ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes As a boy, I loved to watch Father Knows Best, a TV program showcasing your typical sitcom family of the 50s. One of the more memorable episodes involves a short-wave radio that teenager Bud is refurbishing. When he finally gets the contraption working, he finds himself listening to a conversation between two boats located over a thousand miles away. The signal is bouncing off the ionosphere—making him privy to a conversation between the "Betty Anne," a 34-foot cabin cruiser and other vessels nearby. Soon, the entire Anderson family is drawn into the action as the Allen family aboard the Betty Anne heads into a horrible storm. The Allen’s think the turn in the weather is nothing more than a rainsquall. The Coast Guard sounds a warning of an impending storm. But the two parties can’t hear each other due to local interference. The Andersons, beneficiaries of the signal bounce, can easily hear everyone involved and can’t figure out why someone doesn’t help the Betty Anne or radio the Coast Guard. As the Allens are about to be tossed into the violent sea, the Andersons anguish over their inability to offer help. Completely pulled into the teleplay, I shouted into the TV: "Call the Coast Guard! You know the Betty Anne is about to capsize five miles off Shark Island. You can save the Allens! Just make a phone call!" Finally, after ten minutes of tortuous inaction from the Andersons and constant coaxing from me, Mr. Anderson realizes that he can phone the Coast Guard. He makes the call, saves the Allen family, and I stop yelling at the TV. I walked away from that teleplay vowing that if I were ever in a position where I could spot an upcoming disaster (one that I could foresee but others couldn’t) I’d shout out a warning. Today, I feel as if I’m watching just such an impending disaster, so please allow me to offer up a warning. As you observe young people working their way through school, you can’t help but take notice as they approach certain critical junctures. Early on, they decide whether school is their thing or not. They decide whether grades and studying is their thing or not. And finally, they decide whether math, science, literature, art, or philosophy is their thing or not. There was a time when the subject you chose to master at school, or for that matter, how many years you attended, didn’t exactly seal your financial destiny. When I was young, there were a variety of jobs available for people who barely limped through high school. Manufacturing positions paid good money and offered a solid career path to individuals who were willing to roll up their sleeves and get dirty. In fact, blue-collar positions paid, on average, more than white-collar ones. The joke at the time was that factory workers made more than lawyers. Advanced education seemed more of a luxury than a strategic choice. Circumstances have changed to the point where the data are now crystal clear. While we still have a strong manufacturing core, contemporary firms produce high-tech, high-cost items, built by people who’ve done well in school and have had plenty of it. As a result, on average, American employees make more money with each year they spend in school—all the way through a PhD. So, when youngsters say, "You know, school isn’t my thing." It’s our job to let them know of the disaster that might lie just beyond the horizon. It’s our responsibility to explain that when they distance themselves from school, they might be choosing a job pool and income level they won’t like—and it could last their entire life. In a similar vein, when a youngster says, "I know that school matters, but it isn’t easy for me. I don’t test well. Grades aren’t my thing," alarms should go off in your head. Grades matter a great deal and according to recent research, most people can learn to get good grades if they’re taught how to study. Learning how to learn doesn’t call for rocket science. I’ll never forget the day I graduated from high school and our friend Harry Roller sat me down and prepared me for college by teaching me how to succeed in school. He told me to go to every class and do every assignment. You read the reading assignment beforehand. You leave class and head straight to a quiet place in the library where you don’t study with noisy friends. Instead, you sit down in that quiet spot, review your notes, and prepare for your next class. Reading is a science in itself. You take a short walking break after fifteen minutes. At thirty minutes you take a three-minute break. At sixty minutes, a five-minute break. You start a chapter by reading the questions at the end and pouring over the headings, charts, and models, then you read the chapter. And so forth. We know how to maximize learning. It’s not a mystery. So when young people say grades aren’t their thing, teach them how to earn good grades by helping them improve their study techniques. It’s hard to imagine an investment that has a greater rate of return than learning how to learn. And now for the final danger sign. Say your kids agree that both school and grades matter. Unfortunately, they find math and science to be puzzling. It’s not long until they explain that they don’t like math. Eventually they suggest that they don’t "do" math. After all, they aren’t nerds. With time, they come to frame their disdain for all things quantitative as an asset—sure they’re bad at math, but hey, they have social skills that give them an advantage. For others, math and technology is their thing and they see literature, art, and the like as weak and without scientific underpinnings. While it’s wonderful to find a passion, it’s sad when young people turn this love for one field as a reason for not exploring others. Not only does this narrow framing cut them off from important parts of life, it makes them vulnerable. I used to sit on the admissions committee of a popular master’s program. Demand far exceeded supply so we could only accept a fraction of the applicants. About once a year, one of the local candidates who had been turned down would corner me in the hallway and plead his or her case. "I scored nearly perfectly in the verbal section of the qualifying exam and I won two writing awards. Sure my quantitative score was only average, but my verbal skills more than make up for it." Or: "Did you see my quantitative score? I’m a gifted scientist. Sure, my verbal score wasn’t all that great but . . ." You can see where this is going. I would point out that the students who were accepted scored high in both areas of the test. To be admitted, you have to be able to play with both sets of blocks. It was sad to watch these eager applicants as they realized for the first time that doing well in only one domain simply wasn’t enough to earn them a place on the roster. Of course, all of us are acquainted with people who’ve found ways to work in careers they love, and some of them earn a good living. There are always thousands of exceptions to the rule. Nevertheless, I believe it’s important to let your young family members and friends know the impact of school, grades, study methods, and a balanced skill set. We’ve looked out into the future and like the Anderson family, have observed what could easily be an impending disaster. It doesn’t involve boats heading into a storm; nevertheless it could be disastrous just the same. Allow the next generation of youngsters to dismiss the importance of school, disregard grades, and turn up their noses at whole branches of knowledge and they may face a tumultuous future. I feel it’s my duty to sound a warning. Related posts: Kerrying On: The Sky’s the Limit Kerrying On: The Buck Stops Here Kerrying On: A Disaster in the Making

What have you done lately to make someone’s life easier? That’s a question you should be asking yourself every day. I like to constantly think of things I can do to make someone’s life easier. When thinking about learning experiences when training is needed, it’s important to train as efficiently as possible. Even if you’re cutting down an hour and a half plus training session(s) down to less than 30 minutes, it might not be enough. It makes life a bit easier to save time, but is it possible to go even further? Is it necessary to force everyone to do training in the first place? Maybe some people do need full training, but still forced training isn’t the answer to anything. Making training an option but available makes it easier for everyone. Not everyone will need or want to take training, so don’t ever make it required unless somebody will be harmed if it’s not. Doing something for someone would be to trust them to decide if they need to partake in training or not. You are making life easier by trusting them and putting the decision in their hands. This trust builds something important in an organization and I’d argue creates an even better learning culture. What Creates a Learning Culture? Required training is the opposite of what creates a learning culture. Wanting to learn and helping employees be curious and interested in learning is what creates a learning culture. Developing training and making it available isn’t enough, giving resources to people and allowing them to do the learning is what makes a learning culture. What have you done for someone to help foster a learning culture at your organization? Have you allowed them to use their brain to decide if they need the training or not? Have you given them the option to forgo the training and rely on performance support? Have you made sure is thorough enough to give those self-directed learners the resources they need? Making life easier for others dealing with L&D is to not force them to do something. Make it an option if it can be, and in most cases it can. Make Someone’s Life Easier That’s what your goal should be every day. Simplify to the point of making someone’s life easier. Everything is getting easier every day (and harder at the same time), sometimes to the point of flaw, but for the most part it’s a great thing. What have you done lately to make someone’s life easier? That’s the question you don’t hear asked often enough in Learning & Development. This question should be part of every model used by Instructional Designers. It’s the most important question you can ask, and it should be thought about every day. When we ask ourselves this question it makes us think more about what we’re putting others through. I don’t want to sound like this is something only Learning & Development professionals should be asking though, everybody in every industry should be asking this question. Everybody is making or doing something that somebody else will use or touch in some way. Nobody cares as much about what we’re designing as much as we do, so we need to make it painless for them. They simply won’t respect the thought we put into it nor should they have to. Simplifying processes and making it easier on others is just one important thing that we can do for others. Take a look at the course, training, whatever you’re designing or doing. What can you do to make it easier and quicker? Not everybody wants to sit through a 30 minute course, especially if they’re already familiar with the content. Easy Life is complex (and easy) in so many ways, it’s time to think about how to make it easier for others. If we all make part of our job to make things easier, everybody wins. It may take a bit more thought and work on our part, some people may push back, but it’s all worth it. What have you done to make someone’s life easier? The post Make Someone’s Life Easier appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: First Thoughts on Learned Helplessness What’s My Development Process? Learning Experience As a User Experience

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My husband is constantly angry at our fifteen-year-old son. They are always in shouting matches and it drives me crazy. When I walk away from them, my husband says I am "burying my head in the sand." My husband is very negative and set in his ways, and he expects our son to have the same ideas. My husband also verbalizes his disappointment in our son and tells him he is only concerned with himself. Granted, there are times this is true, but he’s a typical teenage boy. He’s sometimes mouthy, but he’s a good kid, works hard even though he may complain, and is never in trouble anywhere but at home. I want to support my husband, but I feel he is often wrong, that he goes too far, and that some of his expectations are unreasonable. When I try to talk about it, he says that I am taking our son’s side and that the only way he can keep the peace is to just shut his mouth and not say anything. He’s not very open to conversation. Help! Signed, End of My Rope Dear End, Aren’t marriages wonderful? And I mean that! Sustained, intimate relationships are usually both the greatest opportunity for personal growth and the greatest challenge of our lives. And they are the former because they are the latter. You are exactly the gift your husband needs, and he may just be the perfect gift for you. Children need both affirmation and influence. It sounds like you’re world-class at affirmation and he has a bias for influence. Unfortunately, many relationships break down because we keep trying to make the other person be good at what we value without properly recognizing our need for what they bring to the party. Now, I’m not suggesting your husband’s approach to influence is the best. But it sounds as though what’s important to him is trying to help bring out the best in your son. And your approach to affirming him may, at times, come at the expense of helping him aspire to higher standards. But that should not take away from the fact that you see great worth and beauty in him. That’s wonderful! So the question is how do you turn conflicting values into complementary ones? How can you and your husband create a relationship where your son gets the best you both have to offer—and where you both learn to offer it in a healthier way? Here are some suggestions: 1. Start with safety. Help your husband know that you value what he is trying to do for your son. Express genuine appreciation for his desire to influence your son to strive. Point out specific ways you can see that your son has benefited from having him as a father. Then scrupulously avoid using the word, "but." Don’t do it! Get it out of your brain. After affirming your value for having a positive influence on your son, don’t go on to say, "But…you often do it about things that aren’t that important." There are no "buts" when you’re affirming people and creating Mutual Purpose. There are only "ands." The fact that you appreciate him wanting to challenge your son is not offset in any way by your desire to also affirm him. The two are complementary, not competing, values. So don’t make it seem like they are in conflict by using the b-word. 2. Motivate with natural consequences. If your husband is reluctant to engage in this conversation with you, think of things that are important to your husband that will help him want to engage. Then share these as you invite him into this complex discussion. Think, for example, about pain, concerns, worries, or problems he may have with you or with your son that are connected to the changes you’d like to discuss. For example, you might say, "John, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can better work together with our son. I know you and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. I know you are also frustrated that he has drifted away from you. I also know you don’t like how I criticize you at times about how you handle things. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I want to find a way to help you have the relationship you want and to partner in a way that works for you as we solve problems with him. Could we set aside some time to discuss this?" 3. Work on you first. Realize that while you will have useful feedback for your husband, he will likely see weaknesses in you that you must be willing to hear. Be open and humble. If you get defensive in the conversation, avoid reacting in the moment. Say, "I’m sure there is merit in what you’re saying. I’m feeling defensive right now so I’m going to need time to think about it. Can I do that and then get back with you later to talk about what I will do with these suggestions?" If you are to work together better, it is going to require both of you to change. You will need to be more willing to be part of raising tough issues with your son and holding him accountable. Your husband will need to be willing to learn to do it in a healthier way—and focus on big things while letting go of little things. If you both work on yourselves, you’ll be a potent parenting team for your son. 4. Organize for the long run. Have realistic expectations. If both you and your husband have habits that have been nurtured over a lifetime, they aren’t going to change after one conversation. I suggest you frame this conversation as a starting point, then agree on ways you can help each other stick with commitments you make about how to work together more productively. Be patient with one another as you try new approaches. Expect relapses. I suggest you read our book, Change Anything, as a couple, for ideas on how to create a plan that will help you both make steady progress in changing these habits. I applaud your commitment to your son and wish you the best as you find ways to complement one another, grow together, and give your son the gifts both of you want so much to offer. Warmly, Joseph Related posts: Responding to Unwanted Parenting Advice Gaining Acceptance Having Integrity in a Family Business

Attentions spans are shrinking, nobody can pay attention for more than a few seconds. That’s what I hear all the time, and it was brought up many times in a recent chat2lrn. Just to clear things up, an attention span is that thing that allows us to pay attention to something. You know, when something captures our attention because it’s so incredibly interesting and we can’t turn away. Patience goes along with attention spans, it takes patience to have a long attention span. The big claim is that they’re both getting shorter. The Immovable The problem isn’t that attention spans are getting shorter, the problem is that those that had our attention in the past never deserved it. Yup, we’re getting more selective about what we pay attention to. There’s a lot of information coming at us. It used to be just newspapers where we got our news, then came radio, then TV, then Internet, then our brains exploded. There’s a lot of great stuff to read, watch, and listen to. There’s also a ton of crap. Attention spans haven’t gotten shorter, they’re just more selective for good content. So if I’m not writing good content, I’ll lose my audience within 8 seconds and it’s not their fault, it’s 100% mine. Here’s the Tweet from the chat, it was pretty lively but it had nothing to do with attention spans, it just happened to come up, I have a strong belief in it, and I felt like writing about it. @Quinnovator @LisaAGoldstein yup! attention spans are getting more selective for good content, not shorter #chat2lrn — Nick Leffler (@technkl) April 9, 2015 So there you have it, to sum up the truth on attention spans, and by extension patience: Attention spans aren’t getting shorter, they’re becoming more selective for good content. — Nick Leffler Explosion I mentioned above there’s so much stuff coming at us we’re likely to experience a brain explosion. Sometimes it really does feel like this. Am I alone there? It’s more important than ever to learn how to manage all this information. You can’t shut it off and stop reading and stop learning, jobs demand that you’re a lifelong learner. From the minute you get out of college with your degree you’re starting the learning program of life. It’s not possible to read everything you run across, so it’s important to learn how to manage information in a meaningful way. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is a great way to manage that. My favorite person to follow that writes regularly on PKM is Harold Jarche, he runs workshops that help people get a handle on their professional improvement through PKM. One of Harold’s methods of making sense of the information he runs across is blogging. It’s great because it’s publicly searchable and can be shared with others easy. I can’t recall how many times I’ve searched my blog for information I’d previously written about to share with others so I could better explain something. It has come in handy on more than one occasion. I found the post above in this paragraph in less than 3 minutes. So, what do you think the best way to deal with the explosion we experience from the information overload? Blogging! I even included a long section (one of the longest!) in my course about setting up your professional website to have a blog. I’m also working on another course that’s about getting started blogging on WordPress.com for free. While this isn’t the ideal method for the future, it’s better than not blogging at all. Gut Filters We have our gut to thank for attention spans getting shorter, or I should say seeming they’re getting shorter. Our gut paired with our split second filters gives us the ability to decide if reading, watching, or listening to something is worth our time. The shorter our attention span, or rather our ability to decide if something is worth our time, the smarter the being. In the year 2000 as a whole the human race was less intelligent than a goldfish (of course that’s not true! Is it?) with our attention span measuring about 12 seconds. In 2013 we are now the more intelligent of the two with an attention span measuring about 8 seconds on average. (Attention Span Statistics) Dismiss The Confusion Just so we’re not confused anymore, the statistics mentioned above have nothing to do with attention spans, those are gut reactions, the ability to decide quickly if something’s worth our time. It’s not a bad thing to have a quick gut filter, in fact it helps us find something worth our while faster and be able to spend more time on that. Attention spans have actually gotten longer. Could you imagine a movie 40 years ago at 3 hours long? Let me know if you find one. We regularly sit in movie theaters for movies that are 3+ hours long and we love it, we come back for more! That’s attention span. They’ve gotten immeasurably longer and we have all the patience in the world for great content. Video games? I used to play for hours at a time when I was truly into a game. Now I’m much shorter on time so I play quick bits if that. It’s not that my attention span has gotten shorter, I just know I have to use my time more wisely so I use my gut filters regularly. Moving On I invite you to dismiss the myth of attention spans. Propagate the fact we’re better than ever at exercising our gut filters therefore allowing us to become more intelligent and wise with our time. What do you think? Are you going to join me in the battle against myths? Yet another one in the long line of myths that are sold to us everyday because they’re easily packaged and can easily deceive. The post Attention Spans Are Getting Shorter appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. 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ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE It all started with what seemed like an innocuous question. And since then I’ve been wondering about a personal training practice to which I hadn’t given much thought recently—specifically the questions I use. My current practice was called into question (here used as figure of speech rather than a reference to the specific training practice mentioned in the second sentence, or the actual inciting question referenced in the first sentence) during our annual REACH conference in August. One of my colleagues, Cricket, made the following statement, "the way you ask questions is a measure of whether you are testing the participants’ understanding or encouraging them to test your own." This really got me thinking, "What kinds of questions do I use?" I realized that many of my questions were pretty darn good (if I do say so my pretty darn self), yet the questions I used to close off a section weren’t so great. And when I got really honest with myself—not so good at all. I typically ask a question like, "What questions do you have about how/where you’d use these skills we’ve just covered?" if anyone responds (and so many times that’s a big IF), it’s usually in the form of a question for me. If I instead ask, "How/where will you be able to use the skill of..?" or, "We’ve been talking about X principle, how would you summarize what it means in your own words?" I get to test how well they’ve understood the main teaching points I’ve been trying to convey, address any inaccuracies, and compare different responses. As I’ve been making a conscious effort to make what might seem like a subtle shift in the types of questions I ask (switching to questions that test their knowledge and understanding), I’ve experienced a noticeable increase in the participants’ ability to understand and apply the training content. Any Questions? Related posts: How can I help participants better understand and benefit from the summary questions at the end of each section of training? From the Road: P is for Practice From the Road: When Does Training Start?

Life ebbs and flows, that seems to be how it goes. I went from relatively quiet days to too much. The quiet was prior to 6 months ago, it’s gone to relatively busy since then. In the past few days it’s caught up with me, either that or I have a bug that’s slowing me down (I do, finally took my temperature so if this post is a bit loopy that’s my excuse It’s nice to slow down sometimes and take a deep breath though.  Taking a little time (how much time is up to you!) and resting can feel great. The revival it creates is excellent, although I have to admit it’s hard to sit still after so much productive time. I’ve slowed down a little the past month, but not like the past few days. I’ve been trying to move to a post a week schedule but haven’t been able to push over that hump yet. Picking up a 2nd blog and trying to keep that up weekly has given me a bit more to think about, and some gear switching to do. The question is, what have I been working? I’m going to go over some of the general projects I’ve been working on in my spare time outside of my daily 9-5. eLearning Contractor For about 5 months I took on a contractor position doing some basic work on eLearning modules. I don’t have a lot to say here though, it involved putting translations into place and animations. Several of my other projects overshadowed this one so I had to put it on the backburner. In the end I learned you always have to do what’s best for your future, never for the immediate dollar. Udemy WordPress Course From late November to late December I worked solid on creating a Udemy course. The work didn’t end once I created the course, and it still hasn’t stopped. The hard work for this one went on for 3 months. I became a marketer, an instructor, an editor and a lot of other things. I had used WordPress a lot on this website and it helped me get some jobs, but I hadn’t taken WordPress to the level I did with this course and beyond. I’ve written about the course in its early days quite a bit, but not lately. I have plans to create another course on getting started blogging with WordPress.com. My goal is to have several courses that focus on using WordPress to have a better career. If you haven’t checked out my course yet there’s a link to it on my other website and a larger description. WordPress Website I originally created this website as I creaed my Udemy course. I walked through the entire process while recording. In the course I ended up with a very different website. The reason it looks very different now is that I rebranded it into another platform for me to blog, this time on WordPress and using it to promote yourself for your career. I continue to blog on this website almost weekly including a recent post about my WordPress update process. I also have future plans for this website to help funnel all students I bring into my course through the courses section. The reason for this? I was putting links all over the place for coupon codes that would expire and I’d constantly have to update them and find them. With one place I can put coupon code links on NickLeffler.com and then link to that everywhere. It’s easy to chance the coupon code then, just one place. With Udemy, if you bring a student to the course, you get 97% of the money for that student. If they go through Udemy then you only get half. Even if I don’t have a special going on, I can still funnel students through this page and ensure I get the credit for bringing the student to Udemy. There’s always more updates to this website, and it’ll continue to evolve and change. I also use it to test plugins and run other WordPress experiments. Based off all my testing and researching I have a lot of updates to do on my course, so it’s always a work in progress. Helping My Wife From mid-February until now this has consumed a huge amount of my time. My wife, Jill is a stay at home mom to my daughter Holly. Jill wanted to bring in some money also and was brainstorming some ways for her to help that her interestests could contribute to. The initial idea was gluten free baking because in July last year she was diagnosed with celiacs disease. That idea didn’t work because of laws that prevent home baked goods from being shipped anywhere. Jewelry was the answer. Jill enjoys fashion and jewelry and my daughter Holly especially loves jewelry, mostly of the princess type at her age though (3). Lovely Leffler Jewelry was born, and I’ve been the tech head for the website while I learn even more about WordPress, and now WooCommerce. Before I created this website I got some practice in setting up WooCommerce on WordPress by creating an eCommerce website for my brother-in-law, that’s another story. WooCommerce is a great eCommerce platform and I’ve enjoyed putting it together. There’s alaways something to learn about WordPress. I’ve also got to try my hand at marketing also as I’ve helped her get set up and running on social media, and advertising. I must say marketing isn’t my strong skill and I’m still learning. It’s been a great adventure and I enjoy doing it, but jewelry is definitely a hard business to break into. A little self promotion isn’t a horrible thing (in moderation) so I’m going to say, if you can take a few minutes and follow Lovely Leffler Jewelry on social media it would be appreciated. It’s almost been 2 months and it hasn’t gotten any easier, but I’m always up for a challenge. Bonus Info: The color palette I used for the website is from a picture I took of Jill several years ago when I was playing with the Adobe Color (then Kuhler) app. So, the website has multiple representations of her and the profile in the logo is my daughter Holly. Expanding with Social Consultant I don’t have a lot to say about this one yet, but I’m hoping to write about this in the near future. I haven’t received permission to write in detail about the position, nor have I even begun yet, but it will be a lot of fun. Enough cryptic talk though, the Master’s program I graduated from in 2011 has been going through some changes. It was a small program of about 30 students in each cohort, they’re now expanding and wanting to do so online through several routes. My place in all this is to consult and help the program through its social presence. I wrote up a few proposals on what I would do to help grow the program. I am a firm believer in social learning and the power of self directed learning, but at the same time I think formal education has a big place also. If it weren’t for formal education I wouldn’t be where I am now. It gave me guidance and a goal of where I wanted to go. I had little idea where I wanted to go before beginning my undergraduate degree, and with each year I was given a path, guidance, and a place to go. I’m looking forward to this project and will pursue writing about it more because being successful with it relies heavily on transparency and openness. What I’m Working On Going Forward Going forward I still have as much as ever on my plate. My goal is to be self sufficient in creating an income for myself which includes consulting. This gives me the opportunity to have a great effect on organization who are ready to join the modern era of work which has limited places for silos and hierarchy. What are you working on? The post What I’m Working On appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Closing Out 2014 With A Bang Rethinking The Holiday Rush Work Out Loud - Don’t Just Share What You Did

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, Here in Australia, we are currently undertaking a safety culture change initiative in my company using your Influencer model. I have an opinion leader who is quite negative about most things, including the Influencer strategies. This opinion leader was involved with the creation and rollout of the Vital Behaviors Roadmap and his positive support would lend great credibility to the program within his crew. How can I harness this person’s passion for positive influence rather than negative? Sincerely, Searching for a Solution Dear Searching, Thanks for an interesting question. What can we do when an influential employee is using his or her influence to undermine an important initiative? I’ve worked closely on an initiative similar to the one you are describing. I can use it to illustrate the broader challenge presented by unsupportive opinion leaders. I’ll begin with a thumbnail sketch of this situation, which will likely sound very familiar. This organization operates open-pit and underground mines. While the firm already has a positive record for workplace safety, the goal of the initiative is to eliminate severe injuries and deaths. The company’s focus has been on changing behaviors, because the majority of accidents happen when drivers speed, when construction workers fail to tie off ladders, and when operators take shortcuts. Herein lies the challenge: we, and the employees we work with, often know what the best safety practices are, but fail to follow them. For example, how many of us stay within speed limits when we drive, or tie off ladders when we clean rain gutters around our roofs? The key to changing these behaviors is broad social support. It’s essential that peers watch out for each other, remind each other, and hold each other accountable for following safety practices. Building this social support will be vital to your initiative. The company took pains to involve two groups of people: formal leaders and informal leaders. Formal leaders include every executive, manager, supervisor, and foreman. All of these leaders have to be on board. Informal leaders include the opinion leaders you referred to in your question. Here is how they identified these opinion leaders: they asked everyone who works in the area to answer the following question: "If you were facing a challenging issue at work and you had time to ask for help, who would you go to for the best, most trustworthy advice?" People could name up to three of their coworkers. They focused on the people who were named most often by their peers. And let me explain what I mean by "most often." Two-thirds of the employees weren’t named by anyone, or were named by only one or two of their peers. These people are not opinion leaders. However, there was a small group—about 8 percent—who were named by fifty or more of their peers. These people are true opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are either your most powerful allies or your most powerful opponents. They are never in between, because, whether you like it or not, people go to them for their opinions and they will be swayed by what these opinion leaders say. So, what do you do when an opinion leader isn’t on board? 1. Take the opinion leader’s concerns seriously. If an opinion leader has concerns, you can be sure others share them. Try to use the opinion leader as a leading indicator or early warning signal. We often involve opinion leaders in focus groups, where the whole purpose is to surface concerns early. 2. Be open to modifying your approach. You can be fairly confident that the opinion leader shares your goal for eliminating serious injuries and deaths. His or her concerns almost certainly involve specific strategies and tactics. Look for common ground and more effective approaches. Opinion leaders tend to be more committed and informed than their peers. Involve them in finding better solutions. 3. Respect the opinion leader role. Don’t try to co-opt opinion leaders or demand they toe the company line. Part of their credibility comes from their independence and you don’t want to undermine that. 4. Support the opinion leader’s right to be skeptical. You want the opinion leader’s understanding and buy-in, not his or her obedience. Explain the big picture reasons for strategies, and be flexible on the forms his or her support takes. In addition, accept that there are differences you won’t be able to bridge. Focus on areas of agreement, instead of demanding total agreement. A skeptic who supports your initiative is the most powerful supporter you can hope to have. 5. Don’t barter for the opinion leader’s support. Some opinion leaders want to include broader or unrelated issues in a sort of negotiation for their support. Don’t go down this path. It turns your safety issue into a commodity, instead of a moral purpose. 6. Ask other opinion leaders to help convince the opinion leader. Sometimes you are the wrong person to have influence with an opinion leader. Perhaps you are a part of an untrusted group, or you have a bad reputation with this person. If you suspect this is the case, ask others to take the lead in gathering and responding to the opinion leader’s concerns. 7. If necessary, remove the opinion leader—but only for cause. You never terminate an opinion leader because of their lack of support. Unlike formal leaders, informal leaders’ support is always voluntary. However, they do need to follow safety policies and keep others safe as well. Workplace safety is a universally accepted and universally mandated part of the workplace. It’s not optional for anyone. I hope these ideas give you tools you can use as you work with this opinion leader. The work can be slow and frustrating, but getting opinion leaders on your side is the key to your success. Best Wishes, David Related posts: Influencing Corporate Policy Overcoming Resistance to Safety Standards Holding Peers Accountable Without Management’s Support

I tried posting this last week but I’ve been having a hard time, so here’s my second chance breaking my many week silence. Hopefully dropping some knowledge on the knowledge-base will open the flood gates. There’s been a few times when a knowledge base has popped up in my world lately, from where I put things in a closed internal environment to being available to the public. I’m writing specifically about an internal knowledge base for employees to put some context around what you read here, not the public knowledge base which is another animal. What role do you need in the knowledge base? This is a question I see and have been asked. Knowledge bases are set up in tiers so each group only has access to what they need and no more. I’m not convinced this is the best model, or even a good model at that. It doesn’t work well. Just as trying to organize information into neat categories rarely works and is not useful, so is access levels useless. This method of organizing and controlling access to information is a remnant of the hierarchy. It takes a lot of management and maintenance to keep information up-to-date, perhaps more than is possible. It’s helpful for people to know if an article is pertinent to them but by no means is it necessary to lock out access to an entire tier of articles. Everything needs to be searchable and maybe a step further into user editable. The knowledge base should go into user generated content territory. Don’t control knowledge. Let it free. The Future of the Knowledge Base The future of the knowledge base lies in user generated content. A large repository of information edited by the subject matter experts and users alike. Hmmm, this sounds a bit familiar. Don’t we have something like this already? Yes! We do! The best knowledge base in the world for internal uses is a wiki. It has the best of both words with information from the experts and the ability to edit and build up more real knowledge. It also has the benefit of having more eyes on the material to correct those errors because we all know even the experts aren’t perfect. There you have it, the knowledge base is dead for internal use. It’s all about real-time feedback, real information (not theoretical), and instant gratification (see a problem? Fix it!). Your Turn What do you think? Why are wikis awesome or terrible? Why do you think the knowledge base is king, or crap? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below. The post Don’t Control Knowledge, Let the Base Free appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Mobile Help Overlays - Ultimate Performance Support for Mobile Apps Challenges and Barriers to Mobile Learning in the Enterprise What’s My Development Process?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I’m trying to follow the chain of command in our organization when presenting ideas and suggestions, but the ideas seem to stop at my boss and never get to the people who would benefit from the suggestion or idea. My boss doesn’t like conflict or change, believes that getting along is more important than addressing issues that might cause conflict, and doesn’t see the value in sharing feedback unless it is to tell people they are doing a good job. How can I motivate my boss to take action on ideas presented to him to improve our organization? Regards, Trying to Address Change Dear Searching, You are not alone in feeling stuck in this situation. Many would agree that influencing or motivating upward is a tough challenge. It’s tough to speak to leadership about behaviors that are negatively impacting the quality of work or the quality of work life. It’s tough to speak up about ineffective systems or stifling bureaucracy. It’s tough to tell your boss that you have more on your plate than you can do without feeling like a whiner. It’s tough to speak up when your boss overtly or subtly makes it clear that he or she does not appreciate you speaking up. And a key word here is boss—the person who can impact your ability to make your mortgage payment next month. So, it’s tough. I know that. I’d like to share some advice I’ve formulated over the years. 1. Frame the challenge in the best possible way. This is, of course, a variation on the crucial conversations principles: Master My Stories and Make It Safe. Start by asking yourself, "Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person (yes, your boss) act this way?" Why is he not passing ideas on or not encouraging or inviting others to speak up? What would make it safe enough for him and yourself to have this conversation? Make sure that you clarify Mutual Purpose and are prepared to be very respectful when you bring up the issue. You want to make sure you come across as curious and helpful rather than frustrated and judgmental. Also, don’t speculate and focus on the possible negative outcomes. We often exaggerate possible negative consequences and underplay the positives. That strategy causes us to vote for staying silent—thus voting for the status quo. 2. Talk about the right issue. In tough situations, we are often tempted to bring up a simple, easy topic and not the real one. In your particular case, the easy issue is that you made a suggestion and it wasn’t passed on. The real issue is that your boss has a pattern of not passing on ideas and that means that you and your colleagues face the same problems at work week after week. The real issue may be that you see yourself and others becoming disengaged and thinking that nothing can be done to change the situation. As a part of your preparation, you’ll want to do a consequence search. What are the consequences of the boss’s behavior? Who is being impacted? Teammates, other departments, customers, you? How? When you find the consequences, you are prepared to talk about the tougher issue. 3. Make sure it’s safe, then talk. Not all times and situations will be equally safe for your boss. Of course, the first goal is to make it safe by mastering your clever stories and getting your motives and emotions right before you open your mouth. When you meet with your boss, if your face is saying that you’ve held court in your head and found him or her guilty before your mouth says anything, the boss will hear the first message. Also, you should consider other factors that create safety. You don’t want an audience. Privacy makes this conversation safer. You will also want to choose a good time. You will know if there are better times—some people are more receptive and have fewer work demands or stresses during certain times of the day or week. And when you talk, start with an observation and question, not a conclusion and emotion. It’s always hard to create scripts in a vacuum, but one that might be helpful is: "I’ve been excited about the new employee involvement program the company has initiated. I’ve noticed a pattern over the past three weeks. Each week, two or three suggestions were given to you and I hear that those have not been passed on to the committee. I’m wondering if we could talk about that. Would that be okay?" In your conversation, you want to honestly and empathically understand the reasons and jointly seek solutions. 4. Know what you’ll do if it doesn’t work. There are a variety of responses you can expect. 1) You and your boss talk about it and find a solution or not—but you are talking and that’s progress. 2) The boss agrees to a solution and then doesn’t change (which leads to another conversation about the pattern and the relationship). 3) The boss gets angry—maybe loudly, maybe quietly. On a bell curve this response is an anomaly and yet many people magnify the tail end to be the middle of the curve. They inflate the small percentage of this happening to a large number and thus choose silence and gossip rather than speaking up. If you play the real odds, you choose speaking up in a safe way. Whatever the reaction, it’s always wise to have some backup plans. If it doesn’t go well with your boss (it’s not safe, he gets emotional, etc.) there are two possible backup plans you might consider: a. Share your intentions and excuse yourself. Tell him that you brought up this topic to improve the results and teamwork in the company and that you didn’t intend to cause him any stress. Express thanks for his time and find a way to leave. b. Suggest a team approach. If appropriate, you might propose that the improvement program can be done by members of the team. After the suggestions are vetted by the team, one team member could take them to the Employee Involvement Committee. This might fit your boss’s preference or style better. For either of these plans, you need to assess what is happening in the moment and what might be the best next step. The point here is that you’ve anticipated some next steps, so when one option ends, you have a way forward. Preparation and sound anticipation improve confidence. Speaking up to your boss can be tough. Yet I remind you that if you don’t speak up, you are voting for the status quo. Also, if you gossip or speak up in a frustrated, angry, or judgmental way, you’ve diminished the relationship. Either way, you have become part of the problem. On the other hand, if you can speak up in a safe, considered, and planned way, you are much more likely to solve the problem and build the relationship. I wish you well, Al Related posts: A Boss’s Drinking Problem Chaotic Boss Crucial Conversations With a Strict Boss

I recently began a new consulting job with the Master’s program I got my degree from. It’s the MSIDT program at California State University Fullerton (CSUF). It wasn’t for any typical Instructional Design work which I’ve worked on (even in my side consulting jobs) but with social media skills at the center. I’ve done a lot around social media lately including participating in several Twitter chats. For the past several years I’ve focused heavily on increasing my social presence from LinkedIn to Twitter, and even this blog. This blog has been the focal point of my online presence and I think to build trust and authenticity in the social world, it’s a must to show a more personal side of yourself (or company). This blog has been precisely the place I’m able to be myself and jot down some of my thoughts. I’ll get to the consulting job with my former Alma mater in a moment, but I wanted to get some things off my chest about online presence. Some readers may be aware that I’ve created a course on how to build a portfolio and blog similar to this. Why does this matter? Social presence and authenticity revolves around being real and not hiding who you are or what you’re thinking/doing. It’s a necessity to have a blog and depending on your type of work, possibly a portfolio too. If you don’t have one, check out my course for help on building one. Now back to the important part of this website, the part where I spill my guts about what I’m doing. Fitting Pieces Together Another thing you may know about me is that I’m all for self-directed learning (SDL < ick an acronym). It may seem odd then to have started a consulting position to help a higher education program build their social presence and expand their program. Aren’t higher education institutions the epitome of non self direction learning? They’re all about formal learning right? They are mostly about formal learning, but saying that they don’t fit into self-directed learning is wrong. I went through the program and I don’t regret it one bit. I had the opportunity to find my path and the tools to get a good footing on that path. Since I went through the program I’ve been able to take my self-directed learning to an entirely new level. Formal education to the Master’s level is almost necessary for some, including myself. Since I’ve finished my program I’ve taken off on a rocket-ship of learning though I couldn’t imagine ever going back to school for anything else. Since going through the formal steps of education up to the Master’s level, I’ve earned the tools to take advantage of all the self-directed learning tools out there. My success has come from a lot of different activities over the past 10 years, one being my Master’s degree. Even though there are many options out there to learn on your own, I still think formal education has a huge part to play for most. This is how I fit the pieces together and hopefully it doesn’t seem as if I’m doing it intentionally to fit my needs. I am a huge fan of self-directed learning and think you can take your career anywhere with it, but I also think formal education has an important place for getting most people where they want to go. I wouldn’t have made it where I am as quickly as I did without higher education which was a big reason in giving me what I needed to benefit from the self-directed learning I now take part in. Social Awareness Program Now about the social awareness program I’m now heading to raise greater awareness into the MSIDT program. One question I have to propose and I’d love to hear your answers is: How do you gain authority in a Master’s degree program beyond the fact you get a universally recognized degree? In other important words, what makes one Master’s program better than another? There are better known programs out there which people speak highly of (you know, world-renowned) and they’re recommended by word of mouth. If you look into these programs you notice a familiar pattern, they offer many of the same courses and they take somewhat similar paths to get to the end. So what gives one Instructional Design program more authority over another? It’s easy to answer that question in the era of social media. The answer is usually (or should be) that they have a greater presence in the community and show their authority. They’re out there helping the community beyond their program by doing research, sharing it, and synthesizing it so a larger audience can understand it. This along with personal attention to all of their students which I’d argue is more important, but the program I went through already has that very well in their practice. The program was closed to a small cohort of about 26 students so they had personal knowledge of the professors AND each other. Now with the expansion of the program and more students being brought in, it’s important to also expand the social presence of the program to help the Learning & Development (L&D) community outside of the program. I’m going to be spending the summer working on ways of doing this and I’m looking forward to making arrangements with some of the L&D organization to showcase what great information and personal attention comes out of the program. Have You? Have you helped build a presence of a newly expanding higher education program or something similar? It will need a great deal of social media expertise for part of it, which I’ve worked at for several years. It will also need a great deal of marketing skills too though. This social media thing is 50% social and 50% marketing if you’re dealing with some sort of organization. It’s a blending of the two and making most everything public is of course my goal, this funny working out loud thing. I hope to hear from you along this journey and will be writing more about the activities I’m doing and how I’m trying to help promote the MSIDT program into its prime-time. The post Social Awareness Program For Instructional Design Degree appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Social Learning Has Never Been About a Single Tool Is Instructional Design Like Choreography? Social and Learned Helplessness in Learning