It was so nice to speak to Chris Dyer from PeopleG2 on his podcast the other week. Coonoor Behal, the Founder of Mindhatch, joined me on the podcast and we both discussed employee engagement and leadership in the workplace. You can now listen to my interview on Talent Talk Radio on their website.    

Alan Todd's blog post was featured4 Ways Technology Can Bolster Executive Education and Impact Company StrategyIn a recent post, I explained that executive education is falling short today because it pulls busy executives away from day-to-day work rather than providing context-relevant learning that equips them to solve the business challenges they face every day. Although the challenge is obvious, and the opportunity, profound - solutions haven’t come as easily.Ten years ago, many saw online learning as a panacea. More recently, MOOCs for business have been held out as the solution du jour. As CEO of a learning technology company, and a student of learning in organizations, I’ve witnessed the hype cycles and emergence of new models firsthand. The good news is that historic investments in online learning have taught us a lot about what works — and more importantly, what doesn’t.Today’s corporate learning bears little resemblance to approaches embraced just 5 years ago. Smart strategies are blended, gamified, and social. And smart companies, like Coca-Cola and MasterCard, are providing a deeper, more meaningful learning experience for leaders across their organizations. Fortune 500’s most innovative chief learning officers understand that technology can enable executive education and development that meets leaders where they are, and delivers a direct impact on company strategy. Here’s how they’re doing it:1. Providing access to experts. For the last fifty years, most companies were forced to select just a few rising executives for the opportunity to continue their education with leading minds at institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton. The impact of these programs was, by definition, limited. Today, however, technology allows organizations to share the insights of top thinkers on supply chain leadership development, sales negotiation, and employee engagement. But it’s not just about expert content. Today’s corporate learning tools leverage innovations in consumer tech to move beyond static, one-way presentations—pairing expert content with expert facilitators who can help busy leaders to not just understand, but activate leading-edge business research, theory, and strategy.2. Delivering problem-based learning. The most effective learning organizations tailor content based on industry- or vertical-specific case studies and projects that address a specific enterprise challenge. As industries continue to change at break-neck pace, Netflix-like content curation helps corporate leaders adjust and measure the impact of content on-the-fly so that it’s continually based in problems and examples that are relevant to today’s challenges and opportunities.3. Integrating learning with work. Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Today’s corporate learning occurs on-demand, as a part of one’s job—not in isolation at a week or weekend-long residential program. The historic distinction between strategy setting - and strategy activation - has collapsed. When the lines between learning and doing are blurred, employees are equipped to make a real impact on business outcomes. Real-time delivery requires an unbundling of content. Today, we’re helping companies to deliver courses in multi-modeled, bite-sized chunks that keep the pace with real business decisions, and enable employees to apply their learning instantly.4. Getting serious about social. The success of any company comes down to the employee’s ability to collaborate and work with others. Corporate learning has to build not only content knowledge of employees, but also social skills. Corporate leaders of tomorrow are not just digital -but social natives. They understand how to tap the collective genius of friends and peers; skills that translate well into the workplace. Social learning networks bring people together across the company, giving employees tools to connect, form networks and share ideas. The effects are particularly profound with millennial workers. Grouping learners together in social networks that mimic real workplace teams can enable employees to further their professional development, amplify contextual learning and improve decision making.As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, not all technology is equal. But technology is a powerful tool when incorporated as a part of work-integrated approach to developing new leaders. The best corporate learning I’ve observed blends together best-in-class content with pedagogy rooted in the science of learning—and technology makes such an approach possible for organizations today. Companies that can pivot their learning strategies stand to benefit from a new generation of engaged, equipped leaders.Alan Todd is founder and CEO of CorpU.See More

This article originally appeared at SmartBlog on Leadership in August 2012. Career development appears at the top of many lists. Unfortunately, they tend to be lists focused on what employees desperately want but are not getting from managers. As for managers, most appreciate the value of career development and really wish they could do it more frequently and more effectively. But let’s face it: A manager’s day-to-day reality is a kaleidoscopic blur of meetings, responsibilities and shifting priorities. Helping employees to develop and grow is one of many activities that is continually pushed out in time to that elusive "someday" that too rarely comes. How can managers get past this conundrum? How can they make career development happen within the pressure-cooker reality that is business today? The answer is definitely not new systems, checklists, processes or forms. Those have actually contributed to the problem. Instead, the answer lies in a new mindset — a different way of thinking about what career development is — and a few key behaviors: Transfer ownership. Managers don’t own their employees’ careers. Employees do. All that managers can (and should) feel accountable for is guiding, encouraging, collaborating on and supporting the effort. When a manager really internalizes this reality, it can produce a powerful energetic shift. The weight of responsibility lifts, allowing managers to approach this task with greater energy and creativity than when it was another of their many "duties." This transfer also ensures that employees have some skin in the game. Personal ownership enhances their engagement, interest, commitment, and results. Cultivate curiosity. When ownership for development is transferred to the employee, career conversations suddenly become a lot easier and less stressful for managers. Managers don’t need to have all the answers. But they must be ready to pose the right questions. Questions are the most powerful tool managers have to support career development. And cultivating a genuine sense of curiosity and interest in others and their goals sets the tone for the most productive conversations possible. Iterate the IDP. Many organizations have formal individual development planning processes, during which managers engage in a lengthy annual analysis and career discussions with each employee. For the manager, it’s a huge time sink, and for the employee, it’s frequently like drinking from a fire hose. So, break it up. Do a little bit each month — or better yet, each week. These smaller, iterative chunks better accommodate the cadence of business. Perhaps more importantly, they better accommodate how development really occurs: little by little over time. Engineer experiences. Many managers avoid career development conversations because they believe that to make employees happy, the goal of such conversations is to provide ideas about how to move up or around in the organization. That’s simply not part of today’s de-layered, leaner approach to business. So how then does development occur? Through experiences that leverage talents and build the skills that employees need. It might be leading a team, analyzing data, or getting to know new customers. Jointly arriving at development experiences is smart business because while the employee is developing, important work gets done simultaneously. Seize coachable moments. Career development opportunities occur countless times each day, but only when managers are sensitive to the cues around them and are willing to seize coachable moments. When an employee shares a new interest, is starting a project, has just come back from training or has experienced a set-back — all of these are career development cues. A 1-3 minute conversation in the flow of the work that needs to be done can help employees reflect, analyze, consider and plan their career development. There’s no need to wait for some big career meeting (that likely won’t occur anyway). Managers who consistently find the time to engage in career development that employees appreciate don’t have more time than others. They have a mindset that allows them to deploy the little time they have toward efficient high-value conversations that drive employee ownership, reflection, motivation, and action. In fact, it’s the busiest managers who realize they don’t have the time not to develop those around them. The post Confronting the career-development conundrum: 5 tips for busy managers appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Okay, I know I need to go to a treatment program for this, but every once in awhile I get this urge to bust a few myths and shake things up. In particular, I like to do this around the topic of employee engagement. I can’t help myself. If you think that the great ‘engagement fairy’ is going to fly down and wave their magic wand and proclaim that you are suddenly highly engaged at work, life just doesn’t work that way. Back in my days as a senior human resources executive, I came across so many employees of all ages who truly believed that they were entitled to the big office, a huge raise, promotion to their bosses job or the best parking space in the garage.  My favorite were the people who came in to interview with me and spent more time asking what our company could do for them, versus what they could do for us.  How much do you want to bet that this group of ‘entitlement seekers’ was some of your least engaged employees? Engagement isn’t a right, its something that happens because you are working in an environment that allows you to do the best work you can. Employees want nothing more than to be part of something meaningful and feel like they’ve had a hand in making a difference. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves and part of the underlying success. They want to be energized by their job and look forward to going to work, willing to put in the extra effort it takes to make their organization a success. No one group alone can own 100% of engagement, there needs to be some level of ownership from senior leadership, managers as well as individual employees. However, there are some really important things that each employee can personally do on their journey to attain high engagement. Here are my top 4 steps for employees to take to reach this goal. Employees need to take personal accountability for their engagement at work.  Just sitting back, waiting and hoping for divine inspiration will not lead to engagement. It takes an effort from each and every employee to move the needle. Employees need to identify the motivation triggers that matter most to them and help their manager to understand what they need.  No one knows what you need to be engaged better than you. Find your voice and speak up. Most managers are not mind readers. Employees need to know how to work well with their boss. Management is not a one-way street; it requires participation from two people who both believe they have a stake in the outcome of the relationship. Employees want to be part of something bigger than them — something for which they can be proud.  Finding meaning in your work is one of the major cornerstones to achieving the magic of engagement. If you believe in the work you are doing and the mission of the company, it is easy to engage with the work. No one knows what it takes to engage you but you! It’s time to step up and stop waiting for someone else to do it for you.

Ali Behnam's blog post was featuredFull-Stack Business Is the Future of RecruitingNest, Netflix, Airbnb. I bet you’ve heard of those. And often. Full stack startups are all the rage these days. In fact, A16Z is on record with identifying the Full Stack Startup, cryptocurrency and transformation of the data center as the three areas that have the potential to create some of biggest disrupters and winners in tech industry.For those who are unfamiliar, a full stack business is a technology-enabled product or service that directly provides the full solution to the end customer unlike other technology startups that sell their product or service as a technology for internal use typically to the CIO. A full stack business doesn’t charge for the use of the software.Instead, they charge for the transaction (booking a room in the case of Airbnb) and can grab the full economic benefit of the service. They are the hardest services to get right given you need to get the software and people side right, but if you get it right, they are the hardest business to replicate based on all the interlocking aspects of the business.Consider for a moment the taxi, real estate and finance fields.There have been a number of startups that have built software to make the taxi services more efficient, realtors more accountable and finance management more attainable. The problem was these businesses didn’t believe technology could provide a competitive advantage.Plus, they had to overcome huge cultural issues with the adoption of this tech internally (sound familiar?). So the firms that built the software to enable these businesses never grew to be anything meaningful. Now think of Uber, Redfin and Wealthfront-all wildly successful full stack startups in these exact markets.I have first-hand experience with the traditional software as OEM service approach. I cofounded a startup back in early 2000 that tried to build software for staffing firms. It didn’t work. One thing we learned was never build a business based on selling software to recruiters-they are the worst clients.As a full stack business, recruiting becomes much more efficient and cost-effective, because operating an end-to-end requires standardized and repeatable processes and a consistent methodology. And you have to be willing to share data and information throughout the entire team-which is not at all the way traditional recruiting works.The thing is, traditional recruiting is broken. Most recruiting firms are aggregation of individuals with individual goals-the classic real estate model. And recruiters are inherently paranoid, which doesn’t allow full transparency for clients to really see what’s going on, and doesn’t provide the best experience for candidates.But when you create an ecosystem with your own people, processes, systems and data, you get a cohesive, collaborative environment with everybody rowing in the right direction. You have a uniform database with all the data (and over time data gets better and better), and have a uniform way to evaluate matches.Recruiters can spend less time on inefficient and administrative tasks and more time building relationships with clients and candidates. It’s more transparent for clients and less invasive for candidates, since you only reach out when you have something and only if it’s the best possible match.Everybody wins.Ali Behnam is the co-founder and managing partner of Riviera Partners.See More

This article first appeared at Lead Change Group in July 2012. Ever wonder why there are more than 350,000 leadership titles on amazon.com? The plethora of models, seminars, speakers, authors, and books on the topic confirms something I’ve been thinking for a while: leadership is less a science (or even an art); it’s more an individual expression… as unique and one-of-a-kind as a snowflake or a leader’s own fingerprint. No wonder so many people have such different takes on it! This expression of leadership is born from the full range of our experiences. Upbringing and parents. Relationships.Work. Other responsibilities. We can each trace our own ‘leader-prints’ back to a complex web of factors unique to our own lives. My expression of leadership has grown from three key roles I’ve held outside of the corporate environment: teaching, parenting, and volunteering. Early in my career, I was a high school teacher and then a college professor. My students were great teachers, since I was learning right along with them. I quickly discovered that me telling them only went so far. My fascinating and well-researched lectures sustained their interest for a nano-second… but when students got involved - when they were working with others, when they were hands-on - interest, retention, and fun skyrocketed. Then came my own children, who taught me more about leadership than any training course ever could. I remember reading when they were young that we teach the life we live… and that quickly played out day after day. "Do as I say, not as I do" didn’t work any better with kids at home than it did with employees in the workplace. Modeling - whether how to use manners at the dinner table or get along with friends - was the only way to achieve sustainable results. Along with my own kids came countless opportunities to volunteer. This is where my most powerful leadership lessons were learned. Volunteers don’t do it for the glamour or the paycheck. They have many other organizations vying for their time and talents. And they stick around only as long as their needs are being met. So, how do these three lessons come together in my ‘leader-print’? I am compelled to get people actively involved - not talking about things but taking action toward joint goals. I lead from the middle, shoulder to shoulder with others in the effort. And I treat everyone - paid or not - like they’re volunteers who are getting nothing out of the experience but a sense of satisfaction and appreciation. So, what’s your personal expression of leadership? How did you arrive at your own unique ‘leader-print’? The post What’s Your ‘Leader-Print’? appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

I know I don’t. I know most of my friends who are also baby boomers don’t. We, of a certain demographic, are leaving Corporate America in droves. Every week I’m meeting up with friends of friends who want to hear my story of why and how I left and what it takes to go out on your own. That’s been steadily going on now over the last four years since I pulled the plug on my corporate human resources career. We all joke about "voting ourselves off the corporate island," but the situation really isn’t funny. In the last year my tea dates have gotten younger and younger while, (sigh) I still get older. The millennials are now joining the party in large numbers. As numerous recent articles and studies are showing, millennial workers are saying that they simply don’t aspire to take on senior level roles. It’s not that they don’t believe they have the skills and smarts to do the job, many just don’t feel that it is the right path for them and worth the effort. Years ago someone thankfully kicked the crap out of the old notion of a career ladder where you moved up one rung at a time. Instead we all began to focus more on building a portfolio of skills and taking lateral moves to gain additional experience to broaden our skill set. But, what didn’t change was the thinking that eventually you’d end up at or near the top. Until recently, that is. Now, people are saying, both with their voices and their feet that their goal isn’t to rise to the top. So, is this all due to the massive percentage of workers that identify themselves as disengaged or other factors? Frankly it’s a bit of everything. With 68.5% of the US workforce disengaged according to the Gallup Institute (87% globally), it’s easy to simply lay blame here, but I’m also hearing from engaged people who just don’t have the desire to take on the stress and pressure that comes with the top jobs. When I talk to my peers who have walked away, I hear things like "I have nothing left to prove" and "I want to do something that has meaning and I can change lives." Perhaps to combat the epidemic of disengagement or it’s just the world we live in today, there is an overwhelming number of people jumping on the bandwagon to talk about how we need to have meaning at work, find our purpose and be happy. Every day I get an email with links to articles on these subjects or inviting me to attend conferences or webinars designed around passion and happiness. Admit it, our curiosity gets peaked when someone promises us we can be happy at work instead of sad, frustrated and miserable. Of course, in the moment we forget that we also have to pay the bills and have health insurance. What my friends and I have figured out is that it is so much better to work to thrive, rather than work just to survive. However, being the more conservative types that most baby boomers are (having had parents that were depression era babies), we saved a lot to be able to have choices later in our career. What scares me a bit, but also makes me jealous, is that millennial workers are not worrying about having the money to make life changing career decisions, they just do what feels right for them in the moment. Given this, how can companies hope to keep them around while grooming them for more responsibility? It starts with figuring out what makes them tick, what makes them excited to get up in the morning and come in to work, what is going to give them meaning and purpose in the workplace. It also starts with figuring out how they can have a successful career while not sacrificing their life-work balance outside of the office. And while we are on this subject, let’s not forget about our GenXers. They sometimes get lost in the squeeze of worrying about losing the incredible knowledge and experience of the baby boomers and the potential of the millennial generation. We need to turn back to the basics of creating an engaging work environment where people of all generations can buy in, go all in and remain within while contributing to the passion and mission of the company and worry less about what their job titles are, now and in the future.

Mike Tippets's blog post was featuredBlended Learning Is New AgainIn today’s connected world it seems almost nonsensical that an organization would rely solely on the classroom to instruct their workforce. Why ignore the ability to deliver content outside of the classroom, making the in-classroom experience better.Blended Learning has some very wide interpretations. Some will say that it is a mixture of brick and mortar classroom with online content. Others will say that it is a brick and mortar classroom that also includes computer lab time in the classroom. Still others will claim that it is any instruction that includes the use of online media and web technologies to instruct.I most closely align with the first group - except that I count virtual, distance learning classrooms as part of the classroom portion of Blended Learning. I believe that this is the most effective and realistic training and education model for distributed businesses (and I include government agencies and non-profit groups in this as well).Whether in-person or virtual the classroom is the most expensive portion of training. You are consuming the time of the learners and also the subject matter experts. This time should be used more as a workshop and not a lecture hall. Using online delivery of material allows learners to consume the material in advance of time with the instructors. It allows the learners to consume at their own pace. Then when they are in the classroom they are ready to ask questions, share their ideas and participate in meaningful learning exercises.The phrase, "Consuming at their own pace," may mean that the learner is reading a little bit each night when they have free time. Or it may mean that they are reading and re-reading the concepts until they feel they have mastered the concept and are ready to participate in a workshop on the topic. Online delivery of the material means that students can consume in their preferred method and timing. It breaks away from the "one-size-fits-all" lecture hall method.The ratio of classroom time to online material will depend on the type of training being done and the learner’s ultimate use of the training. If you are training an employee on how to use internal systems (e.g. POS register, time clock, etc.) then you likely can use more online media for the training, because it is really a rote understanding of how to accomplish certain tasks. But if you are training the employee on how to handle customer complaints, then you may want to expose them to some pre-recorded situations and then in the classroom let the group share thoughts and various experiences with the instructor moderating the discussion and making sure that standard company practices are the foundation.The point of this post is to show how blended learning is being used and also to make the point that there is a significant resurgence in the discussion of blended learning as a method to make sure you are creating the most successful training and learning solution possible. Even in the K-12 education systems, there is an increasing emphasis being placed on the use of online tools to help the student master key skills outside of the classroom. In this scenario, students treat learning math like they did learning to ride a bicycle. They can simply continue to try a concept until they have mastered it. If the students are allowed to practice and master outside the classroom, then the teacher can use the class time to mentor those who are struggling, give examples of where the concept can be used and lead a discussion. Rather than teaching to the lowest common denominator or worse, leaving behind those who cannot keep up with the class.There are many technologies that can be used to accomplish blended learning, but the use of technology should be treated as a secondary component of the solution. Decide what you want the learning outcome to be and then choose technology and the ratio of in-classroom to online delivery based on that learning objective.And stop waiting - the great thing about this type of learning delivery is the flexibility to change based on results. Start a program, evaluate the results, adapt and continue. Learning will always be dynamic and the delivery of that learning should be dynamic too.Mike Tippets is vice president of the Business Solutions Group, North American Division at Hughes.See More

I was asked the other day if I thought I had left a legacy at my last job or frankly in a broader context, throughout my entire career. My quick answer was yes, no and maybe. Legacy is one of those funny words that has morphed over time. According to Webster’s Dictionary, it is anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.  Today, we tend to think of a legacy as the way in which we impacted those around us and the ways we inspired others. I do believe that I did some things that had a positive impact on the businesses I supported from an HR perspective and with certain people that I frequently interacted with. Is that a legacy? No, not really if I was completely honest.  That doesn’t diminish what I brought to the table every day or the things that my team and I accomplished but I question if I changed lives or perhaps inspired lots of people at some point during my career. My views on leaving a legacy changed the day my husband died.  I had always believed that he was an amazing person who was thought highly of by those who came in to contact with him, but I truly had no clue at the magnitude of the impact he had on people.  From the moment the news started to get out about his passing, I was inundated with calls, texts and emails from people around the country who were friends, colleagues or clients of Sandy’s.  The comments were similar and centered around the kind of person he was and the way that he changed people’s lives. He was admired, respected and loved by such a diverse group of people, including some of this country’s top executives, sports figures and politicians, but also the people who interacted with him on a daily basis whether at work, at our neighborhood dry cleaners, our favorite restaurant, the hair salon, gym or the local Peet’s coffee shop. What I learned during those hectic first few weeks was that my husband touched so many people in a positive way. He didn’t save lives, defend the innocent or make a million dollars a year. What he did do was to be the voice of reason and the peacemaker who others looked up to. He was a source of inspiration to others. He made others look good every day, both literally and figuratively. And most importantly, he was a friend to countless number of people.  Now that’s how you leave a legacy. In today’s cutthroat business environment, my husband was an outlier. He wasn’t outwardly aggressive and competitive. He had an inner drive that I, and others close to him, knew about and admired but he didn’t throw it in people’s faces.  Perhaps it’s something we can all learn from, that the loudest person in the room isn’t always the most important one. Sometimes silence truly is golden. As I go forward in my life as an author, speaker, daughter, sister and friend, I can only hope to leave a legacy as powerful as my husbands. Steady, calm and humble trumps frantic, crazy and egotistical any day.

Metrics and data are the name of the game today.  Since what gets measured gets managed, organizations and the leaders running them are constantly searching for ways to quantify the impact of their initiatives and efforts.  Some dimensions - like sales or customer service - are fairly easy to wrap numbers around.  Others present real challenges.  And career development is in this latter group. We know that career development - like eating vegetables - is good for us. Global data builds a case for it.  But what about at an individual organizational level?  How can anyone - from the CEO to a frontline supervisor - gauge the success of career development? It is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of career development efforts through the use of lagging and leading indicators.  Lagging indicators are things that change after career development improvements take place while leading indicators are those factors that change before career development follows that trend. Non-Indicators The problem is that too many organizations are skipping an exploration of either lagging or leading indicators, instead choosing to study non-indicators.  Too much emphasis is placed on a variety of administrative factors that have no relationship to real career development results:  ‘People development’ as a core organizational value. Nearly every organization espouses a commitment to development. The walls of all executive office halls are covered with plaques (and frequently platitudes). But, putting it on paper doesn’t necessarily mean that you are putting it into practice. The number of development plans in the system. There is no correlation between physical plans and authentic development. In fact, many busy managers invest their limited time in completing the forms they’re accountable for… at the expense of engaging in authentic development. Documented IDP conversations. Managers are held accountable for having the conversation… but there’s no accountability for quality. As a result, these tend to be mechanical exchanges that in no way move the needle toward greater career results. Training rosters. It’s easy to think that if employees are being trained, then career development is happening. Not so! The bulk of development happens through experiences and activities on the job. Formal training is important, but only a small part of the overall development picture. Lagging Indicators A quick look in the rear-view mirror can reveal a lot about how career development is going in your organization. Employee opinion surveys and climate studies reveal a lot about how effectively your efforts are being received. Since there’s a clear link between career development, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, these metrics can be instructive. Retention and voluntary turnover statistics speak volumes about the extent to which your career development efforts are hitting the mark. Take a look at the ratio of internal versus external candidates placed in open positions.  Organizations with a commitment to (and satisfaction around) career development will find that larger numbers of current employees are prepared to take on new roles. What do your bottom-line business results look like?  There’s a direct connection between performance and career development. Who’s been promoted or moved? Creating a quick ‘family tree’ for each leader, indicating how employees have grown and transferred is a powerful visual of development in general - and a snapshot of those in your organization who are driving development results. What about innovation? How many new products or services are you launching? What kinds of improvements are in process? It’s those who are developing and growing who are likely delivering these sorts of results. Leading Indicators Why wait to look backward at your efforts when you can explore real-time factors that will predict the trajectory of career development today? Leading indicators allow you to more proactively address this pressing priority. Follow the engagement. Deloitte, Right Management, and others have clearly identified a link between career development and engagement. As the needle moves on one, it generally moves on the other. Wellness factors might predict career development effectiveness as well. How is absenteeism trending? What are your safety or injury trends? These feed into the engagement-career development mix. And quality can suggest the direction of your career development. When errors are down and quality is up, you may find that career development success follows. The indicators you choose depend upon your organization and the data that’s available.  But choose something. What gets measured gets managed. And career development is clearly worthy of management. What about you? How do you measure and predict career development success? Image: Liz Price The post Measuring Career Development Success appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.