For almost a year, I have been writing a blog for CLO Magazine called Your Career.  Here is my most recent post: Learning at the Point of Need.  In the post, I talk about my Cancer treatment journey and how it made me realize that organizations are not providing learning to match symptoms at the […] The post Learning at the Point of Need from CLO Magazine appeared first on Nelson Cohen Consulting.

Over the summer we have begun working with three new clients which we are delighted to have the opportunity to assist: Aon Corporation, we are reviewing their complete global learning strategy and providing feedback as well as assisting with their metrics strategy. Temple University School of Dentistry invited us to come in and work with first […] The post Nelson Cohen welcomes three new clients appeared first on Nelson Cohen Consulting.

71% of hiring managers said emotional intelligence (EQ) is more important than IQ. (source) Advice from Jeff Hargett, Senior Corporate Director, Culture Transformation at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: More and more organizations are joining the "Hiring for Attitude" bandwagon because they realize that some talents are not "taught but brought!" Kendra Cherry, a psychology expert, discusses the differences between IQ and EQ in her article "IQ or EQ: Which One Is More Important?" She cites research that shows EQ plays a bigger role than a person’s intelligence in determining their success or failure at work. As Steve Gutzler points out in his e-book, Emotional Intelligence for Personal Leadership, "Skills like self-awareness, your verbal and non-verbal communication, skills in collaboration, empathy, and self-management will all play into your ability to lead your team to success." Emotional intelligence (EQ) is key when evaluating an individual’s leadership potential. Daniel Goleman, the psychologist and author who first brought the term "emotional intelligence" to a wide audience, stated in his article in the Harvard Business Review that without emotional intelligence "a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader." Goleman identified five characteristics of emotional intelligence: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Social Skills, Empathy and Motivation. At The Ritz-Carlton, we look for candidates with empathy and motivation skills because these qualities are critical for building strong relationships and providing excellent customer service. ∞ Join us for a one-day symposium on November 12th. The day includes a Ritz-Carlton executive panel with Herve Humler, president & chief operations officer of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. The Blog Post Significant Stat: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Well, you gotta think outside the box occasionally right? I got the idea from the Economist that recently published an article on how octopuses think. Apparently they don’t really have a central brain like we humans. Instead their neurons are dispersed around their body, especially in their tentacles. So actually they think with their tentacles not with their "brains". Neat right? There must be something in the water (octopuses of course) that has recently led to a spate of articles on octopuses. Like how they mate, for example, obviously it must be complicated. And how they can use tools , so they must be on the brainy side. I think the editorial motive is to show that even if you think with your limbs, that’s not necessarily bad. Diversity, you know. Or an interest in aliens. Who knows? But actually there is some serious fodder to be found here. I have already done a couple of blog posts on a trendy subject called embodied cognition. The idea is that, even in humans, a lot of our thinking goes on outside our brain and specifically through our peripheral parts including our limbs. In fact Perth uses it as an innovative way to change behavior and for a new way of coaching people. We call it proprioceptive priming. The idea behind all this is that you can lead your brain into making behavioral change by using appropriate types of movements. So instead of thinking how to make changes that will make you a better leader but which are uncomfortable or even painful to make, you put in place the appropriate sequence of movements and they will prime the brain to move to the right or appropriate behaviors. In other words, we can impact and improve leadership by using kinesthetic rather than cognitive approaches. We could dance our way to becoming a better leader for example, as long as we know the right dance moves. Or, if we have decoded the moves, we can use sports and athletics as another means to becoming a better leader. That’s no doubt why someone with no education but much sporting prowess can sometimes become an outstanding leader. Of course, this is foreign to current leadership approaches which mostly stress educational approaches, personality assessment and social and emotional skills. That doesn’t mean that these approaches aren’t useful in their own right; just that they might be - probably are - missing something really big. I don’t even recall anyone linking embodied cognition with leadership although to be fair, sports and leadership are often linked, albeit without any theoretical basis that makes the link useful, actionable and replicable to real leaders in real life. So this mode of thinking does lead to some useful and maybe some invaluable insights. Like: When do we use body rather than mind approaches for best leadership impact? What sorts of physical moves do we make? Is there a formal body language which can lead to behavioral change? (Answer, yes). How can we use decentralized rather than centralized thinking to improve leadership impact and decision-making? How do we link in such approaches to traditional leadership development? So maybe the arcane subject of octopus neurology has more relevance to humans in the real world than we might have thought at first. Will we soon see a new and trendy topic in leadership courses: "Leading like an Octopus?"Read More

In what form might education disruption come? I like technology. I love learning. So you can probably imagine how giddy I get thinking about the potential impact technology might have on learning. Not just how new tech devices can be used to augment the learning experience. It’s true, that does excite me. But I’m equally, if not more, fascinated as to how the rise and ubiquity of technology is rapidly changing the world we live in, and how education will evolve to best serve this new world? Is calling it a ‘new world’ a bit dramatic? I don’t think so. This is the first of a series of posts where I’ll chat about evolving scenarios that I think have huge potential to challenge current models of education and learning provision. These scenarios are based around new models of sharing information, and the dramatic changes to the workplace and economy. Changes that will come to the fore as a result of the mass adoption of technological advances. These challenges to education might be direct and obvious, or indirect and less obvious. Though the less obvious changes might be harder to predict, they may change education in ways that currently seem unimaginable. It might have been easy to predict the mass adoption of the automobile. It would have been harder to predict the subsequent rise of out of town shopping centres and the changes they brought to the traditional high street. Each of the scenarios I’ll talk about can be seen as either a threat or opportunity by the traditional learning providers. There’ll certainly be a wide range of new providers looking to make the most of the opportunity. Will the traditional institutions do the same? Anyway, first up is the old favourite, ‘Disruption’. Disruption is real and it is massive. Education is not immune. I know I’ve probably set off all manner of klaxons with the ‘disruption’ buzzword. But there’s no avoiding it. It’s happening. On a massive scale. Education is likely to be caught in it’s path. But what form will it take? Can we get any clues from the acts of disruption already taking place? Have a read of Tim O’Reilly great article about the ‘WTF Economy’ (after you’ve finished reading this blog of course). A couple of excerpts; "In San Francisco, Uber has 3x the revenue of the entire prior taxi and limousine industry." And "Without owning a single room, Airbnb has more rooms on offer than some of the largest hotel groups in the world. Airbnb has 800 employees, while Hilton has 152,000." What we’re seeing more and more often is well established, well staffed, well used services having their current models of operating trashed by new entrants. These upstarts are using tech and masses of information to utilise new, low asset business models. The General Model for Disruption. Uber, Airbnb, Spotify and any number of other new companies, are comparable in that, to some extent they’re based on a similar model. A model that exploits the massive potential of the ubiquity of technology, connectivity and data. In its simplest terms it’s a model of two parts. Occasionally, after some growth, a third part is added. Part One - The Platform. First, they use technology to enable the demand and supply parts of the transaction to get together with minimal involvement from the companies themselves. They act as agents more than anything else. Driver and passenger. Host and guest. Artist and listener.They can help countless consumers get the individual service they desire. It’s not just large, traditional suppliers that are involved. They also help small scale, niche, suppliers find the customers who most desire their product. Having a large number of suppliers is important. As many potential customers as possible should be able to find something that satisfies their need. And they should be able to access it when they want it. Part Two - The Information. Second, they use massive amounts of data and numerous, complex algorithms to ensure the most efficient level of service for both the business and the customer. We see it it in Uber determining where you’re likely to be going or calculating the right price to ensure enough cars are available, AirBnB looking to deliver the most appropriate accommodation in your search results, and Netflix recommending the best film choice or developing new shows that people will want to watch. Data is the driving force behind deciding what to supply, when and to whom. Customers can also be influenced by relevant nudges from systems that understand the needs of the consumer. Perhaps even better than they do themselves. Part Three - The Creation. And then, thirdly, when they have enough data about the market in which they operate they can then opt to become a supplier themselves. They let others take the risks of trying to sell a product/service/content. They learn what works. And they learn what doesn’t. They can then enter the market themselves. We can see this in Netflix using data about how we currently watch existing hit shows. They use this data to inform their homegrown production of new shows. Amazon, are doing a similar thing in media. They also do it in retail. For example, monitoring third party sellers in Amazon Marketplace to determine what sells. Amazon may then sell it themselves. Cheaper. This combination of ubiquitous tech platform and data sets the foundation for them to reach a massive market, but with a relatively small level of resources. This makes them more nimble than the industry incumbents. The Model for Learning So what about education? What would a learning provider based around these principles look like? They would put teachers and learners together. The teachers would provide the content. They would be the platform, delivering augmented learning at a large scale but with relatively few resources compared to traditional institutions. The teachers may not be the traditional large scale suppliers of learning. There may be small scale niche providers. There would be a lot of learning to choose from. They would make massive use of data: To make sure they are providing the learning people want, when they want it, perhaps even before the learner knows they want it. To discover what learning content works, and what doesn’t. To understand what methods of delivery work best. To effectively deliver personalised learning at scale. Eventually, they would might even create their own content based on what they have learned from delivering other people’s courses. The Contenders? So is anyone doing this at the moment? Certainly the MOOC platforms such as Coursera and Edx offer a good range of courses from a range of universities through their online platforms. But it is only universities who are providing the learning, and they’re likely doing it as a marketing tactic. Does that really satisfy the needs of learners out there? I’ll talk more about the changing nature of learners in a later blog in this series. The UK social learning platform FutureLearn, a personal favourite of mine, offer a broader range of providers, including specialist organisations such as the British Museum and the European Space Agency along with a range of universities (full disclosure - I work for The Open University who own FutureLearn so I might be a little biased). This is great, but I’m still not sure it’s granular enough to satisfy enough learning needs. With the courses being offered for free it’s also a case of acknowledging that some of the courses are essentially ‘tasters’. Udemy, on the other hand, approach things from another angle. They don’t deliver collegiate learning but claim you can ‘Find a course on virtually anything’.  They  offer an ‘online learning and teaching marketplace’ with a mission to help anyone learn anything. They really do put tutors and students together. At the time of writing they’re claiming 7 million+ students and 30,000+ courses. Of course, exactly what these figures include can be questioned, but it certainly seems there is an appetite for this sort of model if done well. And they’ve raised $113 million in funding. Receiving $65 million in June of this year (2015). All of these organisations will be using data to some extent to help improve their products and increase their learner base. But I’m not aware of data utilisation to the extent we might imagine in the future. One organisation who will be using data to drive the uptake of their learning offerings is, perhaps surprising to some, LinkedIn. Their acquisition of online learning provider Lynda.com opens up a lot of potential in the area of delivering professional growth through ‘micro-credentials’. So, there we go. A selection of providers who are somewhere near the model, if not completely there. There are others. There will be more. Should Traditional Education be Concerned? To go back to Tim O’Reily’s piece, "What’s the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional universities in keeping skills up to date?" Will these new providers outperform traditional universities? Can they really disrupt the traditional model? Is there really a market for them? Aren’t learners satisfied with the existing models? In my next blog I’ll explain how the future of work may well have a dramatic impact on the future of education through the change in demand for learning. A change that might be very lucrative for any learning provider fitting the model we’ve just talked about. I’d love to hear you views on this model, or any other aspect of the blog, and let me know of other learning providers you think might potentially disrupt traditional education. You can connect with me on Twitter @steve_p_uk or LinkedIn

Too often in life, we have a problem.  So in order to solve the problem and improve the situation we focus on the output and apply our solution.  Take, for example, the Medicaid expansion outlined in the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare). It’s a simple premise - by expanding Medicaid (i.e. giving people health insurance), customers will go to the doctor more and Emergency Department visits will be reduced.  However, as noted in the Wall Street Journal, a new study of 10,000 low-income Oregon residents found this not to be the case. There are a couple of issues at play here.  The first is that the healthcare delivery system is not structured to accommodate this usage.  When the number of insured was increased, did the delivery system change?  Were clinics opened in low-income areas, where the population resides or works to accommodate them? Were doctor’s office hours changed? Were consumers notified of how to get appropriate care?  Of course, the answer is No. The second issue is that of consumer behavior.  If you give someone a benefit with the hopes of changing behavior, but do not change the way the benefit can be used, the person will use it within the confines of the current system.  Then behaviors will not change. Some may say the newly insured should use physician offices and clinics that exist, but if none are nearby, or can fit them in, then they have no choice but to go to the ER.  If they do have a job, it is likely not one they can easily take off work to take care of a non-emergent issue for himself or herself or a loved one.  Additionally, where they work may not be near where they live, so access to a clinic or physician office that will take Medicaid may be limited by either the location of the facility or their ability to get there (for example, if they take public transportation to get to work).  Unfortunately, it is easier to go after work or school, which means most clinics / MD offices are closed, so what other option exists? The ER. The system is not set up to support he benefit, so the consumer will use the only avenue available. So, what does this mean? For providers, it can actually be a revenue enhancement opportunity as people who were once uninsured, now have insurance.  However, under the current system, this will mean an increase in the number of Emergency Department visits.   Hospital administrators need to make sure systems are in place to manage this influx so as to not increase the Average Length of Stay (ALOS) in the ED (which some would say is too high already).  It also creates the opportunity to serve those in currently under-served areas by opening clinics and physician offices in thee areas and communicating to the consumers the availability and when to go where (Clinic vs. ED). Consumers also have a responsibility to educate themselves and make appropriate changes as the system changes.  The challenge is, changing consumer behavior can take time. Challenges and Problems like this can be solved, but only if the focus of the solution is on analyzing and improving the entire system and not just the output. Your thoughts?

Our "Objections" series highlights 4 main pillars of sales roadblocks: the prospect who expresses Doubt, Misunderstanding, Indifference, or a True Negative. And somewhere in between these four pillars are plenty of extensions to why prospects protest.     They don’t trust you. They have other sellers ahead of you. They struggle with the price. They don’t have time to haggle or move forward. And one of the hardest to nail down, they are heavily resistant to change.   When prospects fear change, it’s for many reasons.   If the decision maker knows they will be held responsible for switching to a new product. If the decision maker is adamant they won’t be able to convert other employees to your new product offering. If the decision maker is content with their old ways and will just try to be indifferent to yours. If the decision maker has concerns with competency to succeed with change. If the decision maker had issues with a similar change model from a different company - Why would this change their tune?   But that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome the ‘fear of change’ response. It just takes time and patience. to hit the right nerve. Here are some quick pointers to subdue your prospect’s urge to resist change.   Eliminate Surprises With Support   If you know you’ve covered most of their true needs and their concerns are with implementation and the responsibility falling on their shoulders, you must assure them your training and support system will be top-notch in the beginning, middle and end of the contract. And to prove that you’re not blowing smoke their way, you need to offer customer testimonials to support your, well, support.   Clear The Air With Positive Change Examples   Unless this is the first client for your company, surely you’ve got customer success stories from using your product. If not, then it’s time to go research and build that credibility report. If some client saw their profit margins increase because your’re product helped upsell other items, or if the quality of your product created more loyal customers for client "X" - whatever case study points out how your ability to convince them to change to you caused substantially happy smiles on both sides.   Know What Impact Your Product’s Change Might Have   If you’ve invested enough time and energy into pre-call planning, multiple phone calls and face-to-face meetings, it’ll all be for naught if you forget to forecast the future of your product to their workforce. Maybe you sell top-end machinery that could potentially put some people out of a job. Or the initial training pieces of your product for their workforce may take more than a day or two to sort out; how do you convey this to supervisors and trainers of that company? You can put the financial benefits of your product up on a pedestal, but you must be conscious of how this may affect more than just the decision maker you’re talking to.   The more you prepare in advance, the easier it is to empathize with the fear that change brings.   This is just one slice of the pie when it comes to objections. Sign up for ej4’s Thinkzoom now to watch a course from our "Objection" series. The post How Sales Reps Can Overcome ‘Fear of Change’ Objections appeared first on .

How many times have you struggled to remember someone’s name? Whether they’re a new client, a co-worker, or just someone you meet out in the world. You were told a name, maybe first name, or last name, at the beginning of the conversation. Then you continue the conversation for another few minutes only to forget key details… like their name. Then, a few weeks later, you run into them again and have to do what many of us do when we forget someone’s name:   Wait for someone else to say that person’s name in the conversation Say, "Hey, there!" Talk with someone else beforehand to find out the person’s name   Turns out we forget names for many reasons. We either aren’t invested with meeting this new person, or the more likely scenario, our brains are just overloaded with information as it is, and something as quick as a name thrown into the conversation fire will easily burn away if you don’t improve ways to recall it.     Which is why we made a quick, effective video showing how salespeople can remember names more easily, so they can improve their networking, which improves their relationship with current and potential clients, which leaves the door open for more business, and more money in their pocket. Because remembering a name shows you care, and if there’s ever one obvious rule of thumb in business, it’s that people do business with people they like and trust.   Click the image below to get started.   The post Improve Name Recall with Our New Video, "What’s in a Name?" appeared first on .

2015 is here and you have new ideas for your company. You’re probably planning out company-wide and/or department-specific goals already, [...] The post Video: Coping with Change for 2015 appeared first on .

In business, you can’t please everyone. Though everyone has to deal with a disgruntled customer at one point or another, [...] The post Dealing with Upset Customers: The Advanced Guide appeared first on .