That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

This is a short post with a big impact.

After spending two weeks scoring Chief Learning Officer Learning Elite submissions it's imperative that I inform you that the word blended does not mean what you think it means.

It's not just the Learning Elite submissions either, I have run into this confusion many times when talking to training and development professionals. For some reason, T&D professionals believe that if you offer a course in the classroom, and via e-learning, and via a virtual platform (or various other delivery methodologies) you are offering “blended learning.”

WRONG

What you have is a menu. 

Here is an easy way to remember what blended is vs. what a menu of options is: Do you like your potatoes baked, mashed, or French-fried? All three are potatoes. You could eat all three “potato delivery methods” at the same meal, but you’d still be consuming the same fundamental thing.

The same holds true for training courses. Three different iterations of the same class are still one course. 

What a blended course looks like is offering different portions of one course in different formats which are utilized to best achieve maximum learning.

For instance, if you were teaching how to use graphic design software, you might have the learners first review a glossary of terms such as font, pixel, saturation, etc. You would not need to waste valuable classroom time teaching them terms and their definition. They could have a handy resource to do so prior to coming to the class, as well as to use throughout the class as a reference tool. The next portion of the blend would be to have students come together in the classroom, to use the software hands-on. The next portion of the blend might be to give each learner an assignment to complete, asynchronously (on their own time, not with others) over the next two days and to bring it back for review and critique. During those two days, you might offer “office hours” so that learners could contact you with any challenges they were experiencing during the independent assignment.

That is a blended learning experience. It utilizes four different training methodologies which, in total, create the entire course. 

1. Independent study (reviewing terminology)

2. Classroom

3. Independent activity (practice over two days)

4. 1:1 coaching 

You don't need to take valuable classroom time teaching people terminology nor do you need to keep the group together for them to complete an independent assignment. So a blended course is divided into chunks, each of which uses a different teaching or learning methodology, to best achieve the learning outcome.

The Difference Between Emotional Intelligence and Self-Management

Wow, wow, wow.

In the last month, my head is just spinning from all of the poor decisions accomplished, trusted, leaders in business have been making.  It’s a great time to explain the difference between emotional intelligence and self-management.

LOADS of companies espouse emotional intelligence (EI) as an important leadership quality, but you can plainly see by the illustration that EI alone does not ensure good decision making?  EI has to be coupled with self-management.

EI is not only understanding what “makes you tick” and working to mitigate behaviors that might be offensive or get you into trouble (such as a quick temper) it also requires that you recognize the emotional and mental state of others and act appropriately in social situations. EI is a component of self-management.

Self-management requires self-restraint, thoughtful responses (sometimes no response), and “decorum” which is a word my mother used all the time and which I never hear anymore.

We can use road rage as an example of EI vs. self-management. See if you can label each of the options below, correctly.

Recently, in the area where I live, a young woman was stopped in her car at a stoplight. When the light turned green she didn’t take off quickly enough for the man in the pickup truck behind her. He could have:

A.     Waited patiently – really how much longer could she sit there unaware?

B.     Honked quickly – a polite “yoohoo” to pay attention

C.      Laid on his horn – impolitely showing his displeasure at how she was impacting him

D.     Put his bumper up against hers and pushed her down the roadway for .25 of a mile

Which did you label EI? (Answer: B)

Which did you label EI PLUS self-management? (Answer: A)

Which option was a big FAIL? (Answer: D)

 In case you’re wondering, the pickup truck driver chose D.  He’s now charged with attempted murder as well as various vehicular violations.

The thing I have observed with poor self-management is that the ramifications are huge. When you observe someone with poor EI you might think s/he is “uncouth.” It’s the kind of person to whom you say, “Read the room.”  But poor self-management often results in irreversible harm – certainly to the person who lacks self-management and often to others surrounding him or her.

In the illustration for this article, we have high-ranking business executives (all from the C-suite) who have had affairs (sometimes with each other), berated employees, spied on former employees, and posted shocking things to social media. If they are doing it – imagine what the “rank and file” employees are doing.

It’s time to make self-management the skill we teach everyone in our organizations. It’s not like EI – it’s not enough to know about it. We all must be able to practice self-management or companies will have to continually spend their time and money mitigating bad behavior and collateral damage.

Team Tomorrow

According to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Future of Jobs Report (Oct. 2020), a large swath of today’s jobs will be obsolete by 2025.

2025 folks!

If someone told you today that the stock market was going to crash in three years, or that your car was going to breakdown and require thousands of dollars in repairs in three years – would you do something about the situation today, or would you just wait to see if it happens, with the hope that you’ll “figure it out then.”

Too many organizations are operating with the latter strategy (although it can hardly be called a strategy).

If you’re ready to be proactive - here’s one way to be prepared.

Team Tomorrow

Team Tomorrow is made up of a “special” group of individuals in your organization who can help to define the future and what it will take to get there.

The first group to include are your boomers. Boomers are just on the cusp of retiring and right now they hold the most knowledge in your organization. They are good prognosticators because they’ve seen and weathered many ups and downs and have an historical perspective on the organization.

It’s important to capture what they know and the wisdom of their years.

Note: None of the individuals necessarily need to be leaders in the company. In fact, it might be more useful if they are not. People who are not currently leading and strategizing don’t have preconceived notions of the direction of the company.

Team Tomorrow

The rest of your selected group should be made up of individuals of all types

·        Different departments/ specialties

·        Different age ranges

·        Different experiences and exposures to other industries in their prior employment

A great idea is to ask people to apply to Team Tomorrow, with a short application and interview process. They should identify what unique perspective they bring to the discussion and provide at least one “vision” for the future.

You don’t want more than 12 individuals on the team so that team process doesn’t get bogged down, BUT consider swapping out team members every six months or so to keep new ideas flowing.  (Suggestion, every six months 3 people rotate off the team and three new people join.)

The Process

The Team Tomorrow process includes three distinct conversations/brainstorming sessions:

1.    What is happening in the world / in our industry that may affect us? How can we capitalize on that so that it’s an asset? For instance, the use of robotics and artificial intelligence is a conversation that every organization should be having right now. Computers changed the way most work was done 30 years ago and digitization/robotics/AI is in the midst of doing that again. You don’t want to be playing catch-up. (You need to come at this “what is happening” conversation from many angles: personnel, productivity, government regulations, etc.)

 2.     The second conversation to have is, What are our competitors doing? You cannot stay in your own bubble and think that you will survive the future. Your organization should constantly be taking the pulse of its competitors to learn from their successes as well as missteps.  

3. The final conversation is Who (or what) is complementary to us? In business we’ve been taught to be wary of the competition, but we haven’t been taught to look for alliances with complementary companies. Complementary industries or organizations create synergy and greater outcomes. Why did Microsoft recently buy Activision Blizzard? They are vaguely in the same industry in that people have their hands on a keyboard/device but there must be a greater synergy that hasn’t been revealed yet. This conversation is aided by the team members who have other-industry experience.

Action

The final course of action is to create a vision for the organization 5, 10, and 15 years down the road.

An activity that is often used in coaching is: Picture that you / your organization has won an award ten years from now. What is it for? What does the headline of the WSJ article about you herald? This headline is something tangible that gives the vision substance and helps your employees to know what you are working toward. 

Planning for the future is not a one-time event.

You’ll want the Team Tomorrow meetings to continue monthly and to be constantly scanning the horizon for opportunities for excellence both internally and in terms of serving the ever-evolving desires of customers. This is one of the reasons that iPhones have such loyal fans – the folks at Apple keep re-envisioning the future and presenting it to us.

As you are constantly cycling new members and new ideas through Team Tomorrow, you’ll find your organization becomes resilient and forward thinking… making it future-proof.

Registration link: www.trainingdr.com/events

Why You'll Never Be Hired as a Manager

That headline was intended to get your attention.

But, truth of the matter, you will not get hired as a first-time manager.

No company is going to take a bet on your “potential.”

·        I bet she’s great at communicating

·        I bet she’s great at scheduling

·        I bet he knows how to coach others to their full potential

If you wish to be a manager of others, you’ll first need to create a managerial role for yourself, where you currently are. Once you have “earned” the title of manager, you’ll be able to use that as leverage to move into other managerial roles, in other organizations.

Here are three tips to getting promoted into a managerial position:

1       Pick your head up from your desk / cubicle

You won’t get promoted if those who have the power to promote you don’t know your name or don’t know who you are by sight. You may be wonderful at your job, but being a manager involves working intimately with others, so if you don’t pick your head up from your work and demonstrate that you interact well with others, you won’t be seen as “management material.”

Anytime you are away from your desk (coming in to work, leaving a the end of the day, walking to the restroom) be sure to say hello to two or three people along the way. Smile. Make eye contact. Act like you own the place. Something as simple as this will translate to, “She’s a good communicator.”

2       Look for opportunities to do more than is expected.

If you do your job – even if you are extraordinary - you are no more extraordinary than anyone else who is also “just doing their job.” Managers show initiative, they plan, they forecast, they solve problems proactively. Show that you have initiative by thinking about something in your work (or the workplace) that irritates you or seems cumbersome, and how you might approach it differently. Offer to “fix” the problem.  Approach your boss and say, “I’ve been thinking about XYZ and, with your permission, I want to try an experiment to … speed it up, reduce the errors, more easily fact-check,” etc.

You want your manager on your side, so that if a position opens up in another area and they are asked “do you have anyone in your department that you’d recommend?” they will think of you because you show initiative

And that brings us to my last tip -

3       Think laterally

You have a 70/30 chance of getting your boss’ job (30% in your favor). Unless your boss is promoted or leaves the company, don’t expect that you will move up in the ranks. In fact, if they think you are gunning for their job it may make them wary of being your “cheerleader.”  Instead, be aware of what’s happening in your organization overall. If you see or hear about an upcoming opening, ask your manager if they would suggest your name for the role. Tell them how much you’d enjoy working side-by-side with them as a peer.  Be willing to venture into the unknown (aka a new department) in order to get your first managerial role.

Finally, if you are hoping for an internal promotion but don’t get it for some reason, be congratulatory and supportive of the person who DID get it. Continue your good work as discussed in tips 1 and 2 and you’ll stand out as a team player of the organization, not as an individual who is out for his/her own self interests. When you demonstrate that you put the organization’s needs before your own, you stand out as managerial material.

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The 3 C’s of Leadership Development

With record numbers of people quitting their jobs, the mass exodus of Baby Boomers, and the current report that more than 10% of all leadership positions in organizations are currently vacant, there is an urgent demand for leadership development in all kinds of industries.

From the kinds of inquiries we get each week, we’ve realized that most organizations are not approaching leadership development in a strategic way. They are looking for coaching or courses without a real plan for how they will roll them out, what they expect the benefit to be, or who is ultimately responsible for them.

Here are the three C’s of leadership development which are necessary BEFORE you actually begin any development approach:

1.      Culture

2.      Communication

3.      Coaching

Note: It may take a year or more to get these things in place, but it is time well-spent if you want your leadership development efforts to be successful.

1.  Culture

For decades organizations in the US have had a “top-down” culture. There are natural progressions from individual contributor, to manager of others, to leaders of departments, divisions and more.  For organizations to be successful going forward, however, leadership is less of a position and more of a capability.

This is a significant change in thinking, in practice, and in organizational culture. And organization’s (and society for that matter) do not change their cultures quickly.

The leader’s role now is to develop others. The perspective must shift to “How far can this person go? What can I help him/her achieve?” rather than “What skills do they currently have and do they serve a specific purpose?”

The pandemic has brought this shift to light more quickly. With so many individuals working from home without direct “supervision,” everyone is essentially leading themselves; and for everyone to be successful (the individual and the organization as a whole) they need the ability to grow their capabilities in many ways, with their leader’s support.

Bottom line: Organizations need to shift their culture from control-and-command to guide-and-support.

2.  Communication

The next critical practice is communicating - not only communicating the shift in culture but constantly, loudly, reinforcing it. The shift in thinking and practice must cascade from the top of the organization to the bottom. Not only do managers need to know what is expected of them, but employees need to know what to expect of their managers.

This is not a fast process. Much like in marketing, where the maxim is that someone needs to hear or see your ad at least 7 times before it even “registers,” you’ll need to keep communicating the role of the leader is to develop his/her employees.

Additionally, you’ll need to explain why this shift is happening. When everyone does better, the organization itself does better. Increased capabilities means increased creativity, productivity, and agility – all of which contribute to increased profitability. When individuals are supported to grow within a company, it is easier to retain (and recruit) employees.  You pick the “positioning” which would work best for your organization and stick to it.

Bottom line: Expect to explain and reiterate your message over the course of a few years. There is a quote from (former) President Obama in which he stated his biggest surprise about being president was how much he had to repeat himself.

3.  Coaching

Coaching is a skill that needs to be imbued in all managers because it is the only way that a culture of developing others will come to fruition. BUT FIRST the organization must commit to a culture of developing every employee to be able to do their best work (#1), then that commitment must be communicated and reinforced (#2), and finally, the skills to fulfill the commitment can be taught to the managers who will actually make it happen.

Coaching is a time-intensive approach to managing because it requires really getting to know one’s employees and investing time in regular 1:1 conversations with each individual. By developing deeper and more personal relationships with one’s employees, you begin to understand who is more analytical and who is more social…which leads you to be able to identify “perfect fit” roles and development opportunities for them. If you have children you get this concept – every child has a different personality, different skills, different passions, different things that make them “tick.” You only know this because you spend so much time with them. And, because you want the best for them, you help them to pursue and develop their capabilities.

Bottom line: It is the managers in your organization who will truly develop your future leaders – not classes or curriculums.

For companies to be successful in the fourth industrial revolution, it is imperative that “leadership capabilities” are present throughout the organization; this will only come to fruition through an intentional culture of developing others and a reskilling of today’s managers to be proficient in coaching.  

Note: This article first appeared on LinkedIn 12/10/21

Career Paths are AMAZING Recruiting Tools

Last month we completed an analysis of exit interviews, spanning the last five years, for a client of ours. The good news is – their attrition rate isn’t that high. The bad news is – the people choosing to leave the organization have critical skills and nearly 90% of them stated as their reason for leaving, “there’s no where else for me to go in this company.”  In fact, a Gallup survey conducted prior to the pandemic found that 93% of people advance their career by taking a position at another company.

What are Career Paths?

Career paths give employees a “map” to ways that they can extend their career with your organization – either by moving vertically (up the ladder) or horizontally to other positions in the company that can utilize their skills. Career paths enable employees to pursue their interests and develop their skills without having to go outside the organization, as, unfortunately, the employees in our client’s organization felt they had to do.

93% of employees advance their career by taking a job at another company

For example, a call center job often begins with a position as a CSR (customer service representative) which is more difficult than you would think. CSRs can quickly burn out and leave organizations – often within the first year. But a career path that shows how their career might progress from CSR to team leader, to supervisor, and eventually to manager or trainer allows employees to envision a career with the organization, not just a job.

A possible CSR career path

Or say I’ve burned out in my CSR job after three years and one promotion to team leader… my customer service skills could also easily translate to a role in sales or procurement (a horizontal move) – so you don’t always need to think of a career path as a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other path. Sometimes it’s a swinging from the vine from tree-to-tree trajectory instead. Be flexible in thinking of career paths and encourage your managers to look at untapped potential that can be captured with the right training, coaching, and support.

How do career paths help in recruitment?

Not only do career paths help with attrition, as the above example illustrates, but they are a secret weapon in recruiting as well. Study after study in recent years have identified that younger generations prioritize professional development; that may mean having access to learning opportunities – going to training, having membership to a professional associations paid for, or tuition reimbursement - or it might mean having a defined process to continue to advance their career in your organization (which, by default, will include learning opportunities).

In today’s ultra-tight job market, you need a way to differentiate yourself and attract employees. Discussing potential career paths (and the purposeful development process that gets people there) and showing a simple diagram (you don’t want to overwhelm people during the interview process… to illustrate that there is room to grow over 3- 5- or 10-years’ time, will enable your company to stand out from the crowd.

Other benefits

Not only do career paths help you to attract employees, but they help you to retain employees as well (helping you to avoid the costs of advertising, interviewing, onboarding and training, not to mention the time it takes for a new hire to become comfortable and capable in their new job), AND often you’ll find they land you on the “Best Places to Work” lists because your employees are so pleased that you value them and are invested in their growth.

Person interviewing for job

Career paths and the public recognition of them (such as during performance reviews and in announcements of recently promoted employees) are also important for having a “supply” of mission critical employees. For example, if your organization only has one procurement officer and that person leaves for whatever reason… it could take months to fill that job. But having pre-planned (and executed) career paths means that you won’t panic because you’ll have someone waiting in the wings to step into the role. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of creating career paths for all roles in your company – then focus on the roles that are essential for the business to continue its work uninterrupted.

The existence of career paths doesn’t mean that every employee will take advantage of them or will follow them to “the conclusion,” but it DOES show that you’re a professional organization that has applied critical thought to not only how your company will grow, but how you’ll grow your people with it.

Which takes longer to teach – how to launch a missile or how to sell insurance?

We often work with 2 and 3 clients simultaneously. It helps with productivity because sometimes you just hit a wall in your thinking when focused on one industry or topic and switching to another helps to get your creative juices flowing again.

One year we were working with both the US Navy and a large insurance company that sold disability insurance through employers (if you were an employee, you could elect to add this disability insurance through your employer).

The Navy project involved radar, sonar and firemen on a nuclear sub, working together to determine when it was appropriate to launch a missile – all three roles must work in unison.

The insurance company project involved training new-hires, right out of college, to sell their employer’s policies to companies.

The Navy required 6 weeks of training.

The insurance company required 40 weeks of training.

It is a dichotomy that has stuck with us for decades. It only takes 6 weeks to learn to launch a missile, but 40 weeks to learn to sell insurance?

Some of the explanatory factors may include:

• Launching a missile is based on very matter of fact yes/no decisions.

• Insurance sales is based on personal interactions – can you get past the gatekeeper? Do you have something viable to offer? Can you answer questions that will not be the same from prospect to prospect?

To teach sales you must teach a lot of variables and how those variables might present themselves. Every interaction will be different.

To launch a missile the people who execute are not the people who make the decision to execute – once they get the order, they combine their data and within very narrow parameters, choose the best opportunity to launch.

Take away – when determining the design of your training or how long it will take to learn – consider how many variables will be in play and how many you can account for in a learning environment.

Onboarding New Hires Virtually

For many years, as companies began to become more global and finding talent locally became harder, many organizations needed to onboard new hires virtually. We, at The Training Doctor, advised many organizations, such as Hershey’s and Synchrony Financial, on how to do so in a way that helped the new hire to feel as though they had made a smart decision to join the organization. 

Here are four keys we believe are non-negotiables for ensuring that new hires feel connected to the organization and to their new colleagues. 

The onboarding platform 

The virtual platform that you use to onboard new hires must be “live” - meaning everyone joins online at the same time - and it must allow for video and breakout rooms.  You want people to be able to see one another and to go off in smaller groups or 1:1 to meet with others or their new managers. Not all virtual platforms have these features, so if you don’t have a platform that allows for this you won’t have the benefits of the next three success factors.

Building camaraderie within the new hire group

People look for validation of their ideas through what others are doing. When joining a new company virtually you want to see what kinds of other people have made the same decision. So the first part of the onboarding process should be time spent on letting the new hires get to know one another. The first step in the process is to ensure everyone has their camera on so that they can see their new colleagues. (We had one client that did not allow cameras on their computers because the employees dealt with confidential financial information, and there was a marked decrease in how engaged the group was during onboarding.)

Build camaraderie

Another tactic is to have people share insight into their lives and roles.  We’ve asked people to share what their previous job was (prior to joining the new organization) or what their first job or most unique job was. You can have the attendees vote on the last one to identify the person who held the “most unique” job and then ask that individual to “tell us more.”  

One activity groups always enjoy is asking each new hire to share something their co-workers would never guess about them based on a working relationship. Fun facts that people have disclosed include they are a triplet, they are an endurance runner, and they speak multiple languages.

These types of getting-to-know-you activities get people talking, get them fascinated in their fellow new hires (they’ll start having side conversations in chat, which is fine, you want them making connections), and make them feel like they “know” their colleagues even if they are sitting at their kitchen table by themselves. 

Building a connection with the organization

Many companies share their history, vision, and values during onboarding. Even in person these presentations can be snoozers, but online they can be even more uninspiring.  One way that you can orient the new-hires to the company and not simply present data is to make an interactive “game” out of the information; for instance, instead of saying “our company was founded in 1934,” put up a slide with four options and ask, in what year was our company founded? 1934, 1954, 1974, 1994.”  Have the attendees cast their vote, then reveal the answer. 

Keeping people engaged in the delivery is a sure-fire way to ensure they remember the information. 

To give the history of the company, one of our clients, rather than detailing expansions, acquisitions or product launches on a timeline, instead identified all the philanthropic activities the company had conducted on the timeline. The expansions and product launch information can be found on the website or wikipedia, but the philanthropic timeline demonstrated their commitment to the community and impressed upon the new-hires the kind of organization they were joining.  When a friend or family member says “tell me about your new job” the new-hires will pridefully talk about relief efforts or the establishment of an endowment rather than reciting a litany of business facts. 

Sample sharing information

Building camaraderie with one’s new boss 

The fourth critical process in successfully onboarding new-hires virtually is to ensure they develop a relationship with their boss. We purposefully put this meeting in the middle of the orientation to break it up and we recommend scheduling it over lunch so that it is a more relaxed conversation rather than a formal meeting.  

Using the breakout room feature of the platform, have each new-hire and their manager go into their own room. The manager should have a template or checklist to follow during the conversation to ensure every new-hire receives the same information such as when 1:1’s will be held or how to request supplies. Additionally, because working virtually is a unique “environment,” it’s important for the manager to share information on their working relationship, such as, “I prefer to communicate via our chat-channel, but if you have a real emergency, absolutely you should call me.” Or, “I will never schedule meetings after 12n on Fridays.”  It is also important to share who else is in the workgroup and what their speciality is so that the new hire feels as though they have a group of colleagues they can call on for answers and support. 

Working remotely is a challenge and onboarding new employees to work remotely is even more challenging because it takes much more attention to detail and to interpersonal aspects of their new work environment.  With the right tools and planning, however, you can successfully bring new-hires onboard.

Example engagement activity

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Bonus Tip

While this article is focused on the first-day orientation, one additional success factor is to assign a near-peer or buddy to the new-hire to help them through their first month on the job. A near-peer is someone who was recently hired themselves (within the last year or so) and who understands and empathizes with the questions and dilemmas a new-hire will encounter. 

Our Recent Chief Learning Officer Magazine article

Principles vs Rules vs Heuristics in Learning

Or what I learned through working at a casino

I was having an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about how we use or should use principles, rules, and heuristics in learning and development.

It hadn’t occurred to me before this conversation that these probably should be identified and defined at the start of any learning/training process so that our learners understand the parameters for the information that is to follow.

Let me explain the difference between the three through a story….

In the early 2000s I taught various courses in human resource management, business management, training and development, and ethics, for the University of Connecticut system. In one of my training and development courses the students had an assignment to develop a short training lesson that included objectives, knowledge, skills, and behavioral outcomes. They then had to teach the lesson to the group.

To get real value from the assignment, the topic had to relate to their work.

One of the cool things about my job with the University was that, rather than teaching on the college campus, I was sent to businesses to teach the college’s courses to an intact group of employees who were working toward degrees. This particular client happened to be a casino.

As their final assignment, two of my students taught the rest of us how credit at a casino is determined and extended to gamblers who have run out of money. It is a very involved process which in the end comes down to a judgment call.

Principles: A fundamental truth that serves as the foundation for a belief, behavior, or for a chain of reasoning.

In practice: ALL casinos share credit information with one another. You cannot run out of money at one casino, borrow, run out of money again, and move on to another casino – every casino knows how much debt you are carrying and who you owe it to.

Rules: Official policies or regulations.

In practice:  Before a line of credit is determined and extended, the casino employee looks at credit scores, bank records, and the customer profile (based on their gambling history and use of credit in the past) to determine how “good” of a credit risk they are. It is incredibly difficult to get credit extended the first time because the gambler has no history of paying it back (unless, as noted above, they have used credit at a different casino).

Heuristic: A rule of thumb or an educated guess that allows you to make decisions efficiently.

In practice. Assuming the person applying for credit has a good history of using credit in the past, and their bank records and credit score don’t reflect anything alarming, they will be extended credit.

Here is the part of learning that cannot govern the final decision: the amount of credit extended is entirely up to the casino employee. Two different employees may come up with two different decisions. Neither one is “better,” and so long as both employees followed the process’ principles, rules, and heuristics both are right.

Now, your assignment: When designing or delivering workplace training, start by defining the principles, rules, and heuristics - it will help you to organize the content and help the learner to understand what processes are de facto vs. when and how they apply their own critical thought.

Gearing Up for Leadership Development

Things sure are different, aren't they?

- working from home is no longer a “perk”

- companies are truly embracing “our employees are our greatest asset”

- 2 million more boomers retired in 2020 than predicted or expected

- HR has found its seat at the table

There is no such thing as “average” or “normal” or “trivial” these days.

Which means….

The way you approach leadership development in your organization is in flux as well.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies and business leaders are avoiding having this conversation.

 Why?

- they believe it is cumbersome to undertake 

- they believe it is a financial sink-hold

- they are too focused on “todays’ crisis” to worry about the one barreling towards them tomorrow

 Does this resonate with you? You're not alone.

👏 THE GOOD NEWS IS - we have a 3-day challenge this month that can help you get started.

Join us for the three-day (30 minutes each day) Gearing Up For Leadership Development Challenge - September 21, 22, & 23 at 3:00pm EST.

💡 Just imagine the peace and confidence you’ll have knowing your future leaders… 

- can problem solve

- make critical decisions

- are adaptable to change

- communicate clearly and with purpose

- have self-management skills

and more….

❔ (BTW, why do we call these “leadership skills?” why wouldn’t we want everyone to have these skills?)

Would it benefit YOUR organization to have future-leaders with these skills?

What about ALL your employees? After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.

When you join us for just 30-minutes a day, September 21, 22 and 23, we’ll cover:

Day 1 - Who will be your future leaders - GenX? Millennials? GenZ?

Each generation has a different leadership style - and will shape your culture differently - who is right for your organization?

Day 2 - What skills do your future leaders need?

According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report (October 2020) more than ¾’s of the skills employees need by 2025 will be soft skills – not technical skills! 

And in a December 2020 publication from Deloitte, titled Diving Deeper, Five Workforce Trends to Watch in 2021, the senior executives polled said employees “doing new work” and “increasing capacity” are at the top of their list of immediate concerns. 

 Less and less we need people who “can do,” and more and more people who “can think.” 

Day 3 – Three Keys to Designing the Perfect Leadership Development Process 

One of the things (perhaps THE thing) that stops most business owners and leaders from beginning leadership in their own organization is the belief that this is a BIG endeavor. 

 It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, organic development that is integrated with people’s real-world work responsibilities is 1000X’s more effective and economical (because people actually “get it”) AND it returns immediate ROI so there’s no “hoping this pays off in the long run.”

All you have to do to join the challenge is follow us on Facebook OR LinkedIn and join-in on September 21, 22, & 23 at 3pm EST every day.

See you there!

The Future is Here

Our 2017 book - Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills has just been updated and re-released. Read the new introductory chapter, below!

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As I write this update, it is July 2021. A LOT of things have changed since this book first came out in 2017. Most of these changes have occurred in only the last 18 months, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Interestingly, as I re-read the book in preparation for writing this update, I realized that while the content is still 100% spot-on and needed little updating, what HAS changed is the urgency behind our need to improve the skills and capabilities of employees if our organizations want to survive the 21st century. What was predicted to take until 2030 to materialize was compressed into a single year – 2020.

Here is a look at why things have become more urgent.

Mass changes in labor statistics happen very rarely. This is one of those times.

The above quote is from an October 2020 blog piece from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The article goes on to say, “We are moving from a ‘one manager, one office, 9-5’ world to a ‘fluid, team-based, work-from-anywhere, always-on’ world,” which, in my interpretation, means we need to be confident that our employees are capable of working independently, making intelligent decisions and working with others that they cannot see and perhaps will never meet.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, many companies laid off large swaths of their workforces. As the economy recovers, companies will be hiring experienced individuals with unknown thinking skills or younger workers who lack the kind of work experience that enables critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving. Not only will learning and professional development become more critical than it has been in the last twenty years, but companies will need to develop career paths that show new employees “the future” of working with that organization.

Generational Shift

One of the premises discussed in the this book (circa 2017) is that the US Census prediction that all of the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) would be out of the workplace by 2030 leaving a large leadership void in most organizations given that Gen X (born 1964 and 1980) generally have not been given leadership roles or appropriate leadership development. The Boomer population is so large that most leadership roles in organizations are claimed by Boomers (as they got there first), and many of those Boomers have stayed on past what is considered a “traditional” retirement age, sometimes working well into their 70s - leaving few leadership vacancies or opportunities for Gen X.

The pandemic changed that dynamic nearly immediately. Boomers quickly reassessed their priorities and accelerated their retirement plans. According to Pew Research Center analysis published in November 2020, the number of Boomer-age retirements between September of 2019 and September of 2020 was 3.2 million, up significantly from the 2 million per year that had been holding steady since 2011.

This leaves an immediate and massive void in leadership. The people who had held leadership roles the longest and have the most years of institutional knowledge, wisdom, and experience are gone. 

Increase in Technology Use (in Professional Roles)

Another extraordinary development that arose from the pandemic was the widespread and nearly immediate adoption of technology to keep people connected remotely.  Platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and more, suddenly came to the fore, although the technology has been around for decades. Personally, I’ve been using WebEx since 2002.

While the adoption of synchronous technology means people can continue to work while isolated in their homes, it also means that critical thought and creativity may suffer when there is no one there to bounce ideas off of or debate with.  Humans are collaborative.  We learn faster and make better decisions when we are doing it with others. Lapses in ethics, which one would never dream of when peers are in proximity, become less black-and-white when working in isolation.

And again, how will we teach Gen Z about business protocol if their interactions with peers occur solely online during meetings with tiny boxes that frame people’s faces? How will we coach them to do better work if we cannot see how they are doing their work?

Another concern brought about by technology is that artificial intelligence (AI) is barreling towards us and far from the fear of it eliminating jobs, it’s more likely that we will be able to attain higher-order outcomes through the use of AI.  Higher-order outcomes are things such as strategizing, creating, and evaluating… things that AI cannot do.  I highly recommend picking up a copy of Margie Meacham’s book: AI in Talent Development which gives great insight into the shifts that will occur in the workplace thanks to AI. At the heart of allowing the humans to do higher-order work, however, is that they must be capable of thinking at more critical and expansive levels than what we have expected from the vast majority of workers in the last 50 years.

Our need to teach thinking skills is urgent.

Career Paths

Prior to the pandemic, unemployment was very low for quite a long time, giving employees the upper hand in the labor market. Companies were so desperate to fill open positions that people were able to easily move from job to job. One reason that Millennials are known to “job hop” is because they value professional development* over other “perks” like pay and flexible schedules. Since few employers have viewed or offered professional development as a business strategy, it has forced Millennials to move to a new employer simply to learn something new.

This is a luxury that neither the employer nor the worker can enjoy any longer.

Not only will the companies who want to retain workers need to implement professional development strategies, but the wisest ones will integrate professional development with career paths, so that when a recruit interviews with your company they not only know the job they will be accepting, but the ones that are possible 3 and 5 and 10 years down the road should they stay with your organization. This will require companies to create career paths that show how professional development leads to increased responsibility and leadership roles.

According to Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education, professional development attracts 25% higher qualified applicants and contributes measurably to retention. “Companies that build careers will be the defining companies for Millennials and Gen Z. For the future.”

* This is something that Gen Z reports is important to them as well, but they haven’t been in the workforce long enough for us to see if this is true.

People Skills are the Domain of… People

Look at the diagram in Chapter 8. It depicts the five learning domains needed for a well-rounded businessperson to develop the thinking skills necessary to be an effective and respected leader in your organization. None of the five can be performed by robots or AI technology.

In October of 2020, the World Economic Forum published their “Future of Jobs Report,” a biennial fiver-year projection of the skills and capabilities that will be needed by employees in order for their organizations to remain viable. (In other words, your folks better have these skills by 2025). 12 of the 15 top skills described in the 2020 report were personal or interpersonal skills. People skills.

As I mentioned above, when rote tasks are accomplished via technology, it is only higher order skills and interpersonal skills that remain the domain of the employee.  Unfortunately, after a decade-plus of technology usage – both personally and in our workplaces – we, as a society, have diminished our interpersonal skills. Many of our employees lack the ability to make eye contact, engage in small talk, or constructively deal with conflict. So, in addition to teaching thinking skills and business acumen (see below), organizations will need to redouble their efforts to teach people skills such as communicating verbally and in written form, dealing with conflict, giving and receiving feedback and many, many more.

Check out Chapter 6 for my take on the importance of utilizing mentors and coaches in this regard.

World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, Oct. 2020 - Employee Skills Needed for 2025

Business Acumen

One of the things I didn’t spend too much time on in the first edition of the book was the importance of developing business acumen, although you’ll find it has equal weight in the diagram in Chapter 8.

Too many people know how to do their job, but not how their job impacts the organization or how their organization fits within their industry as a whole. If we want to build a pipeline of capable businesspeople, they need to understand how the business works. This is business acumen.

This lack of knowledge and sense of being and integral part of a whole is going to be exacerbated by the WFH (work from home) culture, especially as it pertains to young Gen Z workers.  A junior accountant is never going to see the trucks coming to the loading dock, or the lab-coated R+D scientists developing the next iteration of your product, if they are sitting at home working on spreadsheets. If their focus is solely on their job, it become interchangeable with any other junior accountant job at any other company. I predict this will lead to high levels of turnover at the entry level and will detrimentally impact critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and risk taking (which are all informed by business acumen) as well as greatly impact your leadership pipeline.

I’ll conclude this chapter by reiterating a line you’ll find in Chapter 8: Businesses have spent years parsing employee development down to the bare minimum and now must change the mindset to one of providing maximum capability for growth and success in the long term.  This was a critical need in 2017 when the book was first published and now it is both critical and urgent. 

Pivot, Pivot, Pirouette

The Training Doctor is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year!

We were founded in June of 1991, during a recession (the best time to start a business it turns out); and through the decades, as you might imagine, we’ve had to pivot a few times to keep up with industry changes and trends.

We thought we’d share a peek into our time capsule. 

At our start, we weren’t even called The Training Doctor – at first we were named Business Visions Consultants or BVC for short (dreams of IBM dancing in our heads). Why did we change our name? You try to say either of those things (the full company name or the abbreviation) when answering the phone. They are both completely unintelligible.

PIVOT

Also at our start, we were focused on contract facilitation for various organizations in the Northeast such as school systems, insurance companies, casinos, and state agencies. After four years in business and one particularly grueling, year-long, facilitation gig teaching supervisory skills using a million-dollar curriculum our client had purchased from a well-known leadership development company who shall go unnamed because it was sooo b a d (suffice it to say, they are no longer in business), we commenced our FIRST PIVOT and decided that there were a lot of great facilitators around but NOT a lot of great training designers and we would be better suited to focusing solely on instructional design. 

For the next 20 years our sole offering was to design custom curriculums for our clients and hand it back to them for delivery. This was typically because the work our clients did was either very technical or proprietary, and they needed something custom designed for them. Since our expertise is in how adults learn, and particularly how adults in the workplace learn (where behavior change is the expected outcome), we had the pleasure of working in all sorts of industries and for companies you have never heard of like a cheese processing plant in New Jersey, a startup medical company founded by one of the original founders of WebMD in Atlanta,

a 15-store kitchen wares retailer in Connecticut (think Williams Sonoma, but on a much smaller scale) that was doubling its number of retail outlets in one year, the precursor to VMware in Massachusetts, a twenty-year-old, UK-based, global insurance broker that had never had a training department before, and many, many more. If you are interested, you can go to our home page and see some of the logos of the more recognizable companies.

During this time we crisscrossed the US speaking at many industry conferences which were focused on training, adult learning, human resources, and organizational development, helping others to learn how to take knowledge from SME’s heads and turn it into a curriculum, how to design fair and legally valid tests administered post-training, and how to ensure you are designing a training program that actually gets at the root of a performance problem, not just a symptom. Additionally, we had two books published – how to be a successful one-person training department since many of our clients were just that, and how to design a blended learning approach to workplace training.

PIVOT

It was also during this time that we completed our SECOND PIVOT into Virtual Instructor Led Training, or vILT.  While the focus on instructional design stayed true, the delivery mechanism changed. Throughout the nineties and first few years of this century the only option was classroom-based training. But with the advent of the internet and computers at every desk, and the development of WebEx (which was the front-runner in synchronously delivered training, followed by many others), we saw the potential for global companies to embrace the use of vILT to cut costs and still provide high-quality training in a “classroom” environment.

From about 2002 to 2015 The Training Doctor specialized in designing virtual instructor-led training curriculums for many Fortune 500 organizations that had global footprints. This became the expertise we were most known for since designing engaging, interactive, online learning to a group of people who are all sitting alone at their desks is no easy feat. Especially when the end goal is to get those people to change their behavior as a result of participating.

Virtual Instructor-Led Training is the format that pulled together all our history and skills: facilitation, design, adult learning theory + radio and television training (because as hard as it is to design for vILT, it’s even harder to be the facilitator).

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As an aside, you might be interested in learning about the pivot we DIDN’T make - which was NOT giving the time of day to eLearning which was all the rage in the late nineties. eLearning – in our opinion – is not effective for learners or clients, for a number of reasons: it’s largely self-study and we know that most people are not self-directed… there is no one to ask questions of… back in the 90’s and early 2000’s it was very linear and real-life is not linear, so it wasn’t teaching “real world”… the completion rates are abysmal… adults are collaborative learners and there is no collaboration with a computer… the cost and time to “program” are astronomical… and the maintenance to ensure content is up-to-date can be cumbersome or neglected. vILT overcomes all of these faults, which is why we embraced this form of learning via computer.

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PIROUETTE

Our last pivot was more of a pirouette which occurred in 2015. We now focus solely on the design of leadership development to help organizations to develop leadership pipelines and bring their future leaders “up” from within. Throughout our 15+ years of designing custom curriculums via vILT two topics were consistent: sales and leadership. And what we saw large, well monied, reputable organizations doing in the realm of leadership was wrong, completely wrong. And we were PART OF THE PROBLEM.

You cannot teach someone to be a coach in a 2-hour coaching course with a breakout for roleplay. You cannot teach someone to be emotionally intelligent in a class.  It’s impossible to learn to manage stakeholders if people aren’t out in the organization interacting with their stakeholders learning what their values and needs are.

Yes, there is a time and place for classroom (or eLearning) – such as when learning facts, underlying rules, and how-to, but leadership is a behavior and changing people’s behavior is an experiential process done over time and approached in many ways.

Now, in our 30th year, we are committed to forestalling the leadership development crisis that companies have fallen victim to over the last few decades. Our exclusive focus (and passion) is helping small to medium-sized organizations to create a leadership pipeline by having a development strategy that starts when an employee walks in the door. Some of our unique techniques include experiential learning, job visitations, mixed cohorts of learners, and other proven development strategies that you won’t find in “off the shelf” leadership development or a one-and-done course. 

If you think we can assist your organization – please give us a call or you can download an overview of our process here.