sheridan@keystonedevelopment.co.uk
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How do you Learn?

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I’ve been independent for many years now, and my drivers for learning are different to when I was in an internal role. Then, what I learned was largely dictated to me – either by my managers or by the industry regulators. Of course, I did follow up my own interests, but this wasn’t actively encouraged. Now I tend to learn by recommendation. Maybe a LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook connection shares something that piques my interest and I take a look. Often my clients open my eyes: They use a model/theory that I’m not familiar with and (because its my job to create their learning programme on their behalf) I get up to speed with it quickly! Or, they recommend a book, blog or TedTalk that summarises the key messages they want to get across, and another door is opened for me. And of course, I can then take this knowledge to my next project/client. Because I don’t profess to be an expert in anything specific, I can openly say to my clients “I’m not familiar with that” and then they get the pleasure of teaching me something new… Just as I get the opportunity to introduce them to new things. That’s one of…

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No Such Thing as Free Consultancy

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When I refreshed my website last year, I made a genuine offer of a free brain-pick. A chance for any busy L&D manager to share their thoughts, challenges and ideas with me and get my input for nothing more than the price of a cup of tea. Not a single person has contacted me about this. Now, in a world where some L&D consultants won’t even give you a few slides or handouts without a hefty fee, I find this odd. But then I realised that most L&D managers (being smart and canny) realise that it can’t actually be free, there must be a catch. And of course, they’re right. There is a ‘price’… although it’s probably not what they think. I add value to my clients by giving them new ideas, making suggestions and helping them to overcome obstacles. But who helps me to get MY new ideas? My clients!!! Although I never share fine details, or pass materials around, something I did with one client will spark an idea for another client. Maybe it’s a particular exercise that worked well, a concept that helped to get buy-in, or a model that really helped people to make a change. I’m…

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Do this One Thing to Unleash your Brilliance in 2018

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A number of years ago, before my children started school, I was juggling part-time work with trying to be a great mum and do the lions share of the domestic chores. The kids went to nursery 3 days a week so I could work. On the two days they didn’t go, we went to Jo Jingles, Tumble-tots, swimming and generally kept ourselves busy. I never seemed to have enough time to keep on top of the cleaning. I considered putting my children into nursery for an extra half day so that I could get it done. What was I thinking??? Luckily, my husband asked a few great questions: How much will that cost? – Around £40 Do you WANT to do the cleaning? – No not really, but it needs to be done (he already did some, in particular the ironing and most of the gardening around his very demanding job and I didn’t think he should do more) Would you rather spend a half a day having fun with the kids or doing housework? – Duh?? Being with my kids of course! How much would a cleaner cost? – Errr – around £25. And so the decision was made…

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Why use Action Centred Leadership (and other ‘old’ models)?

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Once again, debates are doing the rounds about whether or not we should still be referring to ‘old’ leadership models in learning and development. Obviously, many of these models were conceived in the 1950s and 60s so I guess it’s right that their relevance to today’s organisations is questioned. I still use them, and I will continue to use them. To explain why, I shall use the analogy of ski-ing. NO competent skier goes down a mountain in a snow plough position. It just doesn’t happen. Anyone with more than a week’s lessons behind them is going to be doing a version of parallel turning. Yet EVERYONE starts out snow ploughing. Why? Well, it’s safe. Before you can go at speed you need to learn control. Snow ploughing ensures that you can control your direction, your speed and can stop when you need to. Even competent skiers fall back on the good old snow plough when they get into difficulty. It’s not fast, it’s not elegant, it’s hard work, but it WORKS. No beginner should ever point their skis straight down a mountain and hope they will be able to control their decent. On a group ski holiday many years…

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Getting Unstuck when Designing Training

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Why you need to ‘Turn Left to go Right’ Today I was suffering from training designers block. Similar to writer’s block, but training designer’s block includes not only what to write, but how to bring the content to life, how to present it visually, how to make it fit into the required timescales, take into account likely available resources at the venue, and all with a looming deadline. Designing training still forms a significant part of my role, even though I’m moving more into consultancy, mentoring and programme management, so getting ‘stuck’ is a major problem. But over the years, I’ve learned a few tricks. The most important of which is to lose time to make time. What I mean by this, is daring to step away (despite the looming deadline) and give myself a break. Do something completely different. It’s like when Doc Hudson told Lightening McQueen to turn left to go right at high speed. It’s counter-intuitive For me, the best way of getting unstuck is good old fresh air: A brisk 20 minute walk often does the trick, or maybe pulling a few weeds in the garden. Taking a shower also works (though I appreciate that may…

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Divided by Digital Learning

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There’s an item in the news today about how the elderly are feeling increasingly alienated in the high street. The introduction of self-serve checkouts, automated ordering points and lack of seating mean that shopping isn’t the social experience it once was. The modern high street doesn’t meet their needs, so they are starting to stay away. That’s a shame because the elderly form a significant part of our population, they have money to spend (if we make it easy for them) and more than that, we will all be elderly one day! It’s a similar story with digital learning. Everything I’ve read or listened to this year has been about making learning digital and instantly accessible. People want learning via an app on their smartphone; we can use virtual reality to simulate real life; ‘everyone’ accesses YouTube every day to learn something. Well I don’t. This is partially down to preference – I prefer to learn via other people, whether that’s formally on a workshop, or (more likely) informally via a conversation, group discussion, unconference or social media chat…all happening live and in ‘real time’, so I have some input into the learning. But mostly it’s down to the technology…

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Groundhog Day at the CIPD Annual Conference

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Today I popped along to the exhibition and free seminars at the CIPD conference in Manchester. I go most years, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it. This year was no different. On the plus side, it’s a great way to stay up to date with what the hot topics are, and thanks to twitter and the blog squad, you can get a lot of information from the key-note speeches without having to attend them. It’s also a good place to meet virtual contacts in person, and catch up with people you haven’t seen for a while. This year was no exception. On the down side, I’m getting fed up of hearing the same old things: We need to be more agile; we need to cater for millennials; we need to put the people back into people management; we need to use analytics; what can we do to be taken seriously by the Board? OK, things ARE moving forward, but it’s very slowly. There’s no doubt in my mind that HR people attend this conference for personal development and bench marking. They leave all fired up with ideas, armed with useful data to make their argument, and…

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Teach a man to fish (or a woman to do a website)…

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So, this is it. My new website designed by me, with just a little bit of guidance and hand holding from my friend Becs McNeill. I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve managed to achieve in a relatively short amount of time (probably 2-3 days in total). Of course, Becs (who is far more experienced than me) could have done it less time and possibly made it look just a teensy bit more professional. But she wanted me to learn so that I could be the one in control in the future. In essence, rather than bringing me fish, she taught me how to fish for myself so I could feed myself in the future. Much in the same way that I want to help busy L&D managers: I want to work alongside them, not use a load of smoke and mirrors to make things seem more complex than they are. I want to share my expertise, not keep it a secret. Yes, some things need expert knowledge or experience (just like building a website) but a lot of it is reasonably straightforward…if only you have the time. So by working together, we have achieved a win-win: She has earned some…

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Want learning to deliver? Join the dots

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Yesterday I attended my third ‘Unconference’ with fellow L&D professionals from a wide range of backgrounds. It was (as always) a very thought provoking day where many issues were discussed and some solutions identified! One of the sessions focused on empowering learners and engaging managers in learning. It was a very insightful discussion that considered how much training is VALUED in organisations, whether we are defining the right objectives (and whether the right people are involved in that process) to the metrics that we use to measure training (we decided that most metrics favoured by senior management were largely irrelevant to the measuring the effectiveness of a solution). Perhaps unsurprisingly, line managers were identified as one the biggest obstacles to effective transfer of learning. L&D teams may offer great opportunities and solutions, individuals may be motivated to learn, but when managers won’t ‘release’ them from their day job (proof if ever it was needed that learning is something extra, not related to the real work for which they get paid), when no-one takes an interest in what has been learned and how it has been applied, when no-one is helping them to see the link between learning and job performance,…

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Skin and Bone: Soft and Hard Management Skills

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Last weekend I went on a day’s family bushcraft course (thanks to Komaru Outdoors for such a great day!). Our day was more about having fun than serious learning, but the owners do run more corporate and social sessions with more emphasis on learning and development. Often, their clients are used to living in a black and white world: right and wrong, love and hate, my way or the high way. They learn about collaboration, team work and problem-solving and can then take these new inclusive skills into their workplaces and communities. The course leader and I were chatting. He assumed that (in my role as a training consultant) I was dealing with similar issues. The fact is, we are dealing with total opposites: He works with people who have all the ‘hard’ skills they’ll ever need – in fact, in many cases, these hard skills are over-done and over-relied on. They need to be balanced with what’s traditionally be termed ‘soft’ skills, but really it’s about people skills. They know WHAT to do, but they only have one way of doing it, which may not always be the best way. In my small part of the corporate training universe, most…

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