Knowledge

September 2022

4 Steps to Leadership

Leaders influence and inspire people to improve the status quo. Here are four steps to leadership to ensure continuous improvement.

By Paul B. Thornton

Leaders influence and inspire people to improve the status quo. They believe people have untapped potential.

I recommend you follow the four-step leadership process to improve the current situation.

In each step of the process, you build relationships and involve others to gain their insights and buy-in.

1. Diagnose the Situation

You have to understand the current environment before trying to improve it.

There are two aspects to diagnosing the current situation.

The Framework—this includes the strategy, structure, and systems (key processes) of your organization.

The People—this includes the employees, customers, suppliers, and others who support your organization.

Actions you can take to diagnose the situation include:

Observe people. What do they say and do, as well as what they don’t say or do?

Ask questions. What are people thinking and feeling?
Analyze the numbers. What do the metrics say about the current operation? What are the strengths and improvement opportunities?
Check in with your colleagues and other well-informed people to get their views of what’s happening.

Put the pieces together, so you have a clear picture of the current situation.

You lose credibility if you can’t clearly and accurately describe the current situation.

As Max DePree (former CEO of Herman Miller and author of Leadership is an Art) once said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.”

2. Identify Opportunities

The second requirement of a leader is to identify opportunities to improve the current operation.

Actions you can take to identify improvement opportunities:

Change your focus. Look at things from different points of view.

Study the best companies and individual performers. Benchmark.
Brainstorm
Have discussions with your customers, colleagues, consultants, and employees to solicit their ideas.

Once you create a list of improvement opportunities, do each option’s cost/benefit analysis. Identify the best one-to-three opportunities to pursue.

You must prioritize because you have a limited supply of resources (people, time, money, etc.), and people can only handle making a few changes at once.

Author and blogger Wally Bock said, “If you’re a leader today, one of the challenges is spotting and seizing the opportunities technology makes possible. What opportunities do you perceive?”                

3. Present Your Message

The third step involves presenting your opportunity for improvement message to the people who will be impacted.

Convincing the audience that your ideas will work is about your credibility and the audience’s goals and needs.

Your credibility includes the type of first impression you make, your reputation, and the quality of your ideas. You need enthusiasm and total commitment (no doubt) to your presenting ideas.

Your audience includes three groups:

Impacted Group—those people who the change will impact.
Target Group—those people who are required to make specific changes.
Support Group—those people who can help the target group make changes.

Remember, the audience is always thinking—What’s in it for me?

Actions you can take to prepare and deliver your message:

Determine the best type of information to use. Consider which analogies, examples, statistics, stories, testimonials, and visual aids will most effectively explain and convince the audience that your ideas will work.
Organize your ideas using one of these simple approaches—problem/solution or opportunity/plan.
Practice delivering your message numerous times before going live.
As you practice your delivery, get feedback from your colleagues, mentors, and other influential people in your network.

Your challenge is to create a message that is so clear and compelling that all employees—from the machine operator to the senior executives—see value in your proposal. You must be a true believer. It will lessen your impact if you have doubts, hesitations, or reservations about your presentation. Strong convictions get people’s attention.

4. Plan and Implement

Any change requires a plan. Change doesn’t happen until the target group has the knowledge, skills, and motivation to do what’s needed.

Each plan is unique. However, every plan must address three fundamental questions—what, when, and who.

What actions will help the target group become able and motivated to do what’s needed?

When will each action start and finish?

Who is responsible for getting each task completed?

Most plans include instruction, training, incentives, removing obstacles, dealing with resistors, establishing new metrics, communicating relevant information, and actions to celebrate progress. Each plan needs to be tailored to the people and specific improvements that are being implemented.

Actions you can take to establish and implement a plan:

Take the lead in creating a detailed plan.

Charter a team to create a detailed plan.
Include members of the target group and support Group on the implementation team.
Schedule a kick-off event to start the change process formally.
Get feedback on your plan from your colleagues, mentors, and other influential people.

Change is messy and full of surprises. Once implementation begins, you need to be flexible and adjust as needed.

August 2022

How Companies with Soul Hire Talent that Strengthens the Corporate Culture

One of the big debates that have been out there for a while is: “Do you hire for cultural fit?” Or “Do you hire for cultural add?”

By Ralf Specht

Each of the two questions noted above might be the right question – it depends on the state of your company’s culture. If your company culture is exactly where everybody wants it to be, then hiring for “cultural fit” is the correct answer. If there are significant concerns, hiring for “cultural add” might be the better solution.

The critical question is” “What is the state of the company?” And one level deeper: “What is the state of that team/department/group?” It is a significant leadership question that needs thorough thinking and discussions before committing to the appropriate strategy.

Companies with a Corporate Soul Do Have a Characteristic Culture

Since many firms are struggling to find clarity in this area, I created a framework to help leaders work through the relevant places and establish whether their firm is doing great – or not. It is called the Soul System. The term, shared purpose, is at the heart of the Soul System. And sharing is the important term for the other two components of that methodology: the shared understanding and the shared behaviors. The first defines the company’s strategic direction (vision, mission, values, and spirit), and the second is the desired way the company needs to act with all stakeholders. If these three are in “sync,” you can feel the corporate soul in that firm.

The behaviors are the litmus test for any organization:

Who gets hired?

Who gets promoted?
Who receives which training offers?
Which activities are being rewarded?

If they follow the desired approach, these behaviors drive corporate soul. “This is the way we do things around here” is what you typically hear when you ask why certain things are done the way they are done. But sometimes, things are not being done in the way the company’s management believes they should be done to make the company stronger. It is that moment when a behavioral assessment comes into play.

The Soul Index – A Performance Ranking for Corporate Culture

While Adobe lead the 2021 Soul Index, it is helpful to look at the following two companies that followed it: #2 Salesforce and #3 Microsoft.

Marc Benioff has been the Salesforce CEO since 2001, while Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014. Benioff has built the company on the basis of philanthropic cultural norms, which have been the north star for the company since the early days. Nadella had to course-correct big time when he took over. While his predecessor, Steve Ballmer, was the role model for competitiveness, Nadella changed the direction toward continuous learning. It was no longer a “Prove Yourself” approach but instead became an “Improve Yourself” philosophy that has been an excellent trigger for the growth of the business and its reputation.

Today, both have in common the fact that they prioritize culture and are probably the two most overt companies about it. They have values-based performance culture in common – and to that extent, hiring soul makers is paramount. It is critical that everybody on the team understands the company’s shared purpose and strategic imperatives (vision, mission, values, and spirit) and buys wholeheartedly into them. That includes the work ethics at play and the way leadership decisions are made and received by staff.

Catching Two Birds with One Stone

Building a corporate soul is an ongoing thing – you are never done. Culture needs focus and dedication – yet when you compare it to other resources, it comes nearly for free if you do it right from the start. It becomes expensive when you lose track and have to course-correct – but if you have a clear purpose and a clear understanding and behaviors that are in line with that thinking, it emerges naturally.

But since you can never be sure that it remains that way, you always need to bring it back to everybody’s attention. In my roles as COO and CEO at Spark44, a 1,200-person joint venture for global marketing communications, that was one aspect I always considered key to our success. While we had a strong culture, I used every opportunity to reinforce it. When we planned our annual training programs, they always had two components: skill-based training (the official reason for it) and exposure to our desired culture. As we felt the need to increase the knowledge level of digital marketing inside the organization, one of our leaders mentored a program called “The Spark44 Accelerators.” It used the façade of digital knowledge to strengthen inter-cultural connections.

This course would group colleagues worldwide in “tribes” of six to seven people, mostly people who would have never talked to each other, and have them learn, think, and work together. So, you have a group of people the company sends to take a course, and six months later, they are implementing their version of the course internally on global scale. Not at a department or office level, but on a worldwide scale! It did wonders – not only to increase knowledge but to boost the cultural connection all participants had. The program not only taught colleague’s new tools and techniques, it helped connect colleagues, reinforcing the unique Spark44 culture.

July 2022

Command and Control vs. Trust and Inspire

This distinction between command and control and trust and inspire is key to narrowing the gap between potential and performance.

By Stephen M.R. Covey

  Perhaps the best way to understand why and how Trust and Inspire leadership is more relevant and apt for our day is to see how it contrasts with the style of Command and Control, even its more sophisticated version of Enlightened Command and Control. Command and Control leaders operate under a paradigm of position and power. Trust and Inspire leaders operate under a paradigm of people and potential. It might be easier to see in parenting, where Command and Control parents are the ultimate micromanagers—afraid to let go and give up control, always looking over their child’s shoulder. Trust and Inspire parents are the top leaders—trusting and supporting their children as those children take chances. The same goes for organizations. For many Command and Control leaders, the biggest challenge is simply being able to let go.

Command and Control leaders may get compliance, but typically not much more. While compliance is necessary, it’s woefully insufficient.

Trust and Inspire, on the other hand, is about garnering heartfelt commitment that’s freely and enthusiastically given. Commitment is worlds apart from compliance, and it leads to a much higher level of engagement, innovation, and inspiration while creating far greater outcomes.

Command and Control is transactional—get the deal, finish the job, stop an undesirable behavior, and do it fast. That’s the notion of efficiency shining through. Trust and Inspire is transformational—it focuses on building relationships, developing capabilities, enabling, empowering, and growing people. And the irony is that not only is this the far more enduring approach, but it’s also actually the more efficient way to get things done as well. Remember this: with people, fast is slow, and slow is fast.

As you consider these contrasts, think about your own life. When have you experienced the concepts associated with Command and Control? And when have you experienced those on the side of Trust and Inspire? Perhaps more importantly, which side of the experience do you create for those you serve? For your coworkers? Your customers? Your students? Your kids?

June 2022

Conquering Compliance Issues

Organizations operating in any tightly regulated industry need processes and systems that ensure their workers’ competence.

By Bob Little

One of the critical characteristics of the modern workplace is its – praiseworthy – obsession with competence. This focus on competence is the growth of regulations, including legislation, aimed at ensuring that workers and their employers prove their ability to comply with legal, safe, and appropriate ways of working, which safeguard everyone involved, including customers.

Organizations operating in any tightly regulated industry need processes and systems that ensure their workers’ competence – and prove it for the independent regulators. Such methods and procedures should not only reduce the organization’s compliance costs and risk but should also improve levels of customer service; monitor each worker’s compliance; create a competency framework for each job role; streamline the compliance process, and provide access to up-to-date, real-time information relating to such things as competence and skills gaps. More than merely satisfying the demands of regulatory and compliance bodies, this should continually improve the organization’s productivity.

The challenge for those responsible for ensuring organizational compliance – those working in or with the organization’s human resources (HR) department – is developing the processes and finding the systems that will do these things effectively and efficiently. Other modern workplace issues are added to this challenge’s complexity, including remote and hybrid working.

All these issues are increasingly leading to the use of technology to solve the challenge – notably the advent of platforms that monitor and produce reports relating to compliance across an organization by job role.

One heavily regulated sector – the oil and gas drilling industry, which comprises some 3.8% of the global economy, with revenues of some $3.3tr in 2019 – prefers to use only those operations practitioners who, when responsible for delivering work used in safety-critical aspects of planning and executing wells, can demonstrate their competency. The legal – and environmental – consequences of failing to prove this are serious yet demonstrating competency can be challenging for these practitioners.

According to Christine Telford, a member of Operations Geoscience International Competency Assessment (OGICA), “Professional organizations appraise practitioners’ abilities based on education, references, continuing professional development (CPD) and work experience, together with organizational membership. While these are important components of a Competency Management System (CMS), they don’t validate the proficiency for the practitioner to work to a recognized standard.”

Believing that what’s needed is an impartial technical skills assessment, OGICA has developed an objective skills self-assessment tool for those working operationally in upstream oil & gas geoscience. Utilizing an online software platform from online training and assessment specialist eCom (Scotland), the tool allows operations geoscientists to objectively assess and benchmark their current skill levels. Highlighting skill gaps, which individuals can address via different experience and/or training as part of their career CPD, the output visualizes their results. A digital micro-credential is also issued, which can be uploaded to share results online. Oil and service company employees, independent consultants, and one major oil & gas company in the Middle East are now using the assessment framework in-house. Several major international operators are exploring how the framework can support their activities.

“It’s not just the oil & gas sector that’s benefitting from applying technology to solve competency, skills gaps, and related issues,” comments Linda Steedman, eCom Scotland’s CEO. “For example, eCom’s net enterprise platform for managing learning, development, and competency across all levels in an organization is being used by companies in the construction, manufacturing, and livestock sectors and organizations in the public sector. They all need to monitor competency levels; identify and remove skills gaps as and when they occur, and continually improve worker efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity.”

Necessary Systems in an Organization

In addition to identifying and monitoring competency levels, organizations need a coherent system that provides:

A complete picture of Skills development throughout the organization – ideally, at a glance via rapidly-generated reports. This allows users to build competent teams; empower continuous learning; track and measure performance data and provide the workforce with the tools to do their best work.
Relevant help for workers at the Onboarding stage to help them become competent and productive as soon as possible.
Useful Analysis of real-time worker performance data – which can alert learning and development professionals as well as senior managers to the emergence of skills gaps as well as potential or actual competency shortfalls.
Constant support to help workers Perform to the best of their ability. This includes gathering feedback through 360-degree reviews, evaluations, surveys, and assessments to help teams reach their goals.

Opportunities for Social learning – allowing learners to share ideas, collaborate in developing knowledge and skills and enhance communications.

“Providing these things – known by the acronym ‘SOAPS’ – would allow an organization using this system to be ‘squeaky clean’ when proving competence for regulatory bodies,” smiled Linda Steedman.

May 2022

How to Keep Your Employees’ Skills Sharp

Skills will remain crucial to the success of our enterprises, our people, and necessary for building a future-fit workforce ready for the challenges of tomorrow.

By Elisa Vincent

It used to be that you went to school, earned a degree, and entered the workforce. If you worked hard, you could build a steady career over time. But in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing work environment that’s no longer the case. The days of sticking to one job and one skill set are quickly fading.

As learning expert Kimo Kippen once put it, “the currency of the future is skills and speed.” This not only applies to individuals seeking to build their careers, but also to organizations that wish to remain competitive in complex and global markets. In order to create a future-fit workforce, learning must be at the center of company culture. Quite simply, it is the most powerful and impactful way to build high-performing teams, attract and retain top talent, and ensure growth, agility, and advancement of people and business.

For these reasons, enterprises simply cannot survive without making skills-driven learning and development (L&D) a priority. But how should companies approach this kind of L&D programming? To get started, here are the top three elements every skills-based learning program should include – integrate learning in the flow of work, consider diverse learning modalities, and seek to not only educate but also to inspire throughout the journey.

Learning in the Flow of Work

On average, learners spend less than five hours per week learning. A major reason for this is that learning typically requires individuals to prioritize meetings and find time to learn outside of their typical workdays. The solution is bringing learning to where people are and enabling it to occur in the flow of work.

What this means is that building a skills-driven L&D program should start with considering where your employees already are. What systems are they using on a daily basis? How can you create an experience that simplifies the learning process and reduces friction?

These are questions that many companies had to think through as the COVID-19 pandemic first ushered us into remote work and later promised hybrid work and a return to a new normal. Social collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams, while popular before COVID, have become crucial to business and cultural continuity. After all, employees satisfied with their social connectivity are two to three times more likely to maintain or improve productivity. That’s why Skillsoft launched the Percipio App for Microsoft Teams, making learning in the flow of work possible for thousands of employees around the world, with opportunities for learning fully integrated into the same platform where teams connect, meet, collaborate.

Personalized Learning for All Types of Learners

Simply stated, one size fits all learning is not effective. While groups of individuals may be expected to acquire the same knowledge or skills, learning preferences are oftentimes completely different and diverse, requiring a variety of modalities.

To address different learning needs and preferences, it’s critical to consider the various types of employees that will engage with the learning. Whether it be frontline managers and employees or middle managers, sales and account teams, offering learning options that are sensitive to diverse work needs and neurodiversity, ensures greater speed to adoption after learning takes place.

This kind of approach was incredibly useful when Skillsoft launched a multi-track aspire journey in March 2020 titled, Forging New Paths: Women’s Advancement In Life and Work, in response to how the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted women and resulted in 2.4 million women exiting the labor force. We knew it was important that we build a holistic, blended learning experience in order to help companies better support women at all stages of life and career. We began by considering who would engage with and benefit from this content: women looking to grow their careers, working mothers wanting to balance life and work, allies, mentors, sponsors, and organizational leaders. Using AI technology, we took it one step further to create a curated learning experience to empower women to unlock their strengths and forge new paths towards advancement in both life and work.

Content that Educates and Inspires

The last key element needed to create a strong skills-driven learning experience for employees is content that both educates and inspires – content that speaks to the mind and the heart, that reflects real people, real stories, real situations, that resonates with and reflects diverse situations, environments, and people.

When our team set out to build a new learning path for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, we asked ourselves how we could create content that would truly inspire learners. With such an important topic, we knew we had to be creative in our approach. Rather than leaning exclusively on experts, we infused the courses with real personal stories. This made for a much richer learning experience that put people first.

This approach may not work for all topics. We took a very different approach to our courses for Cloud Ops training, for example. Nevertheless, we must approach learning with the goal to provide employees with content that will inspire them in order for it to yield the greatest results.

Keeping Pace with the Future of Work

The future of work is constantly evolving and pushing us to transform with it. We’ve seen in recent years just how agile work environments can be. But one thing we can count on is that skills will remain crucial to the success of our enterprises, our people, and necessary for building a future-fit workforce ready for the challenges of tomorrow.

April 2022

6 Lessons on Workplace Communication

By watching, listening to, and learning from our international friends, we can learn valuable communication tactics to replicate in our own work culture.

By Mark Ashworth

Over the past 20 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled all over the world for work: from Toronto to Tokyo, Berlin to Beijing, and nearly everywhere in between. But along with a frequent flier card and an impressive collection of foreign loose change, my continental crisscrossing has given me the opportunity to pick up some valuable professional lessons.

Spending time with international colleagues in their places of work is the best way to gain an insight into each country’s unique office culture. Importantly, it’s also a great chance to learn what works (and what doesn’t) to facilitate effective communication and a strong culture within the company.

However, with recent travel restrictions set to have a lasting impact on the popularity of professional travel, it’s looking less and less likely that my younger colleagues will benefit from the same opportunities for cultural exchange that I did. And although I remain convinced that certain types of business travel will soon return, I’ll try my best to fill the hiatus by sharing my top takeaway lessons about workplace communication, each informed by my first-hand observations in different countries.

Why there should be such thing as a free lunch

Offering a free or subsidized lunch to employees is a commonly followed German tradition intended to improve productivity and morale. But not only does it give busy workers one less thing to think about, but this midday treat also does wonders for improving relationships and communication between colleagues.

By providing this food at a set time in a set place (e.g the office canteen from 12-1), the communal lunch is a time for team members to interact in an informal environment without hierarchy or expectations. When I attended these communal lunches in a German company, I was surprised to see people who’d been wrapped up in their own work all morning launch into a lively debate over the best sauces to complement a hamburger. Lunch time creates the perfect space for colleagues to forge deeper connections with one another – whether this is over a mutual preference for pineapple on pizza or the chance discovery of a mutual friend – that will later enable more effective communication and collaboration on work-related projects.

If you are looking for low-investment high-return strategies to improve morale and relationships in your place of work, you should certainly try organizing a once-a-week inclusive team lunch (you’ll most likely win some popularity points too).

When leveling the field, actions speak louder than words

Professional hierarchies are the enemy of effective communication. By putting emphasis on stratifications within the company – whether that be through clothing, privileges, or office space allocation – invisible walls are put up that inevitably prevent the free-flowing of conversation and ideas.

Whilst working in Sweden and Denmark, it very quickly came to my attention that egalitarianism was not just an empty buzzword in the workplace. The vast majority of Scandinavian firms are notable for their extremely loose hierarchies and the efforts put in by senior staff to integrate with their teams. By spending the majority of their time working directly alongside their more junior colleagues, and by proactively engaging with them on several levels, managers in Scandinavia are able to enjoy a productive and communicative relationship with their teams.

To encourage a sense of egalitarianism in your workplace, be the manager who isn’t too self-important to chat to the interns, who doesn’t hide in their private office, and who shows up to the leaving drinks. By setting this example, the rest of the team should follow suit in rejecting unhelpful hierarchical restraints.

Challenge ideas, not people

When you ask someone why they are nervous about contributing ideas or suggesting initiatives in the workplace, it’s likely that they’ll confess to feeling nervous about receiving a negative reaction from bosses or colleagues. And with good reason – everyone’s felt the stomach-twisting shame that comes from being criticized.

However, it struck me that in Russia (and in most of the Baltic states), workers have no qualms about offering up their ideas to senior colleagues. On asking a member of the Russian team why this was, they explained that junior staff members receive respect for volunteering their suggestions, rather than judgment for speaking outside of their remit. Ideas are evaluated in isolation, wholly detached from the person who contributes them, meaning that any criticism of the idea is not taken as a personal affront that risks damaging relationships or breaking down channels of communication between colleagues.

Invest in technology to break down barriers

Having spent long stretches of time working in the US, it’s clear that the enthusiastic adoption of tech-enabled communication tools is an important factor behind the global success of many American companies. Although in the past it was not unusual for interactions between colleagues to be blocked by protocols or PAs, instant messaging and video calling tools have forged new, direct channels through which communication can flow.

From Zoom to Slack and Microsoft Teams, it’s the norm for even the smallest companies to leverage these home-grown tools to their full advantage. On account of the scale of the country, Americans are well used to successfully navigating dispersed workforces and remote working; those nations who are newer to the challenges ought to take heed of the American example.

The takeaway lesson here is that investment in communication technology – whether that be digital messaging tools, virtual reality conferencing platforms, or project collaboration software – ought to be a non-negotiable for businesses. To drive success in a workplace and business landscape that is increasingly dispersed and online, team members must be equipped with the latest tech tools to work in a streamlined and effective way with others – especially when working remotely.

I’ll end this piece with a caveat: there’s no such thing as the ‘perfect’ strategy that will guarantee gold-standard communication in the workplace. No one country has hit the nail on the head, and the peculiarities of cultural variation mean that certain techniques are better or worse suited to certain communities of people. However, by watching, listening to, and learning from our international friends, we should all find something, however small, that we can try to replicate in our own teams and workplaces. Your company’s strength lies in its people, and when these people can share and work together then this strength evolves into more than the sum of its parts.

March 2022

Building an Active Community Around Your Training Organization’s Brand

Uniting hearts and minds is key to success. But how can learning and development professionals build an active community around your organization’s brand?

By Alina Trigubenko

Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of a team of in-house learning and development (L&D) professionals, one of the most important things you can do is build an active community around your training organization’s brand. This is especially important as businesses and other organizations both large and small become more decentralized. For trainers and teams, building a community around your brand will help grow your following and open up new opportunities. For in-house professionals, this is what keeps your department relevant and sets your L&D initiatives up for success.

Keeping learners engaged requires that they embrace both a mindset — and a culture — of personal growth and collaboration. Without the right mindset and an active community, there can be no culture. And without investing in a culture where people can naturally align around commonly-shared values in a secure and modern way, there will be no brand. Uniting hearts and minds is key to success. But how do L&D professionals go about doing this?

Training course programming is key some trainers are so charismatic that people are naturally drawn to them. For the other 99.9% of us, it takes work. And central to this work is creating training course programming that captivates corporate learners and keeps them coming back for more.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to pay high production costs for videos and training materials, but it does mean you’ll need to give some time and thoughtful attention to your online course development, training format, and the tools you use. Streamlined, intuitive tools that provide a great customer experience are essential. But it hasn’t always been that way…

Way back when L&D efforts consisted of consultants or HR managers putting an overplayed VHS tape on auto-repeat in the break room during lunch. Filled with smoke and laughter (yes, smoking was once allowed in offices!), the only thing employees really learned was that it pays well to watch movies at lunch — because it meant a break and a little social time for them. But, was any real learning happening? Or was it more a shared camaraderie around how absurd or useless the video was to the team?

I’ll leave that for you to decide, but my point is that it’s not just your content that’s important — it’s your entire training program and the client experience. Luckily, today’s unified online training platforms help solopreneurs, teams, and enterprises have a greater impact, enabling L&D professionals to reach more people in more places with way less friction than ever before. What this means for you is you can scale your training business or in-house L&D operations more quickly and more cost-effectively. And you don’t have to worry about getting caught up in connecting the myriad of tools out there in an effort to hack together your learner’s experience, which usually leaves them feeling confused and frustrated in the process.

Unified online training platforms provide flexibility and scale

Forget about ancient Learning Management Systems that fail, or expensive prerecorded, over-produced (and cheesy) videos, print materials, and training books. Unified online training platforms enable trainers to deliver live group sessions, host one-on-one deep-dives, archive previous training for evergreen use, manage programs, build community, and market courses all from a single, unified place.

All-in-one solutions like these remove production costs because you are literally creating a library of content as you go. The only production work is planning your curriculum ahead of time so that things flow naturally and in a way that meets your training objectives.

Most pre-produced techniques require participants to go through hours of pre-recorded videos. And did you realize the old way of doing things takes around 200 hours and about $15,000, on average, to complete? By contrast, live course creation takes less than a week and can be done with little to zero production cost! Live systems also remove production headaches and enable consultants and companies to host any type of program, including classes, boot camps, group coaching, etc.

Live online training platforms even include everything needed for compliance training, skill-specific training, mentoring, coaching, and more. Programs that operate in cohorts, where a group of learners goes through a training curriculum together, make these systems great for decentralized workforces as well. Embedded surveying, journaling, and progress tracking via personalized reminders that are delivered via text message help keep remote staff engaged and accountable.

These platforms are super flexible too, unlike videos and print training programs. For example, you can edit on the fly, easily remove outdated content and add fresh programming with so much more ease.

Creating a network for brand success

The L&D industry is constantly evolving, with new programs and fresh training ideas emerging every day. Just look at all the new training books coming out each month; our learning really never ends! But that’s also why it can be difficult to keep up— not just in terms of learning the latest training techniques, but also in trying to get your name or ideas out in the market. Fortunately, with some of the new tools on the market, there are more ways you can build your brand as a consultant, training department, or network of professionals.

For instance, online training platforms with CRM features or flexible integrations like community boards and events modules enable L&D professionals to keep a constant drumbeat of outreach and information going to employees, prospects, and partners. Part of building your brand as a trainer or L&D department includes keeping your network engaged with updates, incentives, continued learning opportunities, and more. All-in-one online learning platforms can even help you expand your network as well. Think of Shopify, but for L&D professionals.

Another benefit of building a training community through online platforms is that it’s easier to network and build talent within the resource pool you already have. When trainers are isolated within their business units or practices, they don’t get the benefit of cross-collaboration with other trainers. And we know scheduling times for like-minded trainers to meet in person, especially in today’s environment, is difficult at best.

The heart of the matter: aligning mindsets, values, and culture to build an active community

Unified online training platforms help reduce isolation and give trainers a chance to share experiences, collaborate on projects and offer more value to the people they train. This is the true meaning of networking. And platforms that have collaborative team workflows are built for mutual success. Instead of waiting for the right partner to move to your area, now all you have to do is build a program together online. When you develop training networks like these, mentoring relationships grow organically as trainers learn from each other, share templates and work together to foster growth by attracting others to join.

Building an active community around your training organization’s brand was once a time-consuming, expensive proposition. But now you can do this difficult work more easily and efficiently with unified online training platforms. This enables you to focus on the work you really care about: creating a learning environment that connects you with more people who share a common mindset and values. And within this community, you can build a stronger culture together — as well as benefit from increased retention.

February 2022

How Proper Recognition Is a Sustainable Initiative for Companies

Human Resources teams can provide employees the trust, cohesion, and purpose they’re looking for with proper recognition initiatives.

By Tara Milburn

The emergency light has been on for the better part of the year as companies across every industry scrambled to provide for their employees’ safety, stability, and security needs during the COVID-19 crisis. Some of the most important resources they’ve been able to provide are policy adjustments, health coverage, and valuable professional development opportunities. And it’s a sign of a job well done that the focus is now shifting away from the employee needs and toward employee support; a re-imagination of team morale and employee fulfillment in the new corporate normal.

As human resources (HR) professionals and People and Culture experts (P&C) navigate their way forward, a few fundamentals have become clear. A study conducted by McKinsey & Co surveyed upwards of 800 American employees regarding their employee experience. They found that in addition to the basic safety needs, there were three important pillars shaping every employee’s satisfaction: trusting relationships, social cohesion, and individual purpose. Through every stage of the corporate experience, from onboarding new hires to providing training and reskilling opportunities, to celebrating senior-level executives, employees are looking for trust, cohesion, and purpose; below are a few important ways that HR teams and P&C professionals can help them find it.

Recognition: The New Language of Trust

In the same McKinsey & Co study, employees ranked the need to be recognized for their work among the top ten experience factors contributing to their sense of well-being and engagement. A major determiner of their relationship with their team leaders and the company at large, the study found that proper recognition could increase employee engagement by 55 percent, well-being by 49 percent, and work effectiveness by a full 20 percent.

Maybe, more importantly, the survey results show that non-financial compensation is more than sufficient to see these kinds of results. Companies might be struggling to show their appreciation through compensation adjustments or employee bonuses, but McKinsey’s findings show that recognition comes in many shapes, sizes, and price points—employees need to understand that their hard work has an impact more than they need to see that impact reflected in their take-home pay.

Recognition Initiatives for the Post-COVID Era

Remote work has changed the requirements for successful recognition in two important ways. First, employee recognition as a whole has become more important and more challenging. Since the inception of the work-from-home movement, 64 percent of remote employees have said a demonstration of appreciation is more important to them when working from home. Without head nods in the hallway and organic interactions during in-person meetings, the need for positive re-enforcement is tangible, but only 26 percent of those remote employees have seen an effort from their company to implement new reward strategies.

The second important change regards the new employee standards for sustainable practices toward both people and the planet. Since stay-at-home orders resulted in some much-needed environmental reprieve, 70 percent of people have become more environmentally aware, and 95 percent are keenly aware of the ecological impact of their actions.

It’s never been more important for employees to see those values reflected in their company culture. Employees want to know that their work is having an impact. They want the opportunity to celebrate their coworkers, and to see their peers properly recognized for their important work. Most importantly, they want their corporate lives to reflect their personal commitment to reducing their ecological impact. HR teams and P&C professionals who can offer them that experience will see their efforts pay dividends in terms of employee satisfaction, fulfillment, and long-term commitment.

Sustainable Gifting—For Any Occasion

Whether it’s celebrating a senior executive or welcoming a new hire with branded company gear, it’s important for HR professionals to provide the kinds of ethical gifts that employees can feel good about receiving. But sustainable gifting isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. Any company can throw a Corporate Sustainable Responsibility badge on their website, but that doesn’t always mean that the products are made in a sustainable way.

B-Corp certifications, on the other hand, prove that a vendor has been through an extensive audit, with every part of their process—from sourcing to delivery—approved at the highest national standard. B-Corps are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions, not only as they relate to the environment but also as they relate to their workers, customers, suppliers, and communities at large. Purchasing from a B-Corp ensures that the products are made and transported using sustainable practices and that every hand is paid adequate wages insufficient working conditions along the way.

Purpose-Driven Company Events—For A Memorable Impact

As much as employees want to be recognized for their work, they also want to be recognized for their values and intentions. Chief among those values is the drive to give back to their surrounding communities and support an equitable recovery. To that end, HR and P&C professionals who are able to engage employees in close-to-home social responsibility initiatives are seeing a significant return as far as engagement and fulfillment.

These kinds of programs can come in many forms. For companies that have the financial ability, offering matching gift programs can be particularly impactful; increasing donation multipliers and offering a range of COVID-specific nonprofits to support can help employees feel like they’re making a tangible difference. Safe, in-person volunteer events can also be offered for a similar effect—an innovative way to provide a much-needed break from day-to-day work while also offering an opt-in opportunity for employees to engage with their local communities in meaningful ways.

HR professionals and P&C teams have done an incredible job of providing their teams with safety, stability, and a sense of security during a global crisis. With months of COVID-management under their belt, it’s become clear that thoughtful recognition is a top priority as teams continue to move forward. Non-financial recognition strategies are as effective as any compensation-based reward could be, and initiatives that reflect an employee’s social ideas—sustainable practices, community impact—will have the greatest effect on team morale. With those fundamentals, HR and P&C professionals can move from the task of survival toward the task of an equitable and fulfilling recovery.

Training Magazine (2021). How Proper Recognition Is a Sustainable Initiative for Companies. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/3-tips-to-strengthen-your-approach-to-employee-engagement/.

January 2022

The Benefits of Taking Risks in Entrepreneurship

In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be ready to take and manage risks.

By Andy Braddell

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur; everyone wants to head out and start their own business venture. Or… maybe not everyone, but if you’re reading this, you probably do. What most people don’t realize, however, is that when you decide to start your own business, a lot is on the line. You’re putting your career, finances, mental health, and often reputation at stake.

Don’t get us wrong, starting your own business is an incredible thing. It gives you the power to shape your own destiny. It gives you a degree of autonomy over your life that most people only dream of.

However, forming a startup is not easy, and it’s certainly not risk-free.

That doesn’t mean gambling your finances or your efforts on slim chances, but if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be willing to take risks. You need to be ready to put stuff on the line. Simply put, there is no path to successful entrepreneurial endeavors without risk.

That’s because with risk comes opportunity. If you want to sit in a cubicle counting beans for the rest of your life, go ahead. There is little risk in that, but there is a little reward, too. It’s no mystery that the higher stakes mean higher gains. The point is that there is a direct relationship between risk and reward.

When you have a bigger potential upside, you also have a bigger potential downside and vice versa. The trick to becoming a successful entrepreneur is to navigate these risks. To take the ones you can afford and skip the ones you can’t.

In that sense, entrepreneurial endeavors are all about risk management.

What is risk management, you might ask?

Well, to put it simply, risk management is the concept of analyzing potential risks and then figuring out how to mitigate them as much as possible in a cost-effective manner.

So, how do we do this effectively? There are a few key points to keep in mind.

Assess Your Potential Risk Tolerance
Start Small
Be Aware of the Worst-Case Scenario
Practice, practice, practice

Observe and Influence the Risk Pitfalls and Outcomes
Minimize Losses When They Occur

There are many “risks” we might encounter as entrepreneurs. Let’s break down a few of the major categories.

Competitive Risk

Competitive risk describes the probability that competition (whether direct or indirect) will affect the revenue of your business. Naturally, this is a fairly high risk for startups, since you’re going to have competition with companies that are already well-established in the market. Minimize your competitive risk by doing a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to brainstorm strategies in advance.

Market Risk

Market risk, also known as systemic risk, is what we call the risk of loss in your business because of market fluctuations. This isn’t something that you can easily mitigate, because it depends on the market, but you should at least develop a few strategies and sources that can keep you informed about the market activity, so any major changes don’t blindside you.

Credibility Risk

Credibility risk is the risk that we face when we market a new product or service. Brand credibility is critical to longevity and will greatly influence purchasing decisions. To mitigate credibility risk, focus on quality over quantity and steer clear of sketchy business transactions. Above all, make customer service a priority!

These are just a few of the many types of risks you’ll face. Others include technology risk and financial risk, but there are many, many more.

Stay informed and stay ahead of the curve!

How much is a good amount of risk? It’s not as simple as numbers. It’s a game of quality over quantity. You need to take the RIGHT risks. The ones that you can manage, the ones that you understand. The ones you can protect against.

Most importantly, you can learn even if your risks don’t pay off.

We wanted to have a real thought from experienced people and when we asked Eric Porat, who is an online entrepreneur, he added: “The optimistic risk-taker always looks at failure as an opportunity to learn. Willingness to go out on a limb and experiment with new ideas is critical to growth. If you’re just doing something everyone else has done before, you aren’t really going to rise above the crowd, right?”.

Remember: failure will almost always teach you how to think and plan strategically.

What’s more, risk-taking actually correlates to increased satisfaction! A recent study documenting risk-taking found that there is a correlation between a willingness to take risks and higher personal satisfaction.  If you’re a risk-taker, both in your personal life and your professional life, you’ll learn to look forward instead of backward. Furthermore, you won’t spend your personal or professional life wondering “what if.”

Perhaps best of all, you may just hit the big time. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla… they all took risks early on, and look at them now!

Training Magazine (2021). The Benefits of Taking Risks in Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from The Benefits of Taking Risks in Entrepreneurship (trainingmag.com).

December 2021

How Organizations Thrive When They Prioritize Staff Well-Being

By Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton

I’m an optimist at heart. I need optimism almost as much as I do air. Given that, I’ve been looking for positives in the midst of this pandemic. Lately, I’ve been thinking that perhaps one positive is an increased focus on employee well-being. I’m not a romantic…so the jury is still out, but I sincerely hope that the heightened interest in well-being will become the silver lining in all of this—because it’s time to reexamine how we prioritize our people.

In fairness, the focus on well-being has expanded from what was healthcare and a gym membership in the 1980s to something much broader today (especially within larger organizations)…including a focus on mental health, creativity zones, flexible work schedules, and more. All of that is helpful; yet we can do more. A recent McKinsey report stated that “forward-looking companies know that everything else—such as technology, access to raw materials, intellectual property, and customer relationships—is fleeting and the only sustainable advantage is rooted in harnessing the passion, skills, capabilities, judgment, and creativity that people bring to work.” However, much that is being written about the future of organizations has focused on law, regulation, ownership, governance, measurement, and pre-pandemic descriptions of performance—with little mention of human beings. If mentioned, employees are referred to as “human capital”…but we are—all of us—flesh and bone, bodies and brains, hearts and minds—and every single organization will be relying on those hearts and minds to carry them out of this crisis.

In order for employees to tap into their full potential and carry us out of this crisis and beyond, they need a different level of support than what most organizations have been providing. That shouldn’t be a surprise because if we’ve learned nothing else over the last several decades—or centuries—we’ve learned the definition of insanity.

Long before the pandemic arrived, we were already experiencing unprecedented change (estimated by McKinsey Global Institute to be 10 times that of the Industrial Revolution and 300 times the scale). Human beings have not evolved as quickly as the rate of change around us and most of us haven’t been trained to cope with that degree of change, leaving many people feeling threatened, stressed, and overwhelmed. In 2018, “stress” was the #1 symptom googled. In 2019, the World Health Organization designated burnout an official syndrome, defined as workplace stress that has not been effectively managed. In 2019, it also reported that suicide rates have risen 60 percent over the last 45 years globally. Enter COVID-19, and 53 percent of adults in the United States say their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress and report difficulty sleeping (36 percent) or eating (32 percent), increases in alcohol consumption or substance use (12 percent), and worsening chronic conditions (12 percent), due to worry and stress over the Coronavirus. A recent PwC study of remote workers found that while productivity has increased during the pandemic, one-third of employees are actually working much harder than the rest, masking the shortfall of others and leaving that third at more significant risk of burnout. In a recent Companies in Motion survey, 77 percent of businesspeople surveyed stated they had no resources for times when they needed more resilience.

There is a clear need for action. If we respond correctly right now, the current crisis has the potential to catalyze a meaningful change in how organizations approach well-being, and it will show up in the bottom line. We have known for decades that a healthy worker is a more productive worker. So, what specifically has to change?

Historically, organizations (especially in the U.S.) have made well-being resources available to their people, presented as a menu, but few have put balanced well-being “meals” together for their people or armed them with the knowledge to do that on their own—educating people on what well-being is and how it impacts performance and encouraging or requiring them to take advantage of the resources provided.
Most organizations have not integrated well-being into their culture in a way that changes behavior in a meaningful and lasting way. In the U.S., we don’t even consistently require employees to take their vacation days—the lowest hanging well-being fruit. (In 2019, 55 percent of U.S. employees did not use all of their paid vacation time.) To bring about lasting change, organizations need to create cultures where well-being practices are embedded at individual, team, and organizational levels, where leadership is committed to well-being and even measured on its effective implementation, where work environments support well-being, and people at all levels are looking out for each other and understand how to enhance their own and their colleagues’ well-being. (There is no point in giving people “Zoom-free” days if their workloads are still leading them toward burnout).

Putting well-being at the center of your strategy and culture will provide you with a sustainable advantage (e.g., attracting and retaining top talent) and a return on investment in terms of business outcomes. However, creating that culture and achieving those outcomes requires a new type of intelligence—Physical Intelligence—because physiology drives our performance.

More than 400 chemicals (neurotransmitters and hormones) are racing through each of our bodies (in our bloodstream and nervous system) at any given time. Those chemicals largely dictate how we think, feel, speak, and behave. They arrive at receptor cells and activate circuits of response that lead us to feel sadness, elation, frustration, etc. Most of us operate at the mercy of those chemicals, experiencing thoughts, reactions, and emotions without realizing that we can strategically influence (some of) them.

Physical Intelligence is the little-known ability to detect and actively manage the balance of certain key chemicals—through how we move, breathe, think, and interact with each other—and enables us to achieve more, stress less, and live and work more happily. Literally hundreds of studies have proven that how we use our body impacts our Cognitive and Emotional Intelligence, indicating that Physical Intelligence doesn’t just sit alongside but underpins our Cognitive Intelligence (IQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EQ). There are hundreds of Physical Intelligence techniques, many drawn from the worlds of elite sports and the arts—all underpinned by neuroscience and easy to incorporate into your day.  Some take seconds.

People who have developed their Physical Intelligence have transformed their lives, and organizations that have incorporated Physical Intelligence across their teams have experienced a measurable impact on business outcomes, including double-digit revenue growth or commercial success; increased operating efficiency, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction scores; and enhanced innovation.

Well-being is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Each employee and team has unique strengths and needs—generally and situationally. Without understanding and having access to a Physical Intelligence playbook, the positive impact of the well-being resources available will be limited by the knowledge of the user—and no well-being program is complete if it isn’t addressing physiology.

Our bodies have been too far down on the priory list for too many years. To complete the well-being revolution, that needs to change. People and teams need deeper knowledge of their physiology in order to make strategic decisions to enhance well-being and business performance based on their unique needs.

The more we understand the neuroscience that underpins our behavior, the more we can exercise control over the balance of chemicals that we can influence, enabling us to leverage our well-being to help our businesses thrive—regardless of, or in response to, the world around us.

Do Your Employees Need Sensitivity Training?

One tactic to teach is to put the solution first rather than the criticism.

By Margery Weinstein

It isn’t hard for me to get agitated and rattled by communications that many others wouldn’t bat an eye at. I have had the experience of receiving an e-mail asking me to “explain my rationale” for doing this or that, and, whatever the intention of the sender, it has made me explode inside. The tone, and invocation to “explain my rationale,” made it feel like a personal attack or dig—as if my competence was being questioned.

That kind of reaction tags me as a sensitive person. It’s easy to dismiss the kind of agitation people like me frequently experience by saying to yourself, “She’s just sensitive.” The problem with doing that is the possibility that there are many others just like me—easily provoked to anger and dismay by communications that rub us the wrong way. Most of us are smart enough not to let you see our irritation, but the unhappiness of such communications builds up over time and may lead a high-performing employee to look elsewhere for work. The importance of a sensitive person working with other sensitive people—who know how to ask questions in a respectful, non-threatening way—can’t be underestimated.

In some cases, sensitive people are driven to suicide by what less-sensitive employees would interpret as run-of-the-mill workplace interactions, according to a study out of West Virginia University. “Perceived low-grade forms of workplace mistreatment, such as avoiding eye contact or excluding a coworker from conversation, can amplify suicidal thoughts in employees with mood disorders,” a study by Kayla Follmer, assistant professor of Management, and Jake Follmer, assistant professor of Educational Psychology, reveals. Their findings are published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

The authors recommend providing greater access to mental health resources to employees. I think that’s a good thing to do, but I also think employees could benefit from an understanding of sensitive communications, and how to construct an e-mail or make a request in a way that it will be received without offense.

One tactic to teach is to put the solution first rather than the criticism. That means that instead of asking the employee to explain his or her rationale, you ask the employee to do whatever it is you think would make the project better. Then, after making your suggestion, you could ask, “Let me know if you have any thoughts on other ways we could do this. I was concerned that…”

My feeling, and that of many other sensitive people, is that I would rather you give me your ideas for how to make something better, rather than criticizing without solutions posed. I always feel like saying (and sometimes do): “Let me know how you would like me to alter this, and I will be glad to do that.” I have no desire to get into a combative back-and-forth, or a debate about minutia that usually means little (maybe nothing!) to me. I would rather go straight to the proposed solutions or improvements.

I had a friend, who came up with a great idea for an article at a publication where she worked, and instead of focusing on the substance of her article idea, the editors on the call with her immediately leaped to their criticism of her proposed headline. The call quickly turned contentious, and my friend lost her temper, and told them to forget it. Fast forward a few months later, and articles on that very topic have been widely published. After that unpleasant, tension-filled call, my friend lost her job. The manager who gave her the news didn’t cite the recent interaction as the reason for her termination, but it might have been the final straw. Maybe they had gotten tired of what they perceived to be her over-sensitivity. All of that could have been avoided if they had focused on the positive and the solution first, backing their way into the criticism. They could have said: “Wow, that’s an interesting idea! I think there’s some potential there—we could explore doing a piece on that. I think, though, that we might want to tinker with that headline. Let us give that some thought and get back to you.”

I manage my work with others by always putting my solutions forward first. For instance, when a contributor to my publication sends me a draft, I could send it back marked up with red lines, comments, and complaints. Instead, I simply fix everything I think needs improving and send it back to the contributor to approve or send back with their own newer version. I like to go straight to the solution and let them tell me what they think of my solution. It’s a faster way to work that reduces friction.

Do you incorporate lessons on sensitive communications to employees, so messages are received with solutions in mind first and criticisms second?

The Risk of Routine

Sometimes being on autopilot—knowing a skill so well it doesn’t require conscious thought—can lead to human error

By Benjamin E. Ruark

Learning & Development (L&D) professionals need to heed findings from neurologists and psychologists when performing job task analyses or writing course curricula for any service job’s routine procedures. These experts note that sometimes being on autopilot—knowing a skill so well it doesn’t require conscious thought—can lead to human error.

Neurologists explain that we have two regions in our brain, each capable of performing routine tasks. The region that normally takes control of routine tasks is the basal ganglia (BG). They’re a set of structures located at the base of our brain, just above the brain stem. After we’ve repeated a task many times, the skills and behavior associated with performing it get stored in the BG as long-term memory. When this happens, we say that such a routine is now part of our habit memory—in other words, we’re functioning on autopilot.

But first, we need to back up to when we initially learn a procedure or skill, such as driving the same route to work or riding a bike. At the initial point in learning a routine, we rely on a different brain structure: the prefrontal cortex (PFC). It’s located behind our forehead, taking up a third of the cortex. It is where our “executive function” resides: We carry out abstract thought, focus our attention, plan, evaluate, judge, and store key information relating (as working memory) to whatever it is we’re attending to at the moment. Our PFC does all the figuring out of what needs to be done when we learn a new skill, procedure, or behavior. It is aided by the hippocampi (HC)—a set of structures in the temporal lobes that form, organize, and store facts and events for possible future use.

But as the steps and nuances of skill performance get easier through repetition, our PFC hands off the memory of how to execute it to the BG. In handing it off, we’re consciously freed up to attend to our next prospective procedure, skill, or behavior. Put another way, our PFC, aided by the HC, is referred to as our prospective memory system. This keeps it distinct from our habit memory system, which is unconscious, by the way. In the workplace, when we see someone operating on autopilot, that’s his or her habit memory in control.

A WORLD OF DISTRACTION

Why is this so important to performing routine service tasks, for example? Mainly because we are easily distracted by all manner of stimuli in an environment. We get interrupted by fellow workers, the boss, etc. We take breaks or we multitask. All these are contributing factors to human error: an omitted step, forgetting a key piece of information, getting the order of steps wrong, etc. Where customers are concerned, the stakes for error can range from minor inconvenience to catastrophic outcomes.

Some potentially tragic examples of errors following on the heels of routine procedures include:

A pilot forgets to set the wing flaps for landing or lower the landing gear.
A surgeon forgets to remove sponges or instruments from a patient or performs a procedure on the wrong limb.

The same common denominator precedes the usual slips and lapses during routine procedures—the habit memory system. As soon as a distraction happens, or during multitasking, this system breaks down. That’s because we’re then temporarily focused on the distraction or on some other concurrently performed task. By focused, I mean we’re consciously attentive—in using our prospective memory system, we’ve broken the connection with habit memory. With our prospective memory now in command, we then attempt to return to the original procedure afresh, but instead find ourselves lost on the details of where we left off and exactly what still needs doing. This “unplanned handoff” is what leads to failure to execute.

INSTITUTE PREVENTIVE SAFEGUARDS

This phenomenon has substantial implications for the L&D community: specifically, instructional design and training workshops focusing on routine tasks that have high stakes with costly and catastrophic human consequences for human error. Service industries such as healthcare, pilot training, offshore oil exploration, and utilities are particularly vulnerable. An “if-then” rule-of-thumb needs to be in force for all L&D projects: If high stakes are involved for human error, then augment the training with recommendations for instituting preventive safeguards. Decisions about which safeguards to use should be based on work context and whether safeguards are to be installed at the individual worker or work unit level.

Individual workers could use something as basic as sticky notes or a clipboard to jot down a last step performed when they are suddenly distracted or interrupted. For unit-wide safeguard deployment, common strategies could include:

Backup: A coworker steps in when an employee is called away to an important, can’t-wait matter.

Call Outs: Calling out the last step performed improves auditory memory.

Checklist: This basic job aid sometimes is ridiculed, but it is highly effective.

Delay Interruption: Ignore an interruption until a natural breaking point in the task is reached.

Do Not Disturb or No Interruption Zone: Post signs to that effect at point-of-task (PoT).

Policies: The organization sets formal policies pertaining to specific distractions or interruptions at PoTs.

PoT Setups: Ensure all resources are in place before beginning a task, eliminating “self-interrupting.”

Although working on autopilot is economically advantageous for our brain, it is real-world risky. It’s safer if we stay consciously focused on whatever it is that we do.

Benjamin E. Ruark is a former Learning & Development, Continuous Quality Improvement specialist/consultant to a half-dozen manufacturing and service industries. He has worked extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including the UK and Ireland.

Can You Hear Me Now?

What buying a new phone teaches you about customer service

By Margery Weinstein

I experienced a trial last week known as buying a new phone. Buying a new phone sounds simple enough—except that it wasn’t.

The process began by making an appointment with my mobile provider. I tried to give as much information as I could, including the specific reason for my visit to the store and the particular phone I wanted to buy, including the amount of storage capacity I wanted on the phone.

It had been a few years since I got a new phone, so I was excited! I got there at the precise time designated for my appointment, and found the store entirely empty except for two sales representatives. Despite that mine appeared to be the only appointment set aside for that time slot, the sales reps didn’t know who I was or what I was there for. You’d think with hardly anyone there, they would have had time to look at their appointment calendar on their computer to anticipate my arrival.

I said, “Hello,” told them who I was, and why I was there. They then told me they would have to verify that they had the phone in stock that I wanted to buy. They did, fortunately. I thought I was home free! Then I threw them off badly. I shared with them that I was a customer who was originally with the mobile provider that this other mobile provider had acquired about a year ago. The representative attending me then expressed concern that she might not be able to help me because she was still getting used to looking up customer information in my original mobile provider’s database. She called her colleague to join her at the computer to see if they could figure it out together. They seemed to figure it out finally—only to let me know 5-10 minutes later that the computer system connecting to that other mobile provider’s database wasn’t working. They apologized and told me they couldn’t help me.

“It would have been nice to know that before I made the trip here,” I said. Their store was only about a 10-minute walk from my apartment, but regardless, I had set time aside for this appointment, and had to put on shoes and leave my cozy apartment. I would have preferred continuing to lie on the couch if I had known their computer system was down.
“There’s no way we would have known that ahead of time,” they told me.

“Could you reschedule my appointment?”

“Oh, you don’t need an appointment,” they said.

“But what happens if I get here and a lot of people are waiting?”

“You would have to wait anyway even if you had an appointment.”

The thing that pushed me over the edge was they seemed not to want to exert the effort to reschedule my appointment, and indicated that, even if I had an appointment, their store was so disorganized and inefficient, it wouldn’t matter because I would still have to wait. “Then why bother having appointments?” I wondered to myself.

I got very angry then, took a deep breath, and turned to leave. “Just pathetic,” I said to them before sweeping out of the store.

I took out my phone to Google other nearby store locations. I found that my phone was in the process of breaking. I was too uncomfortable to go back to the store I just indignantly swept out of, so I kept tinkering with my phone until I got it to finally show me a list of a few other nearby locations. I walked about 15 minutes to another location. They didn’t have the phone I was looking for. I had to ask if they could call the next closest location to verify that they had the phone. They did! I asked the sales representative to let the other store know I was on my way.

Three time’s the charm: The third store I visited had my phone and had a staff competent enough to access and use the database of my original mobile provider. They even counseled me about the best screen protector to buy and made sure everything was in perfect working order before I left. The only snag about this visit was, when I got there, they didn’t know what I was talking about when I said I was the customer sent there by the other store that just called them. It seems the sales rep at the previous location I visited called the wrong store or didn’t call at all and only pretended to be on the phone. Or perhaps the sales reps at this third location had already forgotten the call they had gotten 20 minutes earlier?

I found an article on Forbes by Micah Solomon on “Muscle Memory and Customer Service,” which made me think a well-trained staff could have reflexively done all the things that would have made my experience getting a new phone seamless and simple. “I’m talking about mental muscle memory: a default of being helpful, of actively listening, of doing everything you can to ‘get to a yes’ for the customer in front of you. Once your mental ‘muscles’ get these patterns ingrained, they allow you to serve your customers both spectacularly and consistently—even on those days when your back aches and your feet are cramping and your customers are more abrupt and less understanding than usual,” Solomon writes.

In my case, the sales reps should have had it ingrained as protocol to prepare ahead of time for all customers with appointments. Preparing ahead of time is not a hard concept to explain to employees, and with practice, it becomes a routine part of every workday. At the beginning of the day, right after logging into the computer, check to see who’s scheduled to come in. See what each customer has said he or she needs and check to make sure you are going to be able give those things to each customer. That means checking the inventory in stock and making sure any computer systems that have to be accessed to serve the customer are up and running, and that the employee who will serve the customer understands fully how to use those computer systems.

Anticipating pre-appointed arrivals creates a huge wow for customers. It’s reassuring to open the door, tell the sales reps your name, and have them say, “Welcome, Margery, we’ve been expecting you. We have the phone you want to buy in stock, so we should be all set to get this done for you today.”

There is also muscle memory that should be trained into place for when all else fails and you can’t serve the customer. “I do apologize! Can I reschedule your appointment for you or see if any of the nearby stores have the phone you are looking for and can help you today?”

When that kind of customer service—anticipating and being ready for customers with appointments—and knowing how to help the customers you can’t help yourself—is so well trained that it’s ingrained in your employees, you exceed expectations every time.

Have you bought a new phone lately? Does my experience sound familiar? How do you ensure your employees have muscle memory that reflexively guides them when serving customers?

What COVID-19 Can Teach Us About Managing Grief in the Workplace

One of the most vitally important things a manager can do to ask the grieving employee what he or she needs.

By Margery Weinstein

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I got the news while sitting in my cubicle at the office. I didn’t take the call into a conference room and shut the door or wait to take the call outside. I just sat there and received the news that the cancer had moved into her brain and that, at best, she had six to 12 months to live. You’d think after the call ended, I would have excused myself from work for the rest of the day, or at least have taken a walk outside for an hour to clear my head, but instead I seamlessly and calmly moved within minutes into a weekly business call. My mother was not just my mother, but my best friend, so it must be puzzling that I could proceed without any show of emotion for the rest of the day. One reason may be that grief still isn’t acceptable to exhibit or show in the workplace. So I wasn’t comfortable giving the news to my then-boss and being sent home. I anticipated discomfort, embarrassment, and pity from him, and felt dealing with his reactions would be worse than proceeding through my day.

With the death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S., which was expected to surpass 500,000 by the end of February, many people are thinking about their own mortality and death than ever before. The evening news seems to always include an obligatory segment about the day’s COVID death count, and many news shows also include a segment at the end remembering those who have been lost to the disease.

This is an ideal time to think about how adept your managers are at handling grief in the workplace. Your company may have lost employees to COVID, and some of your employees may have lost family and friends to it. When the pandemic is under control—hopefully by the summer or fall—and employees are welcomed back to the office, conversations about those who have been lost will occur. How should you prepare your managers to handle these conversations?

When I lost my mother, I remembered the co-workers who made a point of coming by to tell me how sorry they were and see how I was doing. And I remembered how hurt I was that, despite sending my boss a text with my mother’s obituary, which included information about where the funeral would be, he neither attended himself nor sent flowers, a gift basket, or any other token of caring except a card after I returned to work. It was clear that my grief made him highly uncomfortable.

I found an article on Fast Company on managing grief in the workplace. The article was written by Lindsay Tigar, who recently lost her father to a chronic illness. She notes the importance of asking the grieving employee what they need. In my case, my boss seemed afraid I would ask for something. I had to explain during the call letting him know that I would be taking a week of bereavement leave that I would not be able to publish that week’s issue of our magazine on our site. Not only did he not offer to help or ask what I needed, he seemed afraid of what I might ask for.

“…It’s best to have an open, candid conversation with your employee where you can ask them how you and the company can best support them,” Tigar writes, synthesizing recommendations for employers given to her by Evans St. Fort, founder of St. Fort’s Funeral Home. When my boss, later in that same year my mother died, gave himself a half day away from the office for at least a month when his dog was dying, I wondered why he hadn’t proactively offered anything like that to me when my mother was dying. If I had asked to work from her place for part of every workday, I wonder what he would have said. He may have consented, but should I have had to ask? Would a sensitive manager have offered the option of working remotely for at least part of the time?

It might be helpful to supply managers with acceptable options to offer employees who have just lost someone they are close to, or are in the process of losing a loved one. One of those options could be remote work, or a more flexible schedule in which the work still gets done—but done on a schedule that gives the employee a chance to visit more with the person she’s losing, or in the case of a loved one who has already been lost, for the employee to take time for herself beyond the one week of bereavement leave.

Tigar also writes of the importance of managers understanding that work isn’t the top priority of employees who have lost someone close to them. “Employers have to give their employees grace, since it’s part of the healing process,” Tigar writes, noting a recommendation given to her by author and grief expert Breeshia Wade. That grace time is easier if at least each position has one employee fully devoted to it and at least one other employee who has been cross-trained to perform the most important functions of the position.

In addition to cross-training, managers can get creative, and see if there is a way to allow the employee to bring her experience of loss into her work. When you’re grieving, your emotions are at a high pitch, making you more sensitive to the feelings of others and sometimes exposing you to environments you have never been in before, such as hospitals or hospices. That heightened sense of awareness, and those new experiences, could put the employee in a mindset to develop better outreach to customers and business associates. Managers should be open to, and even encourage, the employee to talk about her experience of loss, and of finding ways of taking what she learned and applying it to her work. For instance, with customers experiencing loss in their own lives, how can your company better accommodate people during that difficult time? Are there services your company can provide, or make more flexible, for people experiencing personal loss or another life-altering hardship?

Grief is painful—and powerful—and it can make those who go through it more insightful. Rather than suppressing it in the workplace, trainers and Human Resources professionals can find ways of making grief easier to talk about and learn from.

Do you provide guidance to your managers on helping grieving employees? With COVID-19 bringing grief to the forefront, how can managers be taught the best ways to address loss and the ongoing anxiety that often accompanies it?

Is Lack of Work-Life Balance Contagious?

By Margery Weinstein

In an era during which “contagion” and “spread” are intimate parts of our vocabularies and anxieties, there is a sickness other than COVID-19 on my mind: lack of work-life balance. It’s a psychological, rather than a physical, sickness, but a sickness nonetheless that causes mental distress that can take a physical toll.

The question is whether lack of work-life balance is a self-contained problem, or one we can catch from others. Consider the scenario of a mostly balanced and relaxed work group that brings on a person who is not balanced or relaxed. This is the person who calls at 8 p.m. on a Friday night because a video isn’t loading properly on a company Website or tells you she will text you during your vacation if information your work group has been waiting for arrives. On the one hand, the employee’s dedication to her job is admirable, but on the other hand, it is dangerous to the culture of the employee’s work group. That one person is forcing the balance between work and life to be thrown off—not just for herself, but for everyone she collaborates with.

I found an article online on emotional contagion, and I believe the emotions behind lack of work-life balance are capable of spreading. Ali Pattillo notes how easily emotions can spread from one person to another in an article on the site, Inverse: “Across the board, human beings are a roller coaster of emotions, feelings, and moods. According to 25 years of data, these emotions spread like wildfire person to person. Often, they influence a group or organization’s collective mood in positive or negative ways… This social phenomenon, called ‘emotional contagion,’ permeates all human interactions, influencing not only how people feel, but how they think and behave. Emotional contagion is constant and pervasive, yet most of the time we have no idea it’s going on.”

The emotions Pattillo focuses on are negativity versus positivity. My own hypothesis is that, in addition to general high-energy/happy versus low energy/grumpy, the emotions of anxiety and compulsion also can be passed from one to others. The work-fixated, compulsive individual who has joined a group of mostly balanced employees starts messaging her colleagues at night and during their time off, pressing them to finish work by inflexible due dates. She drops constant hints about how hard she’s working, noting (without anyone asking) that she works until 10 p.m. every night. Some of us would have no problem responding, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and leaving it at that. Many others, however, would feel obligated to start mirroring her behavior, even if she isn’t their boss. “Well, I guess working at night, on the weekends, and during vacations, is the new standard, so I’ll have to start doing that,” many will say to themselves.

How do you stop this from happening in your organization? It starts with the hiring process. You want responsible, productive people. You don’t want anxious, compulsive people. During the hiring process, it’s helpful to add questions that tease out a person’s ability to maintain work-life balance, regardless of workload. Here are essential questions to ask in one of the interviews leading to candidate selection:

“What do you do outside of work to unwind?”

“What do you most like about that activity?” (This allows you to gauge whether this is an activity that is really a part of the person’s life or whether it’s just something the person made up or does only once or twice every few years.)
“What is your typical work schedule from your past jobs? At what time did you usually find yourself packing up and going home, or shutting off your computer (if working from home)?”
“How important do you consider it to maintain a balance between work and leisure, including time with friends and family?”

Like all job interview questions, the candidate may not answer truthfully, but asking all of those questions will give you a sense of whether this is a person who can consistently deliver high-quality work on time while maintaining regular hours, or whether this a high-anxiety, compulsive person, who will not be able to shut off her computer and put her work away within reasonable hours.

It’s also up to the manager of each work group to monitor work-life balance in the same way she monitors productivity. If she notices an employee sending e-mails at night or on the weekends, the manager has a responsibility to find out why this is happening: “Shirley, I noticed that you often send e-mails late at night and on the weekends. Let’s work together to figure out a schedule and workflow, so you never have to do that. Evenings and weekends are your time to relax and do things for fun. When you take time for yourself, you come back to work the next day and on Mondays refreshed and better able to focus.”

When employees understand that the manager does not approve of them working at night, on weekends, and during vacations—that they’re not going to win extra points for doing it—relaxing suddenly might not seem so hard.

Does your company prioritize creating a culture that encourages work-life balance? If so, how do you do it? If not, why not, and what are the downfalls of enabling a high-anxiety, compulsive work environment?

Positivity Matters in Times of Crisis

Training, connection, and supportive networks accelerate recovery.

By Shawn Achor

One of the things that surprised me most about positive psychology research is that I rarely get to research places that start out happy. In fact, the majority of my research has occurred in high-crisis or challenge situations. I started with depressed Harvard students, then worked with banks around the world during the financial crisis. I have done work in the wake of school shootings, during the Boston bombings, and with schools in Flint, MI, in the midst of cyclical poverty and a water crisis. More recently, my research led me to the healthcare industry that is reeling financially.

What I’ve learned over and over again— even in the most severe situations—is that in times of crisis, positivity matters more than ever.

But many leaders worry, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, economic meltdown, and social unrest, that trying to emphasize positivity and happiness will make them look out of touch—and rather than helping their people, it will backfire

The reason for this is quite sensible at first. It feels tone deaf to talk about the positive when people are suffering. But upon closer reflection a huge flaw is found in this mindset. If we are waiting until challenges lessen at work to find happiness and optimism, or for structural racism to be abolished, inequalities to go away, or poverty and violence to disappear, we will never find happiness. Nor will we receive its proven benefits in our personal and professional lives.

In fact, when we have large challenges facing our world, we need our best brains possible to bear upon that situation. After two decades, my research consistently shows that the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged brain—especially during crisis and suffering. The more positive the brain becomes during challenges, the more capable it is to recover from stress, anxiety, and trauma, and proactively adapt to changing circumstances.

So now is the time for Training and HR professionals to make the necessary link for their organizations, not only between positivity and performance, but also for positivity as the pathway forward in this pivotal moment for so many people.

Case Study: Genesis Health System

Three years ago, Genesis Health System was not profitable. This was true for many hospitals, which were experiencing the lowest profitability since the 2008 financial crisis. Consequently, few leaders there were thinking about happiness at work, and Jordan Voigt, president of the largest medical center (Genesis Medical Center – Davenport), was facing new challenges ahead. They were about to undergo two rounds of massive cost reductions and layoffs. In addition, they were asking staff to reduce their hours and take time off with or without PTO (paid time off).

Still, Voigt felt it was important to focus on the company’s culture and hypothesized that positivity could help at this crucial time. We worked with the medical center to roll out a series of positive psychology trainings called The Orange Frog Workshop (based on a parable I wrote to teach the principles of “The Happiness Advantage”) department by department, so we could test the effectiveness compared to groups that had not been exposed to the interventions. Each department trained then designed positive changes to existing work routines and created new practices tailored to their subculture, spanning from gratitude exercises to increased praise and recognition from managers and team-based conscious acts of kindness.

The Results: Positivity Training Matters

After the workshop, the percentage of respondents who reported they were happy at work went from 43 percent to 62 percent. Team members reporting they were “very expressive of optimism at work” increased substantially after participating in the training (measured six weeks after the intervention). Burnout dropped by nearly half. Individuals reporting “high stress at work” fell 30 percent. Social connection improved, as well. The number of respondents who said, “I feel connected at work,” went from 68 percent to 85 percent. And this was after staff reductions where some coworkers and friends were no longer at the organization.

In the areas of the hospital not part of the intervention, only 37 percent of respondents claimed Genesis was going in the right direction.

Embedding positivity wasn’t just good for staff; it benefited patients, too. Patient experience rates nearly doubled within a 12-month period. Following the intervention, Genesis Medical Center-Davenport archived profitability and in 2019, it was recognized as one of the nation’s most improved medical centers for performance.

Connection Promotes a “Collective Confidence”

People don’t typically make positive changes alone or in isolation. A positive mindset at work is often a collective exercise because the behaviors and attitudes are reinforced when a group does it together. At Genesis, the emphasis in the workshops was on developing positive habits, brainstorming new work routines, and discussing culture together in groups. This allowed participants to take ownership of the new mindsets, routines, and ways of working. They were creating new social scripts, building a “collective confidence” in real time, and connecting these changes to purpose, verbalizing the significant impact their happiness and positivity can have on their patients. It’s imperative that leaders help people feel connected first and then deputize them to make positive change.

Supportive Networks Are Needed Too

But what about spreading positivity during a pandemic? Or even with a distributed workforce, which is common today?

Research shows that group support is the single most important intervention for psychological trauma, and that is what we’re going through right now. People need to understand that what they are experiencing is a normal response to an abnormal situation and to have tools to help them cope. As for people who are already connected to each other, it’s important to maintain those connections.

Our social structures have been altered too. Many have disappeared. These structures normally create supportive connections— in meetings and at the water cooler at work, in class and at the coffee shop. Learning together helps reinforce this connection.

Considered a leading expert on the connection between happiness and success, Shawn Achor is The New York Times best-selling author of “The Happiness Advantage,” “Big Potential” (https://www.amazon.com/Big-Potential-Transforming-Achievement-Well-Being/dp/1524761532), and “The Orange Frog” (www.OrangeFrogExperience.com). One of his TED Talks (https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en) has had 22 million-plus views, and he has lectured or worked with more than a third of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as the NFL, NBA, Pentagon, and the White House.

4 Pillars of Higher Morale

A manager who inspires positive morale does so best by knowing what each and every team member values. The manager then regularly does something with and for each employee that embodies that employee’s values.

By Jim Hornickel, Co-Founder and Master Trainer, Bold New Directions

Morale! The individual and collective attitudinal fuel that drives all actions and inactions and the results that follow. It includes the emotions, attitude, satisfaction, and overall outlook of employees. Low morale equates to lower productivity. And reduced productivity drives down profitably or sustainability. But, of course, the opposite follows the same dynamics: Higher morale fuels greater productivity, and if that is managed well, profitability or sustainability increases.

Let’s look at the variety of organizational components (interviewing/hiring, individual, team, and manager) that are factors influencing which direction you and your organization choose. 

Interviewing/Hiring

Morale starts here with interviewing/hiring. No matter who does the actual interviewing—whether HR, the interviewee’s potential manager, panel interviews made up of various influential team members, or sequential interviews (those same influential team members meeting with the candidate one-on-one in an arranged sequence)—interviews are the time and place to be thinking about everyone’s morale.

Unfortunately, many organizations still limit interviews to assessing if a candidate has the skills to do the technicalities of any job. Skills are, of course, essential. But morale is the human, non-technical factor. Interviewers need to know the current human-factor makeup of the existing team into which the interviewee will need to blend. What values (personal and organizational) are held together by the current team? How many of the four behavior styles are working now and how do they purposefully blend? What degrees of ego and best self are being exhibited? Is the culture inclusive or exclusive? What degree of respect or disrespect is present? Do you want the candidate to blend in because the existing culture is already operating at high morale or do you want a strong, positive-minded new employee who will raise the morale of the team in place? All are worth investigating as part of the hiring process.

Regarding references, while large organizations generally only give out basic information about a past employee, there are many tens of thousands of smaller businesses that are not as strict. You can ask these less formal organizations questions about all of the above factors in their former team member.

Individual

Let’s assume you are doing a magnificent job of interviewing and hiring. You hire individuals who live with more positivity and optimism than negativity and pessimism. “Blame” is not a word they are familiar with. “Can do” is their creed.

It is still up to every individual to take responsibility for his or her own attitudes and behaviors; to be morale-effecters. While support from the team and managers helps, high-morale individuals have high Emotional Intelligence (EQ). They excel in ever-deepening how they live in the four basic quadrants of EQ (self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management). Individuals who are “self-aware” are worth their weight in gold. They know everything starts here, particularly their own happiness (morale). They monitor their stream of thoughts, feelings, corresponding body sensations, images, intuitions, beliefs, attitudes, and more. Why do they do this mindfully? To “self-manage.” And they know to not do this at the expense of others (i.e., lowering their teammates’ morale). Highly self-responsible individuals then turn their attention from themselves to others in their field of influence. They use the EQ quadrant of “social awareness.” They know they don’t work in a vacuum. There are influential intra-dynamics. Highly emotionally intelligent members ask themselves, “How am I impacting others?” by taking in the clues from the professionals around them. They then consciously use that information to “manage relationships,” the last of the EQ quadrants. One for all and all for one. These are your “shining stars.”

Team

While teams are, of course, composed of individuals, they do take on a life of their own. The collection of individual personalities, behaviors, preferences, values, intentions, ethnicities, life experiences, and more all shape the collective team personality. Great teams take responsibility for the collective. High-functioning teams care for each other in ways that are supportive to everyone’s advantage.

But most team members are not group dynamics experts. Training comes into play. Teambuilding skills are needed. Empowering each other to act as a unified entity supporting the organization’s mission, vision, and values does not just come about “naturally.” Training enriches their capacity to enact, persevere, and succeed. Teams that take on responsibility for being influencers (instead of dumping everything onto the manager’s back) simply have more success, and success adds positively to morale. But they need to know how to communicate with each other for the higher good (higher morale).

High-functioning teams also share the stepping-up for continuous courageous actions. Courage takes development. Whether the manager is a courage-mentor or the organization brings in a coach to champion the professionals toward positive acts of bravery, when a team stops complaining about or blaming others (managers above them, departments they have to interact with, even customers they don’t work well with, and more), and takes ownership of their needs, transformation happens. As transformational trainer T. Harv Eker says, blamers and complainers are crap magnets. They take others’ morale down with them.

Manager

As usual, the “manager” has a critical role in influencing the interview process, supporting individuals they manage/supervise/mentor/coach/lead, and in cultivating team cohesiveness and positive morale. A manager can make or break morale. Studies say 84 percent of people don’t want to go in to work on Monday mornings. Managers can be a negative influencer for reduced motivation (morale) to start another workweek. But thankfully, they also can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

This still comes back to interviewing; in this case, of the current managers. How many professionals do what they do well and their organization assumes that will make them great manager-leaders? Communicating with, relating to, and motivating humans is an entire set of skills unto itself. Many newly promoted managers are thrown to the wolves; they learn on the job. What a setup for failure.

New managers need to be trained on people skills and the many processes needed to take care of all the aspects of managing. But while training introduces needed “information” (such as motivating, evaluating, delegating, developmental coaching, corrective coaching, etc.), training’s best friend is coaching—deepening that knowledge and forwarding the action. Training and coaching also go hand-in-hand for people skills. One cannot learn things such as Emotional Intelligence and being in the nuances of communication and relationships from reading books. So training introduces the theoretical, whereas coaching can experientially transform a manager’s ability to interact with more effective and uplifting results.

Managers also must have great versatility when it comes to overseeing numbers of complex professionals—individualized, situational leadership. An effective tool for navigating the variety of team members is a four-quadrant behavior styles model (there are many). There is great value in combining the attitude and practices of the Platinum Rule (meet people where they are) and learning the many clues that indicate how each team member goes about processing information, responding to various kinds of situations, and such. When people feel more related-to, they are generally happier.

Lastly, uplifting managers regularly “catch their people doing something right.” Too many managers focus on “problems” from a negative perspective and spend an unbalanced amount of time just attending to those problems—putting out fires, if you will. Team members do best when they are praised, acknowledged, and appreciated (deservedly) in enough quantity to make them feel valued and respected. And that, of course, yields higher morale.

Manager-leader specialist Jim Hornickel is the cofounder and master trainer at Bold New Directions. Along with a B.A. in Management, Hornickel’s professional experience includes 25 years as a manager-leader in several industries; life, leadership, and relationship coaching; and authoring books “Negotiating Success” and “Managing from the Inside Out (16 Insights for Building Positive Relationships with Staff).” For more information,

The Talent Ring: Choose—Grow—Inspire

When you view the choosing, growing, and inspiring of talent as a game without a finish line, meant to be repeated over and over again, you begin to develop a culture that will define your company brand well into the future.

By Brent O’Bryan

In 2021, we will see yet another chapter in the Lord of the Rings adventure when Amazon Prime releases a new mini-series. The first of the books, The Hobbit, was published nearly a century ago, yet interest in the fictional land of Middle Earth continues to endure. Foundational to the narratives are the characters, or, for our purposes, the talent. In my industry—physical and systems security—and likely also in your industry, talent is foundational. Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great,” emphasized this point when he said, “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

In the stories by J.R.R Tolkien, a ring is a central element, signifying great and mysterious powers (mostly evil). In the talent journey, there is, much like a ring, a continual process or flow. Therefore, it is worth taking a few minutes to explore how we choose, grow, and inspire talent in what can be described as an infinite talent ring (only this one is for good, not evil).

The professional security sector is growing exponentially and the need for security industry talent is vital. The Freedonia Group, an international business research team, reports that global security service revenues are forecast to rise 3.6 percent per year to $263 billion in 2024. How can we keep the flourishing security workforce ready and able to take on the daily challenges they face in divergent sectors across multiple industries in many different countries? The answers in my industry are likely no different than in your own. Choosing, growing, and inspiring talent are the framework of any vibrant organization.

Choose

“The world is changed.” —Galadriel

The heart and soul of the security industry are the nation’s security professionals. These include officers, supervisors, technicians, managers, and executives. They all assume leadership roles—sometimes with lifesaving ramifications—at facilities across the world. Security professionals act as the first line of defense against civil unrest, violence, and terrorist attacks, while also adding to the customer or visitor experience through concierge-like activities. Due to the aforementioned industry growth, choosing new employees at every level is arguably the most important step in our talent ring.

Galadriel rightly observed Middle Earth as “changed,” and so, too, has our world. While the pandemic has created many job losses in various sectors, the security industry has been onboarding tens of thousands of people to their ranks. This has required organizations to pivot in both strategy and tactics. While some geographic markets are hosting in-person career days at their regional offices, hiring events also have included socially distant protocols such as “drive-through” career days, with hiring managers meeting up with prospects as they drive up to the parking lot.

In addition, while gaining some steam pre-pandemic, technology enhancements in the hiring and onboarding process rocketed to the forefront of the strategy for many organizations. Examples of tools that have been supercharged over the last 12 to 18 months include automated applicant contact and initial screening, video interviewing, and artificial intelligence-enabled new hire surveys.

Choosing talent also includes how to select the best talent through legal and effective means. This requires training of anyone in a hiring role. Teaching leaders to choose wisely requires clarity in five areas:

Define what “top talent” is for each position: Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame baseball player and coach, once quipped that “if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” So, too, with your choice of talent. If you have not made clear what qualities, experiences, traits, and abilities define excellence in a role, you will end up with something other than excellence.

Clarify who is responsible for choosing: Back to Jim Collins for a moment. In the aforementioned book, “Good to Great,” he makes clear that the leader is responsible for who gets on their “bus” (team). If you want a manager to own the results, let that person own decisions related to who goes with them on the journey.
Remind leaders why choosing talent is so important: When asked, most leaders of people are quickly able to recall a hiring mistake. When asked to reflect upon the negative impact of that poor hiring decision, leaders recognize the value in avoiding a similar situation. Conversely, when asked to recall the benefits of the selection of a top talent employee, leaders are quickly reminded of the desire to replicate the situation.
Explore where leaders find the best talent: The best way to start this discussion is to ask the leader where and how they found the most recent top talent. Often, that talent was developed internally or the person came from a trusted source. On this point, remind leaders to embrace the value of a diverse pool of candidates for selection.
Train leaders on how to choose talent: Most leaders believe employee selection to be a strength, yet often history and results tell a different story. Leaders need training on how to select top talent legally and effectively. According to Gallup research, 80 percent of turnover is the result of poor hiring decisions. Training might include the basics of employment law, properly managing an interview, and effective interview questions.

Grow

“There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself.” —Gandalf

The security services industry has advanced greatly, thanks to the recognition that training and leadership are crucial to executing often complex missions at diverse locations throughout the world. Security professionals are a vital part of a facility or community’s safety and security—working in conjunction with local law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency medical responders. Therefore, growth in the security sector demands that employees are continuously prepared to occupy the next rung on the leadership ladder.

At large companies, we may be challenged with ensuring that all employees are fully supported with the optimal learning tools and guidance required to be successful in their current roles while also preparing them for future development and growth. Our learning culture has developed within the framework of leadership support; the creation of programs aligned to support client objectives; and the deployment of learning technology designed to make learning opportunities flexible and accessible to all.

HR and Training professionals often speak of potential. “This person has high potential.” “That person does not.” The truth is, everyone has potential. Now, not everyone has aspiration for more. And that is OK. What is not OK, is when organizations, or better, leaders, do not look for and encourage employees to adopt the proper development mindset. Identifying what development employees should be leaning in to provides guidance for both the leader and the employee.

As a learning organization, we lean in to three specific areas of development:

Safety Mindset: More than anything, we want to help our employees work and live safely. Our business may be security, but security does not happen without first developing a safety mindset. We also know that training impacts Workers’ Compensation claims costs. So, if every employee develops a keen awareness of safety within their environment, we will provide a better service, have healthier employees, and save on unnecessary expenditures. Good for the client. Good for the employee. Good for the business.
Service Mindset: The #1 concern from raving fan customers is often the same as the #1 complaint for unsatisfied customers: employee performance. In the service industry, every moment matters and every interaction leads to a reaction—positive or negative. By instilling a service-first mindset in all employees at all levels, we not only serve customers well, we also serve each other well.
Growth Mindset: Much has been said about Dr. Carol Dweck’s research into the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Much like Emotional Intelligence, growth mindset can be developed. When Gandalf speaks of Bilbo, he, the leader, sees potential, or growth. Bilbo begins the journey in a fixed mindset, but gradually shifts to a growth mindset. How? His leader challenged him along the way, not letting him sink but also not pulling him out the moment Bilbo thought he might drown. Gandalf used a healthy mix of the big three that most learning experts know well: training, coaching, and experiences. When employees shift to a growth mindset, they are more likely to stay with the organization, adding increasingly more value to customers, employees, and co-workers.

Inspire

“The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.” —Faramir

When leaders are positioned to inspire the workforce, the benefits will be seen by the employees, the organization, and the customer base. Inspiration leads to engagement, which leads to retention (employee and client), which drives value to every stakeholder. So how does an organization go about inspiring the workforce? A clear employee-focused vision of career planning combined with consistent recognition are two key levers.

Employees want to see the possibilities when they are part of an organization. Career planning is best designed as a shared responsibility between employee and organization. However, the organization should take the lead on creating the vision. A great place to start is by weaving the vision into your employee value proposition during the recruiting process. Then, develop more clarity during the onboarding of each new employee. Next, during the talent management lifecycle within your organization, build in components of this vision to include employee feedback, supervisor feedback, and specific shared development plans to achieve the vision.

The second lever to inspiration, recognition, is the fuel that helps drive the vision. In The Two Towers, the second in the LOTR trilogy, there is a dialogue with a fair amount of tension. One of the characters of noble lineage, Faramir, is recognized for his actions by Samwise Gamgee, faithful friend to Frodo Baggins. Upon receiving the lavish praise, Faramir responds to Samwise, “The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

Several lessons from the interaction between these two characters captured my attention:

Leaders are praiseworthy: In a position of authority (by title or, in the case of Samwise, by their actions), they know that the true value of the recognition they give derives only from the strength of their own character.

Leaders are timely: In making their gratitude clear when they experience an act worthy of recognition, they do not delay.
Leaders are sincere: While the culture has wrongly taught that recognition must equal some extrinsic reward, they know that the emotional stimulus of a heartfelt word of praise has a much longer shelf-life.
Leaders are humble: Any response to praise is marked by genuine humility.

Sustained Success

“Either go through or give up your quest. There are no safe paths.” —Gandalf

New journeys and adventures are just around every Misty Mountain. The steps in the “Talent Ring” are not easy. However, the organization with the best talent will have the most sustained success in what Simon Sinek wisely refers to as “The Infinite Game.” When you view the choosing, growing, and inspiring of talent as a game without a finish line, meant to be repeated over and over again, you begin to develop a culture that will define your company brand well into the future.

Training Magazine (2021). The Talent Ring: Choose-Grow-Inspire. Retrieved from The Talent Ring: Choose—Grow—Inspire (trainingmag.com).

Training Takeaways from a Negative Online Review

By Margery Weinstein

Companies today have more to worry about than angry customers in stores demanding their money back, and phone banks flooded with outraged messages. Now, thanks to the power of online reviews, one negative experience can blow up and be sent to thousands, or even millions, of current and potential customers as quickly as it takes to click “post.”

But the good news is there are rich training opportunities in these negative reviews.

I found myself in the position of negative online reviewer a few weeks ago. I visited my favorite jeans store in New York City, and was disappointed. The store was empty except for two retail associates, and no one said, “Hello,” or came to greet me. So I wandered in on my own and found one of the retail associates with clipboard in hand doing what looked like an assessment of inventory on the shelves. She did not look up as I stood before her. “Excuse me,” I said.

“Yes?” she said, as though I was bothering her.

Since she was doing inventory, I thought it likely she was a manager, so this was an especially surprising unfriendly reception. She brusquely answered my question, handing me off to the other sales associate, who was much friendlier, though not a good communicator.

I noticed that the jeans she pulled from the shelf looked much different from the jeans I had worn out and wanted to replace. Though the same size, the jeans she showed me looked smaller and stiffer. The sales associate began explaining the relationship between the way a pair of jeans fit and the jean’s wash. I could have sworn she said the wash and the color of a pair of jeans were not the same thing, and that the wash of the jeans also could affect how the jeans fit. I came away confused. I took the jeans home, didn’t like the way they fit, so I returned to the store, getting who I think was the same sales associate explaining to me yet again the relationship between wash and fit—this time contradicting what she told me earlier. So the wash of the jeans does or does not affect fit? I finally settled on a pair that looked as similar as possible to the jeans I had worn out (which I brought with me to the store). Fortunately, this second attempt at a jeans purchase was successful. The unfriendly reception and poor communication skills were eye opening.

The first item on the training to-do list for this store is simple: “Mastering the Art of the Warm Welcome.” I put that in initial caps because I feel like it could be a training module or a session at a conference for retail associates. Does your company have a module like that for front-line employees? It seems like common sense if you’re working in a customer-facing job, but maybe it isn’t. Customer-facing employees apparently need to be trained to greet with a smile and friendly tone every customer who walks through the door. If there are so many customers that each cannot be greeted individually, then employees should be trained to circulate, asking if anyone needs help. The worst thing to do—the one takeaway if nothing else is learned—is to never make the customer who approaches you for help, because you didn’t approach them, feel like they’re bothering you. It’s hard to gauge your tone sometimes, so use role-play exercises that are recorded as videos, which learners can review to see how they come across (rather than how they think they come across).

Now, what to do about the sales associate who may understand the fit and sizing of the product, but is unable to effectively communicate that knowledge? Testing employees’ product knowledge is a good start. You want to make sure they first thoroughly understand your products. Then comes the trickier training step: learning how to communicate and use that knowledge to provide superior service. Role-play exercises work in this case, too. The exercises, though, should be done using people from your company, or outside volunteers, who know little to nothing about the products the employee is practicing explaining and selling. Only when employees have to explain and sell the product do you see how effective the training really was. Can they apply the knowledge they mastered to do what you ultimately most need them to do—sell your product while creating a positive experience for the customer?

I found many resources online providing guidance in responding to online reviews, but I didn’t find any resources to guide trainers in using negative reviews as fodder for training. The negative experiences of your customers can be hard to hear and accept—but the power of the lessons those experiences create is an invaluable training tool.

Do your trainers use negative online reviews about your company to address employee weaknesses and to set goals for providing customers with an experience that will exceed their expectations?

Training Magazine (2021).  Training Takeaways from a Negative Online Review. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/training-takeaways-from-a-negative-online-review/.   

Confidence Is All

By Graham Binks

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

—Mark Twain

Being comfortable with uncertainty does not come naturally to most of us. If you’re one of the few, take note that the majority of your colleagues will probably need some convincing.

Most take comfort in predictability, yet in the business world we’re expected to guess the future—what will our customers value in five years? What might our competitors do to leapfrog the market? Where are the economic, political, and technological trends headed? We don’t have any choice but to deal in uncertainty. Success follows when we get it right.

Fortunately, we can be confident in some predictions. For the rest, we have to keep doors open to opportunity, get good at hedging, and do what we can to increase our odds.

We gain confidence through achievement, and the very best way to adapt your business to change is to build a team with confidence. Confidence that they will make the best choices with the information available to them—confidence that they can pivot when a better path is revealed.

Building Confident Teams

Teambuilding has become associated with social events, framed as an opportunity to hang with your colleagues outside of work. For instance, bowling night or tough mudding. Sometimes such events create genuine camaraderie, but more often they feel forced.

But take on a shared challenge together and win—that’s teambuilding. There is no better way to build camaraderie than overcoming a difficult challenge together. It’s the reason war veterans get together decades after the battle and sports teams play together for longer than their bodies would like.

We’re going to look at the lifecycle of a winning team. But before that, I’d like you to set the stage by taking the Vote of Confidence Test. Grab a pen and paper…

Your Innovation Squad

I don’t hold with talk of “dream teams.” I’ve seen too many embryonic teams roll their eyes at the notion they could sign Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky. Much better to build a team with humility and confidence. A team with self-esteem.

Maybe another sporting analogy will help us think about this stuff. Any good (or great) sports team has clear attributes:

Balance: Every soccer team has 11 specialists. They all know how to kick a ball with at least (mostly) one foot. But stopping, creating plays, and finishing are specialties that dictate each player’s role in defense, midfield, and attack. If you put the top 11 all-time goal scorers on the same team, they’d lose every game.
Experience and youth: Young players run faster; experienced players know where to run. Every great squad has the right blend.
Coaching: The best coaches are rarely great players themselves, but they know how to get the best out of the team they have. They do that by guiding them on the path to confidence.
Visibility: When we watch a match, we see the constituent parts, the specialist roles, and where teams are weak and strong. Visibility makes it easier to improve.

The process of soccer is, essentially, to stop the other team from scoring, move the ball within range of the goal, and score more times than your opponents. The better the team works, the more games they win, and the more confident they become.

Consider, then, the process of change. We find a need to focus on, design a solution that addresses the priority concerns, build it, prove that it works, and launch. That’s how we put the ball in the net.

Simple stuff, right? But here’s the thing. It’s all too easy to focus on the inputs and outputs—the needs and the launch—and forget the part in the middle—the design, the learning, and proving that it works. Yet that’s where the quality is determined. Can you get this right the first time, or do you have to reset the project? Will your roadmap deliver additional value, or will you be playing catch-up to make good on the failings of your first attempt?

Returning to our soccer analogy: Think of the team that keeps possession of the ball—reducing the other team’s chances of scoring—but never gets close enough to put the ball in the net. Best outcome is a snore draw. Often, one late slip can cost the game.

Balancing Experience

Every strong team has the right blend of experience and learning. That is to say, if you’re charging your team with achieving something beyond any of their collective experiences, that’s a great pep talk but destined for disappointment. You need the right level of “been there, done that” on your team.

Let’s dispel a myth here—no initiative is totally original. Unless you’re planning to land humans on Mars, somebody somewhere has done something like this before. The harder it is to find those people, the more you need them if you’re to manage your risk. If you’re bringing a novel new product to market, find someone who’s brought a novel new product to market before—anywhere. If you’re creating something with high technical risk (meaning you’ve no idea if the project is even possible) find someone who’s worked in basic research before.

Ideally, your experienced associates will be great teachers—excited to share of their expertise and see your team develop.

If you cannot find this experience within your organization, you have three options:

Seek partners to de-risk your current assignment and coach your team to become self-sufficient in these areas.
Hire the skills full time—if you’re going to need the core competence.
Roll the dice and load up on trial and error.

For what it’s worth, I have never seen option three lead to universal happiness.

A Coaching Culture

Take the example of a change management company. Like all growing consulting businesses, they face the challenge of cycling new blood through the ranks. Consultants move on, especially the best ones—fact of life. To build a great consulting organization, you have to hire well, ramp new folks up as quickly and effectively as you can and maintain the highest quality for the client. Our change management company’s creative approach to the challenge is to assign a coach to every new hire. Someone who will not only show them where the washrooms are but also guide their onboarding and act as counsel for any client challenge.

It appears that everyone and their dog is a coach today. Shingles have been hung and advice dispensed. Results are mixed, and the reputation of coaching has taken a hit.

Fact is, coaching is a great way to strengthen the skills of teams and individuals. A skilled coach imparts expertise through asking, not telling.

The art of coaching is underestimated. And under-appreciated.

You have all kinds of experts in your organization. Odds are, they learned most of what they know through the school of hard knocks over a long period of time.

But I’ll put $5 on your having only one real expert in some of the critical areas of your business. One woman who knows that part of the code. One guy who remembers why that thing works the way it does. If that rings true, you’re running a one-bus business.

Obviously, we all hope these folks stay healthy and don’t accept a better offer from some other company. But even then, having single-expert bottlenecks in your business won’t cut it down the line when your competition speeds up.

Sure, experts sometimes hoard the information. Much more likely, they’ve under-shared because they were never granted the time to share their knowledge.

Teams are dynamic. Everything changes. Projects come and go. Teams form, make their marks, and disband.

You may start by building one great team, but it’s not enough to end there. A successful change initiative will create a buzz. The team members will be looked up to like champions. Others will want to sign up for the next challenge.

Your pioneer teams can go forth and multiply. Each can carry their early lessons into other initiatives and other teams. It pays to invest in their coaching skills—it’s the fastest way to turn a championship team into a squad.

How much better would your business tick if your experts and pioneers were also great coaches? Propagating their expertise to anyone who will listen. Transitioning others in to fill their shoes. Taking on bigger and better challenges.

Excerpt from “Trusting Technology: Mastering Technology for Non-Tech Leaders” by Graham Binks (Post Hill press, 2019).

Graham Binks is an expert in helping businesses get the best out of their technology investments. Over the course of more than 500 career projects conducted in a wide range of industries, he has helped countless small, medium, and large organizations to quickly achieve their technology goals under budget and with low risk. Binks is the CEO of primeFusion Inc and has more than 30 years of technology leadership experience in Europe, North America, and Asia with clients including Nike, Procter & Gamble, Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Eurotunnel. He is the author of “Trusting Technology: Mastering Technology for Non-Tech Leaders.”

Training Magazine (2020). Confidence Is All. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/confidence-all/.

Resolving Pandemic Paradoxes

Rethinking learning for a post-COVID-19 world.

ByTony O’Driscoll, Professor, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

The COVID-19 disruption we are all enduring represents a pivotal moment in history where humanity’s future trajectory is being revectored. The decisions we make and the actions we take during this perplexing pandemic period are laying down the tracks upon which civilization will travel for decades to come.

Disruptions this big are rife with paradox. They happen slowly, then suddenly. They create a point of “punctuated equilibrium,” where long periods of stability are unexpectedly upended by seismic shocks. Their impact often is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. They create that eerie “liminal space” that exists between “what was” and “what’s next.” They are hard to figure out because they seem to contradict common sense and defy conventional wisdom.

Massive disruptions such as COVID-19 are particularly pernicious because they contain two different disruptive form factors. The first is accelerative, where many of the trends we have been observing are pulled forward faster. The second is paradigmatic, where the perturbations and reverberations of the disruption open up a portal to a future that is entirely different from what we might have previously imagined.

Figuring It Out

In times of disruption, human beings naturally gravitate toward familiarity. We tend to go with what we know. As a result, we often lean into what has worked in the past to solve a problem we encounter in the present. While this approach might prove useful in addressing the accelerative form of disruption, it is virtually useless in addressing the paradigmatic one.

In today’s increasingly paradoxical world, certainty is hard to come by. Each day surfaces new sets of questions to which we have no clear answers. In the post-COVID-19 era, we are no longer living in a world where all we have to do is “find out” the answer to established questions. Instead, we find ourselves having to “figure out” answers to previously unencountered ones.

To traverse the COVID-19 liminal space—moving from a pre-pandemic “find-it-out” world to a post-pandemic “figure-it-out” one—our learning approach must shift from productive to generative. Productive learning focuses on driving individual human conformity around best practices for known and predictable situations. Generative learning focuses on galvanizing collective human creativity around next practices for unknown and unpredictable situations.

We must tackle COVID-19’s paradigmatic disruptive form factor by curating generative learning contexts where people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives come together to figure out progression paths toward a better shared future.

A Global Step-Change in Learning

The primary paradox we face today is that we need a global step-change in learning at precisely the moment in time when we must shift from productive learning to generative learning. To successfully deliver on the worldwide upgrade in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to save both lives and livelihoods due to COVID-19, we must radically shift our thinking about learning itself. More specifically, we must:

Think “Paradigmatic Disruption” over “Accelerative Disruption”
Think “Figure It Out” over “Find It Out”
Think “Problem/Need” over “Learning/Objective”
Think “Context Curation” over “Content Creation”
Think “Generative Co-Creativity” over “Productive Conformity”
Think “Learning to Innovate” over “Teaching to Imitate”
Think “Problem-Solving Networks” over “Subject Matter Experts”
Think “Learning While Doing” over “Learning Before Doing”

Einstein famously quipped that “the significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” By shifting our thinking from productive to generative learning, we can take the critical first step in figuring out the pernicious pandemic paradoxes the COVID-19 disruption has foisted upon us.

As Learning professionals, it is incumbent upon us to make sure this shift happens!

Tony O’Driscoll is a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a research fellow at Duke Corporate Education. He studies how organizations build the leadership system capabilities required to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Training Magazine (2020). Resolving Pandemic Paradoxes. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/resolving-pandemic-paradoxes/ .

The Value of Self-Confident Employees

By Margery Weinstein

Last week, a friend shared with me that a new position had opened at her company, and though she might like the job, she wasn’t going to apply because she assumed she wasn’t qualified. I tried to encourage her to apply anyway, but she demurred.

I’ve been “unqualified” for most of my jobs, and that goes for most of us in trade journalism, because we were trained as journalists and editors, rather than as practitioners of the fields we are writing about. But we take the jobs anyway because we’re confident we can learn on the job.

Editors writing about trades they never were trained in themselves need to be confident they can learn after they take the job. What if all of your employees had that same confidence? When a job isn’t life-and-death, it’s OK that the majority—or at least a significant amount—of the learning occurs after the job has been taken, right?

I saw an article online, “7 Ways to Build Your Employees’ Self-Confidence,” by Karin Hurt, which makes me think we all should be thinking about how to build employee self-confidence. Internal promotion is a great way to incentivize employees to stay long term at your company, and it can be more efficient than hiring from the outside. While employees moving into new roles nearly always require additional training, and the aforementioned on-the-job learning, candidates who are already employees can be assimilated to the job faster. They are already a part of your company’s culture, understand your company’s mission, have a network of colleagues inside the company, and a track record of being a person people like to work with. Outside candidates can have a track record, via references, of being a good person to work with, but you typically don’t know those references the way you know the references of an internal candidate.

The goal of increasing internal promotions—which also helps with succession planning—won’t work, though, if employees don’t have the confidence to push themselves forward when new positions open. Hurt writes that there are easy ways you can train managers to build the self-confidence of employees. These tips, in some cases, are just good manners and ethics, such as treating employees with respect. She says you can do that by taking the time to connect with them one-on-one, and to listen to their perspective. It builds self-confidence when you see that your manager, and maybe even your manager’s manager, thinks you’re smart and worthwhile to listen to. I know from personal experience how it feels when your e-mails to your work group, including your boss and boss’ boss, go ignored, while e-mails from others receive replies. Be sure your managers understand that even entry-level employees should get responses to e-mails expressing opinions and offering ideas.

When I was in college, my professor in a political theory class asked me to help a Russian exchange student, and I remember how it made me feel about myself. I was insecure and confused about why he had asked me, but now when I look back on it, I’m proud, and can see it helped me feel better about my intelligence and ability to be of service. I also was able to interact with the class material more powerfully by trying to explain it to a person outside of our culture. If you have a smart entry- or mid-level employee who has proven him or herself, you could do the same—have him or her mentor a new employee. The new employee probably will be grateful for the help, and the employee you tap to help will strengthen his or her own skills in the process. Do you have a mentoring program that allows proven entry- and mid-level employees to mentor others? Or are mentors only senior-level executives?

An idea Hurt doesn’t touch on that I would recommend is encouraging managers to bring those working under them into meetings to present their own ideas. For years, the manager I have now would take my ideas and present them on my behalf in meetings. I speculated that he did this because he didn’t want to give me a platform because he knew that if I could present the ideas myself, there was a greater chance the ideas would find a receptive audience. In addition to possibly limiting the power of the ideas, managers who prefer to speak on behalf of their employees, rather than invite the employees into the meetings themselves, also miss an opportunity to build their employees’ presentation skills and confidence. You can help create more confident employees earlier in their careers by having a culture that welcomes input from entry- and mid-level employees in executive meetings.

What is the Learning professional’s role in helping to create more confident employees who are more likely to push themselves forward when new opportunities arise at your company?

Training Magazine (2020). The Value of Self-Confident Employees. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/value-self-confident-employees/.

Cultivating the Best Culture and Training for It

The best cultures have foundational elements that enhance connection. The challenge is helping people understand this and develop behaviors that boost connection.

By Michael Lee Stallard, Cofounder and President, Connection Culture Group

“Culture training” sounds like something you might hear in conjunction with “mind control” or “brainwashing,” both of which I abhor. Nevertheless, experiences in my life made it clear that culture—by which I mean the social environment one lives and works in—has a profound effect on our health, happiness, and productivity. Left to itself, culture will drift or settle in a bad direction, so we can’t afford to ignore the area of culture in the workplace.

The first clues that culture matters came out of my work life. There were times I felt eager to get up in the morning; the hours flew by while I was immersed in what I was doing; and by the end of the day, I didn’t want to stop working. Then there were other times when I didn’t want to get out of bed; time passed slowly; and by the end of the day, I felt exhausted. It wasn’t that I had changed, so clearly something in the environment, or culture, of the workplace was having that effect on me.

Working on Wall Street, I observed many mergers that looked promising on paper but stumbled in reality because the cultures of the merging companies clashed, sabotaging post-merger performance. This made me wonder: Is there a best culture? In 2002, I decided to leave Wall Street to research and write a book on what it takes to cultivate the best culture.

A Family Crisis and Unexpected Insight

I knew from experience that factors such as being united around and inspired by an organization’s vision, truly valuing people, and giving them a voice mattered to individual and organizational performance. What I didn’t see clearly yet was the specific effect these factors had on people. A crisis in our family brought that into focus.

In late 2002, my wife, Katie, was diagnosed with breast cancer. A year later, she faced a diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer. Her chances of survival at the time were less than 10 percent. The thought of losing my beloved best friend, our 10- and 12-year-old daughters losing their wonderful mother, and Katie not seeing the girls grow up made me feel anxious, stressed, and, at times, depressed, although I did my best to hide my feelings.

I remember dreading our second-opinion consultation at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK). As we approached MSK’s entrance, the doorman locked his eyes on Katie, smiled, and greeted her like a returning friend. Making eye contact with passersby is very unusual in New York City, so this caught me by surprise. Then I surmised he recognized Katie was wearing a wig and he was reaching out to welcome her. The receptionist called everyone “honey,” also very unusual in Manhattan. The security and administrative people we met were friendly and attentive. Our oncologist was upbeat and optimistic. She told Katie she was not a statistic (so don’t look at them) and women do survive this disease. Although I had been expecting MSK would have a culture of death and dying, I experienced a culture of life and living where people were inspired by MSK’s mission to provide “the best cancer care, anywhere” and where they valued one another, their patients, and the caregivers. By the end of the day, I was optimistic that, with this great medical team alongside us, Katie would survive.

Earlier this year, we celebrated Katie’s 15th year of being ovarian cancer free. Connection with our medical team, family, and friends helped get us through a stressful season. (And by the way, the doorman became a personal friend of ours, and he continues to warmly greet Katie each time she walks through the front door.)

Less than a year later, a friend of ours was diagnosed with cancer. I begged her to go to MSK, which she eventually did. Because she had a different type of cancer than Katie’s, she went to a different part of MSK, located in a different building. Her experience was not at all like ours. She said she felt alone and unwelcome. She was angry about it and swore she would never return. This, too, was an important clue.

Is There a “Best” Culture?

These personal experiences, along with the array of research we were reviewing and our own research, crystalized three truths about culture:

1. It’s the social aspects of culture—how we interact with each other—that affect people the most.

2. Cultures that connect people help them thrive; cultures that are disconnecting, and foster loneliness and social isolation, have a negative effect on people.

3. Every organization is made of a variety of subcultures, so the challenge for organizations is to help people, and leaders in particular, develop and maintain subcultures of connection throughout the organization.

A person who works in a culture that is controlling or where people are indifferent to one another will be less engaged than a person who feels like a valued member of the team. While the culture of a particular organization, department, or group will be shaped by the tasks to be done (for example, a medical practice versus a manufacturing plant), the best cultures have foundational elements that enhance connection.

Connection matters; it’s the lens through which culture should be assessed. The challenge we have today is helping people understand this and develop behaviors that boost connection.

The Substance of Culture Training

When my colleagues and I conduct culture training workshops, we spend time on the science of culture, so people understand that connection is more than just a nice idea. Human connection is, as neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman says, a “superpower that makes us smarter, happier, and more productive.” Our research has found that connection is a superpower for organizations, too, because it boosts employee engagement, strategic alignment, quality of decision-making, innovation, and adaptability, which, together, add up to a powerful performance and competitive advantage.

Disconnection, which is anything less than a positive bond of connection, is the norm in workplace cultures today. Two-thirds of people report they don’t feel connected at work. Research from Cigna last year found nearly half of Americans are lonely to the point that it has become a public health crisis. Disconnection most likely will get worse in the years ahead as artificial intelligence goes mainstream and we interact more with machines and less with human beings.

To counteract the trends that are increasing social isolation and loneliness today, including in the workplace, we who are in the training vocation can help people understand that the need for human connection is hardwired into our nervous systems, and we are ill-equipped to cope with stress without the support of meaningful relationships. As I describe in “Connection Culture,” absent meaningful human connection, our bodies go into a state of “stress response,” which makes us feel sickly, lethargic, anxious, and/or depressed. When feeling poorly, we typically turn to addictive substances and behaviors that make us temporarily feel better or numb the pain (e.g., food, alcohol, and drugs, or excessive work, exercise, Internet use, shopping, etc.). Research has found that nearly half of Americans have one or more addictions that have serious negative consequences for their health.

Having reinforced the “why,” we move to the “what” and “how” of developing and maintaining cultures of connection. In training managers, it has to be simple, memorable, and actionable. They are too busy for anything else. Over the last 15 years, we have developed a framework called Vision, Value, and Voice that managers like. We describe it this way: If you communicate an inspiring vision, value people, and give them a voice, they will thrive and so will your team, department, or organization.

We use case studies of a wide variety of inspiring examples of leaders and organizations that have cultivated cultures of connection, including Jim Sinegal leading Costco; Frances Hesselbein leading the Girl Scouts of the USA; Anne Mulcahy leading Xerox; Alan Mulally leading Ford; Chancellor Victor Boschini leading Texas Christian University (TCU); Bono leading rock band U2; Tricia Griffith leading Progressive; Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vern Clark leading the U.S. Navy; and Lin-Manuel Miranda leading the cast and crew of the award-winning Broadway musical, Hamilton.

To get them started on how to be more intentional about cultivating connection in the subcultures they are responsible for, we provide 100 examples of attitudes, uses of language, and behaviors we have seen leaders use to connect people. Then we help managers identify actions they can put into place immediately.

Our industry has much more work to do in training managers to develop cultures of connection. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Because of today’s connection crisis, our work as trainers and coaches has never been more important.

Michael Lee Stallard is a thought leader, keynote speaker, workshop leader, and executive coach. He is cofounder and president of Connection Culture Group, a leadership training and consulting firm based in Greenwich, CT. His clients have included a variety of organizations, including Costco, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NASA, and Turner Construction Company. Stallard is the primary author of “Connection Culture” and “Fired Up or Burned Out.” He can be reached at: mike@connectionculture.com.

Training Magazine (2020). Cultivating the Best Culture and Training for It. Retrieved from https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/cultivating-best-culture-and-training-it/.

Should You Hire More Introverts?

By Margery Weinstein

We’re living in an era of over-sharing, some say. Many feel the need to share what they had for lunch, the angry episode with a co-worker at the morning meeting, and why they aren’t fully satisfied with their cubicle.

The need to constantly share can be a distraction in the workplace, and can create habits that make working independently, and in a slow, deliberative way difficult. Luckily for me, not sharing is relatively easy because I’m an introvert. That means I get psychologically re-charged by spending time alone, rather than from mixing with others. People with introverted personalities long have been considered less than desirable in the workplace, but that may be changing.

Introversion is having a moment. Books such as “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” and columns such as “6 Reasons Introverts Make the Best Employees,” by Chrissa Hardy in the Christian Science Monitor, may be changing perceptions about introverts.

I remember taking a personality assessment years ago for a magazine writing job in which I tried to control the results by pretending to be an extravert in how I answered the questions. I had been led to believe by my father (a fellow introvert) that introverts had bad personalities compared to those who were “outgoing,” so why would they want to hire me if they knew I was an introvert? I didn’t get the job, and wondered afterward if they had figured out I wasn’t being honest in my self-assessment.

I took for granted that the hiring manager wouldn’t value my ability to spend all day on my own working without talking to anyone else, or my ability to be productive and resourceful without the need to collaborate. I assumed that getting classified as an introvert would only conjure images of a person standing alone in a corner at a cocktail party, or a person too socially awkward to converse in a polished way.

In the article, Hardy makes points I always suspected were secret strengths of mine. The first, for instance, “Introverts only deliver information they consider to be of value,” reminds me of my ability to approach meetings with an efficient mindset. Rather than using professionally oriented meetings for what my boss calls “blue sky ideas,” I’d rather talk about how we actually could get things done, and what truly needs to get done right away. I don’t feel the need to flit from meeting to meeting debating points that have no realistic purpose. I’m a creative person (like many introverts), but if I’m going to expend energy on communicating with others, I want it to count.

The next strength on Hardy’s list, “Introverts are sincere,” also speaks to me. I didn’t understand for years that just smiling and saying, “Hello,” was not considered friendly by many—that many people expect you to also try to engage them in a conversation. I’ve tried to amend my ways, and now push myself to also make small talk with people, but the reason I tend to only want to smile and say, “Hello,” is that I don’t want to pretend to have something to communicate when I really don’t, or pretend to like and know a person more than I really do. It’s also taken me a while to understand that just because people engage you in conversation and banter doesn’t mean they like you. As an employer, you can make use of your introverts’ sincerity by knowing they are the staff members who will not lead you to believe they like you (or anyone else) more than they really do.

This may be offensive to some, but I liken people like myself to cats, and extroverts to dogs. As most cat owners know, a cat isn’t going to pretend to like you, even if you offer her food or other rewards. She’s independent minded, self-contained, and either truly likes you or truly doesn’t want to pay attention to anything you do or say—regardless of what’s offered.

Hardy also notes that introverts tend to be unique individuals. I suspect that’s because we’re internally, rather than externally, oriented. That means we tend to come up with original ideas more often than we look to others for reflections of their ideas or approval. My creativity is one of my greatest strengths, and I think a big part of it is my tendency to look within for new, original ideas, rather than listening and watching those around me, so I can parrot information back to them.

“Introverts do not play office politics” is another one of Hardy’s introvert observations that rings true. I’ve learned over the years to compensate for my aversion to phony conversations by going out of my way to be useful to those I need to rely on, but I genuinely don’t enjoy strategizing about who I want to be friends with and support in the office. I tend to be friends with and support those I really like, and those I feel deserve it. I don’t repeat the kind of mantras that become safe at a company (every company has its own catchphrases, such as “building synergies” and “improving speed to market”). I think that makes me a more valuable employee because I can be honest in my assessment of new ideas and the plans of others. I’m not so reckless that I would tell the CEO in an undiplomatic way that his idea stinks, but I might find ways to gently let him in on some of the potential down sides of his plans.

The dependability of introverts, which Hardy points out, is another of our assets to a company. We have chosen our friends, and those we speak to, carefully, so we have less to distract us, and when we make commitments to those select few, we stick to them. Unlike many extroverts, we haven’t spread ourselves too thin. I have no problem saying, “No,” and I suspect other introverts are similar. I’m less dependent on others than extroverts, so I care less about pleasing others. That means there’s less reason for me to say I’m going to do something I won’t.

Last, Hardy says, “Introverts are independent.” That makes sense since we re-charge by being alone. If you don’t need others for your satisfaction, then you’re freer to work long hours without interaction, and you’re freer to go it alone on an idea you feel passionate about, or just have a hunch will be your company’s next best-selling product.

How can trainers teach managers about the value and use of all different personality types? Do you think your managers are biased toward hiring extraverts? How can your company best make use of the spirit of the introvert?

HOW TO BECOME AN EXTRAORDINARY EMPLOYEE

An exemplary employee not only exhibits knowledge and skills, but possesses exemplary attitude and habits.

By Kennith Fletcher, Professional Writer, Essay4Students

The truth is the secret to becoming an extraordinary employee is not a secret. In fact, there are no secret formulas to use. If there is anything you need to learn from reading this, it’s using your common sense that makes the difference. Unfortunately, it’s not as common as one would think.

There are employees who stand out and there are those who stand out for the wrong reason. Obviously, you want to be remembered as the good one. But being good is not our objective here. You want to be extraordinary.

All of my employers agree that no one is indispensable. They are correct. If you’re not worth anything to the company, why even bother to keep you? There is no such thing as security of tenure, especially if your performance is mediocre.

The Pareto Principle or the 80-20 principle suggests that 80 percent of the outputs are generated by only 20 percent of the workforce. Now, are you among the 20 percent? If not, you need to do something fast. Here are some of the secret steps that are actually not so secret.

1. DO YOUR JOB

Does this sound straightforward enough? This is a fundamental step in becoming extraordinary and getting higher pay. More than just being busy (or looking busy—there’s an art to this), you need to be productive. You were hired to do something, so go to work and accomplish it.