In 2014, we saw organizations use social technologies for recruitment, development and engagement practices. The year to come will bring even more transformation to human resources. The year 2015 will see the advent of what I call "the consumerization of HR," where employees expect an "intelligent mobile user experience" to guide [...]

This letter was received in response to a question Joseph Grenny answered in the December 14, 2011 Crucial Skills Newsletter titled, "The Gift of Forgiveness." Dear Joseph, A year ago, you addressed a concern by "Facilitating Forgiveness" about the communication difficulties a family was facing after a grandmother’s extended illness. The family described was my family, and that year, we canceled our family Christmas party. Your advice included patience and changing stories. In the ensuing months, there was a gradual shift as my son, his cousins, my brother, and myself attempted to patiently do our part to mend the difficult situation. We had a breakthrough in the summer when my nieces and nephews talked their aunt, the oldest in the story, into resuming her tradition of a 4th of July party (it was also canceled last year). That action led to the softening of some hearts and some progress in communication. When my youngest sister was diagnosed with colon cancer this fall, the rest of the resistance became, in Star Trek terms, futile. My mother’s gradual recovery, and the combination of service and prayers by the rest of the family on behalf of my sister, have done the seemingly impossible. We are having a Christmas party! A year ago, you pointed out that hate cannot drive out hate and darkness cannot drive out darkness—only love and light can do that. Your gift from me this Christmas is knowing that your advice commending patience, love, and an appeal to what members of the family really wanted was the right path to forgiveness and restoration of family unity. Thank you! Editor’s Note: If you would like to share similar feedback about how the authors’ advice has helped you, please e-mail us at editor@vitalsmarts.com. Related posts: The Gift of Forgiveness Kerrying On: A Christmas Gift What Happened: Don’t Pass the Buck

  In the frenetic 21st century, when employees job-hop at an alarming pace, customers’ preferences change on a dime, and every week could bring a paradigm shift to the business world at large, what sets successful companies apart is one thing: loyalty. Loyal employees keep operations steady, prioritize long-term success, and [...]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My company has grown to ten times the size it was when I started seventeen years ago, yet our systems and processes have not kept up with our rapid growth. Things need to change! One of my strengths is ideation and after seventeen years on the job, I have a lot of ideas. I am also an activator, so I write proposals, share thoughts, and provide tangible financial justifications, yet my voice goes unheard. If given the opportunity to share, I use my crucial conversations skills to create an open, comfortable environment to discuss ideas, but I typically only get reasons we can’t do it or I’m told this is the way we’ve always done it—which doesn’t make it right! How can I get decision makers to take my ideas and input into consideration? Thank you, Ignored  Dear Ignored, Your company is lucky to have you. The VitalSmarts team now numbers over 100. As founders of the company, we have no illusions about what got us here. We were just as clueless twenty years ago as we are today, and didn’t have a company nearly as influential. The difference today is our team. We have brilliant people who have dedicated their careers to contributing ideas that make us better, stronger, and faster. You’re asking a pretty tough question to answer with so little visibility into your reality. Why aren’t people taking your ideas seriously? Honestly, I can’t know, but what I can do is guess. So in hopes of being helpful, I’ll give you a variety of possibilities to consider. Then I’ll give you a process you can use to figure out which may have merit. First, the options—in no particular order: Nothing personal—it’s about the ideas. Good ideas. Lack of resources. Your ideas are great but the organization doesn’t have incremental resources to test or implement new ideas. Bad ideas. Your ideas are generally impractical or off-strategy. They’re being ignored because they should be ignored. Nice ideas. The ideas are good but not great. No organization has capacity to do all of the "nice to dos." It’s personal—work on you first, the ideas second. Low personal credibility. You have a track record of making implausible ideas, or have had personal failures that have decreased confidence in your abilities in general. Lack of technical/strategic skill. You don’t have a profound understanding of the strategic needs and direction of the organization, so your ideas are off target. Communication skills. Your ideas have merit, but the way you communicate them (orally or written) undermines the merit of the ideas. Hobbyhorses. You’re proposing ideas that are interesting to you, but not relevant to others. Half baked. You haven’t put enough thought into developing the idea for others to take it seriously. There’s a big difference between saying, "Let’s make a new MP3 player!" and developing a prototype of an iPod. You may need to put more work into fleshing out your concept before others will see its merit. Most organizations don’t need more ideas, they need more leaders—people who will champion an idea through successful implementation. If you’re hoping to simply "ideate"—or toss out gems and have others do the work, you are likely to remain disappointed. It’s political—you lack understanding of how to get a decision made in your organization—who the power players are and how to gain their support. It’s process—there are channels through which you need to move in your organization to advance ideas. Your strategy has been to "ideate" only, but you haven’t done the dog work of filling out forms, attending meetings, gaining approvals, etc. It could also be that you have such a stifling bureaucracy that no ideas will survive birth. If that’s the case, you may need to raise that issue rather than continuing to toss pebbles at the brick wall. There are dozens of other possibilities, but I hope these stimulate possibilities for reflection. So, how can you know not just what might be going on, but what is going on? I have two suggestions to help you learn how to exert great influence in your specific case: Find positive deviants. Identify cases in your organization that contradict your experience. Look for examples where someone proposed a similarly bold idea as yours—but in this case, it was picked up, developed, and implemented. In as ego-less a way as possible, compare your case to this one. What was different about this idea, this person, the political process, or the bureaucratic process that made it work? Using any insights you gain, decide how you will tweak your approach in the future. Find honest friends. In addition to self-reflection, you can ask others to give you honest feedback. This is tough to get. Most people will take the easy way out and say, "Your ideas are great, people are just too busy," when in fact part of the story is that your ideas haven’t been that great or you lack personal credibility. If you want them to be honest, you need to make it entirely clear that it is safe for them to be so. One way to do this would be to: Define the problem. Give them examples of the last few ideas you’ve pitched that fell on deaf ears. Give a contrasting example of a "positive deviant." Make it safe. Tell them you have no ego in this and that your sole intention is to gain influence. You desperately need their help. The more sensitive their feedback is, the more actionable it will be for you! Prime the pump. Give them examples of the kinds of things you think might be going on (for example, use the list I gave you above). Ask them to ponder over the three to five reasons on that list as to why your ideas are ignored. Give them time. Don’t demand an immediate response. Ask them to give it some thought then get together with them to debrief. I know this last exercise sounds like a bit of work, but given your passion about making a difference, I think it will be worth it. If you want to feel fully engaged in your work and experience the joy, I can tell you are capable of finding in it, you need to solve this puzzle. It’s clear that the capacity to innovate is an important value for you, so don’t give up. Get feedback. Examine all the possibilities. Be patient as you develop greater skill at influencing your thriving and growing organization. Influence isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort! Warmly, Joseph

Stacy Nelson asked the audience at REACH 2012 how successful they were at creating personal balance in their life. Using the analogy of truing a bicycle wheel, Stacy offered advice for aligning our physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional parts of our life. He says that, in order to achieve the balance we all desire, we need to do the following things: Stop, look, and listen. We are generally blind and outnumbered to the influences in our life that pull us in competing directions and bring us out of balance. Debunk the myth of compartmentalization. Just like truing the spokes on a bicycle wheel, every part of our life is impacted by every other part of our life. Find space, silence, and darkness. In these quiet moments and places we are able to escape from the pressures of life and truly listen to our inner voice. Change with gratitude. Gratitude is a lubricant for life that reduces the friction of change. When we live with an attitude of gratitude we stop whining about the changes we need to make. In his twenty-minute BIG Idea session, Stacy says that if you truly want to live a balanced life, you have to stop, you have to look, and you have to listen. And then go out and live your life with gratitude. Related posts: Crucial Applications: REACH 2012 BIG Idea Video—Ron McMillan Turns Really Bad Days Into Really Good Data Crucial Applications: REACH 2012 BIG Idea Video—Joseph Grenny Asks Two Important Questions Crucial Applications: REACH 2012 BIG Idea Video—Brian Wansink Shares Tips to Cut Calories

I first learned about mindfulness at the moment I needed it the most: I was referred to the mindfulness work of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Medical School by my surgeon after breaking both my ankle and top of my foot in an accident. (Disclosure: [...]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, After reading Change Anything, I set a goal to lose twenty pounds and created a change plan. I followed the plan and lost eight pounds in three weeks, then I hit a plateau and was unable to lose more. Did I choose the wrong plan? How do I know if my change plan is good, or if I need to change it? Stalled  Dear Stalled, Good job! Eight pounds in three weeks is excellent! Hitting a plateau after losing weight is not evidence of failure, it’s good data. Be the subject and the scientist. I suggest you use this data to update your plan. Thousands of scientists, nutritionists, and physicians have studied weight loss, wellness, and health. No one, however, has studied your weight loss. Others have developed general plans based on some general ideas and principles. But you need a specific plan, specific to you. You need to be the scientist who studies you (the subject) to discover the best plan for your own health and wellness. Let’s assume the plan you begin with is a good plan based on tried and true concepts. I suspect this is correct because you used this plan to lose eight pounds. Keep in mind a change plan is dynamic not static. You should now expand, experiment, analyze, and adjust your plan. For example, let’s suppose your vital behaviors were to: Weigh daily Take a brisk twenty-minute walk three times a week Stop eating snacks before bedtime These behaviors have likely made you aware of your weight and the impact your plan is having on weight loss. This is good; observation and awareness are key tools of a scientist to gain understanding. Your weight loss probably resulted from not eating snacks before bedtime and being more active. You made progress and then plateaued. This is good data. Analyze it. What can you learn? Maybe you should continue this behavior and expand your plan. Perhaps you could review what you are eating. Are there some opportunities to cut calories in a helpful, healthy way? What if you cut calorie-rich snacks between meals and replace them with healthy alternatives to keep you from getting hungry and stay energized? If this makes sense, conduct an experiment. What happens when you add this vital behavior to your plan? Note: You can drop the "no snacking before bedtime" as a vital behavior in order to keep your focus on just three vital behaviors. You continue to enact this behavior, but because you’ve mastered it, it’s no longer on your "vital" list. With this new vital behavior in place, track your progress with daily weigh-ins. Analyze the data. Is the new vital behavior working? Adjust your plan accordingly. As you master a vital behavior, experiment with new behaviors. Consider changing your meals and increasing activity and exercise. Also, analyze and adjust your six sources. For example, add a friend and exercise together (turn accomplices into friends), and reward yourself upon completion of your goal by allowing yourself to buy a new outfit in your new size (invert the economy). Congratulations on creating a successful change plan. A leveling-off of your results is not failing to achieve your goal, it’s good data indicating that it’s time to expand, experiment, analyze, and adjust. Doing this keeps your plan vibrant and not only assures you reach your goals, but makes it likely you will surpass them. All the best,Ron Related posts: Change Anything: Motivating Weight Loss Change Anything: A Weight Loss Mind-set Change Anything: An Important Weight Loss Tool

Three years ago, Thomas Friedman, Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times wrote the forward looking column Come The Revolution where he summed up the disruption of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on higher education in this way: "Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately [...]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, How can I rid myself of watching TV mindlessly for long hours? Couch Potato  Dear Couch Potato, Thanks for asking! This is a problem that sneaks up on people and has real impacts. Adolescents who watch hours of TV also eat more junk food, exercise less, study less, have fewer friends, and are more likely to be involved in drugs and alcohol. Adults who watch lots of TV are more likely to be overweight, depressed, have cardiovascular diseases, and shortened lives. Wow! However, notice that these are correlations. They aren’t saying that watching TV causes all these ills. In fact, the causation may run the other way, at least sometimes. Think of how it might work: I feel ill and a little depressed. I don’t have a close friend to visit, and I don’t feel up to taking a walk. So instead, I watch a few hours of TV. While I’m watching, it’s easy to down a beer or two and a bag of chips. As this becomes a habit, I go out less, gain more weight, spend less time with friends, and feel worse about myself. So, how do I handle my depressed mood? By escaping into more TV. How can you escape this vicious cycle? Personally, I use the principles from Change Anything. Set a Goal. Decide how much TV is the right amount for you. It might be one hour a day or five hours a week. Make sure the goal is reasonable and within your control. Create a Six-Source Plan. When a habit is hard to change, it’s usually because your world is perfectly organized to maintain it. You probably have all Six Sources of Influence pulling against you. I’ll suggest some ways to get all Six Sources pulling for you. Source 1: Personal Motivation. Left in a room by yourself, you probably want to watch TV. How can you change your motives in the moment? I think we often use TV as a solution to boredom, loneliness, burnout, and bad moods. And it may even work, at least in the short run. It pulls us into a compelling story and distracts us from our troubles. But it’s a distraction, not a solution. And it tends to lead us into other bad habits, as well as take time away from more healthy habits. If you are using TV as a solution to a problem, then finding better solutions to these problems might remove an important motive for watching TV. Track your moods. Put a notebook near your TV, and track what you are thinking and feeling when you get the urge to watch TV. Find out whether you are using your TV to manage your moods and which moods they are. Also, note what your moods are at the end of each day. Some researchers have found that viewers are happy while watching but feel lousy at the end of the evening—as if they’ve wasted the evening. At the end of each day, ask yourself, "Do I feel good about how I spent my time today?" Enjoy the well-deserved feeling of success when you stick to your TV plan. Source 2: Personal Ability. New habits require new skills. If you find it’s taking too much willpower to avoid TV, add some skill. Skill up on better ways to enjoy your free time. First, determine when you watch TV: is it early morning, the middle of the day, after dinner, or late at night? Map out these times and begin searching for better activities that could replace TV during those times. Create your own Pleasant Events Schedule. It’s an old tool, but it’s a good one. The Pleasant Events Schedule is a simple list of 320 activities that some or many people enjoy. You can find an updated version that focuses on older adults here. You can use this tool as follows: a. Check out the items on the list b. Select several that you enjoy and that would fit into your free time c. Schedule them into your free time—put them on your calendar as an alternative to TV watching d. If you discover you don’t enjoy them, pick different activities Sources 3&4: Social Motivation and Ability. Do others around you influence you to watch more or less TV? What is your personal mix of accomplices (people who enable or encourage more TV) and friends (people who enable and encourage less TV)? Change the Mix of Accomplices and Friends. Identify your TV buddies—the accomplices who join you in front of the TV—and then ask them to join you in non-TV activities. Or, add a new friend by finding someone who is doing something you’d rather do—exercising, taking a walk, reading aloud, volunteering, etc.—and join them. When you feel as if you need help, help someone. Or at least connect with someone. Spend your TV time with someone you care about, instead of with your TV. Call your mom, visit a friend, talk to your children, or help your children with their homework. Source 5: Structural Motivation. Are there hidden rewards for TV watching? Can you do something to invert the economy? Take away hidden rewards. Don’t allow yourself to eat or drink while you’re watching TV. Don’t have the TV on during meals. For example, do you indulge in junk food when you sit in front of the TV? Don’t reward yourself while watching. Reward incremental progress. Track and reward your progress every week. But don’t use TV watching as the reward! Find a range of little presents you can give yourself. Change them up so they stay fresh and make them contingent on achieving your weekly TV goal. Source 6: Structural Ability. Is your environment making it too easy and convenient to watch TV? Does your living room, kitchen, or bedroom scream, "Turn me on, I’m a television!" Use convenience and comfort. Make it less convenient and less comfortable to watch TV. My wife and I have one TV that’s out all the time and is located on the wall in our kitchen. But we’ve made sure the chairs there aren’t overly comfortable. After about 45 minutes, no one would want to keep watching TV at our house. Actually, we do have a second TV, but we keep it on the top shelf in a closet near the living room. Whenever we want to watch a longer show (we’re Tour de France addicts) we take down this TV and put it on a stand in the living room. But we always put it away again after the show. These little touches of inconvenience and discomfort prevent us from watching too much. The secret sauce that makes Six-Source Plans so effective is that you use all the Sources all at once. Don’t cherry pick one or two of these ideas. Make sure you have a tactic that will work for you in each of the Six Sources of Influence and implement them all at the same time. Of course, I’ve shared only a few of the many possible tactics out there, and some that work for me might not work for you. Be the scientist. Explore what works for you and then let the rest of us know. Everyone, I’d love to hear what’s worked for you. Please share your ideas for turning off the TV. David Related posts: Lose Weight and Defy Your Critics

Claire Narum Dashe & Thomson is pleased to welcome Claire Narum as its new Director of Instructional Design.  Claire joined the company in July after working as a training and documentation consultant for Dashe over the past five years.  Prior to that, she spent several years working as a trainer and instructional designer for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  She has developed and delivered training both nationally and internationally, for a range of industries and systems, from large-scale ERP implementations to specialized, in-house software applications.  Claire has a B.S. degree in Psychology from Brigham Young University.  In her spare time she enjoys reading, cycling, swimming, and travel. Find out more about Claire in the interview below. Q:           How did you come to learn about Dashe & Thomson? A:            I was in Minnesota visiting relatives, and my sister brought home a copy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  It contained a special section on the job market in Minnesota, and I stumbled on an article about Dashe & Thomson.  As I read it, I thought ‘That sounds like the perfect place for me to work.’  However, at that time I was still living in Switzerland.  I did send my resume, but not surprisingly, I didn’t hear back.  Eventually, when I moved back to the United States, I found a contract position in Minneapolis.  Dashe contacted me about six months later, and I’ve more or less worked exclusively for Dashe ever since. Q:           Discuss your background a little bit. A:            Well, after graduating from college I jumped on an airplane and moved to Switzerland to work for the international organizations.  It took three months to ‘break in’ to the system, and my first job was as a temporary secretary for UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).  I was pretty idealistic, and a little disappointed to be taking a secretarial position, but I figured I would work my way up.  Eventually I found my way to the World Health Organization, and after a few years there I landed a job doing training on one of their proprietary systems called AMS (Activity Management System).  That was the first time I ever had a job that I truly looked forward to in the morning.  It was like a revelation!  Since then I’ve moved more into the training development arena, but I’ve stayed involved in training ever since. Q:           So how long have you been working in the training field? A:            In total, I’d say about ten years. Q:           And what about this industry attracts you? A:            Initially, it was simply the desire to help people do their jobs more easily.  Working at WHO, there was a lot of bureaucracy, with a lot of hoops to jump through, and very little training.  Although they did have "New Hire Training," it was highly conceptual - not practical at all.  So when I started, it felt great to help people go back to their desks and understand how to use the AMS to do their required work.  I was also the point person for system help at that time, so I really worked hard at providing help with problem-solving, as well as answering simple system usage questions. These days, I’m motivated a bit more by the production process.  Now that I’m not doing much training, I like the process of developing effective training documentation.   And I love working with lots of different companies, getting to know their cultures, their special needs, and so on.  It keeps me growing and always learning, which I like. Q:           You’ve been a contractor for several years now. What’s the biggest change, working full-time for Dashe & Thomson? A:            It is kind of the best of both worlds.  As I said earlier, I enjoy moving around and working with lots of different companies in different industries.  Taking a position with Dashe gives me the stability of working with a team of people over the long term, without giving up the variety of contract work.  Also, I’m looking forward to getting to know a bit more about the other side of the business, the project development and planning side of the equation. Q:           What are you hoping to accomplish in your new position? A:            Generally speaking, the two things I’d like to contribute are, first, to build relationships with as many clients as possible.  I’d like to increase our repeat business by building trust and providing value adds wherever I can.  Second, and even more generally, I’d like to help grow Dashe & Thomson as a company.  I’ll spare you my grand fantasies of a multinational Dashe & Thomson perpetually climbing on the S&P 500, but I definitely want to be part of broadening the clientele throughout the United States, and beyond, if possible. The post Dashe & Thomson Welcomes New Director of Instructional Design appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

Read Joseph’s latest columns on Forbes.com for tips and strategies for changing your behavior in 2013. And Now for the Toughest Influence Challenge of All: Changing Myself We have it all backward. We lament how the world is falling apart because other people won’t change. Health care costs soar because other people eat too much and exercise too little. The workplace is too political because others hoard information and resources. Others have dangerous political or religious views. Others are polluting the planet. And worst of all, "others" come to a full stop before entering the new traffic circles in my town. Sheesh! That’s why we all crave the ability to influence others. If only we could get them to change, our lives would be better. But over the past few years, I’ve gained an appreciation for those with the capacity to influence themselves. Unlike most of us, these successful individuals think of themselves as influence projects. They stand above themselves like interested scientists and consider the habits and proclivities of their favorite lab rats—themselves. By doing so, they develop insights, interventions, and strategies to behave differently. Read more Are You Facing Your Own Fiscal Cliff? If So, Odds Are You Got There the Same Way Congress Did. I’ve about had it with TV pundits and persons-on-the-street who decried the self-interested, short-sighted, infantile politics of Congress during the infamous "fiscal cliff" negotiations. It’s not that I’m not worried or irritated at the behavior that keeps bringing us to these predictable precipices. It’s that in pointing our fingers at Congress, we are distracted from looking in the mirror. Read more Related posts: Crucial Applications: REACH 2012 BIG Idea Video—Joseph Grenny Asks Two Important Questions Joseph Grenny Introduces Crucial Conversations Second Edition Joseph Grenny Says You’re On!: Keep Habits by Competing with Friends

Dashe & Thomson, Inc., a recognized leader in enterprise training solutions, announced it has partnered with McGraw-Hill, the content, software, and services-based education company, as they replace their existing financial management systems with a modern ERP solution. McGraw-Hill chose Oracle e-Business Suite, based on prior experience with Oracle’s products already used within the company. Dashe & Thomson is providing a number of services on the project including Custom Training. Project Atlas will help McGraw-Hill meet their global digital strategic growth by providing the right management information to the right people at the right time to make the right business decisions. Jolene Wilson, VP of Training and eLearning Development at Dashe, says "This is more than just software training for a software implementation. Dashe is helping to transform the way that McGraw-Hill does business. We are helping to define how Oracle EBS will impact the way users perform business processes and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each user audience. We will are tying business goals and KPIs back to the custom training we’re building for each group. In addition, we are creating an online learning and reference portal to support users during training, at go-live, and on-going." Atlas is more than just a systems replacement. It includes replacing Lawson Financials with the Oracle 12 E-Business Suite and redesigning the Corporation’s Chart of Accounts (COA) to address known deficiencies and leverage leading practices. Atlas will provide dramatic improvements in McGraw Hill’s management information capabilities and lay the foundation required to implement the remaining Atlas projects. About McGraw-Hill: With sales of $6.2 billion in 2010, McGraw-Hill has approximately 21,000 employees across more than 280 offices in 40 countries. The company is based in New York, New York. Founded in 1888, The McGraw-Hill Companies is a leading global financial information and education company that helps professionals and students succeed in the Knowledge Economy. Leading brands include Standard & Poor’s, McGraw-Hill Education, Platts energy information services and J.D. Power and Associates. More information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com About Dashe & Thomson: Dashe & Thomson provides customized training solutions to enable large-scale business changes - from enterprise-wide software to process reengineering. The company was founded in 1981 on the belief that knowledgeable users are the key to any company’s goal of achieving return on software investments. Dashe & Thomson provides highly experienced teams of instructional designers, training developers, trainers, online help developers, and e-learning specialists, using a project methodology developed over the company’s 30-year history. Dashe & Thomson consultants provide training services for both corporate and public sectors, and average more than 15 years of professional experience. To learn more, visit www.dashe.com The post Dashe & Thomson announces partnership with education giant McGraw-Hill appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

Dashe & Thomson is now working with the Canadian, yoga-inspired, international athletic apparel company lululemon athletica. This experience will focus on Flex PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) implementation. Dashe & Thomson is applying their User Adoption Methodology and custom end-user training. The implementation will include a learning portal, a "Did you know" video series, and instructor-led training combined with an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) for their post go-live implementation. The post Dashe & Thomson announces partnership with leading athletic apparel company, lululemon athletica. appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I love my sister dearly, but her behavior can be very negative and manipulative. Whenever she is discouraged, she develops passive aggressive behaviors and withdraws from me while simultaneously blaming me for our momentary dysfunction. Often, her perspective of self-loathing advances to the point of suicidal threats. In these crucial moments, I struggle with what to do. I feel that I enable her because I cling to her in an effort to prevent the threatened outcome. However, I also feel manipulated because she is using me to fill an internal void. I desire to help her, but I feel stuck in our relationship. I’m trying to set boundaries, but her manipulation and threats directly attack the boundaries I’ve set up. Please help. Signed, Uncertain  Dear Uncertain, The biggest obstacle we face in life is making wise decisions in the face of overwhelming emotion. It’s impossible for most of us to imagine how hard it would be to think clearly when a loved one is threatening suicide. I sympathize with your plight. You’ve tried to set clear boundaries, but when holding your boundaries seems like it could result in your sister making such a cataclysmic decision, it’s natural for you to second-guess your decision to hold those boundaries firm. Since your question involves very sensitive mental health questions, I asked Jodi Hildbrandt, a licensed clinical social worker I deeply respect, for advice. Here are some important principles to keep in mind as you hold crucial conversations—both with yourself and with your sister. 1. Get professional advice before proceeding. You need to describe your sister’s specific symptoms and behavioral patterns to a professional to determine whether she is at immediate risk of harming herself or others. If so, your response should not be to cave into her demands, but to get her compulsory help. If, after consultation, you are confident a significant portion of the issue is behavioral and not purely neurological or chemical, the following advice may be helpful. 2. Your sister’s problems are more about bad skills than bad motives. She has developed some maladaptive habits in order to manage her legitimately painful emotions. Withdrawal, self-loathing, threats of suicide, and passive/aggressive behavior are ways of escaping emotions she has no other skills to deal with. The only way those who love her can help is to help her—perhaps for the first time in her life—develop clear, concrete boundaries that keep her from using others as a scapegoat for the emotional pain she is dealing with. Please be clear that these boundaries are not just for her, they are also for you. Sometimes, the best way for her to learn to better care for herself is to experience others who are willing to courageously take care of themselves. Establish and hold boundaries for your own emotional health and to give her the option of improving her own. 3. Your belief that you can control your sister’s behavior is what is keeping you stuck. Your sister’s threats of suicide have persuaded you that your actions will determine her choices. This is not true. What is true is that your sister may use your actions as justification for decisions in her life, but that is her choice, not yours. The instant you choose to believe it is true rather than her choice, you become an enabler. You empower her to manipulate you and reinforce her own belief that others are responsible for her emotions. She is unlikely to become mentally healthy so long as you reinforce this belief. You are not responsible for your sister’s choices. You cannot control what she will do or will not do. Continuing to believe you can does not decrease the chance of her making a terrible decision. If anything, it increases it by distracting her from the work she will need to do to become more healthy. I’m guessing we’re not telling you something new here. I sense from your note that you already understand these ideas. So I hope by stating them here to simply bolster your confidence that this is an appropriate way to view the situation. With that said, here’s how to proceed: 1. Firmly and lovingly request time to talk about your relationship. I say "firmly" because she may want to avoid this kind of honest exchange. If she does, then be firm—create safety for her by clarifying your positive intentions: "I want to talk because I want a healthy, wonderful relationship with you. That is not what I believe we have right now. I am happy to wait until you feel okay having this conversation, but in the meantime, I will need to keep some distance from you to maintain my own health and peace. I hope you understand that." You are not responsible for whether she takes you up on this now or decides to wait a while. Do not water-down or apologize for the request. In fact, this firm and loving request is your opportunity to model for her the way she needs to care for her own emotional well-being. 2. Communicate clear, written boundaries. Carefully consider each behavior your sister enacts that is unacceptable to you. Let her know the boundary you will maintain if it happens again. Explain why you need this boundary—not as a punishment for her, but as a way of caring for your own needs. Help her understand how you feel when she does these things. For example, you might say, "When you said you were planning to kill yourself, I felt hurt, terrified, and angry. I felt resentful that you would put that responsibility on me when it is not mine. If this happens in the future, I will need to distance myself from you. It is not that I don’t care, it is that I will not allow you to manipulate me in that way. Instead, I will notify mental health professionals that you are at risk for harming yourself, and then will not have contact with you until you have gotten help." Helping her understand the natural consequences to you of her actions—if done in love and patience—can help her feel much differently about her choices. In fact, it is the only thing that can motivate her to change. She is likely so caught up in her own emotional world that she has no idea how her actions are affecting you and others. 1. Acknowledge her emotions, but don’t own them. While discussing these boundaries, be careful to listen to and validate any emotions your sister shares. Just don’t accept responsibility for them. For example, if she says, "You call yourself a sister and you will cut me off when I need you the most!" you could respond, "To you, my decision to not stay close when you threaten suicide seems hurtful and disloyal. Is that right?" Simply affirm that you understand the feelings she’s having and what she believes is causing them. Don’t argue with her logic or tell her she’s wrong. Just ensure she feels heard. 2. Focus and surrender. The hardest and most important thing to do is to be willing to accept whatever will happen in the future without feeling responsible for it. Do this by focusing on what you really want. You don’t just want a sister who is alive. You want a sister who is happy and healthy. You can’t get there from here. You will have to take uncomfortable steps into new habits and responses to do the only thing you can do to increase her odds of getting there. From there, you must surrender the illusion that there is more you can do. You cannot guarantee she will not take her own life any more than you can guarantee that she will become mentally healthy. All you can do is maintain the unhealthy status quo by continuing to do what you’ve been doing. It’s clear you love your sister. My hope and prayer is that some of these ideas will give you greater skill and resolve to do so in an even better way. With love, Joseph Related posts: Confronting Illegal Behavior Confronting a Coworker’s Temper Tantrums Changing Racist Behavior

MoneyGram International has a long standing relationship with Dashe & Thomson and continues today to deliver a training solution for their Retail Integration Project. This implementation includes instructor-led and web-based e-learning for their Servicing Center in Italy. Training is being conducted on the Oracle Financials, Savvion, SalesForce, the Real-time Credit System, and PowerTransact systems.     The post MoneyGram International and Dashe & Thomson together again appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

We’re excited to announce that Dashe & Thomson has been named to the 2012 IT Training Companies To Watch List by TrainingIndustry.com. It’s an honor to be recognized for all of the hard work everyone here has devoted toward creating the best training and eLearning for our clients. The companies on the watch list were selected based on their new and innovative service offerings, company growth rate, and their unique vision and solutions for IT Training. From the press release: "This year’s list features a set of innovative companies that really stood out during our selection process. These companies have found their place in the market, have a great set of initial clients, and they show signs of strong growth," said Doug Harward, Chief Executive Officer of Training Industry, Inc. Our mission at Dashe & Thomson is to provide our clients with customized training and education to launch their company forward. While we see the results of our hard work from client success stories, it’s reaffirming to our mission that we were named to the IT Training Companies Watch List. Everyone at Dashe & Thomson is thrilled by the recognition and we look forward to continuing our innovative approach to eLearning and IT Training. The post Dashe & Thomson Named IT Training Company To Watch By TrainingIndustry.com appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

The UnAccountables are gangs of renegades hiding in nearly every organization across the corporate frontier. Perhaps you’ve come head-to-head with the UnAble, the UnMotivated, the UnDiagnosed—or even all three—a time or two. When you found yourself in a showdown with one of these outlaws, did you know how to hold them accountable? Watch our new video featuring these bandits and learn more about our new Crucial Accountability Companion Course at www.vitalsmarts.com/unaccountables. Related posts: Special Announcement: Introducing the NEW Crucial Conversations! Accountability or Forgiveness? Seeking Accountability

Dashe & Thomson was recently recognized with awards from the 34th annual Telly Awards, the 19th annual Communicator Awards, and the 2013 Summit Awards . The awards highlight the remarkable online training created for the State of Minnesota as part of their Disability Benefits 101 program. "The goal of the Minnesota Disability Benefits 101 (DB101) campaign is to provide the public with resources, services, and tools to help persons with disabilities plan for the best work options while balancing work and benefits," said Jolene Wilson, Project Lead and VP of Training and E-learning Development. "The use of video in the campaign provided the public with much greater clarity and understanding in regard to using DB101 to achieve their goals." For the online video training, Dashe & Thomson received a Silver Telly Award (top honor) in the category of "Internet/Online Programs - Government Relations" and a Gold Communicator Award in the category of "Online Video - Public Service." Dashe & Thomson also won a Silver Communicator Award in the category of "Websites - Education" and a Bronze Telly Award in the category of "Internet/Online Programs - How-To/Instructional" for work on the Minnesota Disability Benefits 101 campaign. For the 2013 Summit Awards, Dashe & Thomson was honored with Summit Silver Awards in the categories of "Government Video" and "Education/Teaching Video." These awards reflect the outstanding work Dashe & Thomson consultants put into every client engagement. Learn more about Dashe & Thomson’s training services and visit the Disability Benefits 101 campaign to view the award winning work. The post Dashe & Thomson Win Awards For Online Video Training appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

According to our recent poll, 43 percent of employees experienced a déjà vu performance review in 2012—negative performance feedback that surfaces year after year. Nearly two out of three employees say they’ve received negative feedback, and yet only one out of three has ever made a dramatic change based on this feedback. The research shows the typical performance review cycle includes managers giving employees the same negative feedback year after year with little effect on performance. One reason performance reviews are largely ineffective is employees lack the ability to put their performance feedback into action. In fact, 87 percent of respondents say they left their review without a plan for how to better meet their managers’ expectations. Here are seven tips for how employees can make the most of their performance reviews this year: 1. Ask for detailed feedback. Specific, behavioral feedback of both your accomplishments and challenges allows you to know the exact behaviors to replicate and change. After receiving detailed feedback, let your manager know you’re eager to learn and improve. 2. Visit your default future. Motivate yourself to change by visiting your "default future"—the career you’ll be stuck with if you fail to improve performance and are repeatedly passed up for promotion. 3. Invest in professional development. New habits always require new skills. Actively develop the skills you need to be viewed as a top performer through training, workshops, or books—but make sure this is only one part of a bigger change strategy. 4. Find a mentor. Changing habits requires help. Find a trusted mentor to encourage your progression and help you navigate the career development opportunities that exist within the organization. 5. Put skin in the game. Tie your performance to your compensation such as making your year-end bonus dependent on your ability to hit your improvement goals. Or set aside a portion of each paycheck. If you hit your goals, reward yourself at the end of the year. If you fall short, make out a check to a political party you oppose. 6. Control your workspace. Make your new habits easier by enlisting the power of your surroundings. If you’d benefit from close association with another team, ask to move offices. When possible, turn off electronic interruptions that keep you from being as productive as you need to be to move ahead. 7. Let your manager see your advances. Eagerly continue on the path to high performance. Nothing heals the wounds of disappointment like surprising and delighting your manager in the future. Register today to join New York Times bestselling author David Maxfield for a 40-minute webinar where he’ll share important insights from our recent research study, as well as applicable tips for making sure you don’t get caught in a negative review cycle. Related posts: Crucial Applications: How to Overcome a Career-Limiting Habit Crucial Applications: Office Haunting—How to Have Scary Conversations at Work Crucial Applications: Tax Refund Tips to Jump-start Financial Savings Habits

Dashe & Thomson is honored to be selected as a 2013 IT Training Company To Watch by TrainingIndustry.com. It is the second consecutive year Dashe & Thomson has been recognized as a leading IT training solutions provider by TrainingIndustry.com. Doug Harward, Chief Executive Officer of Training Industry, Inc., shared the criteria involved in selecting IT training companies for the list in a press release, "These companies exhibit strong signs of growth in a tough market and they demonstrate a dedication to meeting the needs of their clients." The companies included on the IT Training Companies To Watch List display new and innovative approaches to IT training solutions and retain a quality selection of clients. Dashe & Thomson is proud to once again be recognized as as a leading IT  training solutions provider. The post Dashe & Thomson Named "2013 IT Training Company To Watch" by TrainingIndustry.com appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

Dashe & Thomson is excited to announce the recent addition of Jeremy Vore as Director of Client Engagement. Jeremy brings a background of exceptional experience within the training and development field as a Training and Implementation Manager as well as running RedLeaf Consulting, a change management company. Learn more about Jeremy in the interview below. Q: Discuss your background a little bit. I’ve had a wide range of wonderful professional experiences, but they all come back to my love of communication, teaching, and interacting with people. I’ve been fortunate enough to apply those skills in aviation, outdoor recreation, healthcare, and as a business owner. All told, I’ve been making a living as a communicator and teacher since I was 17. Q: Teenage training professionals aren’t very common! What were you doing? I started sea kayaking in the Great Lakes when I was about 14 and progressed quickly in the sport. I was really lucky and had some world-class coaches and mentors who taught me the difference between being highly skilled in the physical aspects of the sport, which came very naturally to me, and having the experience, judgement, and leadership to be a true, top-level paddler. Part of that education included becoming certified as a British Canoe Union Coach and working for one of North America’s premier paddling centers as an instructor and guide. Everything I’ve done since then has been built on the foundation of communication, risk management, decision making, and leadership that came from that experience as a teen. Q: You also worked as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. What was the most rewarding part of that job? There were two experiences that were extremely rewarding. One was the opportunity to work with students who were struggling or had plateaued at WMU’s College of Aviation. I had a different background and instructional approach than some of the other staff flight instructors and was able to use that to make flying interesting and exciting again. Most of those students ended up becoming excellent, professional pilots. I also helped Cirrus Design develop aircraft-specific private and instrument pilot courses for their technologically advanced SR-series airplanes. These are 4 seat, propeller driven airplanes that have avionics and electronic cockpits rivaling wide body jets, so they aren’t the typical small planes with 1960s technology. We saw measurable improvements in the safety and competence of the airplane owners and pilots as a result of the work we did in the Flight Standards Department. That was very exciting! Q: How did you connect with Dashe & Thomson? I decided to leave my position as a Training and Implementation Manager at Zotec Partners to start a training and change management company, Redleaf Consulting. During the wind-down of my projects, I contacted and worked with Dashe & Thomson to finish a few training initiatives at Zotec Partners before I left. Working with the Dashe & Thomson team was a great experience, and, after I was on my own with Redleaf Consulting, we realized that there was an excellent opportunity to work together. As the Director of Client Engagement, I get to do all of the rewarding things that led me to start Redleaf, but with the resources, experience, and expertise of the Dashe & Thomson team. For me, the decision to join their team was an easy one. Q: What are you hoping to accomplish in your new position? There are really three parts to what I want to achieve. My selfish goal is to build on and develop the foundation of communication, training, and interaction with people that I’ve enjoyed so far in my professional history. From the company’s perspective, I’m looking forward to using my experience and knowledge to help our instructional designers, training developers, and other team members create the best product in the most efficient ways possible. And, for our clients, I want to ensure that we deliver the right tools and content to achieve their specific goals and business outcomes. If I can hit those targets, I’ll consider my role as the Director of Client Engagement to be successful. The post Dashe & Thomson Welcomes New Director of Client Engagement appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, Since our organization runs 24/7, it’s sometimes difficult to communicate face-to-face with all employees. Our managers often use e-mail to communicate important messages, including giving performance feedback. Would you share your thoughts on what is and is not appropriate to communicate by e-mail? Signed,Performance e-view  Dear Performance e-view, When my son, Hyrum, was three years old, he began to sense at times that he didn’t have my full attention. This was the early days of e-services and I was beginning to get emotionally wired into e-mails and other web services. He would toddle into my office and begin chattering about something important on his mind. I would respond minimally. And at some point, he would climb onto my lap, obstructing my view of the computer screen, place both hands on either side of my face, turn my head so my eyes locked onto his, and say something wonderful like, "Dad, do you know what Muffy did today?" In taking control of my head, he was doing more than just trying to focus my attention. He was satisfying his. Our brains dedicate a disproportionate amount of our cognitive resources to observing faces. We become fluent in reading body language long before we master verbal language. Infants can distinguish a human face from inanimate objects or even animal faces. Why the fixation on faces? Because they are the primary tool we use for discerning the intentions of those around us. Our primal programming urges us to assess any being that enters our visual neighborhood. There’s enormous survival value in being perpetually aware of whether those around us intend us harm and whether they’re capable of carrying it out. And nature has endowed us with great facility in making these judgments by reading nuances of the human face. Therein lies the principle for determining when a crucial conversation can be held virtually and asynchronously. The fundamental question is, "Can I do this well without seeing his or her face?" I have a few—not many, but a few—relationships where I can text almost anything and get away with it. Yes, even something a bit terse like, "Your last report was light on facts." And the only reason I can get away with it is because, in these rare instances, if their face puckers up in some unpleasant way, they’ll tell me. They know me well enough that they can imagine the face I had on when I wrote it (curious, but not angry), and if they doubt the mental picture they have of me, they’ll ask. But these are rare relationships. They’re rare because we tend to trust visual data more than verbal. If someone says, "No, I’m not angry at you," but their lip is twitching while they say it, we trust the lip not the words. This becomes problematic in virtual conversations because the massive mental resources that would ordinarily be occupied with scanning your face have nothing to scan, so they imagine it. They might read the words, "Your last report was light on facts" while seeing your face filled with disdain and your lip curled into a snarl. And they’ll trust their imagined picture of your face to give them a proper sense of the threat level you’re communicating. I watched this happen once with a very seasoned executive. She sent a letter to an important stakeholder that her boss, the CEO, later saw and judged to be inappropriate. He called her from overseas while on travel. His first words when she picked up the line were, "I read your letter. I’m disappointed." It wasn’t just the sentence that threw her into a panic. It was the face she conjured in her mind. Her audio and imagined visual experience of that brief exchange led her to flee the company just a few months later. So, here’s my advice: 1. If you need to see the face, don’t write the e-mail. You should always match the bandwidth of your connection with the riskiness of the conversation. If you need lots of visual data in order to ensure your message is being received as intended, wait until you have a high bandwidth connection (e.g., face to face or Facetime to Facetime). 2. If you have to write the e-mail, write it twice. Sometimes, you don’t have the option of delaying the feedback or getting in the same room with the other person (or some equivalent visual connection). In these cases, write the message first to get your content across. Then read it slowly, imagining the other person’s face. Empathize. Try to put yourself in the other person’s swivel chair and imagine how they might feel at each point in your message. Then re-write it with safety in mind. Don’t compromise the content by sugarcoating it or watering it down. Rather, notice those places they may misunderstand your intentions or your respect and clarify what you do and don’t intend for them to hear from you (or see on your face). In less formal relationships, I’ll sometimes describe the facial expression I’m wearing as I write something just to make that clearer! Imagine me looking grateful as you read this last sentence: Thank you for asking this important question! Warmly,Joseph Related posts: Addressing Mediocre Performance Responding to Confidential Feedback Out-of-Sync Performance Reviews

The Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts recently announced the winners of the 2014 Communicator Awards with Dashe & Thomson receiving a Silver Award of Distinction for work with Four51 and another client. Now in its 20th year, the Communicator Awards received over 6,000 entries, making it one of the most competitive award programs honoring communication professionals. Four51, a leading provider of outsourced B2B E-commerce solutions, selected Dashe & Thomson to convert their classroom-based training to an online format. Dashe & Thomson created and delivered a web-based learning solution that included a learning portal, gamification, and engaging eLearning. The learning solution was honored by the Communicator Awards with the Silver Award of Distinction in the category of Interactive Multimedia - Training (corporate). Examples of the Four51 learning solution can be seen in the samples video below: Watch samples of the award-winning custom eLearning development from the team at Dashe & Thomson.  The post Dashe & Thomson Honored With Communicator Awards appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

Bad behavior runs rampant in the workplace. The healthcare industry is no exception. The American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs defines disruptive behavior as behavior that "tends to cause distress among other staff and affect overall morale within the work environment, undermining productivity and possibly leading to high staff turnover or even resulting in ineffective or substandard care." Research among healthcare providers found widespread incidence of disruptive behaviors such as verbal abuse, sexual harassment, racial slurs, physical threats, and profanity. Specifically: 91 percent of perioperative nurses reported at least one incident of verbal abuse in the previous year 67 percent of staff nurses reported between one and five disruptive incidents in the previous month One of the most common manifestations of bad behavior occurs between nurses and physicians in the form of power struggles and clashes over roles and personality. One study found that 95.7 percent of physician executives reported knowledge of disruptive physician behavior within their organization. Not only is verbal abuse pervasive, it is also destructive. Research shows disruptive behavior leads to communication breakdowns that affect outcomes like patient safety and employee morale. Specifically, a study of twenty-six medical residents found that failures of communication between physicians and nurses were associated with 91 percent of the medical errors. Verbal abuse also leads to medication errors which harm 1.5 million patients each year. A study by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that 93 percent of nurses and pharmacists experience condescending language and impatience from bully physicians when they ask clarifying questions about medical orders, and 87 percent encountered physicians who outright refused to answer their questions. As a result, 75 percent of nurses and pharmacists admitted to having a peer interpret a medication order rather than calling an intimidating physician. Rebecca Saxton, PhD, RN, CNOR, and associate professor at the Research College of Nursing in Kansas City, Missouri, set out to uncover ways to reverse this divisive trend of abusive physician behavior and communication breakdowns. She collaborated with VitalSmarts to create an educational intervention tailored to the nursing experience that included the two-day Crucial Conversations Training course. The Solution: Read our case study to learn how Rebecca used Crucial Conversations Training to improve perioperative nurses’ confidence and ability to address disruptive physician behavior. Related posts: Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Tennessee Health System Achieve 100% EHR Adoption Crucial Applications: Office Haunting—How to Have Scary Conversations at Work Does the path to action still include telling a story?