The recent impact of storms such as Harvey, Irma, and María prompted us to take another look at how we do our work as learning and development professionals. Consider the following situation.
Lena is the talent and development leader for the implementation of a new customer service application at a bank. The training component of the plan involves four weeks of intensive classroom-based training for the system’s different modules to be delivered by Subject Matter Experts who became learning and development facilitators after undergoing an intensive train-the-trainers session. All sessions have been scheduled weeks in advance to minimize business interruptions. Supporting materials have been printed. A mirror image of the system was recreated so that participants can practice without fear of deleting anything. All eyes are on Lena and her team. Lena is leading the last meeting before the training’s launch in two days to review logistics and any other issues that need to be addressed. Her assistant asks her to step out for a moment for an announcement: a hurricane warning has been issued. Hurricane and tropical storm force winds will strike the area within 36 hours. At least twelve inches of rain are expected and even more in some areas. Management decided that All employees must prepare their offices and then leave the premises for final preparations at home. Lena remains calm and thinks about what to do when she returns to her meeting. What would you do if you receive such a warning? Does your company or emergency team have plans for this type of situation? Are you prepared? Perhaps you were in Lena’s situation when warnings for Harvey, Irma, or María were issued for your area. Do you ignore the warning? Do you pretend that nothing is happening and send everyone to their teams for instructions? Do you panic and tell everyone to go home and take cover? As Talent Development leader, you have a responsibility to the business, and, at this time, most importantly, to your colleagues. It’s time to stop and think. Priorities are different and your plans will have to change. Before you make any decisions about the training, consider the following:
Here are some suggestions for you to handle the situation after the emergency.
We invite you to consider the issues that we presented here when you design your own contingency plans for your next project. All eyes will be on you. Today it is a storm. Tomorrow could be something else. Prepare for the unexpected.
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Today’s training participants demand more than credentials. They want to learn from our experiences, connect with us as people, and apply what they learn to their own circumstances. Thus, as a learning and development professional you need to be more proactive and resourceful than ever before to balance your credentials and your experience to succeed as a facilitator.
Have you ever wondered what is the most critical element for success in training? Conversations among learning and development professionals often include addressing participant learning styles, creating an inviting atmosphere, using music, or allowing ample time for questions and venting. Others refer to addressing participant preferences, such as interactivity, few slides or handouts, daylong sessions, and so on. What about you and what you bring? Step back for a moment. Think about your own learning experiences. What stands out? Have you ever attended a training where the facilitator suddenly says or does something that changes your perceptions of her positively or negatively or reduces (or increases) your engagement in the learning process? If so, what did you do? What impact did those incidents have on your own attitudes towards future trainings? Let’s meet Lilith. She is the barista training specialist for a local chain of upscale bakeries entering the competitive coffee service market. Her primary responsibility is to ensure that all new hires deliver coffee products of consistent quality across stores. Lilith remembers clearly what happened when she was a new hire beginning to learn about the coffee business. At the end of a lengthy first day of lectures and more lectures, Lilith asked Justin, her instructor, about his personal preferences of acidity levels in coffee and how these compared with those of the typical bakeries’ customers. His answer was, “I don’t know. I don’t drink coffee.” So much for Justin’s credibility. “How could he make and sell something without having direct personal experience with the product? How can I trust Justin? Preparing and selling coffee is not only about the beans,” Lilith thought. What do you think most participants do when they are in situations such as this one? Many of them lose interest in the topic and complete the training to move on to what they have to do. Others speak negatively about the facilitator or the training itself. Lilith did otherwise. She decided to take an active role in her own learning and tasted every product that she prepared. Her knowledge of the business, its products, and her ability to connect with peers and customers positioned her to become an instructor and allowed her to influence the redesign of the company’s training for new hires into one with ample guided opportunities to taste products and practice coffee making techniques. However, not everyone is as astute as Lilith. Let’s meet Marcia. She is an external consultant who designed a development program for incoming future leaders at an insurance company. Marcia earned several prestigious academic degrees and certifications. She can quote facts and figures about leadership and its impact on business. She remains impressively up-to-date on books about leadership. She speaks clearly and authoritatively. On the program’s second day, focused on the topic of influence, Quentin asked Marcia to share an example of when she had to influence a group of employees to follow a company policy with which she disagreed. At first, Marcia gave Quentin an example from the last book that she had read. When Quentin insisted on a personal example, her answer was, “I cannot give you a personal example because I have never been in charge of a group of employees.” In total disbelief and disappointment, Quentin picked up his materials and left the session. Other participants followed soon afterwards and the session had to be cancelled. Marcia lost her credibility and trust from the group, as well as the contract with the insurance company, because of how she handled Quentin’s question. What would you have done in Marcia’s situation? She had strong credentials and solid subject matter content knowledge, yet her lack of experience with one particular issue and her inability to still position herself as an expert led to a major career setback. The outcome of Marcia’s situation could have been different if, for instance, Marcia referred to the book that she read and connected the content with an experience at a personal level. She could have drawn from an instance when she had to convince a friend, child, or relative to follow a rule or an instruction with which she disagreed. She could have also asked the audience for examples of similar situations and inserted her own recommendations based on what she had read, thus demonstrating how to apply information to real-life scenarios. By establishing a link between the training’s content and “real life,” Marcia could have forged a critical connection with her audience that would have allowed her to complete the leadership development program successfully. What do Lilith and Marcia’s experiences mean for you as a learning and development professional?
Remember:
Even though everything that we do in a session contributes to participant learning, your experience is a critical element for training success. *As published on LINKS on Tuesday, July 18, 2017 The beginning of the year gives us a great opportunity to take stock of where we are and where we want to be in the next 12 months. Moving beyond traditional New Year’s resolutions, as professionals we need to focus on what is important for us, our careers, and our businesses so that we can plan to take action.
Let’s meet Jill, Brad, and Annette. Jill is the manager of the mortgage closing department. She is in charge of 12 employees whose functions have different levels of complexity. She already completed their performance reviews for 2016 and identified their development goals for 2017. Each one has an individual plan focused on some competencies that need to be strengthened and others that need to be acquired for the employee to become more effective in their current role. Some have even been identified as high potential employees, which means they will have even more growth opportunities. In addition, Jill has already scheduled a meeting with her own manager where she will discuss the plan that Jill designed for her own development. Brad is an independent consultant who specializes in organizational cultural change. His business depends on his knowledge and expertise. He must remain current on the latest trends in cultural shifts so that he can be a valuable advisor to his clients. Brad built his brand by being present in different activities many of which, on the surface, do not seem to be development-oriented yet actually are. For instance, Brad hears about what local subsidiaries of international companies are doing by attending networking events where he interacts with clients and competitors. He stays informed about emerging key players reading specialized and general business publications either online or in print. Further, he asks lots of questions about subjects that catch his interest to discover hidden business opportunities. Annette is an individual contributor at the marketing department of a major automobile distributor. Even though she is not interested in a management position, Annette has made it clear to her supervisor that she is interested in expanding her role in the company. Annette is thoroughly familiar with the business strategy beyond that of her specific department. She seeks cross-training opportunities, volunteers for special assignments, attends meetings of professional associations, networks internally and externally, and reads anything that crosses her desk or her mobile devices. Over the years, Annette has become an expert in targeted marketing and is often invited to speak at local events. Jill, Brad, and Annette have in common that they place value in development for themselves and for their businesses. Consider the following key benefits of owning the value of development for you:
Every annual conference entails lots of anticipation, preparation, and, simply, running around. Presenters submit proposals to share their work with colleagues many months before the event hoping to be part of the final program. As time goes by, checking for that critical e-mail about the status of the submission becomes a daily ritual. When the e-mail arrives saying that the proposal was accepted, another frantic cycle of activity begins to prepare the presentation, send documents, order giveaways, plan your attire, and meet deadlines. After all, attendees deserve your best work. If the proposal is not accepted, then you sit back and begin to think about another topic for the following year. Either way, you are totally committed to getting the most out of your time at the conference. Every minute counts!
Meanwhile, logistics must be addressed. When to register? Where to stay? How to get there? Will the airline take points for this trip? Would the family enjoy a visit to the host city? When the program is final, you begin to select which sessions to attend; the new app lets you plan your schedule from anywhere at any time. What’s your main learning goal? Do you want to go deeper into your areas of expertise or explore new interests? Do you want to see well-known speakers or newcomers? Do you need any particular products or books to start or grow your business? Who will be there? Who do you want to meet? Who do you need to meet? You arrive at the conference full of excitement. Perhaps you met some other attendees while on travel or at the badge pick up line. You discuss your plans. You meet a group for dinner to continue building connections. You use the conference’s back channels to stay up to date on what happens and share your thoughts. In three days, before you even know it, WHOOSH! It’s over! Now it’s time to look back and focus on what really matters: what you learned while attending the conference. Today we share with you our top takeaways from this year’s ATD ICE 2016.
Make sure that your knowledge is current. Share it. Become the change agent, the promoter of employee engagement, and the thought leader that the business needs. See you in Atlanta for ATD’s ICE 2017! The beginning of the year is an excellent time to take stock of your department’s work, as well as of your career as a learning and development professional. Just as you need to document your department’s accomplishments, you must examine your contributions and document them. We can easily get carried away with the demands of our internal clients. Consequently, we tend to forget that we need to develop ourselves before we can develop others. As you reflect on the information that you are being asked to provide to document the learning and development department’s accomplishments for 2015, ask yourself the following questions:
As you review your job description and your objectives, you should be able to see how your role contributes to the department and, in turn, the organization. Any disconnects need to be addressed and corrected quickly. Schedule a meeting with your manager or supervisor to clarify those connections and take appropriate corrective actions. By doing so, your career and the organization will benefit. Assess your work over the course of the year. How did you contribute to the department’s success? Which actions did you take? Make sure that you use strong action verbs in past tense to describe those actions and that you include any quantitative measures that you have available. For example, instead of saying: “Conducted trainings on consultative sales”, you may consider: “Facilitated 15 sessions of consultative sales training for 225 sales representatives from x, y, and z departments that resulted in an average increase in closed sales of 10 percent.” Remember that the organization’s leaders see the world in terms of numbers. Most of us have some idea of what we would like to do in the future. Some of us are very pleased with where we are and would like to continue doing what we do for a long time. However, many are interested in exploring other areas within learning and development or in other functions. Knowing which way you would like to take your career is the most important step towards getting there. Once you identify the role that you would like to have in the future, you need to find out its requirements so that you can take a critical look at your strengths and weaknesses relative to that potential new role. We tend to be good at what we like to do and not so great at what we do not like to do, so those achievements will shed light on your strengths. Your development plan is an excellent tool to guide your preparation for that next role or perhaps to reinforce your competencies in your current role. Review it and propose any changes to your manager or supervisor when you discuss last year’s achievements and the department’s plans for the coming year, as well as your own career goals. What about volunteering for a special assignment? Any possibilities of shadowing a more experienced facilitator? Perhaps you can work in the administration of the employee engagement survey or research best practices for the organization’s succession planning process. Finally, look at your profile or resumé. Did you include your most recent achievements and recognitions? Does it present an accurate picture of where you have been and of your value to the organization? Does it grab the attention of whoever may be looking for someone with your experience for that new role that you identified? Maintaining an up-to-date resumé is a worthwhile endeavor because it is a way to present your contributions to the organization. It also demonstrates that you care about your career enough to invest time in preparing such a document. Remember: Taking care of your career is also taking care of the business. In the first part of this article, we shared with you what is a teambuilding and some questions that you should answer while deciding if a teambuilding is the best option to address the situation that your business is facing. We will now introduce four types of teambuildings and when it is best to use each one of them. They are:
Which one is the best option for your business? The answer lies on the real needs of the group as well as on what you want to achieve with the intervention. Employees who are working only to address a particular situation could benefit from a problema solving session. Supervisors who are facing problems with their teams whose members are not following instructions could begin with a training about communications and then have sessions to get to know the team members’ personalities. A group that is not achieving expected results could focus on solving problems. Employees who do not focus on the task at hand and yes on talking about each other could participate in a session to get to know the team members’ personalities and others to develop specific skills that would help them to interact productively. A leader who understands, explains, models, applies, and follows-up on what happens during the team building WILL make a difference. Remember: if you do not understand the reasons behind those behaviors that you are observing, the teambuilding will only be a band-aid. For additional information, please visit our Facebook page, The Human Factor Consulting Group Inc. and learn more of our books at www.td.org/noise and www.td.org/torch What comes to mind when you hear: “We are going to have a teambuilding!”?
Having a teambuilding before carefully analyzing what is going on in the Company could be premature at best.
Remember: if you do not understand the reasons behind those behaviors that you are observing, you will not be able to address them. We will present the different types of teambuilding and how to select the one that will help you to obtain the best results in Part II of this article so that the teambuilding does not become a band-aid. For additional information, please visit our Facebook page, The Human Factor Consulting Group Inc. and learn more of our books at www.td.org/noise and www.td.org/torch |
AuthorNorma Dávila Archives
July 2020
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