sheridan@keystonedevelopment.co.uk
LinkedIn

Bring WHY to life to unlock performance

Uncategorized, ,

Last week, I was involved with the #LostCastles project – where giant carboard castles were built across the region and on display for one weekend only. There are LOADS of learning points I could share from this experience around planning, teamwork and communication but instead, I’m going to focus on the importance of vision, and why HOW we communicate that matters. Early in the week, the volunteers were in a large room in the Town Hall making boxes – the ‘bricks’. It was fun for about 30 minutes, but after an hour it was dull. Then we (me and my kids) were asked to tape bricks together – that was surprising hard work and after another hour, we were bored again. We could see other people making more complex shapes and we wanted a part of it, but these people already knew what to do and they didn’t really need any more. We’d been shown the diagrams of how the castle would look, and a very interesting video showing the construction of a castle elsewhere. This was great, and we tried to keep it in mind, but the fact is, we were just making bricks. Yes – there is a…

Read More

How to Design Training

Uncategorized, , , ,

I’m very active on LinkedIn and I realised that many people I’d started my career with are now in very senior positions, or have international roles doing very exciting things. I am still doing (more or less) what I was doing 20 years ago: designing training workshops, learning materials and live learning events. I wondered if this meant I was a failure. I am also aware that many small consultancies like mine and putting more content on line – creating videos, running webinars, and so on. My infrastructure is so bad, I can’t do any of those things. We struggle to watch iplayer. Sometimes I feel that I’m being left behind. But focusing on what I HAVEN’T done, and what I CAN’T do isn’t going to bring success, so I flipped these thoughts. I chose not to climb the corporate ladder for 2 reasons: 1) because I wanted my children to be brought up by their parents, not a childminder, as 2) because the further into management you go, the less involved in training you are. I am a creative person at heart, and my skills aren’t in managing schedules and budgets. By staying as a researcher, designer and occasional…

Read More

Material Things…

Uncategorized, , , ,

There has been a move away from detailed training materials over the last few years, and I totally get it. Whether it’s saving the environment, catering to different learning preferences, curating what’s already out there, or just wanting people to note down their personal learning rather than the theory, in many ways, limiting training materials makes sense. I have cut down the amount of delegate training materials I create, but actually not by that much. Many people still like to have all the relevant information in one place. That said, increasingly delegate workbooks are presented digitally rather than physically. The slides I create are largely visual so giving delegates a copy of the slides is pointless if it is supposed to act as reference material. Anyway, last week, I was grateful for my slightly old fashioned habit of creating detailed delegate workbooks. I was running a workshop and was told (15 minutes before we started) that some of the delegates would be attending virtually, from another country. English is not their first language. They appeared on the screen where my slides would normally be, so I immediately ditched my slides. Thankfully, I always create detailed trainer’s notes and these, combined…

Read More

FARE Training – Providing Vitamin D for Learning

Blog, , ,

When the sun shines and it’s warm outside, I actually WANT to eat salad and fruit. This is good, because I’m carrying a few excess pounds and eating more healthily will help me to get back into shape. It’s harder to make healthy choices when it’s cold, wet and dreary, even though I know I should. The draw of a cheese toastie is just too much! the vitamin D in the sunshine does us more good than we realise. For me, it’s highlighted the importance of a vitamin D equivalent in learning, and the link between environment, feelings, actions and results, and how one affects the others: Your environment affects your feelings, your feelings shape your choices and actions, and your actions define your results. Of course, your results then feed into creating your environment, and around we go again. Most training interventions (understandably) focus on actions: what we do. What we do – our behaviours – have a direct impact on results so it makes total sense. Our behaviours are also the easiest to define, observe and learn, and they are within our circle of control. But we know that impact will be limited if we don’t spend time…

Read More

The Secret Benefit of being a Bespoke Training Designer

Uncategorized, , , , ,

In my last blog, I questioned whether bespoke training was always the right thing to offer. Creating programmes especially for a client, reflecting their culture, structure, language and good practice means that there is always the danger that boundaries aren’t being pushed. BUT, pushing boundaries isn’t always what’s needed. Often, we need to share good practice and help people to achieve high standards (which have been agreed) across the whole organisation, and that’s where bespoke training really adds value. As a bespoke training designer, I need to really get to know the business to do this – recently I’ve been getting to grips with Industrial laundry. It also means working closely with the internal L&D team and taking a steer from them about what should be included. And this is where I benefit personally. If I was a typical training provider, I would have a handful of set courses that I was an expert in, and clients would select the workshops (or programme) that they felt best meets their needs. If I’m selling a set programme, it’s set. I would deliver the same thing over and over, reinforcing my expertise in these areas, yet having no incentive to diversify. Any…

Read More

Is Bespoke Training Best?

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Naturally, my view is ‘YES’! (in most cases). This is why… Recently, my husband attended a leadership course. It was the first he’s ever been on, despite being in a senior role for more than 10 years. Naturally, I grilled him about it! It was a good course – no question about that. The trainer was knowledgeable, engaging and experienced. The concepts covered were interesting, up to date, and provoked thinking and debate. He enjoyed it and found it useful… in the main. But it wasn’t bespoke to his role, or even his industry (though in fairness to the trainer, he acknowledge that everyone worked in the NHS). As someone who ALWAYS creates programmes that are bespoke to a specific organisation, I thought this was the one thing that would have made this workshop better – after all, training is all about application to the job. If we can’t apply what we are learning what’s the point of learning it? I put this to my husband, and he agreed to a point: Tech companies and manufacturing work very differently to the NHS, and although it was interesting, it was sometimes difficult to understand the link and apply the principles to…

Read More

Training Design – More than just a typing job

Uncategorized, , ,

I attend a lot of networking events, and often find myself explaining what it is that I actually DO for clients and trainers. Clearly I need to work on my communication skills because people  assume that I’m some sort of programmer, creating sophisticated e-learning packages. I can just about manage social networking platforms, and am one of the least IT literate people I know!. Or, when I describe that I create live training sessions, I’m told “Our administrator does that for us”. I then have to politely explain that “No, they don’t”. What you administrator does is prepare your training materials. This is quite different from designing training. I am not a typist. My typing skills are average. I’m competent in the use of Word and PowerPoint, but I’m no whizz, but that’s not what my service is about. Indeed, I sometimes employ graphic designers and typesetters myself.   I am a degree-level educated person with over 20 years experience of learning and development in commercial environments. People don’t use me (or my associates) to do a typing job for them, they employ me to create a coherent, robust learning and development solution to address a specific business need, that can be…

Read More

The Same but Different

Uncategorized, ,

Because we didn’t get back from our family holiday until late on Sunday evening, I did the weekly grocery shop yesterday (Monday) rather than on a Saturday when I usually do it. I went to the same place, at around the same time of day, and although everything looked the same, I quickly felt like I’d entered a parallel universe!!! The shop was quiet for a start, I mean audibly not just less busy. The regular staff (in my mind) were nowhere to be seen. But perhaps the biggest change was the behaviour of the shoppers. As a busy working mum, I have my list (written out in the order of the shop), I grab a large trolley, fill it up and am out again around an hour later. Yes, I check the sell-by dates, but it’s quite grab and go. This is normal for Saturdays. It’s what we all do. On a Monday morning the (mostly retired) clientele take their time. They go in pairs too. They discuss every potential purchase. One woman spent 5 minutes examining punnets of pears before putting on in her trolley. And it became very clear that they aren’t used to waiting at the checkout whilst a…

Read More

Performance improvement: Risk and Reward

Uncategorized, , ,

I went on my very first ski holiday 20 years ago. I enrolled in ski school, and for the next year too. By then I was basically competent and keen to follow my own path and not be restricted by lessons. Practice did improve me a little over the next few years but I was never great. Still. Good enough is often good enough. I was never particularly fast, but I could keep up with some members of my group, and that was OK. Then we had kids and so a few years break. When we restarted, we enrolled the children in ski school for 3 years, by then they were at least as good as me. Over the next few years, they have improved and improved. I am literally trailing behind them, and by quite a way. So each year, I’ve had a lesson. They all helped my confidence and technique but it’s never lasted and I’ve never really improved. This year, I almost booked a lesson, but didn’t. Instead, I watched skiers that I wanted to ski like. I’ve been told countless times to let the skis do the work. I’ve never managed it. Making C shapes helps…

Read More

One simple status update… HUGE learning

Uncategorized, , ,

I’m a member of a social media group for independent trainers and small training businesses. It’s a fabulous group: very active, very supportive and very helpful. It seemed to me that lots of people were posting successes and small wins, so I posted something a long the lines of “Everyone seems to having a great start to the year”. Boy oh boy, did that open the flood gates! I have since deleted the (what turned out to be a) contentious statement and taken from it two very important learning points. Something I should (perhaps) have thought about as I am in the L&D field. One is around communication and one is around team work. Let’s explore the communication issues first: My simple statement included a massive generalisation and a massive assumption: “Everyone” and “Great Start”. The group comprises over 100 people, yet I had based my post on the updates of perhaps 20 people at most. So, not everyone: Everyone who has posted recently. Of course, people who didn’t have great news to share or specific questions to ask/challenges to discuss didn’t post anything – the silent majority. “Great start” is very subjective. The more established members of the group…

Read More