Culture & Transformation

How can L&D deliver behaviour change remotely?

During the months since the Coronavirus was declared a pandemic, we have spoken with a lot of Learning & Development professionals and read accounts of the things that they have been doing. The activity has been amazing, not just in L&D but in the way that companies are rapidly changing their operating models. Collectively, we have a lot to be proud of. We have noticed that in many ways, people have been transiting through the Kübler-Ross Grief Curve. Some are much further through than others. Perhaps you can relate to this or you have seen this in friends.

The best short term responses came from those in L&D who asked themselves a simple question along the lines of “What do WE
need to do to help our people do what THEY need to do in the cir...stances they are in TODAY?” Given so much of what we are dealing with as a result of COVID-19 is new, it is most unlikely that anything that we were doing way back in January 2020 is a valid response to this question. Are you still delivering anything now that was considered business as usual back in January?

In times of significant change, it is so easy to yearn for what was, and to try and deal with the new reality without suc...bing to it. It is a natural response to utilise as best we can the tools we already have, partly for familiarity, but also because it is quicker, simpler, and easier. The upshot of this is that the initial reaction of so many trainers to lockdown was to start transitioning their face-to-face training courses into a virtual classroom. They focussed on what platform to use and how to tweak the design of their existing courses to allow them to be delivered online. In effect, they ‘webinised’ their training course. Indeed, some have even just posted videos of classroom sessions online! For those who have applied a quick fix and ticked the ‘deliver online’ box for a training course, my concern is that this temporary solution delivered in urgency continues without a proper evaluation of the results it is achieving in terms of performance improvement.

There are very few cases where this initial sticking plaster response will stand up over time. Some organisations were already using virtual classrooms and blended online learning approaches, and this experience stood them in good stead as they responded to the new needs of their employees. Other organisations have been pushed into online delivery without this experience. They were not in a state of readiness to transfer their learning online, even if it was in their longer-term L&D strategy. COVID-19 didn’t introduce online learning, but it did make online learning an imperative.

One thing has become abundantly clear: L&D will not be returning to what it was before COVID-19. There have been huge changes in the short term, and many of these changes are likely to linger. The world has changed, we have changed, and there is a lot more change coming as organisations adapt to a world we cohabit with this new virus. We need to find a balance between what worked before and what will be needed in the next normal, and we need to do this at speed. There are many ways to deliver training and a myriad of possible blends. Think of these as different species adapting to a new environment.

Which ones will suc...b to the forces of natural selection? The consensus is that face-to-face training will return but at greatly reduced levels, probably much less than 50%, and then will continue to decline as it is found wanting in comparison to the alternatives we are busy creating now through necessity.

Except for niche solutions, face-to-face training will lose the battle for survival of the fittest. The customers we serve know that, much as they might prefer it, we can’t currently deliver face-to-face training, and we may not be able to do so without social distancing for some considerable time. Our customers are expecting training to change and any resistance to online delivery that may have been present has been swept aside.

This gives us an incredible window of opportunity to make changes we have been wanting to make for years — changes that were blocked by cultural and management inertia. There is indeed a silver lining in this COVID cloud. It’s been said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” So how can we benefit from the current lack of resistance to change arising from this crisis?

How to Reboot Training for 2020 and Beyond

This guide steps you through a process to figure out what those changes to training need to be. And it starts with taking a step back...

No Regrets - a story of love and learning

No Regrets is a tale of love and learning, produced in 2014 to accompany Clive Shepherd's book More Than Blended Learning. It tells the tale of two young people who meet up in Brighton as they begin training in their new jobs. As the week progresses, they reflect on their contrasting learning experiences, highlighting from a learner's perspective what good and bad looks like in the design of learning solutions.

This film is, above all, an experiment in storytelling as a mechanism for learning. As such, as producers, we almost definitely got some things right and some things wrong. Let's see what you think.

Effective persuasion through ethos, pathos and logos

As learning professionals, it is our lot to try our best to be persuasive, whether we’re trying to convince stakeholders to go with what we believe will be the best solution to their problem, persuade learners and their managers to engage with our interventions, or sell learners on a new way of working. You could say we were in the persuasion business.

As we look for new strategies for persuasion, we would do well to look to those who came before us. They may not have had big data but some of them definitely had big brains. Enter Aristotle, whose three modes of persuasion have plenty of relevance today.

Informal Learning – the engine in the basement

There is a big engine running in the basement of your organisation. You probably aren’t even aware that it is there. No one has been down there for years, if ever. There is rubbish amongst the puddles of oil and water on the floor and it’s like any other dark abandoned basement.

And yet that engine running in your basement is critical to the success of your organisation. If it stopped at midnight tonight, your organisation would be on its knees in a month, and probably out of business not long afterwards. It is lucky that the engine is so incredibly reliable that it keeps running, even if it does not run so smoothly now.

It is the informal learning engine that every organisation has. There is a huge amount of informal learning going on within every organisation all the time. Informal learning is made up of the learning that comes about through the experiences and social interactions of your employees. It is this day-to-day learning in the workflow that enables us to serve customers well and to improve things as we go along.

Its importance is vastly underrated because we are so good at learning things that we don’t even notice that we are doing it. Most of what we learn on a day-to-day basis as we do our jobs, we learn unconsciously. We don’t necessarily set out to learn, but we do, because that is our nature as a species.

Take a moment right now and reflect on what you have learned in the last couple of hours. The amount we learn on an ongoing basis is quite staggering, and in the work context, much of that learning is the input that drives continuous improvement.

We do a task, and we notice whether we get what we want, or whether there is a gap between what we wanted to achieve and what actually happened. Whether that gap simply manifests as an unconscious unease, or whether we are consciously aware of it, the next time we do that task, we will change what we do to minimise or close the gap.

This is the root of that old saying, practice makes perfect.

The more we practice a task, and the more we reflect on the task and the results we get, the more we learn, and the quicker we can close the gap between what we get and what we want. Typically, what we want is a moving target, and so the gap widens unless we keep learning fast enough. In order to survive, we need to learn faster than the widening gap. We need tom learn faster than the rate of change around us.

Given that informal learning is so critical to the survival of an organisation, how can we help that poor informal learning engine stoically chugging away in the basement?

Think about that from your own perspective. When you are trying to get a job done, what helps you learn about the job in a way that means you can get better at it? Most people would say things like access to the right information and the right kind of just-in-time support, either from colleagues or from resources. And of course they would also want to have the right tools and processes at their fingertips to do the job rather than having to learn to bodge it with the wrong tools. These are the things that need to be made available in order to get that informal learning engine running more smoothly. This is how you improve the quality of fuel for the engine, and how you get the basement clean and shiny.

It is well worth spending some time making people aware of how important informal learning is to the organisation, and to the continuous improvement which is essential to its survival. And then spend some time thinking about how you can support the informal learning engine by making learning in the workflow easier.

You cannot rely on formal training for all your learning needs. Indeed you never have, but you probably didn’t realise just how critical informal learning is.

Read up on Informal Learning at Work http://pal.gl/i

_________________________________________________________________________________________

First published at http://haywoodmann.co.uk/informal-learning-the-engine-in-the-basement/ on 29.07.2015.

Exploring the seven Cs

I’ve always been a little suspicious of models in which the titles of the elements share a common initial letter or just happen to spell out a word that sums up the overall message. I would wonder whether important ideas had been omitted because they didn’t fit the pre-determined pattern and how strained the search might have been for synonyms.
You will have to believe me that when recently I was exploring ideas for high-level designs for learning solutions, option after option seemed to begin with the letter C. I did not conveniently leave out options beginning with other letters, nor did I have to hunt for better matching synonyms. It was just one of those days. Enjoy!

Learning and Development's Two Customers

Imagine if you had to satisfy not one set of customers but two. Both were demanding, and each was looking for quite different things. Well, such is the lot of the learning professional. Not only do you have to provide a great service to your clients, business sponsors and key stakeholders, you also have to deliver satisfying experiences to your end users – the learners.

Sacred Cows and Red Herrings - Part I

I’m going to take an irreverent look at what I think are a couple of sacred cows. This might annoy you, or you might even applaud it, but I doubt it will leave you without your own opinion.

You see, a sacred cow (when used as an idiom) is something that is regarded with such respect and veneration that it is considered immune from question or criticism, immune from tampering.

But what if this veneration is misplaced?

I am talking about Learning and Engagement (yes, with capital letters).

They are beautiful aren’t they, as we look at them. They are things of wonder, and well worth striving for. Well worth the mighty effort to make them happen. There are so many people that focus on these two things. There is so much written about them. Everybody says they are wonderful, necessary and depending on the pundit, the cure for all our problems.

I have nothing against Learning and Engagement per se. I simply think we are looking at the wrong things. They are both red herrings, distracting us from what we really should be focusing on.

A red herring (when used as an idiom) is a piece of information or suggestion introduced to draw attention away from the real facts of a situation. A red herring is a type of strong-smelling smoked fish that was once drawn across the trail of a scent to mislead hunting dogs and put them off the scent.

Let’s not get put off the scent. Let’s focus on what is more important: Performance.

Performance is what the business wants. Performance is what the customers want. And actually, Performance is what the workers want. It’s my belief they would love to do a good job if only we would enable them to do so.

Let’s consider Performance first, and look at learning and engagement (look, they have lost their capital letters) along with many other factors as servants in support of Performance.

It’s interesting how many people in L&D and HR struggle to come up with good and useful definitions of both learning and engagement, struggle to find ways to effectively measure them or measure the changes they have made in them through their interventions. They struggle to justify their value of the business based on changes to both learning and engagement. Where there have been improvements in performance, they struggle to prove that those improvements were the direct result of changes to learning and engagement.

There are enough isolated cases so there is always a case study or two to prove that learning and/or engagement are good things. And they are, but I think focusing on them as an endgame, as an outcome is not helping us.

When I ask someone in L&D to reimagine their role so that their total focus is on ensuring capability at the point of work when a worker has a job in front of them, their thinking changes. They start thinking in much more practical terms about how they can enable and help that worker do the job that is immediately in front of them. Some learning may be required, but often it is other changes that are necessary to ensure capability at the point of work.

The same thing happens when I talk to HR people about engagement, and changing their focus away from engagement and onto capability, and thus Performance.

We are talking here about enablement. If we enable people to do their job, how does that affect them, affect their engagement, and their learning?

There are many things that we can do to enable people without ‘using’ learning and engagement. Instead, give them the right tools, the right information, processes that flow well. Fix the things that frustrate them. Take the brakes off what they are doing. Performance will improve.

I believe that when the brakes are taken off, and someone can do better, they will. They will also become more engaged and willing to learn as they can see that better performance is possible. It wasn’t them being stupid, it wasn’t them not caring; it was the systems and processes and environment they were being asked to work in.

Just for now, do a thought experiment for yourself in your role and imagine that your total focus is on enabling a worker in your organisation, so they are capable of doing what needs to be done. How would that affect you? How would that affect them? How would that affect the customer? How would that affect the bottom line of the business?

Sacred cows?

Maybe, or maybe not. What do you think?

Levy Funded Development - Have you recognised the opportunity?

Upskilling for our future – The Apprenticeship Levy

What is the biggest lie in life? How about – ‘People like change!’.It’s a cliché popular with management particularly when a workforce is required to do something it’s not happy about.  Why are people resistant to change? Change requires thought. It draws more energy than normal. It creates disturbance and can make some feel inadequate. Change nurtures vulnerability, uncertainty and fear. Resistance is magnified by lack of understanding. On the flip side, change frequently provides opportunity, signifies progress, encourages development and improves output. People are often happier after change has occurred.

British industry’s collective reaction to the Apprenticeship Levy has been fuelled by sporadic and ad-hoc communication about the levy, defensive behaviour from existing providers and a pinch of short-term thinking by some employers.

As our national capacity to invent, make and own things seems to daily diminish, there is a real possibility that longer term, the UK will become no more than a low skill, service delivery mega-centre off the north west coast of Europe. How many have grasped the potential magnitude of the opportunity for UK PLC’s presented by the Levy?
Before summarizing the opportunity, let’s consider the counter argumentation, much of which is built not on ideological objection, but on simple lack of understanding.

Why use the Apprenticeship levy?
The opportunity to acquire accreditation in roles previously deemed too intangible to quantify is a compelling case for commitment. As an example; Sales is largely ignored by career advisors and academia mainly because the profession is poorly understood by both. Young adults reliably informed of employment pathways to financial security, career progression and entrepreneurial opportunity will be very interested. Building a qualification around core business and life skills which have already created companies, jobs and wealth is vital to national economic health. Investment in human capital ticks a very important box for Millennials whose value set differs markedly from that of their parents.

It’s too bureaucratic and inflexible

For whom? Process is necessary to ensure learners reach the end-point. To generate commitment and drive learner achievement, rigour must be applied.  The use of public money necessitates the elimination of any possibility of misappropriation. Quality must be assured and this demands attentiveness. Regarding flexibility; process need not however equate to rigidity. The Level 4 Sales Apprenticeship can be tailored specifically as the need arises, even though most core competencies in Sales are common across roles and industry sectors.  Training providers now need a greater degree of agility than ever before to support the needs of the employer.

The opportunity cost
Businesses are often prone to short-termism and evidence of that is easy to find. Many companies worry about lost productivity costs and in particular - lost sales. It seems few are considering the multiplicative power of a more able and stable sales team which can improve conversion rates, lower the cost of sale, increase turnover and grow the customer base. Equipping the next generation of sales professionals requires investment from individual and employer alike, otherwise the old cycle in which only the strongest survive is perpetuated.

Where now?
Change is inevitable. The learning marketplace in the UK has undergone a significant alteration. Budget holders across the country are considering whether training provisioned through hard-fought internal negotiation can now be funded through the Levy. This means either; more human capital development can be accessed or, the money can be diverted elsewhere in the business. 
Providers with specialist expertise are enabling themselves to be the partner of choice in a market segment previously roped off and inaccessible. Employers frustrated by the low-quality people development delivered by some providers in the past now have exciting alternative choices.
Return on investment now reigns supreme.  Business owners, who have now been forced to part with their hard-earned money to spend on Apprentices are, rightfully so, wanting to know that the result of their financial investment will yield increased returns in productivity, revenue and staff retention as an absolute minimum.
Apprenticeships Training Providers now, more than ever need to be responsive to meet the individual needs of employer and learner simultaneously whilst assuring an underpinning theme of quality along the entire journey.
The UK has a real chance to catch up and even overtake some of our fiercest economic competitors by investing in a skills-focused future beyond the EU.  Collectively, we need to grasp the opportunity with both hands. In times of change, the adaptable prevail.

About Mercuri International
With a commitment to delivering innovative training solutions and over 60 years’ experience helping companies worldwide transform their business results, we develop and implement training to help your people become tomorrow’s leaders, managers and sales professionals utilizing a blended learning approach: classroom, digital eLearning, one to one sessions, webinars and tutorials.   www.mercuri.co.uk

Reference & Further information

(Dunn, Apprenticeship Levy Pricing Young People Out Of Training, 2018) - www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/2018/03/apprenticeship-levy-pricing-young-people-out-training The Association of Professional Sales: https://www.associationofprofessionalsales.com/ Institute for Apprenticeships:  https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/about/ Apprenticeships for England:  https://www.app4eng.info/
 

Contact
Sarah James | Tel: 0330 9000 8000 | training@mercuri.co.uk

Is it Really John’s Fault?

There is a task in your workplace that needs to be done. Sally can do it, but John cannot.

Our automatic assumption is that John does not have what it takes to do the job. John is not competent, and if we ever want John to be able to do the job, we need to give him some training and instruction so he becomes competent.

It is easy to see that for someone to do that job, they have to be as good as Sally. So we spend what might be quite a lot of money and effort ‘fixing’ John so he can work effectively alongside Sally.

This might all be true, however, there is another possibility that is almost always overlooked. There is another possibility that is almost always a cheaper solution.

Sally is more experienced than John, and she knows the little shortcuts, the tricks to making that particular machine work, the ways to bypass the system when it gets in the way, who to call when something she needs is missing and how to deal with all those little things that conspire against success.

If those barriers against success were absent, perhaps John could do the task, and do it well. So actually, he is competent for this particular task, and it is the environment that surrounds the task that is not ‘competent’. It is the faulty environment around John that renders him incapable in the moment of doing the task, even though nominally he is competent.

So you have two options. You can train John with all the knowledge and skill that Sally has in order to overcome the problems in the environment that surrounds the task, or you can fix the environment.

Which would cost you less?

If you fix the environment, then others like John can also do the task. If you fix the environment, then Sally won’t need to bend the rules in order to get the job done. If you fix the environment, it is much easier to stay legal and compliant. If you fix the environment, people new into role will reach proficiency much more quickly.

The moral of the story is, when there is a performance problem, do not automatically blame the performer. It might be the stage that you are asking them to perform on, that is faulty.

(Originally published https://russellhrconsulting.co.uk/the-hr-headmistress-blog/is-it-really-johns-fault/)

Humility vs Power: Are you a Shackleton or a Scott?

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 2019 Merit Summit in Vienna. It was my first time at the event as well as being my first time in Vienna. As I reflect on two full days of listening, connecting and learning, I wanted to distill some of my personal take-aways from the event.  This comes at a particularly self reflective time for me, as I have now set up my own business after leaving Citi in December.

The overwhelming theme for me was that of Connection. It has manifested itself in many ways as a rallying call for anyone wanting to be successful in the new world of work.

Connecting the dots for L&D Professionals

Seek, Sense, Share! I've long been an advocate of PKM theory, especially as advanced by Harold Jarce. The Merit Summit ended up being a big fat episode of seeking, sensing and sharing for me! I found it incredibly rewarding as I noticed opportunities to connect people in my network with new individuals and ideas as they showed up for me during the two days. I intentionally didn't pack my schedule with back-to-back sessions, meetings and workshops. I tried to select speakers and topics that challenged my thinking and then gave time to reflect and synthesise as the day went on. Less was definitely more in Vienna.

It all started on Tuesday night at a superb dinner generously hosted by Sigrun & Sofia of the HR Builders. I met some old and new colleagues including Gerard Penning of Shell, Celia Berenguer  of Sanofi and Richard Howell (who is a leading International Change Consultant). Building relationships in this type of environment is incredibly helpful. In my case I really enjoyed the seeking and sharing of new knowledge and understanding within a mini professional social learning network. Stories helped build relationships and personal connections. This theme was to continue throughout the week and has reinforced my belief that L&D Professionals of the future will be great story-tellers, intuitive connectors and generous enablers of learning.

Leaders as Connectors

Tuesday was kicked off by Gerard Penning's key-note speech on Leadership. In his typically engaging style, Gerard used no slides, and simply told stories about great leadership. He focused on the importance of Respect, Curiosity and Resilience as being key ingredients in a successful leader. The theme of Respect was to raise it's head in the debate that I participated in an hour later.

The debate was entitled 'Paradoxes of Leadership: Humility Vs Power.' I shared the stage with three wonderful colleagues: Celia Berenguer  of Sonofi, and Tracey Camilleri of Saïd Business School, and the debate was expertly moderated by Michael Banks.

I feel strongly that this isn't really a paradox. When leaders demonstrate humility they exert considerable power and influence. In fact I consider humility to be a key ingredient to the projection of real power by a leader.

The key here is the definition of 'power'. I define progressive power as the ability of a leader to influence others to go on a journey of personal and collective change. It has a long term time horizon and requires the development of considerable follower-ship. Humility is a fundamental ingredient.

However short term power (I would call this limited power), where power is being done 'onto' others requires very little humility. However this is not really 'leading', rather it is simply 'commanding' and has a short and limited shelf-life in terms of leading others in times of change. In his excellent book 'Kinds of Power', James Hillman talks about a form of Social Darwinism that continues to poison our preconceived idea of how leaders should show up. Society still thinks of leaders in the cult of the Victorian-era 'hero-leader'. There is always a winner at the expense of losers and often winning the race by any means necessary is paramount (even if that means sacrificing team members). For this reason I've always been a fan of the arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, rather than his contemporary Robert Scott!. (Shackelton didn't reach the pole but managed to bring all of his men home alive while Scott reached the prize but tragically perished with his men).*

 

The debate was a healthy one where the main point of difference centered around the topic of fear as an enabler for learning. Some felt that fear could be used by a leader as a motivating factor to generate leaning in their team. Personally I strongly disagree. Certainly, having challenging environments can offer great learning opportunities, and leaders should stretch their people by exposing them to those situations. But they must always do so with respect and support. It's here where connection is key. Firstly the manager builds trust and connection with the individual and co-creates learning as a result. Secondly they must connect the work to a clear shared purpose. Lastly they will connect stakeholders to form coalitions by aligning around a common goal.

The Employee - The Future is Social

As our idea of successful leadership matures, we see the importance of the leader as a humble connector. Equally, leadership is becoming democratised. The very smart Lori Niles-Hoffmann really made us sit up and think about this in her presentation on the Gig Economy.  We are building flatter, more open and agile organisations to prosper in the new world of work. The separation between employees and leaders is increasingly grey. This new gig economy will ensure that more and more of the workforce are coalescing around work and projects rather than roles and organisations. The successful worker of the future will be the one who has their 'connector' dial constantly turned to 'high'. If we are seeking and sensing and sharing in our networks we will be alert to the opportunities to add value and collaborate around important work and opportunities. We will seamlessly contribute to the network, while connecting others to opportunities. We'll also know that by paying into this social dynamic, in effect a form of 'paying it forward', we will simply be increasing our access to opportunities in the future. The future is indeed social.

 

* I would highly recommend the book Shackleton's Boat Journey by F.A. Worsley. Worsley was Shakelton's skipper on this voyage and their tale of survival and rescue is so remarkable it seems fantastic that this a true story. Shackleton's leadership was remarkable.

Curating content for learning in 3 minutes

In a fast-changing world, it can be frustrating to be out of the loop. If you don’t have enough information – about the latest strategies, current best practice, changes in the market, the most exciting new tools and technologies, what people are thinking and doing – then it’s hard to do the best job possible.

On the other hand, with the myriad of new communication tools at our disposal, you can easily have too much information. You simply don’t have the time to sort through all the new content that’s fighting for your attention to find what’s really relevant.

This is where the content curator takes over, doing the hard work to save everyone else the trouble.

Is learning the right focus for L&D people?

The goal of the learning and development person is to help people learn. That makes sense doesn’t it? After all that is their job title.

But what does the organisation really need?

Organisations need more than people who just know lots. They need people who are capable of doing the jobs that the organisation needs to be done.

If you have the choice, which would you prefer; an employee who knows lots about the job, or an employee who is capable of doing the job?

Most people would opt for the capable employee. The worth of most employees to an organisation is based far more on their capability to do their job than on their knowledge of things relating to the job. Of course, part of capability is having the right knowledge, but it is only part.

My suggestion is that the role of anybody responsible for learning and development within an organisation needs to be much broader. It needs to encompass all that is needed to ensure that employees are capable at their point of work.

It is interesting to note that in a number of progressive businesses (for example Nestle, Tesco, Lloyds Bank) the role of Learning and Development Manager has been replaced with the role of Capability Manager. This is far more than just a change in job title. This change in emphasis on the role from learning to capability has quite a profound effect on how people in these roles do their job.

How would this change of role change your thinking?

What would happen within your organisation if someone is focused on ensuring that all employees are capable of doing the job they are employed to do?

I would bet that much more effort would be put into performance support. That is, making sure that employees have to hand the information and tools they need to get their jobs done. This would be apparent in better intranet resources that are easy to access and intensely practical. It would show up in the provision of simple job aids and crib sheets. People would be able to connect more quickly to experts to get immediate questions answered.

Beyond these ‘information’ based performance support aids, there would also be a focus on what is stopping people from getting the job done, what is stopping them being capable at the point of work. So many times people are unable to do their jobs well due to inadequate tools or dysfunctional systems. These operational issues are also part of the capability agenda.

So don’t just think learning as the answer to improving performance. Think capability.

NLP Logical Levels Of High Performing Teams

I am often asked, “What ways can you use NLP to create high performing Sales teams?” 

When creating a high performing team or refining an existing team, it is important to go through the logical levels of high performance which was created by Robert Dilts. 

Imagine you see your team as this high-performance garden. Green grass, rockery, brilliant colours, trees with deep roots that can withstand any weather, with consistent fruit produced from the tree, and a garden shed with the perfect tools to keep the garden working perfectly. 

Now imagine your current garden is full of weeds, rotting bark, long overgrown grass, limited fruit, and is bland and grey in color, with no shed to keep your perfect tools in. I am sure you would agree that this is not the garden you want? 

Logical levels allow you to go through the levels of high performance and identify blind spots, increase motivation and refine the skills that enable you to understand what high performance looks like, sounds like and feels like in your team. It enables you to create the exact garden you want to in order for your team to grow and flourish. 

Environment 

Where and when are you most effective as a team? What environment does that look like, sound like and feel like? 

Our external environment where we work, and where we live has a direct impact on our external behaviour and motivation. Consider that it is both ours and the team's environment that dictates our attitudes, behaviours, and motivation. 

Imagine you are a gorilla in the jungle with all the other gorillas, you have trees to climb, fruit to eat and other gorillas on the same mission as you, with the same passion. They are all pushing you to be a better version of yourself. I am sure you can imagine how you and the team would flourish? 

Now imagine you are a gorilla on your own in a desert in a dry and hot environment with no one to support you, limited water and limited food. I am sure you can imagine how demotivated you would be? 

It is worth considering these questions when crafting or evaluating your sales team environment in order to make sure you all aligned. 

What is working in your environment?  What is not working in your environment?  What do you want instead?   Behaviours

What are our standards? Where are we going? What will behaviors will take us there? 

Remember, if we are disempowered or empowered it directly affects our physiology, our state and then our outer behaviours and therefore results. 

What behaviours are we tolerating as a team? Who do we aspire to become, and what behaviours will enable this? The interesting thing is that behaviour is linked to our results as individuals, teams and towards our clients or customers. 

Every behaviour is perfectly designed to get us a result, whether that's the one we want or the one we don't. You can usually tell everything you need to know about a team by looking at their behaviour. Pay attention, not to what people say, but what they do. The behaviour is either useful or not useful for the direction you are going. 

When working to get the best out of a sales team, ask the following questions. When you ask these questions it is important to write down the first thing that comes to mind. If I asked for your email address how quickly would that come to you? That's right, that quickly. All change is unconscious, and those answers and insights create high performance.  

What do you do that’s working for you?  What do you do that's not working for you?  What don’t you do that's working for you?  What don't you do that's not working for you?  Skills and Capabilities

The level of skills and capabilities of the team are in direct proportion to the results you create.' As people may have skills and capabilities that are not being put to use, Or those skills need to increase to deliver the results you need.

The interesting thing is that most teams focus on what they are not very good at? Why? Because that is what everyone else does. It's important to look at your aspirations both as a team and individually. What strengths do you already have? And if you developed your strengths, which ones will accelerate performance? Where are your opportunities for skill and capability development? Skill and capability development must be part of the workflow. Coaching, small workshops, team meetings, and webinars must be consistent to enable your team's skills to be honed. 

What skills and capabilities do you do well? Where are your aspirations, and what skills will get you there?  What skills and capabilities do you want to develop? What are your strengths and how do you hone those?  Beliefs and Values 

Our individual beliefs are so important and whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. Most limiting beliefs are learned and they are designed to keep you safe. This is great if you are wrestling a tiger in a jungle. Not so useful if you are trying to hit a sales target. 

When you have a limiting belief it is always worth reframing it. “I can’t” What would happen if you could? “I am not confident” In what ways could you be trusting yourself” Remember beliefs either empower or disempower. Sales is almost like a pro sport, and what do they do? The warm-up before training and games to get into peak state and go above feelings because that's where performance is. 

What beliefs would empower you daily?  What beliefs do you hold that are not useful? What would be some more useful beliefs? 

Our personal values and team values provide motivation and drive. If one of your team is not performing there could be a values misalignment. What values do the best salespeople hold? What values does your underperformer hold? What's the gap? 

The reality is that everyone has different values and it is important to respect that. What are the collective team values, and are they in alignment with where you are going? If your team's values are misaligned with your customers or clients values then this can cause conflict and you will get results that are not useful. 

Here are some questions to ask to ensure high motivation and alignment. Elicit these values and build your team around them. 

What's important to you about your customers or clients?  What's important to them specifically?  What's important to you as a team? What's important to you personally?  I what ways can you satisfy your values?  Identity And Purpose 

What the one north star you are all aiming towards, what’s your highest purpose as a team? 

Our purpose has to be so big that it would take a lifetime to get there. This will drive a huge amount of motivation, and who you become in the process would be far greater than who you are now. 

Remember that without purpose and direction nothing happens. It' your purpose that enables you to go the extra mile for each other, for your customer, and clients. 

What purpose do you stand for? Who are you that's more than your role? What's the one mission you are all on? What the highest intention of your work?

You have just learned Robert Dilts logical levels and how to apply this to create a high performing sales teams. It's important to work on all levels of your team garden, from the roots all the way up to the fruit. 

Your perfect garden starts with environment, behaviours, skills, beliefs, values and your purpose. Get your team into a room and place the questions on flip charts and spend 2 hours answering the questions in this article. Then agree on next steps in each area and be accountable for the change, bring this to life. 

When you have any questions please get in contact. 

Journeys, not just workshops. making the most of 70:20:10

It’s time to get a bit more creative with these well-known numbers.

We’ve come a long way since the days of once in a career ‘everything you need to know about leadership’ retreats, enter-trainers, and imitation leather-bound manuals (We all have them!). However many organisations are still playing lip-service to the 70:20:10 philosophy of working and learning.

(If you’re not familiar with the research, 70:20:10 is the work of Morgan McCall and the Centre for Creative Leadership. In short, they found 70% of learning comes from on the job experience and 20% from relationships with significant others. Just 10% is down to formal learning interventions such as training events and workshops.)

If anything, most organisations are adopting more of a 10:20:70 philosophy. In other words:

Attend the workshop (The 10%) Have a de-brief with your line manager (The 20%) Hope to put your new skills and knowledge into practice through your day to day work (The 70%)

This is just lazy learning – turn up, stay awake, and ‘get developed’.

To me it leaves a lot to chance and wastes a huge opportunity. If we adopt a learning ‘journey’ mindset, maybe we can make the most of the informal learning that takes place outside the classroom, in order to maximise the formal learning in it.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, so here it is.

A learning journey starts way before the workshop. And not just through optional pre-reading or watching the odd Ted Talk. It involves real, purposeful discovery activity, linking subject matter to the individual’s role and team, and gives learners the opportunity to explore, experiment, and create stretch before they enter the room. This is learning through doing.

Imagine a world where learners arrive with a head already full of learning, eager to share insights, challenge their thinking further, and develop new ideas. Now you can really hit the ground running.

The coming together part now becomes more about sense-making than imparting new knowledge. More about sharing and collaborating than passive listening. And when leaders share their insights with peers, coaches and mentors before, during and after, the 20% comes into play in the right way, at the right time.

Now, having made sense of what we’ve learned, we can turn Insight into Action – with more purposeful, meaningful activities, initiatives, and team conversations. If planned well, these become not just the follow up activity for one learning event, but the forerunner for the next.

70:20:10 isn’t a linear thing, it’s a framework for continuous learning, a framework for a learning journey.

It takes effort yes, on the side of both the learning designer and the learner. However it also makes the vital difference between transactional and transformational learning experiences.

Think journeys, not just workshops for 2019.

Leadership is different now.

Remember the world is changing at a supersonic speed, and if you are not developing in accordance with this, you and your team may get left behind.

Over time your team becomes a reflection of you, so your attitudes and actions matter.

If you want your team to achieve, develop, become leaders and create a high performing winning culture, you must start with YOU.

Here are some insights to transforming your team!

Collective North Star

What’s the one mission and vision you are all working towards? Is it empowering and does it create motivation and results?

Does it embody everyone’s beliefs and values? If it only embodies what you believe, people won’t work as hard and they will be resistant.

When it embodies what they believe and value they will dig deeper for that, and feel empowered along the journey, almost like they are working towards a cause bigger than themselves.

Individual motivators

What really motivates your team individually? If you think its money for all, then you could be wrong and could be trying to motivate people with tactics that are not effective.

Everyone has a unique motivation, and the best leaders understand what motivates their people and design an ENVIRONMENT to motivate people to deliver results important to them. It’s the environment that people work in that either disempowers them or empowers them.

Leaders also understand how to change their approach to get the best out of others. Some team members may need encouragement, a push in the right direction, a pull, they may need empowering, they may need someone to talk to, and someone to say it how it is, or someone that leads by example.

Achievement, development, money, recognition, progression, excellence, empowerment, trust, acknowledgment, family, security, stability and reward are all things that could MOTIVATE your team. Do you really know what motivates your team?

Leverage individual strengths

I think this image says it all. If you focus all your time telling people the things they are not good at, this creates burnout. Remember you hire people for their strengths, why are you not leveraging them? All great teams recognize their strengths and how to leverage them.

Create coaching sessions and workshops to identify your team’s strengths and then give them tasks and projects which capitalize on them. Imagine a large team all driving their strengths to deliver results. The reality is that strengths come naturally to most people, so there is less resistance, more motivation, enjoyment and an increase in performance. This is one of the secrets to high performance.

Create a team of leaders

Give your team projects which capitalize on their strengths, and also projects which would help them grow into the leaders you know they are capable of. Your team may fear certain things where there could be an opportunity. Encourage them to confront certain fears as this is where the gold can be hidden.

If you know that one of your team members has a skill for something, empower and enable them to run a project or coach other team members on this. This will develop their leadership skills and you won’t be the only voice. GREAT leaders lead from the back and watch their team flourish. If you can develop a team of leaders, this will strengthen the unit. People will step up when needed.

Push peoples comfort zones

Remember complacency can impact your results and team morale. Empower and enable your team to set big goals and have big aspirations. Realize that it is being able to push the comfort zone of what is possible that delivers results. This creates resilient and solution-focused team members. Is your team settling for the norm? Where are your opportunities to push the norm and challenge the status quo?

The crucial thing is when your team are being pushed and challenged, you must be the COOL head. You must be able to think clearly under pressure, as this is where a good coach comes in. Are you a calming influence? How do you shield your team from the pressures? How do you enable them to flourish in times of challenge? Do they have the skills to push their comfort zone and deliver results? Remember that when your emotions are high, your logical problem solving is low. If you are calm, then you stand a much greater chance of a successful outcome.

Lead the coaching culture

The reality is you must develop as a coach. It should be a number one priority. If you give a man or woman a fish they will eat for a day (telling) If you teach and man or woman to fish they will eat for a lifetime (coaching).

This approach will be a reoccurring investment and people will become more solution focused. They will be able to peer to peer coach, they will develop more resilience, accountability, and results.

You must lead this, as for your team to believe in coaching, it must come from the leadership, and that’s you. How many hours per month do you spend coaching?

How many hours per month do you spend telling? Remember that people believe what comes out of their mouth, so if you can enable people to find the solutions themselves this drives accountability. If your team struggles with accountability, its time you became a good coach. Don’t can go half in or half out, you must commit to coaching mastery and your team will excel.

Authenticity creates transformation

Are you pretending to be someone you are not? Because leadership should not be about titles. This would be about one person influencing another.

Surrender your ego when you have a team, it’s not about you anymore. Do you come into work and think because you are the manager or leader you have to act a certain way? Remember that the elephant in the room only causes fear and anxiety. You are responsible for clearing the air.

The ability to be authentic to your team creates a connection, an open culture, transformation and enthusiasm. You will find more people come to you for support, coaching and you will identify challenges you didn’t know were there. This will strengthen the teams bond and deliver an increase in performance.

Remember the team can sense when someone isn’t telling the truth and this creates resistance. The key is to be who you are outside of work and be that person inside work. Giving honest and open feedback is crucial and showing you are human.

Don’t forget who you are and what makes you great. Create an environment that you love. What motivates you? Does your environment embody that? What small changes could you make now?

Accountability is crucial

 

Do you have advocates in your team? This is crucial for driving accountability as in time, people will self-coach. Create leagues and challenges to drive accountability, and ensure you check in with people on their progress.

Ensure you have advocates of your plans and ensure they are also driving team accountability.

They key here is also delivering what you promised. Become a leader of good values and be them consistently. What values do you hold as a leader? And are you consistently being them? Do you practice what you preach?

IBM and LEADx launch executive coach Amanda

Interesting collaboration between IBM and LEADx launch the world’s first AI-powered executive coach. Finally, you can provide personalized coaching and leadership development at scale - are you already using eCoaching in any shape or form?

https://leadx.org

What stops people being capable?

Capability is a slippery concept.

For some time now I have been discussing capability with people in HR, people in L&D, and people with chief executive responsibilities in both the public and private sectors. What I have found remarkable is the lack of consistency in how people use the word capability.

Given that any organisation has a purpose - and achieving that purpose is dependent on the people in the organisation being capable of doing all the tasks that need to be done - I would have thought that capability would be so fundamental to success that people would have a handle on it. Or at least the successful people would.
In fact, I have been surprised at how little focus people put on capability in most organisations.

What is even more interesting is how surprised they are when this is pointed out to them. I often do a little thought experiment with them, and it goes like this.
Imagine you are the chief executive of a new business, and I am supplying a team of people to you to work in the business. I give you a choice of two different teams. Team 1 is welleducated. The members have been on lots of training courses, and they know lots of stuff.
Team 2 is capable of doing the work that needs to be done in your new business. Which team would you choose for your business?

99 per cent of people I ask this choose the capable team. We seem to know that in the moment when the job needs to be done, capability to do the task counts far more for business success than any amount of formal learning. If capability is so important, what is it? How can we define it? How can we measure it? And how do we need to understand it so that we can improve it?

Find out the answers and the components of capability. Do you agree? Do you have different suggestins?

181 Inspirational Quotes for Leaders of Growing Businesses

(This article was first published on our Coachical blog: https://coachical.com/inspirational-quotes-for-leaders/)

If you’re looking to grow your business, it is important to stay motivated and keep an open mind.  Inspiration is the first step to success.  We’ve brought together a variety of quotes from business leaders, gurus, change agents and other great minds to help inspire you to grow your business and achieve even greater levels of success.

On our blog you can filter the quotes by different topic areas, by year and we have also selected our favourites. To all explore all 181 using these filters go to https://coachical.com/inspirational-quotes-for-leaders/

But here are our favourites:

“A leader...is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” – Nelson Mandela

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” – Laozi

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

“What helps people, helps business” – Leo Burnett

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” – Max Lucado

“The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.” – Kenneth H. Blanchard

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs

“The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.” – Jack Welch

“Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.” – Mitt Romney

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy

“Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.” – Reed Markham

“Don’t find the fault, find the remedy.” – Henry Ford

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welch

“A leader takes people where they would never go on their own.” – Hans Finzel

“Leadership is a choice not a position.” – Stephen Covey

“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” – Brian Tracy

“A leader is someone who demonstrates what’s possible.” – Mark Yarnell

“Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John Maxwell

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama

“A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” – John Maxwell

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.” – Theodore M. Hesburgh

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan

“Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” – Orrin Woodward

“The quickest way to grow the sales of your business is to grow your people.” – Robin Sharma

Think we’ve missed an epic and inspiring quote? Check out our full list at https://coachical.com/inspirational-quotes-for-leaders/ or do comment your favouirte quotes. 

Practical Systems Thinking in L&D

Hi All - I'm very interested in systems thinking, particuarlly the practical application of models and ideas as they relate to L&D. I'd be really interested in connecting with others for discussion and sharing - reach out  

Jonathan 

Rules, Roles & Ethics in a Training Workshop

Having had some time during the quieter summer Corporate training period I’ve been reflecting on some of the potential challenges when considering rules, roles and ethics in the selection and use of experiential learning activities and replaying some of the conversations we’ve had on this topic.

Activity Selection – as a Training Workshop designer, the choice of activity can represent not only the learning you want your delegates to achieve, or the behavioural changes you want them to rehearse, but also your role as a ‘leader’, reflecting their organisation values & culture. This was raised in an article in January by Roger Greenaway on using the well known 'Helium Stick' exercise. See Roger's Monthly Newsletter . I know this is a very popular ice-breaker or opening exercise for many trainers and can be slotted into any group or team programme without thinking through the consequences - which as Roger quite rightly points out can include ‘a claimed success (by the group and the facilitator) that almost certainly depends on foul play or on low awareness or on poor observation.’ At what point do the potential unintended consequences of using an activity outweigh the intended consequences?
 If selecting an exercise where insufficient materials or resources are initially given to group, yet they are asked to solve a problem, is that an acceptable way to encourage them to ‘be creative’,  or does it reflect a culture where poorly crafted objectives are the norm, and leaders expect colleagues to do high quality work with inadequate tools?
See https://shop.rsvpdesign.co.uk/helium-stick-with-facilitation-notes to purchase this activity. Roles – as a Training Workshop Leader there is a tacit or explicit assumption that you are in a Leadership role, whether or not you see your principal role as a facilitator of learning. It always surprises me when I bring our experiential learning activities to groups of trainers to experience them, and they say things like ’he probably hasn’t told us everything’, or ‘that material is likely to be a red herring’ or ‘this is probably impossible’. I wonder what their experience is that they should immediately distrust the Training Workshop Leader? Perhaps there is too much use, selection and creation of experiential activities where the task activities are such that the leadership role played by the facilitator or trainer is that of someone who knows they are asking a group to do something that can’t be done? At best this is insincere and at worst it is a poor leadership role model. Rules – many participants will react when told activity rules include ‘wearing a blindfold', or ‘not speaking to anyone’, or ‘not sharing information with others’, by saying things such as ‘this rule makes no sense’, or ‘why should I obey a rule in a silly game?’ A poor response from a Training Workshop Leader would include ‘Well that’s the rules of this game so please abide by them!’. A better response might be ‘How are people in this organisation decide which rules to follow? Is every rule automatically followed or are some bent or broken, and if so, who decides?’, or perhaps ‘This is not designed to be a simulation where the task is very similar to your job role. It is a learning process where you have the opportunity to experience some learning in an unfamiliar situation. The rules reflect some constraints which are similar to those in real life, and therefore as in real life, we hope you will treat them as important rules that reflect things such as Health & Safety, or Corporate Compliance’. As leaders, I think either the Training Workshop Leader has to model an organisational culture where rules are important and should be followed, or to clarify why and where it might be appropriate not to. However, rules should reflect metaphors for some real-life constraints and not simply to make an activity more challenging or interesting. Ethics – sometimes there will be a ‘trick’ or an answer to an activity that if revealed too early, may make the learning impact less effective for individuals or a group. I think care has to be taken on how to choose and apply such activities following some of the issues discussed earlier. So while it might be ethically acceptable for a leader to ask someone to do a task, (for learning or coaching purposes), knowing they could help them by telling them the answer, it is less acceptable for a leader to ask someone to complete something that cannot be done. For example, an activity was described to me where the participants were asked to complete a jigsaw with an incomplete set of pieces provided; and another suggested deliberately making a change in a task without the knowledge of the participants, so that it became unachievable (under the guise of getting participants to react to ‘change’). I find both these approaches lack a basic code of leadership ethics and I would not want to put myself in the position of deliberately misleading a group. Perhaps in the first activity if say all the pieces were available but perhaps spread amongst different sub-groups, then that could be an acceptable design, and in the second, if it was incumbent to regularly check that conditions haven’t changed, then that might also be acceptable - but I suspect I would still take another approach to experiencing the ‘change’ process!

I’d love to hear other’s views on these areas – here at RSVP Design we try not to design, supply or use any activity in our catalogue that might fail our reflected leadership role or ethics guidance as listed above.
We think it’s important.
Do you?

Pipe dreams - Are your forecasts wishful thinking?

Sales people are generally optimists – you’ve got to be. It’s a tough gig and even the best are likely to fail twice in every three attempts. In fact, it’s the only profession where you can fail more than you succeed and still become a super success. Not a luxury open to brain surgeons or pilots! 

Unquenchable optimisim and sales forecasting

Sometimes our unquenchable optimism gets in the way, or at least confuses us and others. Sales forecasting and opportunity management is a perennial problem for many organizations. In the 90s CRM specialists convinced the corporate world that they had the answer and the introduction of expensive, feature rich systems would solve all the problems. Yet, here we are, three decades on and ExCos are still pulling their hair out because pipeline does not turn into revenue.

What’s the problem?

A reluctance to disappoint? Lack of realism? Poor opportunities?

The list could go on. The reality is that individual sales skill must be underpinned by practical tools which manage the quantity, direction and quality of sales activity. Sales people need to be doing enough of the right things in front of the right prospects in the right way to succeed. A £6m sales pipe to cover a 1.5m delta is great but, not in November when your prospect to order cycle is four months long.

Are you identifying the right stakeholders?

Leaving stale opportunities in the pipe to inflate it, not identifing the right stakeholders in the decision making process, failing to identify if the prospect actually has a budget or even a need are some of the many reasons why many sales forecasts are simply pipe dreams.

When you understand how to manage individual and team level QDQ (Quantity, Direction and Quality) of sales activity the dreams become reality. You cannot manage result but you can manage the activity which creates the result.

SKY TV UK Case Study

SKY UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting and BSkyB) is a telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. Sky provides television and broadband internet services and fixed line telephone services to consumers and businesses.

 

Sky offer outstanding training and development opportunities to staff as they believe the performance of their people is a key driver of their growth and success and everyone learns throughout their career. They want their staff to be equipped to deal with queries across all of their products so it is easier for their customers to interact with them all.

 

Blyth Priestley,

Senior Procurement Manager

 

 

The Challenge

Sky is a project, process based business. Projects are running daily in all departments and across all job functions.

 

The SKY supply chain and procurement team wanted to improve the way they deliver projects, particularly with the way they interact with what they consider are the core ‘project managers’ of the business. However, they do not want a typical ‘project management’ course as they do not want to become project managers. Instead, they wanted to manage and lead their own procurement projects more effectively.

 

They selected Supply Chain Academy, to develop a unique and highly practical training session where core principles of project management were taught and delivered around their real live projects. This SMART business simulation approach used real work scenarios and provided delegates with all the tools and techniques they needed to support them as they instantly applied the learning to their work.

 

The Supply Chain Academy helped the team:

recognise when it is appropriate to adopt a ‘project’ approach to managing their workload apply a simple lifecycle to a project to break it into easy to manage stages clearly define their projects to provide real clarity in terms of project scope, roles and responsibilities, and other key factors confidently plan, organise and document a project by using a wide variety of tools that add value to the project management process become more effective in monitoring and controlling the project work, change requests and resourcing pressures by using best practice processes and techniques understand what lessons can be learnt from managing work using a project approach tailor their approach to projects of varying size and complexity

Blyth Priestley, Senior Procurement Manager, confirms that the improvements in team performance are already noticeable:- She commented: “The team have made real positive changes since the training day at Supply Chain Academy; the course was highly relevant, a good mix between theory and practice and colleagues appreciated the relevance of the scenarios and case study to help them take the learning and apply at work. This has been a great opportunity for the team to come together to share their knowledge and learn new skills, whilst at the same time create action plans to become more efficient.”

Informal learning – critically important, but neglected

Informal learning is a big thing now in learning and development. The 70:20:10 model, and others, tells us that informal learning is vastly more important than you’d ever think given the way ... usually carry out learning, training and staff development.

Most people will say they learn by doing things. Think of your own experience and ... yourself: how ... I come to learn what I know in order to ... my current job?

In fact, think of everything you have ever learned. Most of it you will have learned through living. You could almost say that learning is an unavoidable (and desirable) side effect of life. Without that ability to learn ... live, ... would have been consigned to the evolutionary dustbin a long time ago.

Informal learning and training courses

Let’s look at one area of informal learning that is hugely important, ... is usually neglected. This is the informal learning that MUST take place after a training course, if that training course is to have any impact on performance and business results.

You know how it is: you attend a training course, then you get back to a full inbox and several small fires burning. For most people, little is done that relates to their training course, even if they had to set goals in the course or were given some specific tasks to complete or resources to ....

... employers spend good money on these courses, and would quite like to get some business benefits from that spend.

To get such benefits, ... must realise that classroom learning is only a small part of the total learning that is required to operationalise the new knowledge and skills introduced by the training programme.

Learning must continue beyond the learning that occurred in the classroom. There is much more to behaviour change, and subsequent performance improvement, than just a classroom event.

Informal learning is unstoppable

It is not that learning completely stops after the classroom. Organisations rely on informal learning, even if they ... not aware that they ... doing so. People ... learning all the time, and without that learning, organisations would be ... in the water within months, or probably even just weeks.

It is virtually impossible for us to imagine a world without informal learning. Learning for us is such a fundamental part of our existence that ... don’t even notice it, any more than ... notice the air ... breathe.

Triggering informal learning<... /> Informal learning is not, generally speaking, directed by anybody. It is a natural response to observing others, having conversations and reflecting on experiences. It is triggered as a result of what’s going on.

However, the informal learning that needs to happen in relation to a training course often doesn’t happen, because it is not triggered anywhere near frequently enough, or in the right way. If ... want to generate informal learning that is focused on a training course, ... must find some way of triggering it and directing it. And therein lies part of the problem.

Informal learning is very powerful, ... its power comes largely from its informality and its place within the flow of our lives. When ... seek to direct it, ... can kill its power by killing its informality, by separating it from the natural flow of our lives.

So how can ... direct informal learning without rendering it powerless?

It seems to me that ... need a halfway house where ... ... ‘managing’ informal learning, ... with a light touch that does not destroy it. It is like ‘managing’ a butterfly you hold in your cupped hands: too tight, and you kill the butterfly; too loose, and the butterfly escapes and you have no influence over it at all.

Learning transfer

Informal learning by and large happens through activities, through people doing things or observing things, and then reflecting on those things. That reflection is magnified if the learner discusses those things with somebody else.

To achieve this you will need to delegate activities that have been carefully designed to trigger the desired reflection and learning, then debrief those activities to get the magnification effect.

You will also need to wrap some measurement around the process to check if what you ... doing is working, and to obtain information on how you might improve the process.

If you put this in place following a training course, you ... doing what is called ‘learning transfer’.

Excuses people use

Delivering lots of activities to people following a training course, debriefing them and holding them accountable for doing the activities, and then applying measurement, gives you a lot of administration to ....

One of the reasons that people almost never ... this kind of training follow-up is that they shy away from the administrative overhead, especially when they have so much pressure to deliver other courses.

It becomes obvious that you need a digital platform to manage all of this. And when you ..., voilà, you have what people call a Learning Transfer Platform (LTP).

Another common excuse for not initiating learning transfer is that the line manager is too busy or not skilled enough to debrief the activities, and obtaining external resources to ... this work ... not affordable.

In my opinion, the line manager should be having those kinds of developmental conversations anyway in their regular one-to-one meetings, so ... ... not asking them for any more time or skill.

Letting them off the hook for not doing their job is counterproductive and symptomatic of deeper problems. Having said that, for some programmes, a cohort buddy or a subject matter expert may be a better person to debrief training follow-up activities.

Another excuse from the delegates themselves is that they don’t have time to ... follow-up activities. It’s important for all the stakeholders to realise that the training course is not just an event. It should be set up, sold, or marketed to the stakeholders as a longer-term programme.

For example, you might call it a five-day programme spread over six months, one day of which is in the classroom.

The requirement to ... follow-up activities should be ‘baked into’ the programme.

Learning Transfer Platform (LTP)

Quite honestly, the excuses I have heard from most people for not doing learning transfer properly really don’t wash. In my experience, the introduction of an LTP streamlines the process and makes the excuses look rather ridiculous. A good LTP will manage the informal learning that is specific to the follow-on required after a training course.

And it gives you another acronym to use!

Of course, at the time, the workers will still be informally learning lots of other things that ... unrelated to the training course. Learning transfer doesn’t need to impact anything else that they ... doing, ... what it does ... is impact the likelihood that they will start behaving differently following on from a training course.

This article was written for and originally published on https://www.trainingzone..../deliver/training/informal-learning-critically-important-...-neglected and has been republished with TrainingZone’s permisson.

Serious about Diversity? Then focus on Inclusion.

Inclusion is the only path to real diversity success. 

Diversity alone delivers nothing - in fact if left to its own devices it can cause havoc, impede performance and damage reputation.  That’s because conflict among people who are different is the natural order of things.  We are all naturally tribal and we tend to prefer those who we perceive to be the same as us (whether they are or not) – and be wary of those we perceive to be unlike us (whether they are or not). 

Diverse teams are important for three reasons :

to increase performance by leveraging the differences that team members bring in areas such as knowledge, outlook, experience and skillsets (the performance incentive) to ensure equal opportunity (the moral case…think reputation risk) to benefit society (the social case…think corporate responsibility)

If teams are not inclusive :

they will not perform as well as they could equal opportunity will be impeded, because some individuals will be and feel stifled diverse individuals will leave or languish

So if you want to realise the potential that diversity offers, be it innovation & creativity, more talent, access to diverse markets, equal opportunity for all or whatever else, inclusion is the key that unlocks that performance. 

There is no other way.

Top tips :

Weave inclusion thinking into all areas e.g. in recruitment processes ask candidates for feedback on how inclusive your processes are, in your teams conduct skills audits to see if your people’s abilities are being used to full effect, in your supply chains ask suppliers what else they could do for you.  Survey your staff and ask them how included they feel.  Their comments will give you clear indications of what’s working and what’s not.  Do it regularly to gauge progress. Think about your senior management team, how its members are different and whether those differences are valued or suppressed.  Educate them about the critical importance of inclusion for unlocking the potential of diversity. Get on board with unconscious bias and really address it.  It’s not a fad, it’s a critically important part of the inclusion challenge.  Go beyond training and implement solutions – there are many out there. Appreciate how hard inclusion can be to achieve.  Regularly meet people who are different, who you would not normally meet, and analyse your thoughts about them.  How do you feel about them before, during and after meeting?  Do you manage to get beyond the stereotypes they represented?  How much more effort was involved in interacting with them?  Were there awkward moments?  Would you be friends with them?  Would you hire them?  Would you recommend them to others?    Feel the difference discomfort and aim to understand why.   

Harish Bhayani

Senior Partner

PRM Diversity Consultants

Overcoming the challenges for L&D in 2018 – the Survey results

We asked Learning & Development Managers and Directors within UK businesses to answer 5 key questions that get to the heart of the challenges for L&D in 2018.

 *** Download it for free at http://bit.ly/LnDSurvey2018 (no sign up required for People Who Know members) ***

I would love to hear your feedback and personal experiences. 

Blake

Chaos, Uncertainty & Change – How do we handle it?

We arranged an exciting evening filled with some very accomplished speakers dealing with change in the uncertain times we live in. In the video you can see a quick recap of the evening. 

Speakers are often used as the catalyst for change within business. To make the Change happen, you will require behavioural change in order to turn that catalytic energy into the Change you want to see. The cost of forgetting, or of inaction, is not worth considering.

If you wish to download the accompanying ebook, you can do so here; https://www.ontrackinternational.com/change_ebook/ 

Assessing adverse impact in recruiting talent

Harvey Nash are a global recruitment company that values the importance of diversity. In 2016, they partnered with Thomas International to evaluate whether there was any evidence of adverse impact in their robust recruitment process.

Over 12 months, Thomas tracked hundreds of applicants for positions at Harvey Nash, monitoring demographic diversity, behavioural preferences and the eventual outcome of applications. Harvey Nash know that diversity is more than just demographics, and recruit with diversity in behavioural preferences, motivators and personality in mind.

Statistical analysis looked at the chance of each demographic group progressing and dropping out at each stage, using impact ratios, statistical tests and practical tests. The result? No evidence was found that any group was being adversely impacted in the recruitment process, though we were able to make recommendations to make processes even better.

Following the outcomes of the study, Harvey Nash were successful in becoming the first recruitment company to achieve the National Equality Standard, one of the UK's most rigorous and prestigious accreditations for diversity and inclusion.

The Future of Workplace Learning: Presented by Ben Reed, Nimble Product Consultant

Filmed at the Growing Gloucestershire Conference 2017, this 30-minute session is an overview of some of the main drivers for the future of workplace learning, presented by Ben Reed, Nimble Product Consultant.

WATCH VIDEO: https://youtu.be/BRQJ147gQ7w

About Ben Reed

MLIA DIP, NLP Practioner, HND Hotel Management, Training and Coaching Consultant: Ben is an active evangelist for modern learning within the workplace. As a Product Consultant for Nimble Elearning, his day is often spent understanding what businesses want to achieve with their workplace training.

Ben has over 25 years of involvement in consultancy, training and development in a wide range of sectors which include; financial services, manufacturing, energy, logistics, automotive and IT to name a few. A business coach, specialising in relationship development, the psychology of sales, goal setting and strategic planning, Ben is also an NLP practitioner working with clients to develop a clear picture of where they want to be and what they want to achieve.

Ben is deeply involved with the charity sector, providing support for charities to help reduce training costs. Ben has 27 years serving on the Board of Directors for YMCA Cheltenham and is a volunteer youth mentor at The Door in Stroud.

http://trynimble.com

Binary success in the digital world for Nimble Elearning

The trophy shelf in the Nimble Elearning office is looking crowded after the company won back-to-back awards within the space of a month.

Their success began by being named Business of the Year at the Stroud Life Awards. The award honours firms who have made a difference to Stroud’s economy. Judi Bonham, one of the judges said of the company, “The Nimble entry demonstrated their commitment to the Stroud area and community, through their staff, local customers and how they introduce their wider customer base to all that our Stroud area has to offer when visiting them on site."

It’s quite a coup for the Stonehouse-based elearning company. Stroud is a national “hotspot” for the industry so competition can be fierce. Managing Director, Neil Hyde said at the event, “Nimble enjoy supporting our many local customers and introducing to our national customers to the delights of Stroud. No matter the size of the organisation, Nimble takes pride in supporting our customers every step of the way and we get tremendous satisfaction in playing a part in their success.” 

The company’s continued growth has meant those visiting the Gloucestershire town have included some big names: Laura Ashley, Costa, Premier Inn, Ann Summers, Gatwick Airport, Pukka, EasyJet. 

Growth of their customer base has allowed Nimble to expand and this became a significant factor when they won the Gloucestershire Live Award for ‘Digital Business of the Year’. 

The judges looked for evidence of exceptional delivery, site engagement and functionality, security, innovation, ethical practice and sales growth. As Neil Hyde explained, their secret is because “Nimble Elearning helps companies create their own professional and engaging elearning. we. work across many industry sectors such as health, security, retail and charity at a global, national and local level.” 

The company’s expansion has included customers from all over the globe, best illustrated by their latest - Sydney Airport. This success is due to themes that regularly feature in customer reviews: 

Ease of use: “Nimble stands out as being the most comprehensive and easy to use solution on the market.” EasyJet 

Cost effectiveness: “With Nimble we've delivered triple the training in six months. We've grown our suite of training and are now able to track results and produce individual development plans. In nine months we've created 50 courses and our staff have completed over 5000 courses... and we're just getting started.” Europa Insurance Group 

Ongoing customer support: “The support from Nimble has been outstanding – nothing is too much trouble. It's just a great experience." MoneyPlus. 

It’s not surprising the Nimble team are also excited about their recent inclusion in The South West Business Awards, where they were short-listed for Outstanding Business of the Year. It's been a busy start to 2018 already as Nimble Elearning have just finished exhibiting and meeting new audiences at Learning Technologies at London Olympia and are looking forward to CIPD in April.

About Nimble
Nimble is no ordinary elearning website; we've made it super simple to create engaging courses and share them with teams.

With Nimble Author, create elearning teams will love with its super-easy course editor. Publish SCORM courses and quizzes that work on every device and LMS, and Nimble Elearning supports customers every step of the way with its free training and support programme.

Nimble's beautifully simple LMS allows people to effortlessly manage their elearning.

Do more on http://trynimble.com.

Nimble Elearning are Winners of Business of the Year, Stroud Life Awards

Nimble Elearning have won Business of the Year at the prestigious Stroud Life Awards 2017.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/67mrsorZHVM

Organised by Stroud Life newspaper and sponsored by WSP Solicitors, the award is about honouring firms who have made a difference to Stroud’s economy.

Competition was tough amongst the top three, with Fluid Transfer who have won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade and Rempods, investment winners from Dragon’s Den and a previous Stroud Life Award winner.

Judi Bonham, Managing Partner at WSP Solicitors said, "As one of the Judges, the Nimble entry clearly demonstrated to me their commitment to the Stroud area and community as a whole. This commitment shows through their staff, local customer base and by the way they introduce their wider customer base to all that our Stroud area has to offer when visiting them on site."

Nimble Director Neil Hyde adds, “Nimble is extremely proud to have been selected Business of the Year and to be a part of the Stroud community. Nimble enjoy supporting our many local customers and introducing to our national customers to the delights of Stroud. No matter the size of the organisation, Nimble takes pride in supporting our customers every step of the way and Nimble get tremendous satisfaction in playing a part in their success. Nimble’s continual commitment to Stroud stems from a solid belief in the outstanding services, talent and expertise the people of the Five Valleys has to offer.”

http://trynimble.com

ABOUT THE STROUD LIFE AWARDS The Stroud Life Awards rightly puts Valley and Vale businesses and people in the limelight. Every year they discover and celebrate new talent, and share successes and the Awards are a fantastic opportunity for businesses and the community in Stroud district to shout about it. The Stroud Life Awards have established themselves as the most prestigious event in the local calendar since they were first held eight years ago.

Diversity in the workplace; how psychometric assessments provide a level playing field.

Psychological tests and assessments come in many forms, measuring characteristics like your personality traits, behaviour preferences or ability with words and numbers. There are many common assumptions about gender differences in these areas: are men more assertive and better with numbers than women? Do women have higher empathy and better verbal skills?

A recent focus both in psychological literature and HR practice is on ‘unconscious bias’ (unknown biases people hold towards others that can relate to many different characteristics). Important people-related decisions can be unintentionally influenced by individuals’ unconscious biases or widely-accepted stereotypes that may not be grounded in fact (acas). How can the negative impact of this be avoided?

Using gender as an example, research has demonstrated that there are relatively small gender differences when measuring personality (Costa, Terracciano & McCrae, 2001). You will likely observe greater differences between two individuals of any gender than between men and women overall. The same can be said for ability measures, minor gender differences can be observed but they are usually so small that again, you would notice differences between any two people rather than men and women overall (GIA Technical Manual).

The use of psychological tests and assessments can add great value to people decisions, be that recruitment, promotion or leadership development. An additional advantage is that robust psychological tools have to demonstrate that they have no ‘adverse impact’ against particular characteristics, such as gender. If individuals are advantaged or disadvantaged on a psychological tool by virtue of their gender then it is not fair to use that tool for decision-making.

Robust psychological tests and assessments can help provide a level playing field for individuals, providing objective metrics about their traits, behaviours and cognitive abilities, all of which can reduce the influence of people’s biases. Thomas International are currently partnering with a large recruitment business in London, tracking up to 500 graduate applicants throughout their selection process. The aim is to demonstrate that their processes (behavioural profiling, interviewing) do not negatively impact the chances of people progressing who have protected characteristics.

 

References:

Costa, P.T., Terracciano, A., and McCrae, R.R., (2001), Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 81. No.2. 322-331.

http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5433 – accessed 16:33, July 2017

General Intelligence Assessment (GIA), Technical Manual (2017), Thomas International

Enabling change, enabling success

If mindfulness and wellbeing ... at the top of your people agenda right now, it could possibly be because your organisation, like so many others, feels that the rate of pace needed to grow is a challenge for your people. So how can you slow things down for your people while keeping pace with market demands?

Businesses will be familiar with traditional change models and may consider them when looking to effect cultural change.

Has the path of change evolved?

Change is necessary when new processes, technology or products ... introduced to a business. Moreover, adjustment is normally required by everyone and, because ... all have our own preferred way of being communicated to and our own moral compass, the same message will be received and interpreted differently by individuals and teams. In the past our people have needed to receive the ‘great news about our future’, get over themselves and adjust. Either that or leave!

Many leadership courses require us to understand the impact that poorly planned change can have on individuals and teams.

“...'re encouraged to consider the people that ... manage, and plan our communication well, leading by example – embrace the change, it is positive!”

When does change become a state of normal?

Today’s world requires continual movement, for us to innovate, stretch and grow. ... need to be agile and receptive to the increasing demands of our customers while watching game-changing technology take our competitors into new markets.

If ... stay with traditional ‘tried and tested’ change advice, ...'re at risk of our people becoming apathetic or worn out. Our goals should be written in concrete ... the plans to get there should be in sand, considering the differences in our people when modifying our approach in how ... work with them.

The transition from a traditional business to a market-leading one can be uncomfortable and take longer than the budget permits in some cases. The impact will be realised through stress-related absenteeism, reduced productivity, team conflict, negative performance management and attrition.

Past employees can review us through social media and, in return, you would hope that customers and employees, current and future, could receive a balanced view of our business, the way that ... operate, our services and our innovation. This may not always be the case if change has been poorly executed or our people just can’t change with us.

What about the employees that stay? Why ... they stay? Is it because they're more resilient, or is it something else? How can you keep them motivated?

Well-communicated change, where people ... on board and involved from the beginning, should reduce the dip in performance that most organisations accept simply because ... ... told that this (the change) is what is going to happen and what ... should ... as a result.

How can you transform from a ‘change agent’ or a ‘change enabler’?

Let’s consider an environment where your people and teams ... empowered to effect change. Collaborative and authentic leadership requires clear and consistent communication providing facts and evidence that change is required. Challenges and questions need to be managed respectfully and honestly. For example, a meeting is called to discuss the findings of a competitor review. The problem and the consequences of this potential threat ... shared. Everyone has input into how the business can maintain its competitive edge. Cross-departmental teams could be formed to work on ideas of challenges together. Often leaders feel that they must own the business problems. This is not the case. Normally our teams ... creative and have more to add than they're give them credit for!

This may be simple, ... it is highly effective. ... stimulate creativity and passion within our organisations that allows personal development to flourish. Highly effective organisations employ people that ... multi-skilled and can work across multi-disciplines to deliver on projects that will grow our businesses. Apprentices, interns and graduates can flourish and develop experience quickly where they can add value to creative thinking and problem-solving tasks or projects. After all, they're the future in terms of our succession plans. More importantly they have a view of tackling problems based on facts and ... not constrained by conventional views that ... all carry when ... have worked in a business for a while.

So, back to the leaders. This can create some discomfort in the short-term. ... can find ourselves feeling out of control or not the ‘subject-matter-expert’ ... start to work on cross-functional projects or ... seconded to other areas of the business. This discomfort comes when ... reach a point of new learning.

“... need to appreciate that future leaders need to embrace skills and expertise that they may not possess. Everyone needs to be encouraged to learn from mistakes, to be humble and ... for help, from this true collaboration is achieved.”

Leadership could never be in such high demand as when ... ... going through change. Leaders should be reminded that the reason they're in the position that they ... is to simply lead.

So, what does the change-enabling leader need to ...?

Let go of personal insecurity

Accept that the role of the leader is to manage the vision and people to achieve it. Invest in understanding the team’s strengths, goals and motivation to ... their best.

Create trust and share feedback on strengths and limitations

Sharing feedback is healthy and needs to be balanced. Honest dialogue within the team allows people to express if they feel out of their depth. This could provide another team member with a new challenge. Celebrate this honesty and try not to hold people accountable to responsibilities on their job descriptions. The team will not grow. 

Let go of convention while holding the company’s vision close

The vision of cultural change needs to be imagined and shared by all. Leaders need to demonstrate that even ambitious plans ... achievable with the right motivation and mindsets. Celebrate wins along with way, demonstrating that the progress being made is important and positive

Empower decision-making at all levels

Supporting and coaching is easier said than done, especially if a quick solution is evident. Most people will take responsibility and step up if they can make decisions. Accountability and ownership ... important to us all and is relevant for even the most junior of team members. As a leader, it is occasionally wise to turn a blind eye to the methods of achievement as long as the expected outcome is achieved.

Take away the fear of reproach of mistakes

Making mistakes is in our human nature and provides points of learning. A collaborative leader will be approachable and on hand to coach or mentor individuals through these mistakes, allowing growth and opportunity to own issues and make it come good.  Sometimes leading by example means rolling up one’s sleeves and getting stuck in to help. This does not mean taking the mistake away, ... keeping in mind that showing is sometimes better than telling.

Proactively encourage teams to grow through ‘lessons learned’

A team that possesses a philosophy of supporting one another should also be able to challenge each other’s decisions constructively. Lessons learned ... valuable; they should be recorded for future reference as they ... likely to be in project management processes moving forward. Ultimately, valuable lessons ensure that ... ... not repeat them.

Change is sometimes called ‘continuous improvement’. If you think about it, it makes total sense. People ... innately scared of change, nut ‘continuous improvement’ is something that ... all strive for. Allow your continuous improvement to happen, harness your approach to managing it and focus your ‘plan of concrete’ towards being a successful change enabling leader.

How does your leadership stack up in an environment of continuous improvement? Contact us about our Thomas tools to see.

Are your people ready for cultural change? - video

In today’s demanding and competitive market conditions, companies must adapt to survive and thrive. Cultural change is not always easy, but it is always possible. Managing the process requires understanding, commitment and tools.

With our innovative people assessment tools we create success stories for organisations in times of cultural change – and, now, cartoons!

Featuring Amir Qureshi, CEO of Thomas International, in caricature-form, find out how we can support you in managing and achieving cultural change.