This letter was received in response to a question Joseph Grenny answered in the February 29, 2012 Crucial Skills Newsletter titled, "Influencing Unprofessional Dress." Dear Joseph, I am the "CEO" of this company—that is, I am the superintendent of schools of a 5,000-student K-12 district and my challenge was to get the building principals to agree that impressions do matter to our "customers." In public schools, we have a rather unique situation in that one never knows where the parents are on the "dress for success" spectrum. Some (like Joseph and some who responded to his column) do not like ties and suits (very few of us do!) and argued for a relaxed, personal approach to dress. But that doesn’t work when it comes to interacting with parents who are more likely (given that they’re taking the time to actually visit you rather than call or e-mail) to have an issue and are quite possibly mad and ready to draw conclusions of one sort or another. The impression we create for those parents matters, so we have to dress the part. However, my building leaders were often not setting a good example for the teachers in their school, and as a result, the entire building’s level of dress was unacceptable by most peoples’ standards. The occasional spirit day or casual Friday is totally fine and welcome in a school, but this was becoming the norm. So I decided to engage the leaders in a conversation. At our leadership council meetings we first talked about our impressions of the teachers’ dress and then about how we could be role models for them. Addressing the teachers’ dress was a secondary objective—they are unionized and for such "initiatives" we need to get union leadership on board. I decided to first discuss and then decree that leaders start wearing a jacket and tie (or the equivalent for women). Now, school leaders definitely look more professional. I’m not saying they wear three-piece suits, or even a suit, but the norm is now to wear a tie, and that has raised the general level of dress quite appropriately. In fact, I’ve started a conversation with union leadership about teacher dress. We’ll need to define terms such as "business casual" which means different things to different people, but there is consensus that such a term, once better defined, can and will help us get away from the ragged jeans and flip flops. I just cannot help but think how that type of dress harms our profession’s reputation and union leadership agrees, so perhaps we have some mutual purpose and common ground from which to operate when we begin step two of the dress for success campaign in our school district. Thank you once again for the advice and for the ensuing comments from your readers. Very helpful to me indeed! 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: Influencing Unprofessional Dress Influencing the Education System What Happened: Time to Let People Go

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have a beautiful, talented twenty-four-year-old daughter who is fifty pounds overweight. She is currently in graduate school and has not been in the job market for the last two years. I worry about her health, and the bias she will face seeking a job as an overweight individual, and I ache for her lack of a social life. I have been trying to serve healthy meals and discuss healthy eating at the dinner table, but I have stopped short of a direct crucial conversation with her. Now, she no longer goes on short walks and is doing even less physical activity than before. How can I open dialogue with my daughter about weight management? Worried Mother  Dear Worried, Crucial conversations with our closest loved ones can be the toughest and most rewarding conversations of our lives. They are challenging because you’re conflicted. You care deeply about your relationship and you worry that speaking up could threaten it. At the same time, you care deeply about your daughter’s health and happiness, so saying nothing isn’t an option. So, how do you speak up in a way that helps your daughter without undermining your relationship? Find Mutual Purpose. You are clearly concerned about her weight, and you’ve identified several potential consequences: health, bias, social life, and physical activity. You’ve also noted that weight is a touchy, unsafe topic for your daughter. I suggest you begin with the safest common ground, the one she is least likely to see as meddling—your fundamental concern for her health. I wouldn’t introduce the issues related to potential bias or her social life. And I would let her steer the discussion to weight. Help your daughter find her own motivation. Do your best to avoid giving advice, making suggestions, or lecturing. Instead, help your daughter explore her situation and decide for herself what she really wants. Begin with a contrasting statement. A contrasting statement is a "don’t/do" statement that is designed to fix misunderstandings. You can already anticipate that your daughter is likely to misunderstand your intent. She may think you intend to tell her how to live her life. Fix this misunderstanding before it has a chance to grow. The "don’t" statement explains what you don’t intend. It anticipates and addresses your daughter’s concerns: "I’d like to hear your point of view on a sensitive topic. I don’t want to intrude on your personal life or tell you what to do." The "do" statement explains what you do intend: "I just want to hear your perspective. I’ll respect your choices." Encourage your daughter to explore both sides of the issue. "Please tell me how you see your health—what’s working for you, and what’s not." Then stop talking and let your daughter respond. Don’t push your perspective. A mistake we often make is to state our position in a way that forces the other person to take the other side. Here’s an example of what that would sound like. Parent: "If you don’t begin exercising and eating right, it could have long-term impacts on your health and happiness." Daughter: "Not necessarily. I’m happy the way I am. Besides, with my school schedule, I don’t have time to cook food and go to the gym." You have advocated for one side and forced your daughter to advocate for the other side. And guess who’s going to win this argument? Focus on Mutual Purpose. Listen for what is working, rather than for what is not. Your daughter is likely to focus on the challenges that prevent her from living a healthy lifestyle. A good response from you would be, "Are you saying that you’re motivated to work on your health, but you’re struggling with how to do it?" If your daughter says she is motivated but unable, then you can offer your support and she might accept it. Know your limits and be willing to step back. There is a good chance your daughter won’t want to have this discussion with you. Even if she is concerned about her health, she might not want you to be involved. If that is the case, then I think you will be more successful if you respect her decision and back off. To you, this might feel like rejection when you are only trying to help, but please don’t take it that way. Even when your daughter shuts down the conversation, she is listening. Back off, give her some space, and allow her to think about her situation. Earn her trust by respecting her limits, and she might invite you to help her when she is ready. Other suggestions. Are there ways you can improve your own health behaviors? For example, are you eating fruits and vegetables, watching your weight, and getting plenty of exercise? Be a modest model. Don’t talk about it, but change your own behavior. Trust that your daughter will take notice. Change your home to make healthy eating and activities easier and more convenient. Keep fruit and vegetables visible, and make them appealing. Stop buying fatty, salty, and sugary foods. Consider replacing your plates with smaller ones and moving your TV to a less comfortable area. Introduce new, fun, muscle-powered toys. As you prepare for this crucial conversation, please remember that all the research confirms that parents are the most influential people in their children’s lives. You can have a real and positive impact in your daughter’s life. Take the chance and make a difference. Best wishes, David Related posts: Confronting a Child’s Drug Abuse Addressing Your Child’s Teacher Crucial Conversations for Kids

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I have an aging mom who needs to be moved into an assisted living facility, but she just won’t hear of it. How can I have a conversation with her to help her understand that she needs to move so we will know she is safe? Concerned  Dear Concerned, Your mother is lucky to have a loving child who is concerned about her well-being and safety—enough so that you’re willing to step up to what many believe will be one of the most difficult conversations they’ll ever have. After all, you’re about to ask an aging parent to step away from a comfortable situation, complete with a familiar collection of belongings and friends, and enter a situation that could be not only novel, but even frightening. After all, in her mind, the new home may not be a home at all, but an institution full of people who treat their customers in an institutional way. It’s filled with strangers. There are rules and restrictions of all sorts. Plus, who knows what view your parent has of assisted living facilities. For years, the industry was peppered with horrible places that were often used to hide away the ailing aged—forgotten by loved ones, ruled by the local version of nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and smelling of urine and alcohol. At least, that’s how movies portrayed the places. Your mom may have even visited such an institution—perhaps the horrible place that housed her mother or grandmother. The place you have in mind, in sharp contrast, provides lovely circumstances, delicious food, the possibility of companionship, and lots of fun group activities. Why just look at the van parked out front filling up with active seniors on their way to the mall for a shopping trip. Also pulling up out front is a group of high school kids who’ve come to put on a luncheon show of musical numbers and poetic recitations. At the ready, you’ll find a qualified staff of medical assistants who will ensure that the food everyone eats is healthy and in the right proportions while simultaneously monitoring medicines and special needs. There’s the rub. Two people hold two very different views of the immediate future and two very different opinions about what choice to make. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up trying to convince each other that your view is correct, while fighting off the other person’s incorrect view. As a result, neither of you will change your opinion and you will either continue with the status quo, or you will take your mom to the care center kicking and screaming. This sort of stand-off reminds me of a time I watched my eight-year-old daughter attempt to convince a neighborhood kid who had just moved to America to taste a bowl of chocolate ice cream. The new neighbor hadn’t tasted ice cream before and the brown blob she was being offered wasn’t the least bit appealing to her. My daughter kept saying, "Trust me, you’ll really like it!" And then when that didn’t work, she’d state: "Honest, you’ll really, really, really like it." The friend would shake her head no and steel her will against what she assumed was a circumstance similar to the time her mom told her to eat a suspicious looking new food (liver) and not to fret because it was really, really good—only it was liver. Essentially, my daughter was talking ice cream and her friend was hearing liver. Here are some steps you can take to avoid such a standoff. I’m assuming that your mom’s medical circumstances demand that she move to an assisted living center—for both her safety and your peace of mind. That means whether she moves isn’t open to discussion. How, when, where, and under what conditions are indeed open and require healthy dialogue. Enter to learn, not simply to teach. Before you start the conversation, don’t merely prepare your arguments, prepare your willingness to listen. You’ll need to understand your mother’s concerns in order to openly discuss and resolve them. Explain why you made the decision. Don’t start by suggesting that you’re thinking about her moving into assisted living. If you leave that door open, you’ll spend most of your time debating if, when the if is no longer up for discussion. Start by explaining that you and your siblings have decided that, for her own safety and well-being, it’s time she moves. Then share the circumstances that led you to make the decision. Explain the impact her actions have had on her and on friends and loved ones. Let her know that you’re trying to help her find a place she can enjoy while she still has most of her faculties, not a place to stow her away. Ask her to share her concerns. End your description of why she needs to move with an invitation for her to share her concerns. Some will be accurate, some you’ll need to research, and some will be way off base. Restate each concern to ensure that you understand exactly what she’s saying. Many of the concerns will be about genuine losses of independence and convenience. Discuss ways to mitigate or minimize these disadvantages. When she shares what you perceive to be an inaccurate perception, explain that you see it differently and then share your view. Quickly call for a study and visit. Rather than try to verbally persuade your mother of all the benefits of assisted living, involve her in selecting a facility—including a visit to some of the choices. Match your mother’s issues with the place that best suits her needs. Play the role of a good realtor—don’t sell the place, let the place sell itself. What do you like? What don’t you like? How might we change that to suit your needs? Talk with existing residents and see how they like it. Where possible, call or visit old friends who are currently living in a care facility and see what they think about the situation. Choose friends who face similar circumstances and they’ll be able to share insights about what to expect and what to do to avoid potential disappointments. Allow for a trial visit. Many facilities let you sample their services by signing up for a short test period. This is often the point at which the senior begins to realize that having others of the same age around, support from medical staff, prepared meals, less area to clean, and the like, more than offset the loss of living in one’s own home. Check for success. Once your mother selects a place and settles in, visit frequently—by whatever means possible. Check to see what is working and what isn’t. Where possible, make further changes to match her needs to the facility. Finally, live up to the promise you made to yourself. You meant it when you decided that you wanted what’s best for your mom. Whether this turns out to be true depends a great deal on how often you make contact with her once she’s found a new place to live. Kerry Related posts: Sharing Bad News with an Aging Parent Speaking with a Parent Facing a Crucial Conversation?

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes In late March I attended one day of the National eXtension Conference (#nexconf) in Sacramento. I went to see Harold Jarche and Jane Hart speak but must say I enjoyed the whole thing. Jane was the keynote speaker for the day and they both ran a workshop afterwards. Since that day, I’ve been meaning to reflect on the event and revisit my live Tweet stream of the event. It’s been a while, but I’m finally writing that reflection. It was great to be able to see, and meet, some of the people I follow in the industry. I got to see a sight I thought I’d never see, but enjoyed. "Happy" by Pharrell was the song of the conference. The team running the conference put together a video of participants dancing to the music. It was fun seeing everyone dancing and having a good time, including Harold and Jane during a discussion panel. Jane Hart was up first, she talked about how she works in a social manner sharing information she learns with the public. Jane Hart - Keynote Speaker There’s been a lot of talk lately about Twitter being in decline. I can say in the learning community it is as powerful of a source to learn as ever. No surprise Jane talked about Twitter being the number one learning tool this year. Twitter isn’t a source for training Jane says, it’s more about becoming better at what you do. This is a global economy and Twitter allows us to connect with others who do the same thing, get inspired, and learn. I take the learning one step further by branching out from just my industry into others. Inspiration comes from all corners of the world and diversity feeds my innovative side. Jane talked about the importance of social media and constant learning. Jane is right when she says before you pay off your student loans from a degree, the information you learned will be irrelevant. A degree only gives you the base level knowledge to work with. It’s a good beginning, but it can’t provide you the knowledge you need to gain throughout your career. It’s necessary to be a lifelong learner, not just conferences or webinars, but all the time. To maintain a learning attitude is the only way to stay relevant in your career and thrive. Seek - Sense - Share Jane talked a little bit about Harold’s framework, called Seek, Sense, Share. This is a way to manage the large amounts of information out there. Boiled down to its basics, you must seek information. Make sense of it picking the good from the bad and adding value. Finally, share the relevant and meaningful information while adding value. There will be a lot more to come of the Seek, Sense, Share framework, it’s the root of Harold’s PKMastery. According to Jane, a benefit of social learning is that job opportunities come in different forms, including student blogs. We should encourage students to reflect on their learning in the public. Not only does it help them better reflect, it connects them with others interested in their ideas. There’s also that side benefit of the interest companies may have in hiring them. Are you trying to get people to take part and show their work more? Jane Hart said something that resonated with me: "you can’t train people to be social - only show them what it is like to be social." There are two things that are necessary to create effective value in your social actions: Learning out loud - You have to always be learning. To reflect on that learning, it’s necessary to share it with other people. Working out loud - You need to show people what you’re working on. Go beyond collaboration into the realm of cooperation where inspiration and imagination become reality. As Jane Bozarth says, if you don’t think what you’re working on is worth sharing, then why are you doing it? Show Your Work First thought: show your work with the entire world!? But what I’m working on is proprietary and I can’t share it  with anyone outside the company. There’s always something not proprietary you can share, it’s just a matter of seeing the value in it. Also, there’s the Enterprise Social Network (ESN) that you can share on. You can break down silos and connect with others who may specialize in parts of a project you’re working on. To summarize, there’s two types of social sharing: Social Web ESN Between these two, there’s nothing that needs to be a secret. The benefits far outweigh any drawbacks of opening up your work to the world. Jane Hart sums up what being a social learning practitioner means here: A Social Learning Practitioner is a learning professional who encourages, enables and  supports knowledge sharing and collaboration across their organisation - not just in training. He/she is a role model, leading the way by showing the business what it is to be social, and modelling the new knowledge sharing and collaboration practices that are required for the modern business to operate effectively in the modern world. - Jane Hart That was it for Jane Hart’s solo presentation but she is also an integral part of the workshop which came next. Harold Jarche had some great things to say in the workshop and great activities to get everyone’s blood flowing. Harold Jarche and Jane Hart - Becoming a Social Learning Practitioner, Walking the Social Talk Things got interesting. The conference was now about to be interactive, and in an eye opening way. Harold Jarche told the story of his t-shirt which a friend gave him represents how organizations operate today. Successful organizations in the 21st century are connected from the bottom to the top. Organization still operating in a hierarchy are a thing of the 20th century. If an organization isn’t going that way, they are going the way of the dinosaur. "@kanter: Next up @hjarche @C4LPT interactive workshop! #NeXConf pic.twitter.com/exrLeeHqSg" note the shirt @jonhusband — Harold Jarche (@hjarche) March 31, 2014 The question of learning styles came up from the audience. I’m not sure if it was to play devils advocate, or real, but Harold and Jane fumbled on who would answer that one. Harold took the reigns on answering. His answer was that there are about 6 billion learning styles. Everyone is unique, there’s no sense in trying to accommodate any single learning style. It’s not possible to accommodate every learning style. Jarche’s Brand of PKM no longer Personal Knowledge Management, now Personal Knowledge Mastery Harold introduced a 40 days course to what he is now referring to as PKMastery (rather than PKM). This seems to be a transition so people know it’s not the former broader field of Personal Knowledge Management anymore. It’s now a more unique Jarche brand Personal Knowledge Mastery. Writing the Good Stuff Harold recently hit his 10 year blog anniversary and took the opportunity to reflect on the past 10 years. He said that his first valuable thing he wrote took three years. I disagree that it takes any time to write something of value. It’s all valuable, and is all a learning experience. Of course he didn’t mean it but I felt the need to say it. If you’re writing a blog, its content is valuable. Maybe it’s not valuable to everyone, but it’s valuable as a personal reflection tool. Harold’s framework on learning and working in the network era has been an eight year work in progress. It represents the things we do in work and learning and how it all connects. http://www.jarche.com/2014/03/absorbing-complexity-with-pkm/ Work and projects is where much of the knowledge we’ve gathered, learned, and reflected on comes to fruition. Communities of practice (CoP) is where we can test and discuss new ideas. These are usually formed around a specific topic of people who meet and discuss around that topic. Social sharing is a great source where inspiration comes from. You can get perspectives from various industries and gain diverse ideas. It is a great representation of how all the different networks come together to provide innovation and great ideas. This type of work-flow has provided me inspiration and allowed me to stay innovative in an evolving industry. This is all summed up well by Harold when he says "work is the learning and learning is the work." Diversity in Knowledge A much needed question Harold brought up, is "are you getting the diversity you need in your knowledge networks?" I think this goes along with my long time belief which I sum up as "great minds do not think alike." Diversity is what creates greatness, you can’t get diversity if you get your information from a small scope of sources. It’s important to follow ideas and information from a diverse group of people. Other industries, different levels of expertise, different geographic locations, and any other diverse source. Well said by Harold: "If you find Twitter boring, you’re not following the right people." An interesting method of finding information on a topic you’re interested in was presented by Harold. Seek out a person that’s an expert in the topic and you now have a human filter. You’ll get information on that topic which has already been filtered and curated by an expert. Mini Chat Jane hosted a mini Twitter chat to show the diversity of information you can get from the Twitterverse. My idea on if I decide to follow someone back is simple: are they real? Regular tweets? Professional tweets with limited personal tweets? I feel that if I limit who I follow, I’m putting myself into a silo. My Twitter stream may be overwhelming, but the diversity far outweighs what I might miss in the river of information. Network vs. Hierarchy Time to get the blood flowing. We all stood up for an activity orchestrated by Harold. He provided an eye opening experience of the accomplishments possible in a networked organization. Everyone in the room was instructed to stand up. Harold gave us simple instructions to pick two people in the room, but we couldn’t say who they were. We were then to organize ourselves as an equilateral triangle in relation to these two people. The problem is, we couldn’t talk and everybody has random people to move with, the crowd was in constant flux. Even with this complex formation, the entire room was able to do it within a minute and thirty seconds. The eye opener: Harold asked us to imagine the exercise with one person organizing the same pattern, it would have taken all day. Complex networks of people can self organize to create complex things without a hierarchy. Adding Value There’s a fine line between sharing good information and spamming the world. Harold and Jane explained the importance and methods of how to create value for the information you’re sharing. Here are some ways to add value: Explain the importance Make it relevant Put it into context Join the dots Synthesize the important parts Visualize the information for the reader By doing these things to the information you share, it will assist you in preventing over sharing. It takes a lot of effort to do this, and for good reason. If you share everything you see whether you read it or not, you’ll become the information spammer. I make a great deal of effort to read everything I share and make sure it contains quality information. http://www.jarche.com/2013/09/discerning-with-whom-and-when-to-share/ The goal is to increase knowledge, gain insights, and get ideas to innovate. The goal is not to share as much as possible. It’s important to take your tacit knowledge, share it, and leave a knowledge artifact. Full Circle It’s imperative that every point of Seek, Sense, Share is touched upon. If you only Seek and Sense, information may never become those innovative ideas. Likewise, if you only Seek and Share, you aren’t synthesizing the information to gain insight. Jane and Harold shared the tools and workflows they use to practice Seek, Sense, Share. http://www.jarche.com/2014/03/what-is-your-pkm-routine/ I find much of my information through either Twitter or Feedly. I then make sense of it at a later date in Pocket. Information I find beneficial or important gets shared via Twitter and LinkedIn. If a post is interesting and requires more value than Twitter or LinkedIn can allow, I may write a post to reflect better. Even this post is part of the Seek, Sense, Share framework. While participating in the conference, I synthesized what I was hearing and seeing into my live Twitter stream. This post is a reflection on my Twitter synthesis. I have had three touch points from this conference. I started with a first hand experience at the conference. I then documented and immediately synthesized via Twitter. Finally, I am reflecting to write this post. This process has shared information with others and allowed me to benefit in the process. The Resources There were a lot of resources shared in this conference, either through Tweets or on screen. Many of them are from Harold and Jane’s web sites. This is a list of resources including my Tweet stream which I created a Storify of. Hope you enjoyed my reflection, and I’m glad it wasn’t a full day because then I believe I’d have a novel on my hands. https://storify.com/technkl/nexconf http://www.bethkanter.org/seek-sense-share/ http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/11/30/my-daily-pkm-routine-practices-and-toolset/ http://www.jarche.com/2014/03/what-is-your-pkm-routine/ http://c4lpt.co.uk/janes-articles-and-presentations/going-social-its-not-just-about-new-social-technology-but-about-new-social-skills/ http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2014/01/21/slpp1/ http://www.jarche.com/2014/03/absorbing-complexity-with-pkm/ http://www.jarche.com/2014/03/what-is-your-pkm-routine/ http://www.jarche.com/2013/12/pkm-is-making-sense-of-complexity/ http://www.jarche.com/2013/09/discerning-with-whom-and-when-to-share/ http://www.jarche.com/2013/10/learning-is-the-work-2/ http://www.slideshare.net/janehart/ You might also enjoy: Tweet Your Way to Conference Success Empower Employees With A Wiki Command and Control

We’re taking a candid look at how management attempts to influence the bad behavior of employees and how effective these influence efforts are in creating change. Do any of these behaviors sound familiar in your workplace? People make commitments, but don’t take them seriously. Coworkers gossip or talk behind each others’ backs, creating cliques. When projects fall through, people shift blame instead of taking responsibility. Please weigh in by taking our 3-minute survey today. All who complete the survey will receive a free MP3 download from our Influencer Audio Companion. Listen as author Kerry Patterson shares how to increase your influence by making use of vicarious experiences. Thank you for your continued help in supporting our research efforts! Related posts: We Need Your Help: Ever Had a Crucial Conversation Go Social? When Your Employees Won’t Talk to You Influencing Litter Control

Estimated reading time: less than 2 minutes 30 seconds. A lot can go into writing a blog post, but not all that goes in is necessary. Some of it could be detrimental to getting the post out there. Putting less into a post can lower the barriers to getting your thoughts documented and out to the world. Sometimes it can be as simple as sitting down and writing down your thoughts. No length requirements, no need for an image or illustration. There are only two requirements for your post: Write down your thoughts and ideas. Read and revise at least once. You should have simple goals that are achievable to allow you to stick with them, any other addition is a barrier to your writing. There are many things that can present a barrier to posting. I experience them first hand, I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to barriers. I have several barriers of my own, and my conscious effort to reduce them is by writing this post. Self imposed barriers make my postings more difficult, and rather than posting, I choose not post at all. Identify Barriers Identifying your personal barriers is the first step to removing them. Here are a few barriers I’ve recognized: Every post needs to have a picture to add value. It’s true that a well chosen picture or illustration can add value, but it’s not always necessary. Sometimes it’s best to focus on the writing only. Some of the best blogs out there are simple and straightforward text only. I need to keep a regular post schedule. Many sources recommend it, but don’t let it become a barrier. It should remain only a suggestion. I made it a goal to post weekly (or bi-weekly), on Monday’s. This created a backlog of ideas. If I missed my Monday post, I felt like I couldn’t post again until the next Monday. Currently I’ve been posting on any day of the week and on occasion weekends too. Posts need to be a certain length. Length doesn’t dictate the value of the post, and I’ve realized this over time. My posts vary in length from 300 words to over 2,000 words. The important part is that I’m writing something of value to me (and some others), no matter the length. These are a few barriers that I’ve struggled with and identified. I still have to be conscious about them to make sure they don’t dictate my posting habits. It’s necessary to recognize that writing a post is more important than listening to your self imposed barriers. Call to Action Think about what some of your barriers in writing are. If you don’t have a blog, think about some of the barriers you impose on yourself in your life. What are some of your self imposed barriers to writing? How do you plan on achieving or have you achieved freedom from these barriers? Sorry, no related posts.

The ChallengeJ. Lynn Jones is a VitalSmarts veteran. An elementary school principal for sixteen years, he became a certified trainer in Crucial Conversations and used those tools to help his school boost achievement. When he was promoted to director at the Nebo School District in central Utah, he added a certification in Crucial Confrontations. He taught both courses to most of his 600-person staff and also offered them to other administrators, teachers, and support staff in his district. But his biggest challenge in his expanded role was a persistent one. He was responsible for special education in the district and focused particularly on the special education teachers in its twenty-seven elementary schools. These are the instructors who give extra help to mainstreamed students with learning disabilities. And they didn’t have a history or culture of being accountable to progress their students. "We had a number of veteran teachers who never had high expectations, and the kids never performed well. The teachers used the excuse that ‘these kids have disabilities’," he said. "In the end, we weren’t seeing good instruction and we weren’t seeing good results." Of about sixty teachers, Jones was comfortable with only five or six of their results. But because he was not a career special educator, he lacked immediate credibility to shake things up by himself. About the same time he came to this realization, he added another VitalSmarts certification to his credentials: Influencer Training. The Results: Read our case study to learn how J. Lynn used Influencer Training to boost literacy rates and double the number of special education students released into the regular school system. Related posts: Success Story: Crucial Conversations Training Improves Nurses’ Ability to Address Disruptive Physician Behavior Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Tennessee Health System Achieve 100% EHR Adoption Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Retailer Save Millions and Prosper in Economic Recession

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I work in a busy, growing medical office with five support staff, and I share duties with a coworker who just turned seventy and has been with the clinic since it opened. We don’t have an office manager, so the clinic owners expect us, as peers, to come up with policies and procedures for the front desk, solve problems, and strategize on improvements. My coworker resists every suggestion of change or improvement to the front desk area and refuses to use the computer unless she has to. When I try to suggest changes in a nonthreatening manner, she gets very hostile and attacks me personally, and I no longer feel safe talking to her. The owners are aware of the situation, but they won’t address it. I want to see the clinic continue to grow but frankly don’t see how that can happen if the front desk doesn’t keep up with the times. Stuck in the 90s  Dear Stuck, You’ve just described an incredibly messy, complicated, and value-laden problem. There isn’t likely to be a simple or easy-to-implement solution. Let’s begin by identifying the different issues that are involved. You don’t have an office manager, so your team of five organizes its own work and handles any disagreements. One of your coworkers resists changes and improvements. This coworker becomes hostile and attacks you personally. This coworker is seventy years old and has been with the clinic since it opened. The owners are aware of this situation, but haven’t addressed it. The clinic is growing and the front desk needs to keep up with the times. I think we can break this problem into two parts based on who could take action to solve it. One problem is with your coworker—her resistance to change and her personal attacks. A second problem is with the owners—their unwillingness to take action. I would focus my efforts on the owners for a couple of reasons: I don’t think you will reach an accommodation with your coworker until they make their position clear. The owners have more options than you do for creating new solutions. In any case, I think they need to step up and take responsibility for the situation. Determine What You Really Want. Before you talk with the owners, decide what you want in the long-term for yourself, for the owners, for the clinic, and for your coworker. I’ll guess that you want the clinic to continue to grow, the front desk to keep up with the times, and a fair distribution of work within your team. Find Mutual Purpose. What do you think the owners want? I bet they want many of the same things you do, plus a couple more: They don’t want to have to get involved in personnel issues and they want to show loyalty to a loyal employee. Can you buy in to these five goals? Do you think the owners will as well? Agreeing that a high-quality solution will achieve all of these goals will take you a long way toward crafting a solution. Make It Motivating. There is a good chance the owners don’t share your view of the problem. They may see it as a personality clash, while you see it as a productivity issue. Take the time to describe the situations that occur, and the impacts they have on the clinic’s ability to function. Avoid personalizing these issues. Remember, the owners are prone to dismiss your concerns if they sound like personality differences. Stick to the facts as they relate to the clinic’s ability to grow. Make It Easy. Give the owners time and space to discuss possible solutions among themselves. Don’t press for a "simple" solution—one that could sound to the owners like you win and your coworker loses. Remember, the owners may want to reward your coworker’s loyalty as well as maintain a healthy workplace. This will take some consideration and creativity on their part. Yeah, But. There are several ways this conversation can go wrong. I’ll anticipate a couple. What if the owners still refuse to get involved? Here is how I would read this outcome: they want to protect your coworker, they don’t want to get involved in a personnel issue, and they think you can work it out on your own. That’s the story I’d tell myself, but I’d want to check it out with them. Ask them whether you are reading them correctly. If that is their position, then you need to ask yourself whether you can live with the results. It may mean redefining the roles within your front desk team. Your coworker may need to stick to her preferred jobs, while the rest of you work more flexibly. It may appear unfair on the surface, but maybe she’s earned it. What if the owners ask your coworker to change, but she doesn’t? What if she becomes even more hostile toward you as a result? The ideal is that peers hold peers accountable. However, peer accountability requires that leaders back them up when the going gets tough. Since you know this scenario is possible, discuss it with the owners in advance. They can’t just ask your coworker to change; they need to support her and hold her accountable. They need a plan—who will do what by when—and a way to follow up. Good luck with this tough situation. Have other readers resolved a similar situation? I’d love to hear what worked for you. David Related posts: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Coworker Coworker’s Personal Life Control Freak Coworker

Estimated reading time: less than 4 minutes. My second MOOC is nearing completion, I’m in the final week. This is my second experience in a MOOC and I’ve taken different approaches this time around. As with the current MOOC, my first one was also on the Coursera platform, both from the same school (Wharton). Gamification was my first experience and it was a good course. It was well put together, but as with all MOOCs, had its failings. My largest problem was in the way I approached the course. It was my first, and I was inexperienced about how to get the most from the experience. I felt isolated during the six week course. There were no good opportunities for reflection or interaction required in the course. Also, the forum to communicate with other classmates was overwhelming at best. Virtual Classes I’m not inexperienced in participating in the OC part of it either (online course), just in the M and O parts (massive and open). My Master’s program was remote, about 400 miles from the school I visited twice during the two year program. Why was my Master’s program so much more successful than any MOOC? To begin, it was a cohort of about 26 students allowing us to become a close group. One regular activity made the program more successful than any MOOC. The cohort reflected on the reading and wrote a post answering a few questions presented by the professor. The part that made this even more successful than just reflection? We read at least two other posts and responded. Not only did we reflect on the material, we also saw the material from a different point of view and discussed it with others. Many times the conversation led beyond the assignment, and to valuable and thoughtful interactions. This would be a difficult activity for a MOOC, but not impossible. The biggest problem would be that overwhelming feeling you get in a forum for 100,000+ people. If everyone was to write one post and respond to two others, the risk of it overwhelming the student would be more limited. A well defined goal by the professor would ease most negative feelings. The forums are currently overwhelming and have no defined goal, leading to no clear path to use them. It’s a sea of posts. So, how have I been able to more effectively participate in my Marketing MOOC? Early in the course I was invited to a G+ Community with much smaller numbers than the course itself. I made it a point to participate during the early parts of the course. As the course has continued, I’ve been participating a bit less, but it got me through those early stages of waning motivation. Once I was six weeks into the course, it wasn’t an option to drop it, and I haven’t. Peering down the final stretch of the course, I’m one short (late) week away from gaining my second certificate of completion from Coursera. MOOC Graveyard I’ve signed up for many courses which I’ve never completed. My most recent course was statistics. I made it through just less than two weeks before feeling I was in too deep and dropping it. To say statistics wasn’t beneficial to me is completely wrong though. It gave me the opportunity to get my feet wet, experiment in the material a bit to see if it was for me. Most importantly, it gave me a trial run to see what statistics was all about, and if the teacher was to my liking. Another one of my failed attempts was a course I signed up for and never went to the first class. I never got a notice the course had begun. I signed up weeks in advance, forgot about it, then half way through the course realized I had signed up. I don’t know how it happened and at this point don’t even remember what course it was. The Future of MOOCs They’ll always have a place in the education system, but  they’ll never replace entrenched institutions. There’s a long way to go before they reach their pinnacle. MOOCs also have some exploration to do before they reach successful pedagogical methods that work for their delivery medium. Every few months I’ll be checking if there are any interesting courses to take, and this one won’t be my last. As of right now I’m waiting to take the Coursera course "Understanding Media by Understanding Google". I’ll be waiting for a bit as it’s still in progress, so I’ll catch the next one in several months. Call To Action If you’re going to participate in a MOOC, make it count. Don’t rely on the larger student population to reflect and discuss topics with. Find a small weekly study group, a partner, or even a small community. You will be held more accountable for completing the course, and you will learn more. You might also enjoy: Expand Your Skills First Thoughts on Learned Helplessness

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I was recently promoted to supervisor within a highly stressful telecommunications center. My entire team has complained about another employee’s personal hygiene and said that the offensive odor and unsanitary conditions of the employee’s workspace are so bad that it contributes to a hostile work environment. In the past, this was handled ineffectively and has now become a disciplinary situation. I know I need to hold this conversation, but because it is such a sensitive issue and the employee is otherwise a spectacular employee, I am at a loss as to how to begin the conversation. Please help! Dreading B.O. Conversation  Dear Dreading, What do we do when someone’s behavior negatively affects others and they don’t seem to know it or can’t seem to change? In addition to body odor and cleanliness, this behavior could include things like inappropriate dress or language, too much small talk, and smoking in incorrect places. All of these behaviors create gaps—the difference between what is agreed upon or expected and what is actually happening. We can endure small, infrequent gaps and hope they go away, but when the gap is serious and when it is a pattern—as it is in your situation—what do you do? Here are a few strategies. Clarify two kinds of expectations. The first expectation is reviewing or discussing expected behaviors and the reason behind them. When you are first promoted, or when there is a new team member or a new quarter, take the opportunity to meet and talk about the few expectations that will help your team work together effectively. This might include talking about past gaps that have hindered the team or the work. For example, you might want to talk about proper dress and grooming standards. The reason for this is that customers have expectations, managers and employees have expectations, and these expectations make it easier to work in close quarters as a team. I suggest that you never work on more than three or four behavioral expectations as a team—these should be important issues your team struggles with most. The second expectation is really important: when someone sees a gap, talk about it. Ask each team member to agree that when someone falls short of expectations, those who see it will privately, politely, and professionally talk to him or her. You won’t get angry or gossip; you’ll talk. The reason is that when we don’t talk about a gap, we lower the standards of the company and we increase the probability someone will get offended, gossip will run rampant, and team morale will go down. As a team, identify gaps and solve concerns before they become real problems. Give the person the benefit of the doubt. We teach people who face a gap to ask themselves, "Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person act this way?" By asking that question, you avoid jumping to conclusions or making assumptions that can move you to make wrong diagnoses. It also prevents you from beginning your conversation in a way that says in essence, "I have held court in my head and found you guilty. Can we talk?" Such a beginning is not helpful and makes you part of the problem. You want to start the conversation by sending the message that you are observant, inquisitive, and caring. You want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You do this by helping yourself understand that until you talk about it, you don’t know—you are only guessing. In your case, maybe the person has started taking a new medicine, or maybe his or her house burned down and he or she is living out of a car. You don’t know. Give yourself the opportunity to do a real diagnosis and to maintain the relationship. Discuss gaps early. Identify the gap when it first appears, then find a safe time and a private place to talk. Over the years, we’ve talked about the skills for beginning an accountability conversation or "the hazardous half minute." And we know that if you begin correctly, you are much more likely to find a solution. In Crucial Confrontations, we teach that you should first describe the difference between what is expected and what has been observed then end with a question. For example, if an employee came in late you could say, "I just want to clarify that working hours start at 8:00 and I noticed you came in today at 8:25. What happened?" You should say this in a way that is nonjudgmental. If the person is wearing too much perfume or cologne, you might begin with, "One of the expectations we have is that we will work together in ways that makes it pleasant for others. I have noticed that your cologne is very noticeable, and I’m hoping you can wear less of it. Can we discuss this?" Let’s assume the person says "yes" and we have caught it early. If they disagree, that is another problem. If you don’t discuss it early, the problem lingers. Coworkers gossip and don’t invite this person to lunch. Another employee calls the person names behind his or her back and one person lets a sarcastic comment fly. Now trust and respect have diminished. Gossip and hurt feelings have increased. Why? Because nobody spoke up early about the gap. Trust the process. If you begin your conversation in a way that says you are not judging, and that you are observant and caring—both about the standards and about your colleague—you are well on your way. In a private place, at a good time, after you have your head and heart in the right place, and if you had previously clarified expectations as I described above, you might say, "A few weeks ago, we all agreed to a dress and grooming standard that would help us serve our customers and work well together. This is a bit awkward for me to say, but I’ve noticed that when you come to work you have a body odor that is noticeable. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’d like to talk about what’s going on and what could be done to meet the expectations." Your purpose is clear in your words and in your behavior. If you didn’t have a clear expectation, you would substitute the first sentence by saying something like, "I think it’s important that everyone come to work in alignment with certain dress and grooming standards." Notice what should not be said at this point. For example, don’t say that others have complained to you. Share that information only if the person says it’s just your opinion. Don’t use inflammatory words like stink, stench, or reek. And certainly don’t use the indirect approach by anonymously leaving a bar of soap on the person’s desk. Over the years, as I’ve discussed the idea of bringing up a tough subject in front of large groups, I’ve asked participants to raise their hands if they have ever had to talk to someone about a "body odor" issue. Hundreds of hands have been raised, most often accompanied by audible sighs and shaking heads as people reflect on many bad experiences. Then I asked how many should have spoken up but didn’t. Many more hands go up and I can see many more negative reflections. You are not alone. I hope this advice will help you feel more motivated and able to step up to the conversation and help an otherwise spectacular employee. I wish you the best,Al Related posts: Confronting Late Employees When Your Employees Won’t Talk to You Giving Feedback to Defensive Employees

When she first met her husband, Patty Loeffler was thin, active, and the picture of good health. But nine years into her marriage, Patty found herself 100 pounds overweight and a perpetual yo-yo dieter. She had joined and left Weight Watchers so many times that she was embarrassed to even consider going back. And yet, she knew she needed to make a big change. That’s why in 2012, she made the resolution to simply "get healthy"—and the timing couldn’t have been better. In March 2012, Patty enlisted in Influencer Training by VitalSmarts. Already a Crucial Conversations certified trainer, she was excited to learn the Six Sources of Influence model for changing behavior. When prompted to identify a change challenge to which she could apply the model and principles, she selected her "get healthy" initiative. Shortly after, she received the newest book from VitalSmarts, Change Anything, which helped her further apply the Six Sources of Influence to her personal goals. Patty started her "get healthy" change plan by identifying two vital behaviors that proved to be instrumental to her success: 1. Make a plan. Patty found planning to be essential. She not only planned her healthy meals, but also where she would go if and when she ate out. She learned where all the healthy restaurants and meals were in the city so she would never have to make a last-minute unhealthy choice. 2. Weigh daily. By weighing herself daily, she found that she could stay on top of her weight loss and most importantly, quickly get back on track if she started slipping. Patty used all six sources of influence to help keep her vital behaviors, but she attributes the majority of her success to social motivation and ability. She says the social influence that was missing from her past diet attempts meant the difference between her success and the years of failure. Patty recruited her husband and son to join her in her goal to get healthy. Like Patty, her husband also had a history of failed weight loss, and as a result, was pretty reticent to participate. But after Patty begged him, he agreed and they made a very serious commitment to each other that they would see the plan through to the end. When Patty’s son came home from college that summer, she also recruited him to participate, and together the three found success in applying the model from Influencer and Change Anything. The Six Sources of Influence Patty identified to help keep her behaviors included: Personal Motivation - Patty hung her skinniest jeans on her closet door which served as a daily reminder of what she looked like and how good she felt when she first met her husband. The jeans also reminded her that at the age of 53, her window of opportunity to change was closing as she may only face more health issues in the future. Personal Ability - A key part of Patty’s plan included a nutrition program called Ideal You sponsored by her employer. At first, Patty was skeptical this would be just another failed diet plan, but this program taught her skills to control her diet with higher protein and lower carbohydrates and fats—skills she never learned before. There was also a phased approach which began by limiting her diet in the beginning and slowly adding in healthy foods as she learned to get her intake under control. The program also taught her effective strategies to maintain her weight loss. Social Motivation and Ability - Patty and her husband faced every part of their weight loss journey together. They started by publicly announcing their diet at her daughter-in-law’s birthday party. This public proclamation lead to support from her entire extended family. Her husband also did most of the shopping under their approved dietary guidelines and they began exercising together and spent less of their time together watching TV or eating out at unhealthy restaurants. Patty also garnered support at work. She teamed up with a few coworkers who also had a goal to get healthy and they spearheaded a transformation of their entire team. For example, they stopped bringing in unhealthy food to celebrate events and when they ate out together, they went to healthy restaurants. Patty’s family and friends never made her feel bad for wanting to choose healthy meal options. On the contrary, many actually thanked Patty for her example and motivating them to make their own healthy choices. Patty also attributes much of her success in beginning an exercise regimen to the help of personal trainers who reintroduced her to exercise and how to do it effectively. Structural Motivation - Instead of falling into old habits of rewarding herself with her favorite foods, Patty started going to the spa and treating herself to massages, manicures, and pedicures when she hit her weight loss goals. She was also really motivated to change by shopping for cute clothes she couldn’t fit into previously and the money she saved from giving up expensive and fattening fast food meals helped to offset the expense of a new wardrobe. Patty was also motivated to stick to her new diet because it was a plan she paid to be part of and she didn’t want to see that money go to waste. Structural Ability - Early on, Patty decided to chart her weight loss. This strategy helped her to see her long-term success—which was a tremendous motivator during the weeks of plateau. She also changed her surroundings. She brought exercise equipment out of storage and placed it in her family room. She also got rid of all the junk food in the house. She even made changes at work. For the first time in her career, she began to use the on-site personal trainer and fitness center provided by her employer. Results By using the change plan found in Change Anything, Patty shattered a long history of failure to lose weight. In just nine months, she lost an impressive 102 pounds. And, as it turns out, her weight loss impacted her life in even more immediate ways. After discovering a life-threatening illness months into her get healthy initiative, doctors told her that losing the weight was the best thing she could have done and possibly even slowed the progression of the disease thus allowing it to be discovered and treated at an early stage. Patty wasn’t the only one who experienced such dramatic success. The social influences she learned about in Change Anything really made a difference not only for her but also for her husband and son. In the end, Patty’s husband lost 80 pounds and her son lost 100 pounds, proving that with the right plan, you really can change for good. Related posts: Change Challenger Terri has lost 21 of 50 pounds Bobby Robbins: Lost 12 of 50 pounds…and counting Success Story: Nebo School District Uses Influencer Training to Improve Student Performance

Estimated reading time: less than 5 minutes 30 seconds. Over the past few months I’ve seen a few stories about how people got into the field of Learning & Development. In the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d share my story of how I got here. I feel I should start with my current role, because that’s where this story is heading. I’m a senior Instructional Designer in the healthcare industry. My journey has been long, winding through three industries and a handful of organizations. While not as haphazard of a journey as most, I’ve still gone through a lot of changes. My journey began a long, long time ago, during my employment in the K-12 industry. I was finishing up my undergraduate degree, and working in an elementary school as a computer technician. Being a computer technician, it would appear that I was only involved in the Information Technology world. My work was interwoven with elementary school teachers though. This was my introduction into the world of education, just a different kind of education. My role was IT related, but my everyday work was related to supporting the performance (or development) of kids. During this time, I was going to school as a designer for the web. What a wonderful pair my work and school provided. Designing web pages and working with technology, the possibilities for student development. Up to this point I had no introduction into the Learning & Development world, or Instructional Design. The introduction came during one of my web design courses. A professor I often had, received a Masters degree in Instructional Design. I didn’t take an immediate interest though, it was passing information that sunk into my subconscious. Full Speed Ahead After completing my undergraduate degree, I continued combining IT with the California public school system. It wasn’t until I desired to expand my reach of helping people learn that I recalled my professor being an Instructional Design graduate. The path I wanted to go made sense, so I researched taking my web design knowledge, and focusing it on education. This spark didn’t occur for a year after graduating my undergraduate program though. Seeking to go into the same program my professor had gone through, I looked at the same school I graduated from and knew had the program. Budget cuts had taken their toll in the California public school system though. Various programs had been cut, many of which were graduate programs. I continued to seek out a similar program. With luck, I found one! It was from a Southern California State school and fit my needs. I wasn’t prepared, nor will I ever be, to move to Southern California though. Luckily it was almost completely remote.  I traveled to Orange County only two times during the entire program, and I’m fortunate to have family just 20 minutes from the area. I not only got to see relatives, I brought my family along also and made a mini vacation out of it, Disneyland here I come. Oh, and startup bootcamp which is what they called the first meeting. Beginning the Climb During my graduate program, I began climbing deeper into the Instructional Design world. My life revolved around the topic and its many sub-topics. My graduate program was personal, with a structured set of classes. All 26 or so of us were in a cohort who went through the entire program together, and graduated together. In my desire to expand my reach, I made the jump from a small California school district into the Silicon Valley area. While my role was not L&D related, I created opportunities to involve myself in other’s learning. I was able to volunteer to train peers within my role, including those in the Russian office. I was also able to create a self paced training module to assist new team members in getting up to speed on what the company sells. While I was in this role, I was able to complete my graduate program, and seek a role that would better align with my goals. This brought me into the staffing industry, where I learned to put my formal Instructional Design knowledge to work. My audience was expanded, and I was having a great effect on the organization. I was able to not only fine tune my knowledge, but expand it by innovating with new technologies and methods. Thirsty To create the best stuff possible, I needed to innovate and take my creations to the next level. Twitter and the Learning & Development community allowed me to do this. I not only began to take part in the online L&D community, I began writing in my own blog to better reflect on my learning. My thirst for knowledge has yet to let up, and has increased during my time as an Instructional Designer. I am currently in the healthcare industry, always on a mission to feed my hunger for knowledge to better affect my organization. I’ve worked with a lot of great people, which I have learned a great deal from. The online community has been a great resource for information and inspiration also. Currently I take part in as many new learning opportunities as I can. Online Twitter chats fuel my inspiration and knowledge, and I take part in #chat2lrn. Other’s blogs fuel my knowledge, desire, and ability to try new things in my current role. Going to Innovate My ultimate goal is to expand my effect on the organizations I am a part of, and work with people who have these same goals. From social enterprise networks, to mobile learning, I love new technology. I love looking for new ways to innovate in the field of professional development with technology, new and old. Beyond my organization goals, I also would like to write a book and speak at a conference. Further out on my goal timeline is to move into the consulting world as a free agent. Share Alike Now that I’ve shared my story on how I got here, I’d like to encourage you to do the same. While my story isn’t as haphazard and unplanned as many stories I’ve heard, people are still interested. The biggest mistake you can make in your career is to think that people aren’t interested in what you have to say. If you think that, you’ll never get the feedback and idea sharing that expands you. Share your work, share your learning, play a part beyond consumer and lurker because your opinion is valued. You can’t innovate in your own life without the inspiration from others sharing with you. If you haven’t written anything for the public to see, do so. You can start by leaving a comment here on how you got here, wherever you are. You might also enjoy: First Thoughts on Learned Helplessness Expand Your Skills MOOCs Have a Long Way To Go

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, I’m the team leader of an increasingly dysfunctional team. Our tasks require a high degree of coordination and we often have to figure out what to do as we go. But we’re stuck in a pattern of arguing and disagreeing, and it derails our ability to get anything done. Lately, our aggressive debates and defensiveness are dragging us down. Members seem to think it’s more important to be right and prove others wrong than it is to get our work done. Can you help? Despairing  Dear Despairing, Sometimes in our teams and relationships, we slip into bad habits. It’s hard to trace how these problems developed, but it’s easy to see the negative and sometimes hurtful outcomes these problems cause. I consulted with an executive team that seems similar to the team you describe. In one of the first meetings I attended, a director shared his ideas about solving a problem. "I think we ought to do options ‘J,’ ‘K,’ ‘L,’ and ‘M’" he said. Another director aggressively jumped in, "I disagree!" he said. "We’d be fools to do ‘M,’ we’ve got to do ‘P,’ not ‘M.’" A heated argument ensued. Afterward, I spoke with the disagreeing director. He agreed with the other director about proceeding with options ‘J,’ ‘K,’ and ‘L.’" It was only option ‘M’ that he disagreed with. Imagine that. He agreed with three fourths of the other’s view, but the first words out of his mouth were, "I disagree!" This is the verbal and emotional equivalent of picking up a shield and drawing a sword. This response almost guarantees a fight. I’ve seen this same mistake made in personal relationships as well. What’s needed to change your team’s behavior is a focus on purpose and the teammates’ agreement to use a few skills: Share the facts first. You might say something like this: "I’ve noticed we seem to have more arguments and disagreements that lead to blockages rather than progress. For example . . ." Then share several specific examples that are obvious to everyone. Propose a Mutual Purpose. "I strongly suggest we all operate toward this Mutual Purpose: We achieve our team results in a respectful, efficient way." Define "respectful" as listening to each other, not labeling each other or each others’ ideas, and not interrupting each other. Give specific examples from recent team arguments. Such examples might include words like "stupid," "unworkable," and "ridiculous." Define "efficient" as letting details pass that are unimportant and not getting "hooked" into arguments or debates that are unproductive. Say, "Each of our comments and responses should take us closer to solving a problem or building a productive option." Explain that you shouldn’t expect perfection, but that you should actively make an effort to accomplish your Mutual Purpose. Share the ABCs of response. These skills help teams create more productive behavioral patterns. Here’s how they work. When someone makes a statement, do not ignore the comment or respond with disagreement. Rather, respond with A, B, or C, as explained below. The ABCs of Response A- If you agree, say so. You might simply say, "Mike, I agree with you that . . ." If you agree with some of what was said, respond by identifying what you agree with. Consider the example used earlier of the disagreeing director. Instead of saying "I disagree," he should have said, "Mike, I agree that we should do ‘J,’ ‘K,’ and ‘L.’" B- If you agree and want to add to it, build on their idea. "I agree we ought to do ‘J,’ ‘K,’ ‘L,’ and ‘M.’ I also think we should do ‘R.’" C- If you disagree with what was said, don’t attack, criticize, or disagree. Rather, compare your opinion. This is often best done by first paraphrasing the other person’s idea, then sharing your own. By laying both ideas side-by-side, everyone can compare and contrast the two ideas. For example, "Mike, you think we should do ‘J,’ ‘K,’ ‘L,’ and ‘M.’ Is that right? I think we should do ‘R,’ ‘S,’ ‘T,’ and ‘V.’" By responding to comments with the ABCs of Response, you acknowledge others’ comments and minimize defensiveness. With ideas out in the open and treated with respect, people can now compare, contrast, and build to get to the best solutions and the most effective decisions. We are now creating a dialogue and using it to get results and strengthen relationships. Using the skills of creating a Mutual Purpose and the ABCs of Response, the executive team I worked with had what the CEO referred to as "an amazing metamorphosis." Within three meetings, with the CEO giving gentle reminders, the team became more disciplined and productive. Each team member reported the change as an improvement and said he or she did not want to go back to the former way of doing business. As your team focuses on results in a way that strengthens relationships, you improve your effectiveness in the dialogue of today and pave the way for improving the dialogue of tomorrow. All the best, Ron Related posts: Violated Agreement A Boss’s Drinking Problem Responding to False Accusations

ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE So it doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does it usually takes me by surprise. It’s every facilitator’s fear—the inappropriate comment. They come in lots of shapes and sizes, ranging from overly personal to highly offensive. I remember a train-the-trainer session where a prospective trainer’s opening line was, "So Adam and Eve were in the garden." I thought for sure this was a joke. He got to the end and said, "And that’s how crucial conversations skills could have prevented original sin." Not the punch line I was expecting. We all fear and dread over-shares and inappropriate comments, but what’s the best way to handle them in the moment? One thing that’s worked for me is to use a contrast of sorts: thank the person for being willing to share, and clarify what’s appropriate to share in this setting. What do you do in these types of situations? Comment below to share your ideas. Related posts: From the Road: Mind the Gap From the Road: Do You Know Where Your Participants Are? From the Road: Insights From Just down the Street and around the Corner

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes 30 seconds. As an Instructional Designer, it’s necessary to be able to wear many hats. Along with those many hats comes the need to learn new skills and techniques. I’ve learned it’s necessary to look outside Learning & Development. This post is about some of the skills I’ve looked towards to inspire my work and help me develop a creative edge in my work. No department works in a silo, which is why it’s important to explore different skills. There are an infinite number of skills to learn and apply to Learning & Development. These are a few skills I’ve picked up and continue to work on which I find related to Instructional Design. User Experience of the Learning Experience My interest in Instructional Design began in web design, which has close ties to User Experience (UX).  Learning is an experience that you should take into consideration from start to finish, not just one part of the process. This holistic belief is like the beliefs of UX, and contain all those small parts such as UI. While UI is important, it’s just a small piece of the UX/LX. User Experience is one of the most important skills to have. To be able to think about the entire experience and put yourself in the end users shoes is invaluable. I read anything I can get my hands on relating to current UX trends. User Experience is so important to L&D that the term "Learning Experience" (LX) was coined around its thought processes. This is for good reason, you’re not designing instruction, not not even just training. You want to create an experience that accounts for the entire journey, and make it a wonderful experience. Our added goal is for the user to learn something during that experience. Taking your job a step further to take responsibility for how the user begins to the final steps is necessary. Not only will you be more successful in your, job but you’ll create an experience for users where you’ve freed their energy for learning. Wireframes and user stories are just two great parts of User Experience that Learning Experience designers can bring into their work. This brings me to the next skill necessary for creating a great Learning Experience. Make it Pretty With Graphic Design While graphic design is a small parts of UX, I felt it important enough to put it on its own. Visual design can affect so many things in learning. From how serious people take it to how clear the information is presented. Information design and graphic design go hand in hand. Designing a Learning Experience is often visual. Beside writing expertise, an Instructional Designer must be able to present ideas in a visual form. Visuals help cement the learning for a more memorable and clearer experience by the user. Trying to simplify your performance support? Presenting things in a visual way can cut down on words and simplify the understanding you’re trying to provide. Performance support can almost always be more successful if presented visually. Market Yourself If you build it, they will come. Unless you create compliance training, this statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if you’re creating compliance training, it’s not a bad idea to give it positive twist through marketing techniques. Marketing focuses on giving a product a positive image and make people want it. Marketing your courses, classes, etc is just as important as what goes into creating it. No matter how well designed a learning experience is, if nobody ever sees it, that effort was wasted. Where Do I Learn? That’s an easy question to answer these days. You can learn about many of these topics free thanks to the myriad of free resources, from MOOCs to YouTube. I was able to learn the basics of marketing by taking a free Coursera MOOC. UX is a topic you’ll find in many places, even from everyday observations such as one at a restaurant (where does the restaurant experience even begin?). There are also many industry news web sites that have some great articles and insights from the pros. The problem isn’t where to learn about these subjects, it’s how to decipher the good from the bad. This is something that can only come with experience. What’s in it for me? Diversity of knowledge. That’s the only reason needed. With diversity of knowledge comes creativity, more success in your work and thinking that reaches beyond the status quo. Innovation also comes from diversity of knowledge. Things you wouldn’t put together become common, leading to even more creativity and innovation. Sometimes it’s necessary to branch out into other industries and draw on the relations you see. Learning & Development never works in a silo, even the science behind it never pertains only to learning. There are so many things that cross over, it’s our job to find those crossovers and make our field/work better and more valuable to the business. Borrowing from other industries is a great way to keep innovating and creating the best environment for learning. Go forth and learn Think about how your job crosses over into various industries. I’d like to hear all the different crossovers you can think of. There are a few which I didn’t mention, and I’m sure there are many more which haven’t even crossed my mind. Comment on this post with some of the skills you’ve found are important in the Learning & Development field. If you haven’t already, go out and learn a new skill. Take a MOOC, learn a new piece of software that you don’t already use. It may surprise you how many ways you can find ways to use that knowledge. You might also enjoy: What’s My Development Process? Touchscreen Toddler Learning Experience As a User Experience

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, We are looking for meaningful ways to recognize our nursing staff in our busy, stressful ICU. In our last employee satisfaction survey, we scored low in "recognition." We know from Influencer that external rewards aren’t always the best way to motivate people. We would like to find ways that would encourage staff to grow and have internal satisfaction for doing a great job with their patients, families, and other staff. Other than external rewards, how can we meet our staff’s need for meaningful recognition? Managing Motivation  Dear Managing, Your question is relevant to every leader. It’s common for hardworking, productive, and dedicated staff to say they don’t get the recognition they deserve. If not corrected, this feeling can undermine their commitment, engagement, and performance. Leaders need a variety of ways to recognize performance and show appreciation. 1. Don’t resort to using money as a motivator. Personally, I like money. I endorse the view that, "Money may not buy happiness, but it sure makes misery more comfortable." The challenge is that money often plays the role of de-motivator. If you don’t think your pay is fair, then it’s hard to stay motivated. But, if you do think your pay is fair, then you stop thinking about it and its power to motivate fades. Leaders need to establish fair pay, but they shouldn’t rely on fair pay to motivate. 2. Use rewards in moderation and in combination. This is the guideline we introduce in our book, Influencer. Rewards work best when they a) aren’t so large that they become the only reason for acting; and b) are combined with personal and social motivators. The merit badges scouts earn are a nice example. The badges themselves are just bits of cloth or tin. They are very moderate in value. But they work in combination with both personal and social motivation. They recognize hard work and a worthy accomplishment, something to be proud of—personal motivation. And they create an occasion for family and friends to cheer the scout’s success—social motivation. When rewards are too large and not used in combination with personal and social motivators, then all eyes are on the rewards and the rules for winning them. You see people cheat and game the system. They may even lose track of the personal and social reasons for their actions. Here is a scary example. A hospital had made rewards and punishments a big part of their hand-hygiene program. A nurse manager saw a nurse put her hand under a hand-sanitizer dispenser, but nothing came out. The dispenser was empty. The nurse continued into the patient’s room and began to work with the patient. When the manager pulled her aside the nurse said, "I did my part. It’s not my fault the dispenser isn’t working." This nurse was so focused on the rules, she failed to remember patient safety and the intrinsic reasons for having clean hands. That is the danger of rewards that aren’t used in moderation and in combination. 3. Make the invisible visible. This is a skill we teach in Crucial Confrontations and Crucial Accountability Training. Have you ever looked back at a tough day—a day spent coping with emergencies, interruptions, and switches in priorities—only to wonder what you’ve actually accomplished? This is the rat race, right? You know you’ve been running all day, but you aren’t sure you’ve gotten anywhere. Many of us experience this frustration, and I bet nurses who work in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) experience it more than most. Here’s why. Patients who are in ICUs are among the sickest in the hospital. In fact, they are usually so sick that, even when they are healthy enough to be discharged, they don’t get sent home. Instead, they are sent to another unit in the hospital, one that deals with less critically ill patients. Often ICU nurses don’t get to see or experience the positive end to the patient’s story—the patient’s leaving the hospital and their happy families welcoming them home. Work to fix this situation by creating ways for your ICU nurses to see and experience their accomplishments. I’ll suggest a couple of ideas, but I bet you and your staff can generate far more. Involve your ICU nurses in post-discharge calls to patients. Most hospitals are now implementing some kind of post-discharge call to patients. Research shows these calls improve patient satisfaction, reduce medication-related problems, and result in fewer return visits to emergency rooms. These calls can also be a powerfully motivating source of feedback for nurses. I’m not suggesting that your nurses have time to make these calls, though that would be great. Most hospitals already have specially trained staff who make these calls. Have the people making these calls meet with your nurses to share outcomes, or meet with the phone team yourself and then share outcomes with your ICU nurses. Create regular opportunities for your nurses to see the human impacts of their hard work. Solicit feedback from patients’ family members. Often, ICU patients are so sick and sedated that they hardly remember their ICU experiences. But their family members sure do! Most are overwhelmingly grateful for the wonderful work ICU nurses perform and would be happy to share. Find ways to get family members’ feedback—solicit notes, ask family members to record a message that can be shared, or have family members attend a routine meeting. Tighten links to the units that accept the patients you discharge. Involve staff from your internal customers—the step-down and medical-surgical units that take your patients when they no longer need to be in your ICU. Ask them to attend regular meetings, so they can share how they, their patients, and their patients’ families have been impacted by the work your ICU nurses perform. 4. Use crucial conversations to reduce de-motivators. Ask yourself whether there are leaders, physicians, or staff members whose actions undermine morale on your unit. Sometimes you can identify a handful of individuals who are rude, dismissive, or disruptive in ways that counter the recognition others provide. I’m not suggesting that these people should ever sugarcoat bad news or provide less than honest feedback. But you may ask them to be more constructive by focusing on facts, allowing room for dialogue, and showing respect. I hope these ideas give you a few additional ways to recognize your staff. However, none of these can substitute for your own genuine appreciation for their work. Make sure you spend time rounding every day, noticing all the right things they are doing on the job, and removing barriers so they can do even more. Please let me know what you try and how it works. David Related posts: Motivating Others to Take Action Before & After: I Felt Like a Nurse Again by Gaylen T. How to Influence Accountability

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. I recently read a post about Fads in L&D from my good friend Con (aka @LearnKotch). On some of the points of this post I agreed, but others I think needed a bit deeper deconstruction and more seeking of meaning. By this, I’m speaking about MOOCs. I recently wrote about my experience in a Coursera MOOC of which was my second experience, my first being over a year ago. My concern is about dismissing MOOCs as just another fad though. It’s not. While I agree it’s not the latest greatest thing and going to change L&D forever. It does have a place in the wider scheme of education, from higher education, to corporate learning. Sure MOOCs aren’t accepted by the average Joe at this point. That doesn’t mean it won’t have a profound effect on corporate learning further down the road. Just because the average Joe has not accepted them, doesn’t mean they have no credibility in corporate learning. In fact, most learning activities in L&D haven’t proven themselves in corporate learning! At least not to the extent that gives them a clear dollar value. Then again, things like UX don’t have a clear dollar value, but many could argue that the value a good UX provides is better than the best sales team on the planet. I digress. Good content is out there, curated and put into a format that can be used in corporate learning. Now if only the corporation would pull their heads out of you know where and use those resources. A good MOOC could be researched by the L&D department and provided as an option (or requirement) to those deemed as requiring skills in that field. Instead of taking a course on cultural competence, think about the true change that could occur in a MOOC requiring more thought, reflection, and attention. MOOCs are for drop outs! There’s the big problem of people dropping out of the MOOC. This isn’t a problem, it’s just the nature of the system. It’s there for people’s leisure, to get what they need from it, or figure out it’s not for them, so we leave. That means great success in my mind! Significant amounts of time aren’t wasted. Rather than investing time and money into a class or eLearning, an employee can now test the waters. Does this course help me in my job? Do I have enough time to invest in this course? Will my manager back me in taking time to take this course? If a manager won’t back an employee, that’s not a company anyone should be working for! Answer this question: What happens if we don’t invest in their education and they stay? MOOCs can be a valuable part of an employees education, and professional development. My employer is lucky because every MOOC I’ve taken has been in my time, but if it’s related to my job, there’s no reason my employer shouldn’t be paying for it. So, I haven’t finished every MOOC I’ve signed up for and started. I test the waters, figure out if the teacher or content is for me, and if not then I can drop it without inflicting any damage on myself academically or financially. This simple fact is enough for me to call MOOCs one of the most successful experiments in my time. a MOOC to me means free education to those who want it, if it doesn’t fit then you lose nothing. Nobody does. Attendance to the end means nothing, at all. So therefore there is no alarming rate of non-completions, it’s part of the territory and to be expected. Something is wrong if completions are too high in fact! A lot of people are wasting a lot of time, and not getting what they need. There’s no way somebody can tell if they are going to finish a course without testing the material. An inherent problem in the university system is that a lot of people are wasting a lot of time and money doing things they decide they don’t need, or don’t like. This huge problem is eliminated in the MOOC, you’re free to drop at any time, no loss. As far as the current model not being sustainable, that’s not true. There isn’t even a single model to say that statement is true. The fact that there are various acronyms means there are many models. A xMOOC is different from a cMOOC. While I would agree that the xMOOC doesn’t have as successful of a pedagogical model as the cMOOC, it still has its place for certain material. Just like eLearning has a place for certain material, while blended classrooms is better for others. Weaving their way to a company near you MOOCs next big break-through will be in the corporate world. Most important things do break in the consumer world first and make their way to corporations. MOOCs are no different. I know of at least one corporation here in the United States in the beginning stages of creating a company MOOC. That’s just the beginning stages though. To take advantage of the wonderful resource of a MOOC, a company doesn’t have to create one. All the company needs to do is figure out how to use current public MOOCs. A curated list of MOOCs an employee can take is not enough. They need to be included as part of a custom learning plan for each employee. There’s a MOOC out there that would fit into every type of employees professional development. It’s up to the L&D department to figure out how to get the average Joe to benefit from the many MOOCs out there. If the average Joe isn’t benefiting from them, it’s not the MOOCs fault or average Joe’s fault. Conclusion MOOCs definitely have a long way to go as I’ve said before. They might be the best thing that’s ever happened to education. They could eventually be the best thing that’s happened in corporate learning also, that just hasn’t happened yet. I’d argue the reason for this is because of the slow-moving nature of the corporation (not to mention tendencies to shun change), no fault of the MOOC. What do you think about the "fad" of the MOOC? Do you think it’s just a fad? You might also enjoy: MOOCs Have a Long Way To Go Expand Your Skills

Inspiration Before any project can begin, there has to be some sort of inspiration for it. Nothing ever comes from nowhere. Like Pablo Picasso always said: Good artists copy, great artists steal. My inspiration came from a combination of a template redesign panel at work and the org chart I created for a recent eLearning Heroes Challenge. I wanted to create something that I could touch and feel. I needed to play around with what it might look like. The animation for the menu needed to be fluid and animations needed to go both ways, nothing jarring. With that, I had a good basis for creating something that had sections defined by colors and fluid animation. Logistics I wanted the template to be unique, and lack all hints of Storyline. While I love Storyline and all that it can do, it is just a tool. I don’t believe a tool should dictate the design, nor should anybody be able to tell what tool a design was created in. I also wanted to give the user the largest viewable space for content within the project. This means a great deal of white space, and full screen views for content that fit the full screen need. This meant a menu that was not persistent, it vanished when not needed but was accessible within one click. It also meant text boxes limited in width therefor also limiting the amount of text possible on the screen. Text box width limitations are important, it’s been proven that people read quicker and comprehend better when words across are limited. Another benefit these narrow text boxes allowed for was plenty of space for visuals that lent themselves to a project. In section three of the project, I felt it would be a great opportunity to display how full screen content could fit into the template. It also gave me the opportunity to get creative and show how a story told with visuals and limited words could be more effective than just words. Problems Before I get into the details of how the template is set up, how I did it, and how to change it, it’s always wise to discuss the problems experienced and how they were overcome. Menu On Top Layer One problem I experienced was with the menu button and drop down. The problem didn’t arise until I began working on the full window contend and needed the menu button on top of everything. Storyline has this odd little thing were master slide items are below the content of the slide by default. This meant that I couldn’t just put the menu button on the master slide and expect it to be on top at all times. It was below the full screen images which wouldn’t work at all, what if the user wanted to leave that section? After a bit of searching, I found out that it was necessary to have the menu button in a layer, then called with a trigger. This trigger forced the menu layer to appear on top of everything, including my full screen images. It took me a while to figure out how to do all this so it worked from all slides of the project. I ended up with the menu in it’s own layer and a trigger on the master slide showing that layer when the timeline started. No Menu The second problem was the intro slides into each section. The menu button didn’t need to show up on those slides. To solve this problem, I had to create a second master slide with a blank sub master slide below that. This layer doesn’t contain any content at all, or any triggers, it’s just blank. The four intro slides to each section use this special master slide, so if you want a slide without the menu button, you need to use this layout. I didn’t create any other layouts though. I assumed if you had content on a slide, the menu needs to be there. Now that all these problems are resolved, down to the dirty stuff on how I did it, and why you should stick to the simplicity of the template (although you’re in no way required to). Keeping it Simple Menu The most common piece you will want to edit first is the menu. It was designed to fit four sections, if you have more than this, you may want to re-design your content. Each section is color coded within the colored number circle. To edit the menu, you’ll need to head over to the slide masters. In the first slide master, you’ll find three layers, the menu button, menu, and menu out (this is to provide that seamless menu slide-out animation). Open the menu layer and change the names as you please, after you’ve modified them be sure to also make the same modification in the menu-out layer. If you fail to make the same modification, the animation of the menu out once and item is clicked will be jarring and odd looking. Not even one single pixel can be off. If you’d like to simplify the naming of menu items, you could set up four variable for each section and replace the text for each in the menu and menu-out layers to those variables. This way you’d just have to change the variable and the rest would be taken care of for you. You’ll also notice that each menu item dims as they’re visited. I’ve created states for each menu item, that state is used if the complete variable for each section is true, meaning the user has completed that section. Modification to when each section is complete should be done in each respective section. That’s it for the menu! You’re ready to change the content! Sections Each section has a trigger that sets the section variable equal to the number section you’re on. If you add a slide, be sure to copy that trigger over. This way the menu knows where the user is, and where to send that user once the menu-out animation has played out. There are various elements you can use on each slide, it’s up to you if you use them. One element is the next and previous arrows. They are traditional navigation methods and don’t lend themselves to bouncing around and exploring the course, this is where the navigation dots come in. Navigation dots (don’t know the actual UX term for those) are a great way to allow the user to go wherever they want in a section. It also tells them exactly how many slides they have in the section and how long they have to the end. It’s not necessary to use both the arrows AND the dots, but it can’t hurt. Once a user reaches the end of a section, an arrow is necessary even if you chose not use them as your main navigation method. With the last arrow, make it the color of the next section. this signifies to the user that they’re done here and moving onto a new section. The color theme will then change to the new color. At the end of each section, make sure to add (or copy) the trigger to set the section complete, this will ensure the menu item is dimmed so the user knows they’ve been there, done that. Full Screen Content This is the most important piece to this template, and one that should be used much more than the text slides and other navigation buttons. The menu will still be there for easy navigation between sections, but the user will be engrossed in a full screen story or scenario. I created a sample of this in section three on the second page. Once the user entered the story, navigation outside of section navigation fails to exist until the end.  I set it so the user is marked as completing this section from the start, as there’s nothing worse than being forced to go through every detail. Only the user can determine if that content is required by them. Again the colors are pulled into the story, but they make a difference (sweat the small stuff). Towards the end, the color changes to the next section color, signifying the end, and movement into the next section. This is cemented by the arrow that exists at the end providing easy navigation onwards. Completion That does it for setting up the template. I didn’t go into creating a whole bunch of quiz sections or anything as I’m not a big fan of quizzing, but I’m sure those could be put in if necessary. I had fun making this template, and am glad people have been receptive to its simplicity and possible excessive white space (if that’s possible!). I’ll be making more templates and will use the eLearning Heroes Challenge as a jumping off point for creating them. Download the template and see it in action on my portfolio. You might also enjoy: Using the ‘rescale project’ option in Captivate Work from high to low and clean that audio up To round-trip or not to round-trip

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, How do I deal with passive-aggressive behaviors like someone agreeing to do a task then "forgetting" to do it, dragging his or her feet, or deliberately doing it incorrectly so he or she won’t be asked to do it again? Tired of Passive Agreement  Dear Tired, If you live or work with or near other people, at some point other people will let you down—they’ll miss a deadline, fall short of a standard, or just do something wrong. So your question about dealing with this behavior is universal. I’ll offer a few suggestions that are more generic and then get specifically to the challenge you face. 1. Speak up. Some people hope that if they are patient, the problem will go away, even if the problem is reoccurring. They hope that time will cure the issue. While people are waiting and not speaking up, their silence is generally interpreted as acceptance or agreement. My first bit of advice is to speak up. It might be that the task or assignment is harder than it need be. Speaking up can send a message that the task is important and that you want to make sure nothing gets in the way. 2. Speak up while keeping it safe. The key components of safety are Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect. Remember to avoid jumping to conclusions or losing your cool. This step requires that you avoid showing on your face or by your tone of voice that you have held court in your head in advance and found the person guilty. You want to convey that you’ve observed a gap and that you want to figure out what’s going on. The way you stated your question causes me to remind everyone to give the other person the benefit of the doubt before speaking up. Think: "Could this situation be more complicated than I assume?" 3. Speak up about the right topic. This step focuses on your specific problem. In Crucial Confrontations, we teach CPR, which stands for content, pattern, and relationship. CPR is a strategy to help you find the right issue. Talk about content if this is the first occurrence. For example, "JC, you agreed to have the report in by Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. and I didn’t receive it until Wednesday at noon. What happened?" The first and second times can be accidents, so you should talk about the content—the specific issue or behavior. By the third time, the issue or behavior has become a pattern and you should address this pattern. For example, "JC, the last three weeks you’ve turned in the Tuesday report on Wednesday. What’s going on?" When JC says that the computer broke down yesterday, you can say, "I’m interested in what happened this time, but I’m more interested in the pattern of missing the deadline three weeks in a row." This allows you to then diagnose the motivation and ability issues that can get in the way and close the conversation by reaffirming the commitment to deliver the report. Follow up by asking if there are any other reasons why JC could not get the report in by 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Excellent performance begins with clear expectations. And now to relationship. In your case, you need to have a relationship discussion. It might sound like this. "JC, you’ve committed to turn in your report by Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. each week and you’ve missed this deadline three out of five times. We’ve had several discussions and you’ve told me there was nothing getting in the way of you doing this. I’m now thinking that I can’t trust that when you make a commitment you will keep it. I’m not sure why this is happening, and it is certainly affecting our working relationship." This is the time to discuss the possibility that JC is forgetting, dragging his feet, or simply trying to get the task reassigned. Based on JC’s response, you may have to start progressive discipline. And for those who are thinking that this is not quick or severe enough, I chose a topic that I thought could allow a bit of patience. Other performance gaps would require quicker, tougher responses. Over the years, we’ve coached people in situations that lingered and festered. When we asked, "Have you spoken up?" they respond "Of course." "About what?" we ask. The answers too frequently reveal that they spoke up about the easy not the hard, about the simple not the complex, about the content not the pattern or relationship. When you speak up about the right topic, you send a message that the task is important, that you are interested in finding any barriers that make it more difficult than it needs to be, and that it is so important that you’ll make sure the task will be completed. Sometimes, a relationship conversation will focus on the fact that you have to hold these conversations so frequently and you need to see high performance without repeated conversations. In summary, make sure you do the first two steps, and then always talk about the right topic. When you do, you are more likely to find a lasting solution. I wish you the best,Al Related posts: Holding People Accountable Holding Clients Accountable Holding a "Charmer" Accountable

Mobile for Performance There’s plenty of discussion on how you can use mobile devices to improve performance. They’re quite powerful. Learning & Development hasn’t discussed much about improving users performance inside a mobile app. Apps within the organization are becoming the norm. If you don’t know of one, ask around, there’s a good chance something is being developed. When a user downloads and installs an internal app, how long does it take to augment their job performance. We should be starting that discussion within our organization. How to best support new users use of internal apps. It’s unreasonable to expect users to use a new app that’s not consumer grade simple. Users should get up to speed quick to support their performance. We shouldn’t bombard them with more training provided far from the point of need. Mobile help overlays build the foundation for mobile devices to support organizational requirements. We should be advocating for the non-tech savvy. Simplify for those that don’t know how to do a specific task. For those that do know what to do, get out of the way and let them do their thing. What They Are I could try to describe what a mobile help overlay is in words, but that wouldn’t make sense. For the most part they’re visual, so that’s what will give you the best idea. I’ve been collecting  examples of Mobile Help Overlays on Pinterest. Installed apps display a translucent overlay over the interface pointing out the most needed features and tasks. They should be simple, only the most important tasks pointed out, and they’re easy to dismiss. There are other many types of mobile help within apps but I’m going to only discuss mobile help overlays. Other varieties can be cumbersome and need too much effort from the user. In the UX world you will hear the term coach marks to describe mobile help overlays. The term coach mark doesn’t roll off the tongue or describe their purpose well. Nielsen Normal Group explains other forms of in-app help, while giving some pointers on how best to use them. Why They’re Great Performance Support Mobile help overlays are a success in the consumer app market. While no hard evidence exists speaking for their success, those using them are happy with the method. You won’t have a hard time finding apps in the consumer market which have implemented mobile help overlays. Internal apps need the same level of new user scaffolding. But Apps Are Easy It’s nice to live in a world where everything is easy and everyone knows how to use everything. But that world doesn’t exist. Every developer and UX designer thinks their app is simple and so intuitive that anybody could pick it up and start using it. Sure that exists for users who are tech savvy. For somebody like my dad though, it’s just not possible. Even the simplest task, the best instruction I give is torn apart by my dad as being complex and vague. Unless the majority of your audience is tech savvy, there’s a chance users won’t know what to do. Worse, a user might be using an app wrong or not using it at all! If a user isn’t provided a scaffolded experience into the app they may never use the app to its fullest. When the average user downloads an app with no clear direction on how to use it, what are they supposed to do? Sure they can fumble their way through it, but the most beginner user may not be willing to do that. Performance support is the best method to get a user performing necessary tasks quick and with success. If the user is tech savvy and doesn’t want help, it’s easy to dismiss with a simple tap. Traditional Methods Traditional methods are cheap and easy to develop, they just aren’t successful and do not fit the ideal medium of delivery. Job aids for instance are large, built for the printed, and removed from the location the user must perform in. How do you get a job aid in the hands of an app user without burdening the user? Think about how they’re supposed to find help and use it. The goal of performance support is to give just enough, just in time, in the right context then get out of the way. Traditional methods can only give you just enough, not the other two. Traditional methods of training are self explanatory in their weakness (I hope). A user won’t remember training when the need arises to use the material. It doesn’t make sense to force a hunt for supporting documentation and extensive training to use an app only to forget. Mobile Help Overlays Are Over Engineered Mobile help overlays sound complicated and too much effort to put into an app. The bad news is that they aren’t as easy as a job aid, not by a long shot. They will need developer resources, planning, and more thought on the back end. To say they’re over-engineered is wrong. This focuses only on the work required on behind the scene groups. Focus on the user, what makes their life easier? Work on the back end ensures the user has an easier, more successful experience within the app. It also saves users time which can add up beyond the time and cost of pre-work. It also saves the user from stress and lack of performance. Help to Task From introduction, to ramping up in an app, mobile help overlays need minimal separation between task and help. Users have minimal requirements to understand and begin using the app. When the user needs to do a new task within the app, instant help is available. No required training, no learning to forget. The user gets what they need, when they need it. Once the user is on their way to success, it’s out of their way for them to perform. UX or L&D While UX experts have a good handle on mobile help overlays in consumer apps, internal UX experts might not have them in mind. With research and planning, a learning experience designer is better equipped to understand user needs. They’ll help guide a simplistic scaffolded approach to performance within the app. We Need Training! Isn’t that how every good intention begins? You’re asked for training, get an idea of what’s desired, then please the customer with what’s expected. That’s where the danger lies. The expected is usually determined by those that know nothing about learning or the needs of a real user. Go beyond the expected. Question the requirements and find out if training is the answer. For a mobile app, it most likely is not. Any time somebody asks for training, you’re going to have to into a deeper analysis. If someone asks for training on a mobile app, you should be asking questions and analyzing. Training is rarely the answer. How to use an app doesn’t belong in the head unless it got there with regular usage. Performance support would a more successful strategy to improve behavior. The goal is to make the user as successful as possible in as little time as possible. Think of all the wasted time looking for help, asking for help, and/or participating in unneeded training. Conclusion Performance support is a powerful tool, to get the correct material is a challenge. Do not underestimate its ability to provide all user needs for help and the ability for it to replace training completely. Do you have any additions to mobile help overlays that could make it an even more successful method of performance support? Think for a while on what other methods of supporting performance could be used that you find lie outside of the norm. There are many out there, mobile help overlays being just one. You might also enjoy: Mobile Performance Support - Make It Simple! Stop Trying To Predict Mobile Users Needs Challenges and Barriers to Mobile Learning in the Enterprise

Last week, we announced the release of the second edition of Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change. For a sneak peak of the book, download the first chapter now. This new edition includes: New subtitle Updated statistics, facts, and figures New research and case studies from organizations like KIPP, Menlo Innovations, Fundación Paraguaya, and others Skill applications gleaned from six years of Influencer Training "Act Like An Influencer" stories: twenty-five vignette examples of real influencers New focus on the three keys of influence: 1) Focus and measure, 2) Find vital behaviors, and 3) Engage all Six Sources of Influence Now available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book WIN A COPY: Enter our drawing to win one of twenty-five copies of Influencer by watching Joseph Grenny discuss the principles of influence at our local TEDX event. To enter, watch the video, leave a comment, and share with others. (One entry per action taken. Winners will be selected and announced June 5.) Related posts: Special Announcement: Introducing the Second Edition of our Bestselling Book, Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change August Newsletter Drawing Winner! Influencer Institute: Introducing the Influencer Institute—And a Call to Action!

About a month ago I saw a question from the eLearning Guild asking for people’s input on what learning will look like in 2024. Since that day I’ve been thinking about it and meaning to write down my thoughts. There has since been a discussion on the topic, and several others who wrote down their thoughts. Here are my thoughts on what learning will look like in 2024. I also hope to see some comments on where you think learning will look like. Reality In reality not much will change in 10 years. There will still be a few organizations on the cutting edge of learning who will work with how people learn instead of forcing it. That number of organizations who "get it" may grow a small amount, but still be the minority. Most organizations will still try to control how, when, and where learning happens. The fight will still remain against how learning occurs. Learning & Development departments will be stuck in formal learning, tracking the wrong data through an outdated LMS. Ideally Learning & Development will be working with how people learn. This is contrary to what happens today, but this shift will catch on. It will occur but I say ideally because in a perfect world it would occur within the next 10 years. Few organization learning departments will be controlling learning to track participation through an LMS. Working with how people learn in reality is the only logical step in how learning will look in 2024 to me. There are many moving parts to working with how people learn though. A great shift will occur to performance support and social learning. Also, courses will be limited, more viable solutions will be developed for the majority of learning. The foundation of how learning will look in 2024 exists in whole today, it just hasn’t been adopted. Leaders who have the best chance of making these changes first need to have visibility to the possibilities. As those in charge are introduced to how people learn, they’ll be forced to put in place solutions to solve the problem. With this happening, the ideal will soon become the reality. xAPI The last part of where I think learning will move towards the year 2024 is the experience API (xAPI). Within 10 years time cutting edge organizations will figure out how to use xAPI. xAPI will track activities within an organization and show what people do, and what their preferences are. Of course more will have to be learned in L&D to analyze and draw information from the Big Data that xAPI can provide. Rather than throwing xAPI at a problem, organizations will learn how to create a plan for what they want to do with xAPI. Only after the plan is created will an organization move towards implementation. Mobile There are still so many questions surrounding mobile, and so many misconceptions. In 10 years time mobile will be the primary access point for users to learn what they need for their job. They’ll do it at the point of need by searching for what they need and receiving accurate results. Once the needed topic is found by search or by location, it’ll be as simple as glancing at their device to do their job. Organization learning departments will learn that it’s not the ideal tool to apply old learning methods to. The determination will be that performance support is the ideal application for mobile. Of course this is an idealized story of how mobile will work in 10 years, but it is the direction organizations should and will need to go in. This is how I see mobile in 2024 in an ideal world. See You In The Future The foundation exists to what learning will look like in 2024. Some organizations are even there or have a plan in place to get there already. As the message spreads, doing the same old thing will no longer suffice. Organizations will figure out what they’re doing isn’t working and be forced to change. This will all happen as the workforce changes and employees demand a better way to be better at their job. Future employees will demand their time is not wasted on required courses only to be forgotten, or were not necessary in the first place. What do you think learning will look like in the year 2024? I know I am excited to see where things go, and I’m excited to be on the forefront of whatever does happen. You might also enjoy: Empower Employees With A Wiki Generation Mobile Recipe For Disaster

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, How does one escape the addictions of pornography, drugs, alcohol, etc? I’ve been told that even if I’m able to finally get to the point of remission, I’ll always be an addict and never completely escape. It’s a hopeless message, but I sense truth in this and fear I’ll have to fight it the rest of my life. Do you have any advice that can help me in my lifelong battle against addiction? Signed, Struggling  Dear Struggling, I have great news for you. While in some cases there might (and I stress MIGHT) be some element of truth to the statement, "I’ll always be an addict"—that statement doesn’t mean what you think it means. The implication of "always an addict" in your note is "I’ll have to fight the rest of my life." That’s the part I can immediately reassure you is absolutely not true, but hang on for a moment and let me get to that point in its time. First, I want to be clear that my coauthors and I are not addiction experts. We study human behavior, so we have opinions about the state of research on issues like addiction recovery. That is not our specialty nor do I have training in addiction recovery. With that said, I will share some opinions on your question. • Will you always be at risk of returning to your addiction? There’s a good chance you won’t. Many people with addictions recover in a way that never affects them again. One of the most dramatic evidences of this point is a major study funded by the U.S. Government in 1971 as tens of thousands of heroin-addicted soldiers were returning from Vietnam. Military officials were terrified that a healthcare crisis would ensue as their systems would have been overloaded with those suffering the effects of addiction. But the crisis never happened. Well over 80 percent of those returning, who were classified as seriously addicted, discontinued drug use after coming home—forever. • How long does it take? I’ll answer this briefly but will refer you to the chapter on addiction recovery in our book Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success for a fuller description. Our work shows that habits change when all six of the sources of influence that shape our habits change. Period. Now, that process can take a while, but understanding those sources of influence helps you recognize that there are discrete actions you can take to move the process along and to understand what work remains. This also explains why so many of the returning soldiers changed so quickly. All of these sources of influence were organized in a way that promoted addiction when they lived in Vietnam. When they returned, for many of them, all six sources changed. So they did, too. • If you’re one of the 20 percent rather than the 80 percent, does that mean a lifetime of struggle? Absolutely not. Even those who continue to feel vulnerable to relapse will tell you that year by year, maintaining the life patterns that keep them "sober" (I use that term generically) become not just easier, but pleasurable. Here’s the good news I promised you. Please read these sentences over and over and over: The way you feel today about your addictive behaviors can feel entirely different just a few months from now. You can literally come to hate what you currently love. You can—and will—come to find loathsome those things that seem irresistible today. Let me elaborate on this last, and most important, point. Our emotions often lie to us. When we experience an emotion (let’s say I’m feeling angry at my daughter) it comes with two embedded lies—it feels true, and it feels permanent. It feels true in the sense that I have a profound conviction that I am totally right and she is totally wrong. My emotion is my evidence that I am right. All of us have had the experience of feeling that way, then getting a little more information and perspective, and having the emotion pivot 180 degrees. We feel remorse, or empathy, or love—whereas seconds earlier we couldn’t have imagined feeling different. Similarly, the emotions feel permanent. We believe the way we feel about something is how we will always feel. For example, I cannot imagine not craving a cigarette. Or being stimulated by pornography. Or getting out of control at the sight of chocolate. Or losing my temper when criticized. Yet, when you talk with those who have realigned the sources of influence in their life, they’ll often use words like "disgusted" when they think about those behaviors today. But don’t trust these other people. Test this proposition against your own experience. Have you ever felt even momentarily different about an addictive habit you struggle with? Have you had moments when you felt no temptation at all? In fact, you felt revulsion for the act? If so, you know already that change is possible. The challenge is working through the process of change until those temporary feelings become the norm. If you want to see a powerful example of this shift, watch this video. It’s a fascinating experiment done by the Thai Ministry of Public Health. A young child approaches people who are smoking in public with a cigarette in her hand to ask them for a light. The smokers are horrified at the thought of this child picking up this habit. Every one of those approached began lecturing the child, citing compelling reasons the child shouldn’t smoke. After listening patiently for a moment, the child would hand them a card with a phone number for smoking cessation services, and ask, "Then why do you smoke?" Researchers observed the smokers after the child walked away. Almost every one of them dropped their cigarette. All retained the card with the phone number. Calls to the help line increased 40 percent on the day of the experiment. Now, this doesn’t demonstrate permanent change, but it shows that feelings can change. That’s the point. In this case, it was temporary. But people who were feeling compelled to smoke moments earlier were suddenly disgusted at the thought and stopped. You need not fear a lifetime of struggle. You may need to be conscious of maintaining the six sources of influence throughout your life, but you’ll want to do it. You’ll derive pleasure from the new life. Your feelings will change. Just keep up the good work. The way you feel today is not the way you will feel a year from now. Warmly, Joseph Related posts: Change Anything: Overcoming Addiction-Part Two Change Anything: Overcoming Addiction Overcoming Career-Limiting Habits

Since reading Mark Britz post It’s All Training Until It Isn’t and related post Learned (Learning) Helplessness many thoughts have been stirring in my head. Before I lost the ideas these posts and the term "learned helplessness" stirred in my head, I wanted to write down a story I was reminded of. It’s a story of how unknown to myself was introduced to this term and the prevalence it holds in society. Before I was part of the Learning & Development world, I was a computer technician in an elementary school. I worked with teachers and sometimes students on how to best use technology in the classroom and of course I maintained it. I never had any sort of official training in the detailed workings of computers or how to troubleshoot them, I just learned by doing. If I didn’t know how to do something, I’d search for an answer! I never thought about this, or my inquisitive nature that I used to troubleshoot every issue imaginable. One day I was helping a teacher create a school newsletter back in the day of Microsoft Publisher (does it still exist)? She was having trouble figuring out how to align a certain group of text on the screen. Rather than exploring, trying, then searching, teachers defaulted to asking me for help. This created great job security for me, but I do believe there’s a better way. Not knowing much about Publisher, I played around a bit and figured out a solution. It didn’t take a search nor did it take a deep level of knowledge of the software. The only thing I used to solve the problem was good ol’ fashioned curiosity. The teacher was so amazed how I could play around with the software and figure out a solution. I thought nothing of this at the time, but I’ve thought of this story as a reminder of how unwilling people are to take part in trial and error. Relationship to Learned Helplessness I think the connection is obvious to the term learned helplessness, but in case it’s not, I’ll explore it a bit further. This teacher in her many years of schooling and training had lost the ability for exploration. This ties in with learned helplessness, she was to the point where she had forgotten how to learn or was unwilling to try on her own. While it made me feel needed and I was more than happy to help, I thought there must be a better way. This is what led me to seek other career paths even if it was subconscious. A large part of my job was comprised of something anybody could have done, it’s just that people had forgotten how to try to do it themselves. More to Come This is only the beginning of my thoughts on this topic, and I’m glad that I have a name to put to it now. I have a lot of research to do on the topic and I look forward to every bit of it. Social learning and learning how to learn are important factors in combatting learned helplessness. It’s not something that will be solved in a few bullet points. It’s deeply engrained in our culture of formal learning and doing. That is part of what I’m hoping to uncover in future posts. It’s part of what I love about L&D, there’s always something to learn, new and old but relevant still. Do you have any stories or experiences that you could tell about seeing learned helplessness in the workplace or school? You might also enjoy: Social and Learned Helplessness in Learning Turn The Curiosity Back On Ten Things That Make Me Cringe