be present.  So I will keep working on this.  To be noticed, acknowledged, and addressed by someone is to know you are “present” to them.  Everyone wants to be seen.  Be present with people.

Another question to ask yourself and your boss-self is, “do I give direction?”  How clear are you in telling people what you want?  Every parent has been through a moment where you know you were not clear enough in what you wanted from your child.  Check the pink items that came out of the laundry due to a lack of clear direction.  If you are a leader in a corporation, how many times are you fixing something? Re-doing it?  Do you have confidence that the direction you have given is going to yield the results you want and have the backing of your boss? Giving clear direction sets the people around you up for success instead of failure.

Last question of the day, “what kind of culture do you create?”  Do people shy away from making eye-contact with you?  Are they afraid of you or the consequences of your behavior?  This one gets to the core of legacy to me.  I want a culture of kindness to surround me.  A simple thank you for a completed task goes a long way to create a culture that gets results. People want to follow a leader who is present to listen, then gives clear direction, and follows it with gratitude or support to meet the goal.  I hope I leave in my wake a wave of gratitude and kindness creating a culture of engaged, empowered people.

Moving On

The year has been about moving on.  My career at Grundfos came to an end.  I had loved my job and really enjoyed the relationships I had with so many co-workers.  At the time I knew the only way to get through the restructure was to move on, keep positive.  The mistake is that I did not allow myself to grieve the life change, the experiences, the friendships, or people knowing your reputation.  It caught up with me as I made a choice for security and took a position that my inner voice said might be a mistake.  I was so lucky and had another offer 3 months after that one to work with my former employee.  So I moved on from that first position to another one.
Eventually you have to deal with just being sad about some of the change. If you don’t, you cannot truly get excited about the future.  I am trying to be more patient in my new role. I am not going to make this huge impact right away.  They have no idea what I have to bring to them and only have the previous employee to refer to when it comes to training initiatives.  I am building relationships, suggesting new ideas, and in some cases being allowed to move their programs on down the learning path.

Moving on is hard. If you are receptive enough, you can learn a lot through the process. If you work at it, you can retain some of the former relationships. If you open your head and heart, you can find peace along the trail.

Drive-by Training

I received a paragraph that was several lines long with the topics covered in a training session.  It was sent to me so the attendees could have it recorded in their file.  A conversation with the department manager uncovered that the session was two 15 minute videos covering a wide range of topics.  He also told me the supervisor then discussed it with the workers.  I questioned the value, the take away learning from the session, and the purpose of doing it.  This drive-by training is to help them know stuff for a certification test that they may not do on their day-to-day job but since it is on the test, they need to be exposed to it.  There was further discussion.  I got nowhere.

Why do I call it “drive-by training?”  Because it is fast moving, no response or interaction necessary, just a dump and go.  This method allows employees to put in their files that they have attended “x” training.  It also allows a manager to say they are providing training while adhering to a tight schedule.  What else can it do?  Why several of these qualify for ceu’s of course!  If this is a major focus for your teams, then be wary of the drive-by.

So how do we fix this in our organizations?  If it is training that we are providing, we obviously need to make sure we are using effective design methods.  Do you have clear objectives?  Do not blow by these or you have just asked them if they want fries with that.  Training that is practiced is training that is applied.  So slow down and park it in their hands so they drive a bit.  If they are going to be able to drive at work, retain and use the content then we have to plan their practice time.  Only get them for an hour?  Then maybe one topic will take you 3 sessions.  Think of it as repeat business.

When the folks are getting their training via vendors and webinars, see if you can begin to draw a new map for them with planned tour stops not just gas fill ups.  Can you help choose the training they attend?  Evaluate if it is worth their stop?  Or provide some sort of reflective eLearning, journaling, or monthly presentations of concepts learned?  It is a shame to let them drive by the major sites to just get points on their ceu gas card.  This is a rough job but we signed up for it.  Sometimes we have to be more than a gas attendant letting them just drive in and drive out.

Dumbing Down with deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson was announced recently as the keynote for the fall DevLearn conference in Vegas. At the risk of becoming an outcast amongst my peers, I admit that I had not heard of him. I do watch some tv but not a lot and obviously I have not been watching or reading about “Cosmos” on National Geographic’s cable channel (http://www.cosmosontv.com/). So when I saw a “USA Today” special edition with him on the cover, I picked it up and found a kindred spirit It is not the astrophysicist part that attracted my attention as I have never been much for sci-fi nor the study of space overall (my brother tried to get me into it as “Star Trek” was his tv show — me? nope, but those triffids were funny). Neil deGrasse Tyson has a passion for people understanding science, recognizing its importance, and respecting the discipline. THAT speaks to me!! It particularly speaks to the part of me that is offended by “science standard” politics in my state but that is another blog.
In an interview section with deGrasse Tyson, he referred to the common phrase “dumb it down.” He said, “if you’re dumbing something down, they know that behind it is this subtext of ,’Well, I’m way smarter than you, and you’ll never understand it if I said it the way I would say it. So, let me see if I can simplify it for you.” (USA Today, Cosmos special edition, March 24-April21, 2014, pg. 24) He says you need to dig deeper in the subject for the right way to communicate it and a more interesting way to share it. I had a Sunday morning, shout out, kind of reaction to that.
I have worked with engineers throughout my career and hung out with loads of them at Purdue. They need to hire this man as their next commencement speaker. Young and old, many an engineer or technical person I have met has made an attempt with a little contempt on the side to “dumb it down” for the rest of us when we worked with them as subject matter experts (SMEs). I have watched the approach shut down learners in a room and instructional designers who could not deal with the underlining message. This is not all about them. It is about us Learning & Development professionals. Have we gone the lengths to help them understand why that does not work and that we need their great content to be shared in an “interesting way?” Or did we just request the content, moan about their lack of urgency for our project, and then watch as the light bulbs of connection never went off?
I use 4MAT design principles when working with SMEs. The instructional design model is a cycle they can understand and relate to in their own learning. ADDIE is the name of a great aunt they only see at reunions. They need from us a simple model to follow that does not leave our learners unconnected. Neil deGrasse Tyson gets learning. I will now be watching to see the methods he uses as an astrophysicist to connect science to the general viewer. You should too.

Rocco Rocked the CC

One of the best sessions I attended at this year’s Learning Solutions Conference was provided by Stevie Rocco on Copyrights and Creative Commons.  The web combined with cool tools like my favorite, SnagIt, has made using media in training so easily accessible.  Love Google Images?  Stop!  Warning warning those images are not a good choice for your training.  They are pulled from somewhere that probably has a copyright on the image.  Understanding Creative Commons is tricky but simply reviewing their site, using some of the cool tools shared & Firefox as your browser could make using images in your training a snap. Thanks Stevie!

Learning from Yukon

I have spent two days in classes at the eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference given by the Yukon Learning team on Articulate’s Storyline authoring tool.  I cannot speak highly enough of Stefanie and Ron, the lead trainers.  I thought it was really smart to have other team members in the room while they were teaching the software. (Brooke and John were very helpful.) This was particularly noticeable  in the advanced class where the participants were of all levels.  The extra instructors really kept the pace moving while giving attention to the truly advanced learners too.  For those doing software training, this might be a good technique to keep in mind.

Not everyone picks up software quickly, meaning me.  I need repetition, a resource for review, and lots of visuals.  I like to watch someone do things and then try to do it myself.  I had watched learning videos on Lynda.com to get the overall view of Storyline.  Stefanie’s “Getting Started” session guided us through the building blocks of the software with usable output as the result.  The scenes we created in class step-by-step now are a reference for building my own courses.  Adding a little more complex exercises in the advanced class was a challenge but oh the satisfaction when it worked!  The combination of watching on Lynda.com, doing face-to-face learning with Yukon, and now using my notes, books, and Articulate tutorials for reference is an example of personal blended learning. We use blended learning when we design courses. We should use it when we learn ourselves. Now, I have to go build a story.