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Top Ten Tools for Learning Professionals (revised for 2011)
Jane Hart from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies is once again crowd-sourcing a list of valuable technology tools for learning professionals. One of the highlights of her many resources is the annual list she publishes of the Top 100 Tools for Learning. I’ve been participating the past couple of years and have revised the list to include the landscape ...
3 Steps to Creating Effective Learning Objectives
Learning objectives are a crucial part of developing training courses and to ongoing course improvement. They steer the direction of a training program or individual course and help in the development of an evaluation program. What is Important to Learn? Learning objectives help us to ask, ‘What is most important for participants to learn in ...
Why a Leader’s Awareness is Critical
Pick up virtually any popular leadership book of the past 10 years and you’ll see a common theme: leading yourself first. In fact, most leadership books go out of their way to make this point before getting into how to lead others. A great example of this is Stephen Covey’s wildly popular book, The 7 ...
How to Get People to WANT to Take Action
Over the last several years, I’ve been very fortunate to instruct leadership classes onsite at one of Southern California’s major defense contractors. Like any defense organization, the constant security of their facilities, knowledge, and expertise is of critical concern to both them and the government. As such, the security folks at the facility are continually ...
What To Do When Employees Hesitate On Long-Term Goals
Anytime we work with leaders, we teach them a framework for learning about the long-term goals of the people they lead. It’s important to know this to keep people engaged and everyone working towards a shared vision. That doesn’t mean it’s easy…and the question came up in a recent client forum, “What if an employee ...
Want to Lead? Get Into Sales…FAST.
Leaders are supposed to be great at inspiring us, having vision, creating strategy, and developing teams. But salespeople…really? Heck, yes. It used to be that people got jobs, showed up for work every day for thirty years, dealt with poor leaders when they had to, and retired more or less satisfied with their contribution to ...
Connect With Emotion and Inspire Action
I think you’ll agree that this 2 minute video from Purplefeather artfully captures the importance of communicating with emotion in our daily interactions: What messages are people getting from you that are plain and ordinary? How can you use emotion to inspire a more powerful call to action?
Six Ways to Get Smart and Stay Smart
People who want to influence the world in intelligent and meaningful ways need to continually keep their knowledge up-to-date. You will rarely find someone who successfully leads organizations and people who does not also do a lot to consistently to drive their own learning. Several colleagues have asked me recently where I get knowledge on ...
When to Start Friendly with Firm Feedback
One of the age old questions when giving someone tough feedback is whether it’s appropriate to say something nice first, to “lessen the blow” of whatever is coming next. After all, we all want to keep relationships strong with colleagues and employees. First of all, let’s just acknowledge that few people enjoy giving tough feedback. ...
I’m Irrational With My Time (and so are you…)
For years I’ve suggested to clients that putting in a good hour or two of planning at the beginning of every week would help them to be dramatically more effective than if they simply started the week without a plan. While it’s always made sense to me to do this on Sunday evenings, I’ve advised ...
Sticking to it in a New Year
It is the time of the year when the Jazzercize classes are packed and there’s a line for the treadmills. Many of us yearn for new beginnings and a new year gives us an opportunity to consider what changes we want to make in our lives. As is the case most years, I suspect there ...
Five Design Tips for Non-Designers
Many people look at beautifully designed pieces and think to themselves, “I could never do that.” In fact, any of us can become adept at design, with some practice, exercising our creative minds, and looking at good examples. Five design tips for non-designers Hang on to examples of good design. If you find a website ...
Coaching for Performance
State governments aren’t particularly known for their success rates in using resources efficiently to produce good results. That said, at least one notable exception exists when we all learn how to drive a car. In that area, most states have the system down cold for helping new drivers get around safely and effectively. When we ...
Think You’re Multi-tasking? Think again
I used to take such pride in my great ability to multitask. It turns out that what I was doing wasn’t really doing two things at once, but rather slowing myself down by quickly switching back and forth between two things. NPR quotes neuroscientist Earl Miller as he reminds us, “People can’t multitask very well, ...
Top Ten Tools for Learning Professionals
People often ask me how I am able to keep up with all of the latest technological developments, sites, and gadgets. It is mostly through what is often referred to as a PLN (personal learning network), made possible through RSS feeds, Twitter, and through leaders like Jane Hart from the Centre for Learning and Performance ...
eLearning Toolkit
Is your organization behind the times when it comes to incorporating eLearning as a learning mode? While online learning is not always the answer to an organization’s learning challenge, there are certainly plenty of times when it makes perfect sense. Learning Management System (LMS) – in order to track the learning in your organization, you’re ...
5 Practices for Controlling Stuff
Labor Day weekend is almost over and it’s back to work for the last few months of the year…I won’t even tell you how many days left until the holidays. Costco has Christmas decorations up and I’m already getting emails from the Dana Point Turkey Trot asking me to reserve my place for Thanksgiving morning. ...
Get More (of the right things) Done
I was remembering the other day about my first couple of years working professionally. It was in the early ’90s. Email was just being introduced into the workplace. I received around ten emails a day, only about half of them requiring an answer. Most of the time, if a co-worker had a question, they would ...
Making Authentic Connections
A friend of mine recently moved to another state and has been courageous in already signing up for some HR-specific networking events. She asked for my advice and the first thing I reminded her was that most people are uncomfortable networking and that she is not alone. I do not perceive myself as an expert, ...
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