sheridan@keystonedevelopment.co.uk
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Tag: coaching

Home Posts Tagged "coaching"

Is the future of L&D simply being curious and connected?

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“That’s what I do: I drink and I know things”. One my favourite quotes from my favourite character in Game of Thrones – Tyrion Lannister, played by the brilliant Peter Dinklage. Yesterday, as I took a short but very bracing walk, it occurred to me that my quote would be very similar: “I think and I know people”. After 12 years of running my own business, I’ve got the two off to a fine art. But I always feel under pressure to increase my skill set and prove my ability through qualifications. I don’t have a Level 7 coaching qualification – should I get one (even though I don’t want to be a coach)? I don’t have digital design skills – Should I invest in a course and expensive software if I’m going to stay in business? I’m not an apprenticeship or ILM provider – perhaps I ought to get accredited (even though I’m very rarely asked to provide this)? This feeling of inadequacy was heightened on Friday when I was talking to a freelance trainer just 3 months into her journey. She believed that she needed to have a raft of qualifications in order to be taken seriously, somehow…

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How to Create an Award Winning Development Programme

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In L&D circles, the fashion is for agile learning; for bite-size sessions, or even micro-learning; for self-direction and curation. Surely no-one still attends workshops? Even worse, 18 month programmes? Well. Yes they do, and there’s a reason for it: They work. They work AS LONG AS the right people are on the programme in the first place, the programme is designed to take them on a development journey, AND those people are given high levels of support and challenge. I’m delighted to have played a supporting role in such a programme for the last 9 months – The award winning Academy at Johnson’s Apparelmaster. The Academy is multi-layered (internal) development programme that I’ve been supporting for the last 9 months. Here I am (on the right) with (L-R) Charlene Howard, Michela Deegan and Jan Fisher-Payne who each manage and deliver a specific stream. I have been supporting the largest group – the Intermediate level. Although my part has ended, the Academy is just half-way through. Twenty-Four people have been through 9 months of structured development, including self-directed learning, five 2-day workshops, telephone coaching and practical assignments. So far, the results have been pretty impressive. I’ve seen the majority of these…

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Self-Serve Learning: Magic Bullet or Cop Out?

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Over the weekend, I was listening to a podcast about simplifying learning. The feeling was that we (as learning professionals) should be encouraging people to source their own learning, but making it easy for them to do that. Why do we put people on a full day Excel course when they just need to learn how to do two functions? Of course, encouraging ‘just-in-time’ learning and making it easy to access is a brilliant thing for us to be doing: Agility in the workplace is increasingly important, and enabling people to learn what they need to learn, when they need to learn it is a no-brainer. BUT… What when we don’t know what we don’t know? That’s when a formal workshop or course can be massively helpful. People may enrol on a workshop or on-line course because there’s something specific they want to learn. However, this might only form 20% of the content. OK, maybe 20% of the rest of the content is irrelevant, and maybe they already know another 30%. That means 30% of the session is extra ‘bonus’ learning. Things they didn’t realise they needed to know, or is just helpful in other ways. Case in point: A…

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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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Dig a little deeper to transfer learning

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It’s one thing ‘know’ good practice but quite another to ‘do’ good practice. We see this all the time time training: People arrive on workshops complaining that they know all of this stuff already, yet most of them don’t SHOW that they know it in their everyday work. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Understanding and DEMONSTRATING that understanding are not the same thing either. As a professional training provider, we always actively encourage follow up to formal training. Some clients choose to do little, leaving it in the hands of the learner. Others choose a more structured and formal path. Apart from in very few cases, the latter approach always works better… What gets measured gets done. We are all busy. We all have multiple demands on our time. There is a temptation to be satisfied with what we have learned and move on to the next thing. Even as a training professional, I am no different. I’m currently receiving training on using the Strengthscope™ profiling too. I enjoyed the training session. I understood what was covered. I am motivated and keen to use what I have learned, but going from an internal focus (knowledge, feelings) to an external one (demonstration)…

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Why reinventing the wheel is necessary

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Yesterday I created a Learning Journal for a client. In some ways, there’s nothing new in this. I’ve probably created about 8 of them before, with the first around 10 years ago for Newey and Eyre. The Learning Journal I created yesterday bears little resemblance to the one I did for Newey and Eyre all those years ago, though I dare say that a paragraph or two will be recognisable. This may not be surprising to you. What may be MORE surprising is that it shares less than 50% similarity with a similar document that I created earlier this year. On a similar note, I’m currently starting the design of (another) Management Development Programme. Probably the 12th I’ve written. I will be able to take some elements of the programme from the previous 11, but much of it will be new. When I say ‘new’ I don’t mean never heard of before…I mean never included in one of my programmes before. And this is all because things change. Organisations change – each one is at a different stage and each has their own particular challenges and focus. Technology Changes – In my first management Development programme a ‘blended’ approach involved…

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What when there’s no burning platform?

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I’ve been in the training business for a long time (over 20 years although I like to think I don’t look that old) and I’ve seen all manner of approaches to training. We’ve gone from five-day residential programs through distance learning, coaching has been the tool of choice with e-learning always hovering on the horizon. Bite sized training is currently very popular and of course social learning via technology and apps. They all have their pros and cons. Just as we all learn in different ways, different training approaches will suit different businesses and different topics at different times. There is something though that is starting to worry me. And that is the engagement of learners. I’m not talking about participation on an event, or take-up rate of distance learning module but actual deep commitment to the learning opportunity, and more importantly, to its application. Afterall, the whole point of training is to bring about a change in behaviour. I work with lots of different organisations, and the HR and training teams are generally very intelligent, realistic, and business savvy. They have done their research, and they know what training needs exist and how fulfilling these needs will benefit their…

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The Key to Employee Engagement

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Last week I helped to run a seminar on Employee Engagement. It was a really positive event with a good mix of delegates, all at different points on the road to Employee Engagement. Of course, everyone wanted to know how to engage employees, what the 10-steps to success were, or which metrics were best to use. Of course, we couldn’t nail that down in the 3 short hours we had! Employee engagement is one of those quite difficult to define concepts: you know it when you see it/experience it. It’s like having that wonderful natural looking yet carefully planned garden that you want to spend the whole of the summer in. It’s difficult to define what makes it so inviting. Yes, the plants and flowers are nice, the layout of the lawn, the position of the patio, but there’s so much MORE.

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Don’t Use a Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut

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…it WILL do the job, but it takes a lot more energy that is needed, and creates a lot of unnecessary waste. Use a nutcracker instead. We all know the analogy, but what does it mean for trainers and HR departments? To answer that I’d liked to share my own recent learning experiences. I’ve had a quiet couple of weeks: a project designing 8 (very bespoke) half-day workshops for managers in food manufacturing has just finished, and my next project (delivering a lot of train the trainer workshops) doesn’t kick in until after half-term. So I embraced the lull and decided to get some lessons to improve my ski-ing and skating. Now, I am basically competent in both of these skills, but it is clear from watching other people that I am a long way from great. That’s OK. I don’t actually WANT to be great…but I knew I wasn’t as good as I could be.

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