March 2011 - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/ Chief Learning Officer is a multimedia publication focused on the importance, benefits and advancements of a properly trained workforce. Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:59:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-CLO-icon-Redone-32x32.png March 2011 - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/ 32 32 Yum Brands Delivers Fast Food and Content https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/31/yum-brands-delivers-fast-food-and-content/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/31/yum-brands-delivers-fast-food-and-content/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/31/yum-brands-delivers-fast-food-and-content/ A learning content management system helped Yum Brands standardize training in a decentralized environment, reuse content, improve retention and ensure a consistent customer experience.

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With 37,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories, more than 1 million associates, and global brands including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Yum Brands is the world’s largest restaurant company.

With so many stakeholders, learning is no small feat. To ensure consistent, personalized content, including standard operating procedures for the restaurants and e-learning for employees, Yum instituted a learning content management system (LCMS) in 2007.

From how food is prepared to the proper way to greet customers, Yum Brands strives to offer its customers a consistent restaurant experience from store to store. However, with employees frequently joining the team, updates to menu items, changes in food preparation tools and procedures, and regional considerations, maintaining that experience can be a challenge.

To manage brand integrity, each Yum brand maintains operating standards that define how to prepare food, serve meals and operate restaurants. The brands use these standards to support training materials developed and maintained in the LCMS. The standards are also reused to create other training tools, such as training cards, observation checklists and build cards. Housing materials in the LCMS enables the organization to perform two functions key to the success of its training programs: content development and management, and personalized delivery.

To Each Brand Its Own

Each brand has a core set of products, but depending upon geography, that brand also can have regional menu options to cater to local customers, as well as equipment variations. So, instead of all learning being centralized in one location, learning is decentralized within business units.

To maintain the accuracy of the learning content developed and accessible in the LCMS, each business unit creates standard operating procedures (SOPs) to define each restaurant’s procedures and serve as the basis from which all other learning tools are created. SOPs, ranging from how employees should wash their hands to prepping food, are developed through a collaborative process by developers in each business unit.

“Using the SOP as the source content maintains the integrity of all our learning tools and ensures all workers are trained on approved material leading to operations that are consistent across the board for that business unit,” said Mary Beth Schuckman, manager of learning technologies for Yum Brands.

Use It Once, Use It Twice

Even though Yum operates in a decentralized environment, content reuse is important. By reusing content that originates from one source, the SOP, all learning for a particular procedure is consistent, regardless of its format or where it is deployed. “In the past, we would find a restaurant worker trained in a certain process, like making a chicken sandwich, in which one training guide said to build the sandwich one way, and another guide they were looking at said to build it slightly differently. This put the burden on the restaurant worker to seek clarification or decide for themselves which way to proceed,” Schuckman said.

Further, to ensure consistency and avoid duplication of development efforts, each piece of content the brands create is frequently reused in additional formats, depending on the audience, situation and usage for which it is intended. For example, the content for making a chicken sandwich could appear in an e-learning course on preparing food; as a training card available in the restaurants for shoulder-to-shoulder training; as a build card for reference; or even as a trainer checklist so a manager can verify that an employee performed the proper steps in the right order. Rather than creating four separate files, the content is published from the LCMS in the chosen format.

“At the end of the day, we want our restaurant employees to have the training and tools they need to do their job,” Schuckman explained. “With an LCMS, content maintenance is much more efficient, especially if you reuse content as much as we do.”

Hand washing is a good example of this. “Hand washing is a critical procedure for our employees to understand, and it appears throughout the standards hundreds of times. If we had to manually change the content each time there is a change to a procedure, it would be nearly impossible,” she said. “With the LCMS, we can make the change once in the SOPs, and everywhere that content is reused is automatically updated, including e-learning and tools available for print.”

Make It Personal

Another LCMS benefit that Yum relies on is the ability to deliver personalized content based upon brand, region, if a store is franchise or customer owned, and employee role. This approach ensures that Yum associates receive the exact content that’s relevant to them. Yum leverages personalization in two ways: delivering the standards and delivering Web-based training.

Before the implementation of the LCMS, standards were delivered to U.S. stores in multiple large binders containing all the standards a store in that brand might need, but they weren’t tailored for that particular store. For the international restaurants, the standards were available on a website but were many years old and were available only in English. The sheer volume of restaurants and the rate of change in materials made it impossible for each restaurant to have standards that were specifically relevant to the products it sold and the equipment at that particular location.

The LCMS changed all that by allowing Yum to attach metadata to content, enabling the company to customize the SOPs to an individual restaurant. “We are able to give restaurants exactly the information they need, nothing more and nothing less,” Schuckman said. “They don’t have to sift and sort through multiple binders to find desired information. Now, they can access all the standards online that pertain specifically to their restaurant.”

Like many organizations, Yum utilizes Web-based training to educate its workforce, and with the multitude of job roles, from restaurant managers to delivery drivers and customer service reps, the company has significant and different training requirements. Not only is Yum able to meet these training demands, the company is able to deliver training personalized to an individual based on his or her job role and restaurant concept. For example, restaurant managers and delivery drivers may enroll in the exact same course, and the manager sees all the course content while a delivery driver sees only the content that pertains to his or her specific job.

In Yum’s LCMS, there may be a master course for a procedure employees need to complete. When an individual logs in to one of these courses, attributes are passed to the LCMS about that learner. Depending on that person’s job role or the type of restaurant he or she works in, content is dynamically removed from the course that doesn’t apply to that individual. For example, references to a drive-through procedure are removed for someone in a store without a drive-through.

“The benefits of personalization are twofold for Yum,” Schuckman said. “First, we are able to consistently and efficiently train our workers to deliver the experience our customers expect. Second, our content developers can efficiently create one e-learning course, and with the use of metadata, deliver it to a variety of audiences only providing content that applies to each unique learner.”

Benefits for the Business

Starting in quarter four of 2010, Yum and its brands started to measure the effectiveness of its learning programs in the U.S., and early data suggests training has a big impact on the organization.

“To see if we could get some understanding of how effective our training programs are, the brands started to track learning data against staff turnover and retention rates. We learned for one brand, where all training was completed by staff, versus only 10 percent completed, turnover rate dropped from 134 percent to just under 79 percent, significantly below the brand’s average,” Schuckman said.

“In another comparison, we found that retention jumped from 57 percent to 77 percent when training was fully completed by the staff. In both of these studies, we are hesitant to attribute the entire gain in retention to our training, but it is clear there is a direct correlation between training and retention,” she said.

Yum also ties training back to measurements of restaurant quality. To grade each restaurant, Yum created CHAMPS — customer, hospitality, accuracy, maintenance, product and service. The average national rating for one brand’s restaurants in the U.S. is 86.5 percent. For restaurants that received training, the average is 89 percent, and for those that received less than 10 percent of the training, 83 percent. This indicates training is important to the overall restaurant experience.

“Without a doubt, the personalized delivery and content creation and management functionality the LCMS provides is critical to the success of our learning program and contributes to the overall success of our brands,” Schuckman said.

“The more we learn about and use the LCMS, the more possibilities we see for the future of training at Yum,” she said. “We want to further support the need for our restaurant teams to access just the right personalized content at just the right time. Also, by having the content centralized within the LCMS and with the content separated from the delivery technology, we’re confident we can meet new demands even if we don’t know what they are right now.”

Pamela Campagna is the principal of Blue Sage Consulting Inc. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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Scrap Learning and Manager Engagement https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/29/scrap-learning-and-manager-engagement/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/29/scrap-learning-and-manager-engagement/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/29/scrap-learning-and-manager-engagement/ By participating in the training process pre- and post-event, managers can ensure that employees retain and apply more of what they learn.

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In an ever-changing business world, where sustainable competitive advantage is key to success or failure, training is the lever many organizations turn to when searching for performance improvement. However, most organizations overlook an important aspect of development that often makes it many times more effective — manager engagement.

KnowledgeAdvisors conducted a survey from December 2009 to March 2010 to investigate the current state of training application and manager engagement. The majority of nearly 160 respondents were from companies with 5,000 or more people, and their roles within the organization were most often in learning and development (56 percent) or human resources (25 percent). More than three-quarters (76 percent) of all survey respondents indicated that training is a key organizational tool to optimize employee performance (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Unfortunately, using training as a performance lever tends to lose its power with time as employees forget what they’ve learned or let their newly acquired skills go unused. Robert O. Brinkerhoff, Ed.D., professor emeritus at Western Michigan University, said that after training, learners typically fall into one of three categories:

1. They do not try to apply training.
2. They attempt to apply it but realize no worthwhile results.
3. They apply training and get some positive results.

Positive results tend to be reinforcing and prompt the learners to apply their skills again. Yet Brinkerhoff estimates that successful application, group three, is as low as 20 percent. The remaining 80 percent is known as scrap learning — learning that was delivered but unsuccessfully applied, as in groups one and two, and is therefore wasted.

Scrap learning is pervasive. By survey respondents’ best estimates, only 9 percent of learners actually apply what they learn with positive results. Seventy-six percent indicate that learners apply 50 percent or less of what they learn, which means the scrap learning rate is 50 percent or higher among more than three-quarters of all companies.

There are elements of training that clearly impact the quality and effectiveness of learning; great instructors, relevant materials and the right delivery method are essential. However, factors external to training are also influential. In Brinkerhoff’s book Telling Training’s Story, he describes the influence managers can have on learner behavior before and after training. He found that managers can lengthen the training lever, or at least prevent it from shortening, by actively engaging their direct reports. In Figure 2, Brinkerhoff identifies behaviors managers can perform before and after training to reduce scrap learning.

Figure 2

Before training, it is helpful for the manager to assess the business case. Is the employee the right person to attend training? Is it the right time? Are the costs appropriate? Additionally, the manager should meet with the learner pre-event to set learning and performance expectations, and they should create an action plan together. These managerial actions help to ensure that training is valuable to the learner and is fully aligned with business goals. Further, the conversation and expectation setting prepares the learner for the actual training event.

After training, the manager should review the action plan with the learner to determine if it still aligns with what was taught. As the learner applies training on the job, the manager must supervise and provide meaningful praise and feedback to reinforce success and correct mistakes. It is also the manager’s responsibility to seek projects, events or situations where the learner can hone new skills.

KnowledgeAdvisors asked survey respondents to consider how well managers were engaged in these types of efforts throughout their organizations. When asked how often managers pre-assess learners before sending them to training, only 21 percent indicated their organizations assess learners “some of the time” or “most of the time.” This means that for more than three-quarters of the organizations, learners might be attending training they do not need or they may be attending training that is too advanced.

Further, only 25 percent of managers have a dialogue with learners before 50 percent of training to set learning and performance expectations with direct reports. Granted, not every course deserves a check-in or a dialogue. Yet, when training is directly related to job performance, critical to the employee’s future success or costly and aligned with business goals, it is reasonable to expect some level of manager engagement. Thus, these figures seem low knowing that manager involvement upfront can increase training effectiveness.

The level of manager engagement is only slightly better after learners attend training. With regard to generalized involvement, 42 percent of managers “encourage learners to use training” and another 11 percent “hold employees accountable” for applying training. However, for 44 percent of respondents, managers “have little involvement in how my employees use what they learned back on the job.” In other words, almost half of the managers do not support learners after training; thus they shorten the performance lever the organization has invested in.

Following up to ensure learner expectations have been met is a powerful way for managers to check in with their direct reports. Together the manager and learner can compare expected versus actual actions and diagnose what led to successful application of training or prevented it. When asked about expectations, survey respondents indicated that only 35 percent of managers follow up on expectations by requiring a summary debrief of what was learned. Some 32 percent require a demonstration of the learning within a reasonable time frame. Among other required actions the percentages get smaller and smaller: 19 percent provide a specific program or project within which to use the training; 16 percent require an action plan that describes how training will be used on the job, and 13 percent require measurement of a business result within a reasonable time frame. The decline in percentages for the aforementioned actions seems to be linked to the amount of effort required from the learner and manager. As effort increases, the percentage decreases.

In the same way a parent might help a child grow through praise and correction, managers have many of the same behavior-shaping tools at their disposal to support and reinforce learning. Survey respondents were able to select any or all of the following five support options. Some 25 percent of managers supported learners by publically recognizing and celebrating successful application of training on the job. At a slightly lower rate, 22 percent of managers formally observed and provided feedback to learners within 90 days of training. While these two actions are critical to develop an application-feedback learning loop, at best only a quarter of managers perform these tasks. Other support tasks included: reprioritizing a learner’s daily tasks to emphasize training use (21 percent), setting aside time to allow learners to try new concepts (16 percent) and allocating money to learners to fund new ideas that can be implemented on the job (9 percent).

Several measurement tools can facilitate manager engagement. Prior to training, managers can be surveyed to determine how much support they provide to learners pre-event, such as expectation setting. Using specialized evaluation systems, the post-course learner feedback can be routed automatically to the manager, who can gain insight about challenges the learner might have faced during training as well as barriers that might prevent on-the-job application. A performance management tool also can be used to document goals and provide automated check-ins between the manager and learner at regular intervals. Automated check-ins are important for providing information because they facilitate an even more important process — ongoing dialogue.

To quote behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” This quote is undoubtedly a variation of similar quotes by George Saville and Albert Einstein, but it carries substantial weight coming from Skinner, who spent his career shaping others’ behavior. He clearly implies that learning degrades over time due to recipients forgetting, whether they are in a generalized educational setting in a liberal arts school or participating in specific employee training aligned with a job task. Despite some degree of learning degradation, education can be prolonged and increased, and skill can be acquired and improved by using behavioral shaping techniques.

How is this relevant to manager engagement? Managers have the ability to prepare employees for learning prior to training. And after training, they have some ability to control the work environment to allow learners new opportunities to apply, practice and perfect what was learned. Lastly, managers have the ability to praise and reinforce successes as well as correct and coach mistakes.

The results of this study indicate that in most organizations today, manager engagement, both before and after training, is relatively low. If organizations are searching for ways to improve job performance through training, they should first look at performance improvement through manager engagement. How effective can managers be? Consider another one of Skinner’s quotes: “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.”

John R. Mattox II is director of research at KnowledgeAdvisors. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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Learning Fosters Psychologically Healthy Workplaces https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/28/learning-fosters-psychologically-healthy-workplaces/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/28/learning-fosters-psychologically-healthy-workplaces/#respond Mon, 28 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/28/learning-fosters-psychologically-healthy-workplaces/ Knowledge, skills and abilities gained by employees can not only make a healthier workplace, but also benefit employers in the long run.

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There’s no easy road to learning. It’s a two-way street — learning and development — which can lead to a healthy workplace.

The American Psychological Association (APA) recently awarded eight companies with their Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards (PHWA). The companies were rated on five different criteria: employee involvement, health and safety, work-life balance, employee recognition, and employee growth and development.

According to David Ballard, head of APA’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program, having opportunities for growth and development in an organization can build employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. In turn, this can be applied to new situations that can increase motivation, job satisfaction and the ability to manage job stress, because employees have the necessary resources to do their jobs.

“All this can translate again for the organization as well. It improves organizational effectiveness [and] work quality, and the organization also can be positioned as an employer of choice,” Ballard said. “It can attract and retain the best employees and that’s what it takes to have a competitive advantage today.”

In a survey conducted by the APA, 53 percent of working Americans reported they have participated in workplace training. Among the PHWA recipients, it was 74 percent of employees. In the same survey, 74 percent of employees at PHWA recipients also said they were satisfied with their employer’s training and development opportunities, while just 44 percent of overall survey respondents were satisfied. In addition, 32 percent of overall respondents said they were seeking employment elsewhere, compared to only 6 percent of employees at PHWA recipients.

“Employees are looking for something that’s meaningful for them, something where they can experience growth,” Ballard said. “Whether that’s growth within the position they’re going to be in for some time, using it as opportunities for career advancement or personal benefit, or getting value and developing themselves, it’s something that’s important to employees.”

Barrie Gross, former in-house employment law attorney and founder of Barrie Gross Consulting, an HR training and consulting firm, said a business that offers many training opportunities helps keep people engaged in their jobs, to some extent, by giving them chances to learn new skills, new information and new ways to do things.

“This can, often times, spur on an excitement that might have been missing because employees felt bored in their jobs, or perhaps didn’t understand the bigger context of why they were doing what they were doing,” Gross said. “Training can help revitalize employees’ interest in their jobs.”

Ballard said that recent economic changes have trickled into the work environment — for the better.

“On the employer side, they’ve come to realize that human capital is the biggest value they’ve got,” he said. “If they don’t develop and use that to the fullest potential, then it’s not only doing the employee a disservice, but it’s going to hurt business results.”

Ballad cited the following as best practices for companies looking to provide employees with a healthy work environment:

Good assessment: There are assumptions of what employees need, but employers should ask and assess what they want. What works with one organization may not work with another.

Tailoring: Once an assessment is conducted, employers should tailor workplace practices to meet identified needs.

Strategic implementation: Resources and support systems should also be built around identified needs. If the company is going to focus on training and development, compensation and reward structures should be set to support what they’re trying to accomplish, rather than working against them.

Evaluation: Employers should continue to evaluate and improve, based on feedback from employees and results.

SumTotal Systems, a talent management software company, supplies Softscape software to one of the PHWA recipients, The MITRE Corporation, a non-for-profit defense consultant.

Bill Docherty, senior director of product management at SumTotal, said that an effective employee learning and development program has proven to be one of the best ways to engage employees and build employee investment and the organization’s success. The payoff is employee retention, productivity and efficiency, among other benefits.

“Employees want to feel that they’re empowered with the information they need to be effective at their jobs,” Docherty said. “That’s what I think learning does for companies.”

Natalie Morera is associate editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at nmorera@clomedia.com.

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The State of Learning https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/24/the-state-of-learning/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/24/the-state-of-learning/#respond Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/24/the-state-of-learning/ Learning in today’s companies is much like teaching someone to ride a bike. At the end of the day, the question isn’t what resources you provided but rather whether they can perform the task at hand.

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I continue to be perplexed by the state of our learning community. The evidence that learning has a critical role to play now and in the future continues to pile up, but we won’t be successful without necessary transformations.

It’s time for change. About 60 to 70 percent of operating costs are related to our people. We are losing our tacit knowledge to retirement; the demographics clock continues to march inexorably forward as baby boomers exit with years of experience. More and more ink is being devoted to talent management, knowledge transfer and leadership development. New quantitative studies show that historic approaches to identifying talent and making investments are not necessarily the best approach. The drumbeat goes on.

Yet in the face of all of these external drivers, my sense is that innovation and leadership from the learning community lags. Put simply, the approaches being supported are tentative and incremental. Bold action is required, and I simply do not see any action emerging from our community at the present moment.

Much of what is being discussed is highly tactical. Tools take center stage in many of these conversations. I would like to propose an alternative to the current suggestions. A shift in focus is necessary due to the challenges we face in senior management discussions.

The fact is learning organizations have made little progress in participating in strategic conversations. Activities are still counted while impact goes largely unaddressed. Outcomes are what senior managers care about. They are particularly interested in outcomes measured in financial terms because that is how they are being held accountable by shareholders.

To focus the conversation about outcomes, I use an analogy about learning to ride a bicycle. The point of the analogy is that it’s not about the curriculum; it’s about actually riding the bike. Let’s assume that we have the very best instruction manual, curriculum design, the most qualified instructor and an excellent assessment tool to determine if the student fully comprehends the material. This is all well and good, but at the end of the day, the real question to be answered is: Can the student actually ride the bike? Riding the bike is the real objective.

All of our efforts to apply learning theory, including instructional design and media, ultimately have little to do with the actual outcome. Making refinements to improve the speed of adoption is worthwhile, but in the end, it is tactical. None of it matters if the learner can’t actually ride the bike.

There is another important implication from the bike-riding student. The example dramatically reveals the contrast between teaching and learning. The curriculum and the teacher can both deliver something of value to support the learning process. But all of this is merely support. It is not the heart of what has to take place for learning to occur. In the end, learning takes place within the learner.

We can observe the activities related to learning. One such method is trial and error. Failure should not only be accepted but be seen as a necessary part of learning because we know that learning cannot occur without attempts, some of which inevitably result in failure. No such analogy for learning in a corporate setting is allowed. Failure simply is not acceptable. This cultural norm is a significant stifling factor in corporate learning. A shift in this strategic dimension of our community is required.

A shift from tactical to strategic requires a shift from teaching to learning. With a focus on learning, we must have outcome measurements that provide feedback to the learner and to us.

It is impossible to truly have a high-impact learning strategy without a concrete strategy to measure the outcomes rather than the activities. While often viewed in terms of how senior management will react to the measurements, the real issue is how the learner will benefit from the feedback. Once we have that as a necessary element, we can build on it to accelerate the process going on within. It is not the teaching but the learning that is key to the future.

Michael E. Echols is the vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University. He is the author of ROI on Human Capital Investment. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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Leading By Example https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/23/leading-by-example/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/23/leading-by-example/#respond Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/23/leading-by-example/ Learning leaders should maintain a reasonable balance between life and work and relay that message to all developing employees to reduce potential for tired, over-stretched workers.

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Work-life balance has been rising in importance in the last decade, particularly as new, younger employees enter the workforce in increasing numbers. For learning leaders, the old axiom “lead by example” holds true here; leaders who approach their personal lives with the same developmental discipline that they do in their professional lives will see their company culture follow suit. The result is employees with sustainable levels of energy and high engagement.

Money Isn’t Everything

Researchers at the Gallup World Poll surveyed thousands of respondents in 155 countries between 2005 and 2009 in order to measure well-being. Although the study reported that there is a positive correlation between life satisfaction and income, it concluded that positive feelings also depend strongly on other factors, such as feeling respected and connected to others.

According to authors of The Plan, John M. McKee and Helen Latimer, there is a misconception that being financially successful will lead to being satisfied. Satisfaction, according to them, lies in true contentment in all facets of life – personal life, career growth and financial management.

“Leaders have to take the same approach to their own life as they do with their organization that they’re overseeing,” McKee said. “They need long-term life objectives. Leaders are good at personal development projections for the next few weeks or months, but aren’t so good at projecting five, 10 years from now. They forget to use the same training they’re applying and teaching on business issues to personal issues.”

McKee believes that the majority of leaders focus singularly on one aspect of their life, most often not detaching from the job. Those without jobs in these prolonged turbulent economic times continue to focus solely on obtaining employment and not on the sacrifices poor employment choices will make on the balance in their life.

“People are so desperate to get employed that they’ll take any job,” McKee said. “I encourage those people to take this time that they’re out of work to make a plan for where they want to be in 10 to 15 years. They should create action steps that will help them get there, that will help them make the right choice when seeking and hopefully obtaining employment.”

Joseph Grzywacz, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said people who look at employment and unemployment tend to think all jobs are created equal. But according to researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, participants in a study who transitioned from being unemployed to being employed in a poor-quality job showed a worsening of their mental health.

Striking A Balance

It is up to learning leaders and others who directly influence employee development to share the importance of obtaining a personal and professional balance with the workforce.

“As executives running a firm, there are things that you can do [to promote work-life balance] as formal as the other business policies you place and trainings you administer,” Latimer said. “You can stress [work-life balance’s] importance through employee evaluations, mentoring and other development programs. It can be done in multiple levels in formal and informal ways as long as the objective is to make a plan for employees to achieve success in all aspects of life.”

According to Gregg Thompson, president of Bluepoint Leadership Development, leaders too often attempt to be universally admired heroes – a vain pursuit.

“Most leaders try to correct work-life balance by using three things they have been using all their careers: delegate more, organize better, prioritize work,” Thompson said. “Both work and non-work are insatiable draws on your life. A balance is about being committed to bring the best to both. It may sound over simplistic, but by doing so, when you’re at work you’re living it up that way as well. You’re continuing to pursue your passions [and] interests and serving your family as well because you continuously have the life aspect of the equation in your mind. While at play, you’re enjoying recreational activities; this aspect also contributes to leadership development. Leaders forget that it’s OK to play.”

In a time when many employees continue to be satisfied by simply being employed, it’s important to remind both leaders and their subordinates that satisfaction comes from more than the hours, projects and decisions made at work. Without stability in all aspects of life, leaders risk becoming depleted – less focused, less energetic, less decisive.

Ladan Nikravan is an associate editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at lnikravan@clomedia.com.

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Need for Speed https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/22/need-for-speed/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/22/need-for-speed/#respond Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/22/need-for-speed/ Virtual classrooms stimulate the innovation needed to grow while being less expensive and instructionally rich

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In today’s business environment, “what’s now” has become a continuous stream of “what’s next,” challenging L&D organizations to keep pace with accelerating change. The flow of information has become so fast that the relevance of learning programs is based as much on speed and timeliness as it is on instructional rigor.

We have entered an era of borderless workplaces, one where employees collaborate and communicate internally and externally on a continuous basis. In order for companies to thrive in this kind of environment, L&D should build programs that encourage and celebrate innovation, knowledge sharing, collaboration and the development of deep expertise.

CLOs are wondering two things:

1. How can they rebuild their deep skills development strategies in a modern, virtual work environment? Deloitte, for example, is building a new brick-and-mortar corporate university to drive core skills development in its ever-growing workforce. How can organizations reinvest in such strategies but do it in a modern, blended way?

2. How can they build programs faster, using an agile learning model that enables continuous, rapid development of content? Learning is taking place everywhere: How can L&D develop programs that are flexible, rapid and timely?

Both of these issues can be addressed in the context of the virtual classroom.

In today’s connected business world, virtual classroom tools have become virtual learning and collaboration systems. They are always on; they include audio, video and screen sharing; and they offer a wide variety of learning tools to help people collaborate, share information, store and replay materials and catalog content. If you look at tools such as Adobe Connect, Cisco Telepresence, Centra, WebEx and GoToTraining, you see that they have become virtual work environments that replicate and improve upon many of the face-to-face meeting experiences we have in business.

How do these systems address the two issues mentioned above?

Virtual classrooms are both less expensive and can be more instructionally rich than physical in-class experiences. Last year Cisco used its own virtual technology to train its entire worldwide channel team — using local facilitators to manage the program — and found the learning outcomes and learner satisfaction were higher than when they ran the program in person. Studies have been conducted on the effect on technical training, IT training and sales training, and in all cases the instructional value of virtual programs, when delivered by a suitable instructor, are equal or better than in-class experiences.

Second, these virtual learning experiences are far less expensive; they reach more people; and they deliver more hours of training per dollar. Although cost is not always the issue, we are all looking for ways to reach more employees more regularly, so by reducing cost we can greatly expand our reach.

Third, virtual learning experiences are fast. We can put content online in a few hours and the instructional value is very high. When a learner has a question or wants feedback, the instructor can immediately respond or ask the learner to go into a breakout room to work with another instructor or expert. In our continuous need for speed, a learning organization can identify a training opportunity, find an expert and prepare him or her for a learning event in only a few days.

Fourth, virtual learning creates an on-demand learning environment. One of the most exciting and cost-effective new tools for corporate training is video sharing. Almost every digital device now has a video camera. Organizations can now capture video through a virtual learning experience or on the job, put it into the LMS or learning portal and create an internal YouTube for learning.

This whole market is growing and evolving.

Last year I had the opportunity to meet a number of CLOs and training leaders in Europe and found that despite the fact that virtual classroom technology is more than 15 years old, many companies are still not sure how to use it effectively. The market for synchronous learning tools and platforms is now more than $1.2 billion, and these tools integrate the use of a wide variety of rich media that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars to author.

If you feel the need for speed in your training organization, develop an agile learning strategy and look to virtual classrooms as a core part of your solution. This area is exploding with innovation and growth and should be a core of your team’s expertise and strategy.

Josh Bersin is the principal and founder of Bersin & Associates, with more than 25 years of experience in corporate solutions, training and e-learning. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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Nurturing Leaders From Within https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/21/nurturing-leaders-from-within/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/21/nurturing-leaders-from-within/#respond Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/21/nurturing-leaders-from-within/ Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Chief Learning Officer Larry Mohl used his background in engineering and team development to create a learning culture that can heal the sick and aid leadership growth.

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Three years ago, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta set a goal to expand its facilities and increase its staff from 5,600 to 8,000 employees to compensate for the organization’s growing nursing, administrative and physician sectors. While seeking additional talent, executives also hoped to fix a snag in the organization’s succession initiatives.

At the time, the hospital was able to hire less than half of its vacant managerial positions using internal succession planning. However, in the past five years, the organization’s Center for Leadership Strategies, led by Vice President and Chief Learning Officer Larry Mohl, has helped it to hire 65 percent of its leaders internally, bringing the count for internal employees to more than 8,500 in 2010.

With more than half a million annual patient visits in 2010, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is the country’s largest pediatric health care provider. Mohl’s work at the helm of the hospital’s continuing medical and leadership education program helps staff to stay abreast of advances in clinical care within the expanding organization and industry.

Engineering Development: Creating Roles and Leaders

Mohl’s formal education shaped him to become an engineer. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Buffalo and master’s in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan, he began working for Motorola as an engineer in research and development. As he moved to similar roles in product development and product management, he said he recognized a lack of satisfaction with his responsibilities.

“My passion was more with people than with things,” he said. “I was very interested in how people were doing things together. Within my own group of engineers, I was coming up with new ways of having people learn things as we developed new products, implemented products and worked with customers.”

While Mohl trained his fellow engineers and was given the opportunity to establish his own internal consulting group, Motorola was creating and executing Six Sigma, a business management strategy it developed in 1986 to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in business processes.

Mohl moved his traditional coursework approach to training engineers to an application approach where employees would learn something related to Six Sigma and then have to go to their job and apply it successfully before learning more. As the role he had created for himself grew, so did his responsibilities and number of direct reports.

“I started to get myself trained in areas around human capital, leadership development, organizational learning, behavioral change and other things that would round out what I needed to help people do well by getting resources to make sure they made the changes we needed to make the organization better,” Mohl said. “At the same time, I got some training and facilitation skills, consulting skills and did a year at an improvisational theater training center so I could really get better at being in front of people.”

Motorola quickly acknowledged that engineering knowledge was moving fast and that all of the company’s technicians would be outdated if not trained regularly. Mohl took a role as director of knowledge management within Motorola University, where he worked to implement communities of practice to help facilitate the flow of knowledge around the organization and address the lack of development options for engineers.

Mohl later took on the role of director of leadership, learning and performance to lead Motorola’s personal communications sector. He was responsible for leadership supply and competency development and managed more than 40 employees worldwide for three years before being approached by American Express to become the company’s chief learning officer. Mohl accepted the position and was a member of the global talent senior leadership team for two years before feeling another urge to change his career path.

“Suddenly I was looking to get closer to something a little bit more mission based,” he said. “I wanted to take everything that I had learned at Motorola and AMEX and apply it to health care. My background in bioengineering allowed me to always be around and familiar with health care in the past, and I wanted to contribute there.”

Introduction to Health Care: Sharing and Learning

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hired Mohl to create and run its Center for Leadership, which began as an executive-level experience.

“We still have that today — it’s called The Executive Experience — but Larry also developed a curriculum for high-potential managers that we want to groom to move into leadership, as well as a foundations program for supervisors and first-line managers we want to develop to meet growing demands,” said Linda Matzigkeit, senior vice president of strategic planning and human resources at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “Larry has been instrumental in building these three programs that all fall under the umbrella of the Center for Leadership.”

The Center for Leadership brings together high-level managers from the system’s physician, nursing and administrative sectors. Over an 18-month, part-time period, nominated managers participate in workshops and share best practices from their departments to develop projects that address challenges in the organization and industry.

“We don’t consider this a training thing; we call them experiences,” Mohl said. “It’s part classroom workshop, there’s application on the job, there’s coaching that goes along with it, mentoring and actual application projects that participants need to do.”

Executive leaders within the organization, including Mohl and Matzigkeit, teach workshop courses alongside externally hired content experts. Since the program began, both the content and strategy in content delivery have remained unchanged due to visible benefits in individual employee growth as well as the Children’s board’s continuing approval.

To establish the program five years ago, the board began funding the Center for Leadership with endowment funds — a strategic move it believed would help build the organization’s future. As part of the endowment, Mohl and Matzigkeit made a commitment to the board to deliver positive results annually for five years before receiving the funding permanently.

Surveys measuring the leadership development program’s business impact were conducted yearly to determine the level of achievement and benefit participants received. Mohl worked with Robert O. Brinkerhoff, author of The Success Case Method, to create case studies with metric results for classes that would go through the program to both improve the learning and document the program benefits for the board. Continual success enabled the program to receive permanent funding last year.

As a part of the human resources team, Mohl is responsible for leadership and development, organizational effectiveness, clinical staff development, continuing physician education and technology training for all sectors of Children’s. As the head of strategy for the organization, Matzigkeit works with him to establish the company’s direction and to implement a learning strategy to build the company’s capability to reach established goals.

“Now we are all talking in a common language around strategy, financial principles, building capability and leading change,” Matzigkeit said. “We have tools and templates that employees receive in class that we see them using on the job. Using the same language, tools and processes has not only helped get everyone on the same page; it’s been a great development opportunity for our leaders who hadn’t had this kind of learning experience before.”

Learning for the People

Six years ago, Mohl’s team approached employees with an “employee promise” concept where they asked employees what they wanted from Children’s in order to recognize it as the best place to work. Employees identified four things that were most important for them to give their best: mutual respect, learning, work-life balance and total rewards.

“We told employees that our shared philosophy on learning and development is an important thing, and we’re going to make it available for you so you can grow yourself, your career and take care of the kids,” Mohl said. “We have a people strategy — to integrate everything together so you can make more efficient processes for people and get the data you need to make really good strategic business decisions.”

To successfully measure the benefits of learning initiatives, Mohl uses surveys, such as the one created for the Center of Leadership, and also tests physicians on skills, such as performing vaccinations, to guarantee their proficiency before allowing them to work with children. In order to test the impact of programs that teach these skills, Mohl created a simple measurement strategy to be used throughout the organization.

“The structure has three levels, and it’s like a triangle: all three factors need to be in place,” Mohl said. “Is the program working? Are people behaving differently because of what we did? Do we get some business impact from that?”

Mohl said he believes the enthusiasm employees displayed when positively answering those questions, along with the executives’ eagerness to grow learning, is what has fostered success within the company as well as a stronger client bond.

“I’ve rarely been in a place where I’ve felt more supported than at Children’s,” Mohl said. “When I first came, the CEO was very, very invested in learning. It was very unusual for health care to even have a CLO title at the time, so you could see how forward thinking the organization was about this.

“Our new CEO, Donna Hyland, fundamentally believes that we need to be improving, learning and developing. I like to tell people that at Children’s we have a healthy dissatisfaction for the way things are. All you have to do is walk through one of our hospitals and see these kids and how brave they are and what they’ve been through, and it just makes you want to do better and want to do more.”

Ladan Nikravan is associate editor at Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at lnikravan@clomedia.com.

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Recruit and Retain https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/18/recruit-and-retain/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/18/recruit-and-retain/#respond Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/18/recruit-and-retain/ With individual employees picking up more of the load, organizations need to recruit, develop and retain talented workers.

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In today’s economic climate of cutbacks and hiring freezes, employees feel underemployed and overextended. With individual employees picking up more of the load, organizations need to recruit, develop and retain talented workers. What follows are five examples of leading organizations.

1. Social networking: Talent management begins with communication, and communication extends online. According to Human Resources IQ, global lighting company Osram Sylvania uses networking sites to recruit potential employees, and according to Bersin & Associates, Hyatt Hotels Corp. has recently decided to use social networking sites in its talent acquisition process. Organizations are using social networking to find, train, develop and retain employees. For example, Taleo Corp., which provides talent intelligence solutions, claims that social networking tools enable employees to create, share and rank development activities that unlock the hidden knowledge.

2. Simulation: Many organizations use simulation to provide real-world experience when managing and developing talent. Unisys and The Performance Development Group created an immersive, video-driven simulation where managers could practice behaviors by working through a typical 15-month performance cycle while managing two different, well-defined faux employees. Similarly, simulation also worked for Wyeth, a large pharmaceutical company that needed to train its sales force to directly affect real-life performance. Wyeth worked with PDG to create an immersive, video-driven simulation that allowed sales representatives to experience complicated compliance scenarios on physician calls in a low-risk environment. This video simulation provided a chance to practice on living, breathing, dynamic characters.

3. Hands-on experience: To train and develop talent, Genpact, a global service provider in the business intelligence and performance management field, uses job rotation and hands-on experience in its Global Operations Leadership Development Program. In this program, managers rotate through three different jobs — crossing businesses, functions and regions — to obtain direct hands-on experience.

4. Blended learning: To manage talent and prepare managers for the annual review process, International Finance Corp. followed a blended learning approach. Online training tools, targeted at both managers and staff members, included asynchronous, self-paced e-learning; mobile learning; synchronous Web conferences; and assessment tools. These multiple access points and learning styles reached more employees and helped managers better coach workers to develop their careers. According to IFC, “The multifaceted integration of learning and talent management helped IFC achieve its objectives of connecting talent champions by building global talent.”

5. Synchronous online learning: Because Kerry Ingredients & Flavours makes ingredients for the global food and beverage industry, its sales force needs to understand various ingredient technologies and customer needs. In particular, salespeople need to sell more than single-ingredient solutions; they need to provide integrated ingredient solutions. The training developed by Kerry and TorranceLearning involved many parts, one being a Coaching for Sales Effectiveness course to help sales managers coach team members, one on one and in groups. This course was started using online synchronous learning, via an interactive webcast, before being built into Kerry’s LMS. Beginning this way enabled managers to use it immediately, without waiting to integrate it into the LMS, which provided earlier feedback to further hone the course. “Understanding the skills needed by the sales team and evaluating each person against those skills to determine what program was needed was definitely helpful,” said Susan Shin, a member of the Kerry HR development team. “Focusing the content to the needs of the learner creates more relevancy.” Coaching activities were tied back to real customer situations, and Kerry made top sales directors available as subject-matter experts.

These examples show that, especially when combined with traditional methods, social networking and other online training methods can enhance an organization’s talent management strategies.

Brandon Hall is CEO of Brandon Hall Research, publisher of the study “Emerging e-Learning: New Approaches to Delivering Engaging Online Learning Content.” He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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The Undeniable Connector https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/18/the-undeniable-connector/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/18/the-undeniable-connector/#respond Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/18/the-undeniable-connector/ Emerging social technologies allow people of all ages to learn in ways that are comfortable and convenient for them.

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Ben Brooks, vice president and practice leader for human capital performance at risk management giant Marsh, knows colleagues need access to people and information to help them serve their clients. Sometimes this is through traditional training. Most often it’s far more.

Marsh University, which Brooks created with a hefty social media component, enables colleagues to connect to one another to learn. Along the way, they solve problems across continents as easily as if they worked down the hall from one another. The university’s motto, “at Marsh, everyone is a teacher,” makes transparent and accessible the incredibly diverse and deep industry expertise within the organization.

When an employee in Edinburgh shared information about IPO insurance in her blog post, another employee in Johannesburg commented that she was unaware Marsh offered this product, and she had met a prospect that week that could potentially use it. For a week, the two went back and forth on the site, asking one another questions and filling in details. That information is now available for everyone to learn from.

“We have all of the ingredients for success within the walls of our firm, but they are often on hard drives or in the gray matter of our colleagues,” said Brooks. “Marsh University is working to institutionalize that knowledge so it can be better leveraged and so we can recognize our thought leaders and content producers, the teachers everyone wants to learn from.”

The experience at Marsh flies in the face of people with a consuming belief that social business tools are a time-suck, a productivity waster and a general disruption to the excellent training programs their organizations carefully craft.

Those prone to abuse new social tools are likely those who were wasting our time standing in doorways updating us on last night’s dinner conversation or launching endless e-mail assaults. We waste time blaming technology for problematic hires or outdated organizational cultures.

But emerging social technologies can extend, widen and deepen our reach and our inherent desire to connect. They allow us to embrace the needs of changing workplace demographics and allow people of all ages to learn in ways that are comfortable and convenient for them.

In a simpler world, what we needed to know to do our jobs well was reasonably well-defined. It made sense to broadcast information from the top down or even the front of the room. These days, it’s not so easy. We have more data, more stakeholders, more complexities and less time to train. Learning research is quite clear that the more engaged people are, the more effectively they learn. The more questions they ask, the stronger their learning process becomes. Social learning is about making it easier for people to find their questions and their voice.

We are not passive blank slates or empty cups waiting to be filled with wisdom. We are meaning-seeking creatures. Constructing an understanding based on what we find important is a far richer, more productive learning model. We need new ways to make sense of the mountain of information coming in our direction. We need new ways to filter content, save information and pose questions to trusted sources. We need more complete ways to learn.

Many employees have already integrated social technology into their lives. Their ability to connect serves their employers well. While their colleagues squander time in meetings or on long phone calls, they sum up things in quick messages through an updates box that asks, “What are you working on?” Through their networks of online connections, they discover people who can become true friends and valued teachers — people they wouldn’t have found in the enterprise 1.0 world.

Networks of knowledgeable people, working across time and space, can make informed decisions and solve complex problems in ways they didn’t dream of years ago. By bringing together people who share interests, no matter their location, social tools can transform the workplace into an environment where learning is as natural as it is powerful.

New social business tools may even give us time back. We find people with answers faster. We learn directly with those who care about our work, and we can make stronger decisions because we find wider perspectives than we’ve ever had access to before.

Marcia Conner is fellow of the Altimeter Group and co-author of The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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Send Your Trainers to Asia https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/17/send-your-trainers-to-asia/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2011/03/17/send-your-trainers-to-asia/#respond Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:00:00 +0000 http://dev-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/2011/03/17/send-your-trainers-to-asia/ A stint in Shanghai, Singapore or Hong Kong can increase trainer skills with cultural awareness and emotional sensitivity.

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If you’re a learning leader with global operations, nothing can increase your trainers’ skills like working abroad, and currently Asia is an optimum location. Asia is booming. If you have traveled to Shanghai, Singapore or Hong Kong recently, you know that these cityscapes are filled with construction cranes. Strikingly beautiful buildings are rising in all directions, and the infrastructure improvements are ever present. The fastest trains in the world are found in China. Although controversial, Western countries are increasingly importing advanced technology such as wind turbines for power generation from the East. Many Asian countries seem unfazed by the economic recession, and the signs of increasing wealth are plentiful.

Just as impressive is the Asian appetite for workforce education and development. These cultures have long revered learning, and their respect for knowledge is accelerating in the digital age. The value of having your trainers work in Asia will accrue from what they will learn about language, cultural awareness and emotional sensitivity.

1. Language: English is broadly recognized as the world’s principal business language, and is clearly first choice as a secondary language for Asian professionals. Presenting in English offers unique challenges for Western trainers when they are working in the East. Although global professionals are increasingly fluent in English, and many have even picked up American or European slang and accents, high-level English skills are far from universal. When working with a group of limited English speakers, it’s good to remind your trainers of some of the most basic issues. For example, the need to use a smaller, simpler and more common vocabulary. Your trainers will need to slow the speed at which they speak. Many participants are painstakingly translating from English into their language, and the process is time-consuming, difficult and exhausting. It’s often helpful to set up some sort of signal to let trainers know when they are speaking too rapidly. As trainers become absorbed in the content and process, their speech again returns to its normal rate. This is compounded by the fact that politeness is a prevalent Asian mannerism. This results in many participants pretending they understand when they actually need the presenter to slow down. Trainers must find comfortable and accurate mechanisms for initiating regular checks on speed and understanding rather than relying on participants to signal first.

2. Cultural awareness: Masking discomfort is one of many cultural differences. It is inappropriate to overgeneralize about variances since each culture and each individual is unique. Just as in a Western organizational setting, there are many Asian subcultures. Trainers must be very conscious of the existence of cultural differences, even when subtle. It’s easy to think you are on the same wavelength when in fact you are on very different footing. Consequently, it is paramount for nonindigenous trainers to be aware and inclusive of cultural difference.

3. Emotional sensitivity: Being intentional about speech and being insightful regarding cultural difference are two crucial ways to improve training effectiveness, but they are insufficient without emotional sensitivity. Trainers usually rely on emotional cues to gauge audience response, but Eastern participants can be far less demonstrative of emotions than the audiences to which Westerners are accustomed. This can leave a trainer feeling unsure and uneasy. Most Western trainers use questions to increase audience engagement. This can create extreme discomfort and embarrassment in Eastern contexts. Even though Eastern audiences are coming to expect this sort of thing from Westerners, overhead questions directed toward a group can still engender negative emotion and a deafeningly silent response. Trainers are better served by first giving participants the opportunity to discuss the question with a colleague or small group before asking for a public comment. This strategy also will allow participants to compare understanding of the content and question.

Working in the East puts Western trainers in an unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable environment, but doing so forces trainers to strengthen their use of language, culture awareness and emotional skills. We have much to learn from the highly intelligent and hardworking people of Asia. Training in Asia gives us the opportunity to become better educators and better global citizens.

Fred Harburg is a private consultant, writer and speaker in the disciplines of leadership, strategy and performance coaching. He has held numerous international leadership roles at IBM, GM, Motorola and Fidelity Investments. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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