There was a time in my life where I felt so stuck that I could not breathe. I was in an extremely toxic relationship. As much as I always tried to remain an optimist, I felt overwhelmed with doom. I lived with a constant ache in my heart, and dull panic in my head. At Christmas, I quietly expressed my fear to my sister in law Rose. I told her how stuck and afraid I felt, and about my elaborate plan to extricate myself from my relationship. In the month that my partner was away, I was going to organize everything, have multiple conversations to come to a peaceful resolution, and neatly tie everything up. After a few minutes of listening to me, Rose finally said "The only thing you need to do in this next month is prepare yourself mentally to leave. If you start to organize everything, it will never happen." As the month drew to a close, I finally went to see a therapist (to the great relief of my family and best friend) and after hearing me describe my situation, she said "Wow, it sounds like you feel like a prisoner." Hearing it described that way, from someone I had never met, was actually quite a relief. I was in a prison, albeit one that I had constructed myself, after giving away my power piece by piece, until I felt I had none. I left her office, and headed straight for a favorite childhood hiking spot, where I walked for an hour, with tears streaming down my face. And then I got a blindingly clear message: I had to move (I swear it was the trees that told me — this was in Marin County, after all!). It is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? Of course moving was the logical thing to do in an oppressive relationship. And yet it was the one step that was unthinkable. I wanted to do anything else BUT that, because I knew that it would send my entire life (as messed up as it was at that point) crumbling to the ground. Many of us get ourselves in situations that feel impossible. Your career can start as vaguely unrewarding, and turn into a straightjacket of misery. Your casual drink to relieve stress can turn into a full-blown addiction. Your relationship can turn from uncomfortable to abusive. Your writer’s block can turn from mild procrastination to a full blown self esteem bashing panic attack. Your business stress can turn from a headache into a stroke. I realize that this may seem extreme to some of you, but in my experience, unhealthy situations escalate slowly and insidiously. I never would have believed that the strong, independent, positive thinking young girl that I was would get caught up in a horrible relationship. Yet there I was. If you, or someone you love, is stuck in an unhealthy situation, what is that critical step that you are afraid to take? The unthinkable step I think you know what it is. And you can feel it because it shows up as slow-rising panic, when you think thoughts like: "I could never go to the doctor and find out about the true state of my health." "As much as I want to, I cannot make my fingers move across the keyboard to write my book." "I could never tell my child who is an addict that I refuse to be codependent anymore." "I cannot take one hour off to stop working, because my business will fall apart and my clients will leave." "I cannot look up my credit score to begin to get out of this financial mess.""I cannot pick up the phone to call a recruiter to begin to find a better job." I am here to tell you YES YOU CAN. I will warn you that when you take that step, you will not feel a huge rush of courage, but rather a big wave of nausea. When I was packing my things to move out, in garbage bags that I had grabbed from my mom’s house on the way back from my revelatory hike, I was physically ill. I was shaking as I was packing. But I did not stop until I had gathered the very last of my things, and shoved them in my mother’s car. When I pulled away from the curb, drove to my friend MaryAnn’s apartment, and sat down to have a cup of tea with her, finally extricated from my self-made prison, I felt a wave of joy and courage. Courage is a symptom of taking the unthinkable step. As I write this post to you, in my backyard in Arizona, with my Chihuahua Rocky snuggled next to me, waiting for my husband to bring my kids home from school, I can tell you with an open heart and thankful tears that I am so glad I trusted myself enough to take the unthinkable step. It was not without messiness, and consequence to many I loved. As much as I appreciated my new life, I grieved the beautiful things and people I gave up to get myself to a better place. But it opened the door to unimaginable adventure and creativity. In the decades that have followed, I have done the best work of my life, and built a network of exceptional friends, clients and colleagues. I have grown a loving family. I have survived economic calamity, and come out swinging. Most importantly, when I find myself feeling fear, doubt or panic, symptomatic of ignoring what is obvious, I can now ask myself "What is the unthinkable step that I am afraid to take?" And with a little goading and support from friends, I take it. Your unthinkable step I hope that your unthinkable step is not out of a situation that is as frightening as mine was many years ago. Maybe you just need to tackle that damned kitchen drawer that is jammed with a bunch of junk and drives you crazy. Maybe you need to finally launch the website that you have been working on for the last 9 months. Maybe you need to stop the mad pace of your business and take a day out to hear yourself think, and define what you need to move your business model in a more sustainable direction. Whatever your situation, I think you know what your unthinkable step is. I encourage you to take it.

It is no surprise to long-time friends that I am a huge Star Wars fan, Yoda in particular. It began back in 1977, when I waited in a huge line at the Corte Madera movie theater to see the first film. I was carried away by the music, the special effects (truly groundbreaking at the time for those of us old enough to remember it), the Hero’s Journey storyline and the characters. I love Yoda because of what he represents: the wise elder, trained in the school of life, actively mentoring the young and impulsive. I don’t think we have enough Yodas in our lives anymore. The closest I remember is my grandfather Frank Webber, who was a kind and quiet man, filled with values and purpose. I could always count on Grandpa Frank to be rock solid in times of difficulty or ethical challenge. I miss him very dearly. In our busy professional and personal lives today, it is easy to feel adrift, or overwhelmed with pressure. An elder mentor can remind us that no challenge lasts forever, and that things get better. They can also remind us that the quickest path is not always the best. And that living a life based on values and ethics (the Light Side of The Force) may not always win friends or fill your bank account immediately, but is critical for the health of the planet in the long run. I realize not everyone is a Star Wars fan (my best friend of 30 years has yet to see any of the films, and my children are not interested in waiting in line with me when the latest movie releases in December), but hopefully you can relate to the character. Do you have a Yoda in your network? While I have many, many smart young mentors in my life, and a truly exceptional peer network, I realize that I have few elder mentors in my life, besides my parents and my mother-in-law. There is something very special about having people in your life who have lived for many, many decades, and can share wisdom and experience. This is why I keep Yoda in my office, as a reminder that someone is watching me navigate my day, making sure that my choices align with my ethics. If you do not have an elder mentor in your life, I encourage you to look for one. Maybe he or she lives in your neighborhood, or frequents your spiritual home, or sits at a cafe you frequent on your way to work. Maybe you are that elder yourself, and can reach out and give counsel to the younger peers around you. If you do have a Yoda figure in your life, I would love to hear how you developed that relationship. May the 4th be with you!

Yesterday, I got back from an 8 day journey across the country. Not only did I have a multi-city stop, but I had a very different work mix in each city. Asheville was a mastermind retreat for my wonderful entrepreneur clients, where we dug intensively into audience definition and market positioning. My best friend Desiree Adaway was also leading a retreat of her men’s mastermind, so we had a joint session with Susan Baier around audience segmentation, and really enjoyed getting to know each other. Cincinnati involved teaching a workshop on Quiet Leadership for a large corporate client. (This is part of my ongoing consulting with Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution, which is launching online next month). I taught brilliant research scientists from a large company how to appreciate the natural strengths of introverts, as they innovate on mixed teams. Photo credit: Haseeb Turiq   In San Jose, I organized and led a panel for The Small Business Web on how to build a strong community of customers, partners, fans and supporters, with bestselling author Guy Kawasaki, Chief Branding Officer Cliff Worley from Shark Branding (Shark Tank Daymond John’s company) and Marketing Director David Potter from Citrix. Each of these events required a quite different mix of skills and experiences (what I call "ingredients" in Body of Work): Running a retreat required listening, marketing and branding knowledge, strategic thinking and empathy Delivering a complex curriculum required focused preparation and research, advanced presentation skills, partnership with technical experts and humility Running a panel involved relationship building (to invite the right people, and have them say yes), facilitation and storytelling   These may seem like extremely different activities, but I see them as part of my larger mission: to build skills and build communities so that we collaborate on solving our most pressing problems.   In today’s quickly changing world of work, you likely face a similar array of different projects on a weekly basis. Here are my 5 tips for creative ease in a whirlwind work environment: Love the one you are with. When I was preparing for this trip, I started to freak out a little when I saw how different each project was. At the end of the first day of my retreat in Asheville, I started to think ahead to the complex workshop in Cincinnati in 3 days. But I immediately pulled myself back to the retreat at hand, and only allowed myself to worry about day to of the event. I cannot tell you how many times this tip has greatly reduced my anxiety when facing huge project deadlines. Anxiety Pam: "OMG, I have six chapters to write in my book in the next three months, that is impossible!"  Love the one you are with Pam: "Right now, you are looking into the eyes of paragraph one of chapter one. Make her feel she is the only chapter in the world, Slim!" This is how huge projects get accomplished. Put your ingredients on the counter before you start cooking your next recipe. As you shift from one project to the next, clarify which of your ingredients are going to be most important. You may have just used some serious humor and empathy to help clients through a brainstorming session about their new brand, but these ingredients will not help a room full of smart scientists.  Consciously choose the skills and experiences that you need to use for each project. Sometimes this means significantly shifting your approach to the work (in California, we call it "changing your energy"). Organize and separate your projects. It can get very chaotic if you are working on different projects at the same time, each which include notes and research. Use different colored folders for paperwork that relates to each project. Create an organized file structure on your computer so that you have folders for each project instead of random documents all over your desktop. When I travel with multiple projects, I make sure to keep notes and papers in separate folders. This makes sure I don’t pull out notes ideas for my coaching clients when I am trying to get ready for my software development conference. Be sure your self pep talks include "how." I heard a tip from Daniel Pink at South by Southwest that worked beautifully on this trip. He told the story of a research project that he conducted on his National Geographic show "Crowd Control." Most of us (life coaches especially) are used to giving ourselves motivational speeches (in front of a mirror or in the toilet stall) before heading into a stressful work situation, like a presentation. It usually goes something like this: Panicked Pam, channeling Stuart Smalley: "You can do it, you are good enough, smart enough and doggonit, people like you!" What Dan and the research suggests, is that it is much more effective to include a "how" in the pep talk, and tell yourself exactly how you will walk through your challenging situation. Panicked Pam channeling Dan Pink: "You may be scared about presenting in front of these smart scientists, but this is how you are going to do it: You will do a Power Pose that you learned from Amy Cuddy 2 minutes before going on stage. You will follow your carefully prepared workshop outline. You will rely on your colleague in the room to handle challenging technical questions. You will breathe, and you will only worry about getting to the first morning break (see "Love the One You Are With"). Take time to anchor gratitude. When you complete each individual project, be sure to take the time to express gratitude for yourself, the people you worked with, and the creative outcomes of the project. This avoids our tendency to rush from one project to the next, without truly seeing the wonder of the creative experience. You want to anchor the positive rush in your body from facing a challenge and walking through it with strength and focus. We are capable of creating so much. We don’t have to live in a binding niche. But we do have to know ourselves, and how to find the thread that ties our work together. — Want some help with your plan for the second half of 2015? Check out Indispensable Summer Program, which starts on June 1. Registration ends May 27. Details here: http://pamelaslim.com/training/indispensable-summer-2015/

Two years ago, my friend Jonathan Fields gave me a call and asked if he could pass my name on to Susan Cain, author of the bestselling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won’t Stop Talking, as a resource for the training project she was undertaking. I had met Susan once and loved her work, so of course I said yes. At that moment (June, 2013), I was in the very last throes of writing Body of Work. The day after I turned in final edits on the manuscript, I began working with Susan and Paul Scibetta, her business partner who would become the CEO of the organization. I learned that they not only wanted to create a corporate training program from the Quiet material, but they had a much bigger vision — to create a Quiet Revolution, gently nudging the world to recognize and celebrate the natural strengths of introverts. What I thought would be a small consulting project turned into two years of intensive partnership. Starting from our tiny roots — Susan, Paul and a wonderful intern from Yale named Davis Nguyen, we built the vision, infrastructure, IP and staff that launches today at Quietrev.com. My role shifted through time from acting COO in the early start up stage to a consultant for the Quiet Leadership Institute (QLI), the workplace training arm of the Quiet Revolution. When West Point graduates and Army veterans Mike Erwin and Jeff Bryan joined QLI, program development went into high gear. Mike and Jeff closed a deal with NASA, where in our very first pilot of our workshop materials, we taught rocket scientists who worked on the space shuttle. I can safely say it was the highest stakes debut of a new program I have ever been part of.  The participants were amazing, and they loved the material. We were working under stealth mode, so now I can finally show you the pic from that event:  Jeff and I in awe of the shadow of NASA facilities. It was a day I will always remember. We continued to extend the QLI reach, most recently with senior research scientists at P&G, where we are bringing the Quiet Leadership program. Kathy Fish, P&G’s Chief Technology Officer (a really wonderful person, and great example of an introverted leader) was quoted in today’s Fortune article about our work there.  Why a Quiet Revolution?  One of the biggest things I have learned since working with Susan is that the popular definition of "introvert" is wildly inaccurate. Webster’s Dictionary defines introvert as: "a shy person, a quiet person who does not find it easy to talk to other people."  This is, quite simply, inaccurate. Introversion is driven by neurobiology — specifically the triggers that release dopamine in our brain. Introverts’ dopamine flow starts when they have periods of quiet reflection, in peaceful and not overly stimulating environments. Extroverts’ dopamine flows when we are in stimulating environments, responding to body language cues like smiling faces or nodding heads.  The extrovert bias that Susan mentions in her record-breaking TED talk and in Quiet says that in order to be successful — in school, in the workplace and even in relationships — you must act as an extrovert. This negates the deep and profound gifts of introverts, like prudence, love of learning, judgment and humility.  The goal of the Quiet Revolution is to celebrate the strengths of introverts, for the benefit of us all. I am a raging extrovert, with deep love and respect for introverts. In my bio for the QR team, I wrote: "One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting in a row of folding chairs lined up facing Lake Almanor, where we camped every year. My father, mother, sister, brother and I all had our noses in books, speaking up only about once an hour to read an especially juicy passage aloud.  And yet I, unlike the rest of my family, would engage in conversation with anyone who walked by. I would pepper the camp ranger with questions, tell my life story to the campers next door, and make friends with the small town grocer where we would buy fresh milk.  I was (and am) the sole extrovert in my family. In the decades since, I have learned what a gift it is to deeply understand the nature and gifts of introverts. I am comfortable waiting a full 5 minutes in silence after asking my Dad a question, to give him time to reflect and gather his thoughts. I am acutely aware of how jarring an assault it is on introverted audience members to shout from the stage "Can I get a YES or YES?!!!" This is due to my socialization in a family culture that celebrates solitude, reflection and silence."  How to learn more:  Here are some resources my friend Claire Diaz-Ortiz (Chief Digital  Officer for Quiet) put together for us to share: The original Susan Cain TED talk is a fantastic overview of all things Quiet. If you haven’t seen it — it’s one of the most viewed of all time — watch! For digging in deeper, download this free 40-page ebook: The Power of Introverts: Nine Best-Loved Stories by Susan Cain. See this great section of the site devoted to regular folks. Think Humans of New York. It’s called Quiet Revolutionaries and I love reading through the stories. For parents like me, check out the Kids section for perspectives from writers, experts, and educators on what it means to be a quiet kid (or parent). The chock-full Work section has ideas, advice, and inspiration for anyone trying to carve their own career niche. I have waited a long time for this day, where I can share with you this huge project I spent a lot of time working on. While we started with some huge benefits not normally available to new entrepreneurs — a hugely popular book and TED talk, seasoned founders with access to lots of resources and capital — I will tell you that it has not been an easy process. So much work has gone into building this organization to the point that it was ready for public launch. Many wonderful team members contributed along the way, before the full-time team came aboard. I am thankful to you all!  As a person who is passionately committed to furthering education about our unique strengths and differences, so that we more deeply respect and harmonize with each other, as well as being a community builder by design, this is a very happy day. Enjoy Quietrev.com !

Pingendo is a cross-platform free WYSIWYG application for prototyping web pages. It uses Twitter’s Bootstrap as a base, and responsive web design support ensures your sites will adapt to fit phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. (Review)     Download at: http://pingendo.com  

    Play @ https://color.adobe.com/ Getting Started with Color http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-creative-cloud/get-started-with-adobe-color-cc/  

Responsive and adaptive designs are extremely popular in the world of mobile learning, but they are also very commonly misunderstood concepts. Today’s mobile learning professionals need to understand what responsive and adaptive designs really are in order to plan and implement them effectively with HTML5-based solutions. Responsive & Adaptive Design @mLearnCon15 Nick Floro from Nick Floro  

Prototyping Tools and Techniques mLearnCon15 from Nick Floro

You need a performance support solution, but getting approval to implement a larger, more costly solution takes time—if you have the budget at all. But maybe you don’t need the larger, more costly system. Maybe you can start your performance support journey using tools you already have available. In this session you will explore how using open-source-based products can help you launch and support your audience without breaking the bank. You will learn from demonstrations on how to use these tools to prototype and test a concept to develop the best workflow and meet your audience’s needs. You will receive a breakdown of open source and free technologies that can be used to build a solution with a minimal or zero budget. You will leave this session understanding what’s needed, and how to plan, demonstrate, and launch working versions of several key performance support tools that you can model and implement within your organization.   Designing a Performance Support Solution on a Shoestring @ mLearnCon15 061115 from Nick Floro   Presented at eLearningGuilds Performance Support 2015 Conference - June 2015

A look at what HTML5 is and how people use it today to deliver the next generation of learning content and applications via browsers, native apps, and hybrid apps. You’ll learn what you need to consider in designing content along with technical guidelines. Get an introduction to five hot features in HTML5 that you can start using today, and prepare for developing with the new standards. You’ll discover the five challenges you need to know in order to make sure your first app or delivery is a success and you’ll learn whether to launch a native app or web app. Designing HTML5 Mobile Learning for Browser, Native, and Hybrid App #mlearncon15 from Nick Floro Presented @ mLearnCon15

There’s a growing interest in creating interactive digital books for learning. The challenge is that there are several publication formats and many different vendor applications to use to build an interactive book. Knowing which format and/or tool to use, when to use it, and what’s involved in creating your content in the format provided by the vendor can seem overwhelming. In this hands-on session participants will learn the process for building eBooks using iBooks Author. You will explore the authoring environment and discuss the processes that are involved in building an eBook. You will discuss and apply the pluses and minuses of each file format using iBooks Author. You will leave this session with an understanding of the latest tools, gain an understanding of what each format offers, and discover how you can take advantage of it in your organization.   Creating an Interactive Book with iBooks Author #mLearnCon15 from Nick Floro   Presented #mLearnCon15

Augmented reality has great fidelity, but suffers from limited field of view. Source: How Minecraft and Halo make the most—and the least—of HoloLens

We asked some of the world’s top design schools to share their favorite books. Here’s what they recommend for your summer reading list. Source: 35 Books Every Designer Should Read   My Favorites: Visual Notes for Architects and Designers (Norman Crowe and Paul Laseau) Learn how sketching like an architect can sharpen your thinking (and make for some awesome Moleskines). The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman) An industry classic explaining how to design products for real human use.

Fancy headsets can cost between $200 and $500. But if you have a smartphone, some extra time and an empty pizza box, you can make your own.   Source: Want A Taste Of Virtual Reality? Step One: Find Some Cardboard

By Halelly Azulay, TalentGrow LLC Your current leader population wants to grow and needs to continue to improve their leadership competencies. You have Baby Boomer leaders set to retire but many of those ‘on the bench’ to succeed them are not quite promotion-ready. Millennials are chomping at the bit for ongoing leadership development opportunities. You need to create ‘bench strength’ in the form of a pool of ready-to-lead talent. Does this sound familiar? Don’t despair. Hope awaits… When we deploy a wide variety of development methods to get our leaders to the next level, everyone benefits. It is not merely a training issue, either. It’s bigger than that. Here are three ideas to help you approach leadership development in a broad, and inclusive way that doesn’t require developing coursework or having people attend classes! Rotation/stretch assignments A job rotation means that the leader is temporarily assigned to a different job, usually laterally, in another role in the same organization, for an agreed-upon period of time. A stretch assignment is a task or project that these leaders perform usually within their current role but beyond their job description that challenges and broadens (stretches) their current skills and capabilities. In leadership workshops or seminars, leaders are usually isolated and focused on learning outside the context of their workday. But when they are strategically working in a job rotation or stretch assignment with a developmental lens, leaders learn new skills in the context of their daily work experience and apply their lessons immediately, continually. These kinds of assignments, when coupled with specific development goals, are a rich growth opportunity that yields many benefits to the leader as learner. They are a wonderful platform for leadership development that is readily available and completely scalable to the specifics of the leader, team, and organization. Volunteering in a leadership role How can your future and current leaders practice new leadership skills on-the-job without any downside for your organization whatsoever? By practicing on someone else’s turf as a volunteer. Volunteer jobs in leadership positions provide a great opportunity for leaders to ‘get their feet wet’, try new approaches, and practice skills they haven’t yet mastered. And they do this all away from work where their mistakes don’t affect your organization directly or cause any hardship. There are endless leadership positions in non-profit and community-based organizations that need volunteers to serve their constituents. Leaders can craft a development strategy for leveraging a volunteer job for their own learning and growth, then deploy the plan and bring back the newly developed skills back to your organization. It’s a win-win-win. Mentor/protégé Do your current or high potential future leaders have a mentor? And, are they mentoring someone themselves? Lots of employers already have, or are considering adding, a mentoring program. Often, we view these opportunities as intended to benefit the newest members of the workforce. Yet, the potential developmental benefits of mentoring and being mentored can be equally valuable to those in leadership positions. When in the role of protégé (aka mentee), leaders can gain insights from those who are a few steps ahead of them on a similar leadership journey. Even the most experienced and successful executive coaches have an executive coach of their own. Leaders of all levels should also keep their skills sharp by getting a mentor. These leader mentors create value for their protégés, but don’t they also grow their own skills as a result of mentoring others? Yes! For example, they may develop patience or empathy, or gain a new perspective on organizational challenges and trends, or enhance their coaching skills while playing the role of a mentor. These new skills can then be leveraged back on the job. This is leadership development at its best. There is dual-value delivered to the organization as a result of both parties developing. Developing leaders is an ongoing challenge many organizations face, and by expanding the idea of "development" to include non-training-related methods, we can all benefit richly. Whether by completing a stretch or rotational assignment, volunteering in a leadership capacity, mentoring or being mentored, current and future leaders can grow their skills, stretch outside their comfort zone, and bring the benefits of  their expanded skillsets to their organization without ever stepping foot in a leadership development workshop. Look for these and many more non-training employee development ideas in Halelly’s book, Employee Development on a Shoestring published by ATD Press.   About Halelly Azulay, TalentGrow LLC Halelly Azulay is an author, speaker, facilitator, and leadership development strategist, as well as an expert in communication skills and emotional intelligence. She is the founder of TalentGrow LLC. a consulting company that develops leaders and teams experiencing explosive growth. TalentGrow specializes in people leadership skills, which include communication skills, teambuilding, coaching and emotional intelligence. TalentGrow works with all organizational levels, including C-level leaders, frontline managers and individuals. Halelly is the author of two books, Employee Development on a Shoestring  and Strengths Can Help You Lead a More Fulfilling Life . She also hosts The TalentGrow Show http://www.talentgrow.com/podcast a leadership development podcast. She brings 20 years of professional experience in workplace learning and leadership development to her work with corporate, government, nonprofit, and academic organizations. The post Guest Blog: 3 Ideas for Leadership Development Outside the Classroom appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Everyone who comes to Google comes with a learning hat and a teaching hat - they have to teach as much as they learn, says Suzanne Martin, head of global people development, brand and marketing at Google, referring to the company’s g2g (Googler to Googler) program that puts employees in teaching roles. Source: HR Magazine, May 2015 The post Quotable: Suzanne Martin appeared first on The Training Doctor.

In an article in SHRM’s HR Magazine in the month of May 2015, an interview with the VP of Organizational Development and Chief Talent Officer at Hospira, Inc., Pamela Puryear, revealed an interesting approach to learning and development: employee-teams can apply for a grant from the Training Department to meet a learning and development need in their business unit. The post Training: Free? Money Maker? Or Gift of the organization? appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Research now tells us that what makes a group truly intelligent and innovative is the combination of different ages, skills, disciplines, and working and thinking styles that members bring to the table. Scott E Page, professor and director of the center of the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan has demonstrated that groups displaying a range of perspectives and skill levels outperform like-minded experts. He concludes that "progress depends as much on our collective differences as it does on our individual IQ scores." Source: Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Instituted and Scott E Page, "The Difference," published by Princeton Press The post Collective Differences equal Better Learning Outcomes appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Online learning is "consistent with where we are going with employers and teams." Employers need people who are self-motivated and who can work independently and collaborate online with colleagues, including critiquing each other’s work - exactly the skills that online learning builds. Lora Reed, Assistant Professor, Ashford University Forbes School of Business as quoted in HR Magazine, May 2015 The post Quotable: Lora Reed appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Heard around the water cooler: Place-based learning to identify learning that is classroom-based or face-to-face. The post Are you going to that place-based class? appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Millennials will account for close to 50 percent of the workforce within the next five years. Corporate learning leaders need to be the champion for making professional development an organizational priority. We need to be taking educational benefits out of the last page of the employee handbook and shining a spotlight on it. In the next five to 10 years it’s going to be a key differentiator for employers who do it well. Jay Titus, EdAssist Excerpted from: http://www.clomedia.com/blogs/1-ask-a-gen-y/post/6303-millennials-will-work-for-knowledge The post Quotable: Jay Titus appeared first on The Training Doctor.

One of the wonderful things about Adobe Connect is the fact that the pods make it so malleable… one of the maddening things about Adobe Connect is trying to get all those pods in place easily and at the right time. One option: Create a layout for your activity instead. Say, for example, your activity is for participants to respond to the question How Do You Create the Perfect Impression on a New Client? What do you do before, during and after the sales call? and you have a separate chat pod for each response (before, during, after).  Rather than try to move the pods in to the participant viewing area quickly and neatly, use a separate layout where they are already set up. Then, with one click, you can move the whole group to the layout. * From the menu bar, click Layout > Create New Layout * Then choose to create a blank layout (you will have to bring in every pod you want in this layout) or duplicate an existing layout (if you know you want video, attendee list and chat, you might want to duplicate the standard ‘sharing’ layout) * Give the layout a name so you can easily find it in the list of layouts on the right of your screen (using our example above, we’d probably call this layout Before, During, After) * Click OK. Populate the room with whatever pods you need (again, using our example, we’d need 3 chat pods) * Now, when that time in the course arrives, simply click on the Before, During, After layout thumbnail and voila! your three chat pods are at the ready and participants can begin their activity much more quickly. The post Adobe Connect Tip - for easier classroom management appeared first on The Training Doctor.

The post What We Talked About Last Month appeared first on The Training Doctor.

Organizations have displayed an increased interest in blended learning, which takes the best of all training methodologies from the perspectives of demographics, economics, and instruction. Demographics For the most part, the demographic factors affect learning in the workplace and concern the population of learners.  Especially in today’s globally diverse work environments, organizations need to make adjustments for multiple languages, various time zones, multiple generations, and cultural differences.  While the content of the learning program may be the same (basic selling skills, for example), the design or delivery may have to be altered to accommodate varying demographics of the audience. Economics Often, training delivery options are dictated by the economics involved.  For example, classroom based training will require travel expenses, maintaining or renting classroom space, and the printing and reproduction of materials.  Computer based training options are more economical in many ways; however, they require their own set of economic decisions such as adequate server space, the hosting of a web site, and secure access and record keeping. Instruction The design of the actual instruction can vary greatly based on things such as individual learning styles, how immediate the need is for the training, or what access learners have to instructional methodologies.  Do they have individual computer workstations? Are they able to leave their jobs to attend a 4 hour or 8 hour training class? Want to learn more? Order your own copy here ! The post Blended Learning Uses the Best of all Training Methodologies appeared first on The Training Doctor.