"I'm a consultant!"  Sounds glamorous and important! It may be the key to the large income increase that you want.  And it would be great to be your own boss!  Or would it? Why do so many training professionals leave organizations, start their own consulting practices, and then end up in a different corporate job (if they can find one) within a year or two!

It’s 3:00 am and you are thrilled at the discovery that you can actually prepare beautiful graphics for your training. You never thought you could.  You are amazed with yourself. The following day, at the meeting, the boss asks: "Wow, how did you do all of this? You are a designer-trainer, and now you are also an artist and developer. How do you do it?"

Have you ever had an important meeting with your boss and diligently took notes as if you’re transcribing the entire conversation?  Have you ever anticipated taking notes at a conference keynote session because you were looking forward to the person speaking?  How often do you go back and read your own notes, though? Chances are we don't revisit our notes very often.  Why do we take notes if we don’t intend to do anything with them?  Our intentions and our motivation are there, but most often we end up looking hazily at our own handwriting trying to decipher a note.

Use this infographic in your organization to kick-start discussion on how to bridge the chasm of The Disengagement Canyon. For change to be successful, it must be clearly defined, aligned, understood and sustained. To do this successfully, address the 3 Critical Engagement Points in the infographic.

Engagement is what motivates people to not only feel dedicated to their job and their life, but also to feel rewarded by what they do and how they do it. It pushes people to look differently and go above and beyond not because they have to but because they want to.  With 68.5% of the US workforce identifying themselves as disengaged, resulting in $550 Billion a year in lost productivity, companies today cannot turn a blind eye to the importance of having a fully engaged team.  

"Getting by" calls for answering some age old questions in a brand-new year. As the American economy continues to try to recover, many workers begin to wonder if another round of layoffs will occur in their companies. While jobs are being added in the government sector, the growth of new jobs in the private sector has been slow.  Businesses, even those doing well, have shown a reluctance to invest when there are so many uncertainties.  

I’ve come to realize over the years that some of life’s best lessons are learned in some rather strange locations. One of the oddest places at which I’ve "gone to school" has to be the ice show at Busch Gardens in Tampa, FL. The teacher was a performer named Albert Lucas.

It’s probably occurred to you that the comedian’s art and the trainer’s art have a lot in common. Over the years, I’ve worked with Disney Institute and Disney University and their trainers a number of times. And on these trips, I take advantage of the opportunity to learn from them, as well.

Small bites content is small, standalone, useful and accessible content. More importantly, it is learningcontent needed instantly for a micro task or activity at work. 

Have you heard these urgent requests before? "Can you make it quick, please?"  "Can you tell me how I can improve immediately?"

Make your online presentations more than memorable.  Make them unforgettable. Matt Abrahams, Stanford University educator and coach will share practical, research-backed techniques to confidently deliver compelling, authentic and memorable presentations for you and your audience.

We know bite-sized video works to deliver highly effective, targeted learning content and resources to employees. We also know that with the right approach to delivery (mobile!), bite-sized video has the potential to live up to the long promised "anytime, anywhere" learning capability of online training.

In today’s workplace, leaders and their teams have far too many shifting or competing priorities to manage effectively.  Challenges of all kinds can keep them from achieving desired results: inability to identify top priorities, constant distractions, pressure to multi-task, rambling meetings, email overload, 24/7 mobile technology, the inability to say "no," and many others.

Research shows that 84% of organizations are spending less than 5 cents of every learning dollar on exploring, acquiring and deploying informal initiatives, yet modern learners prefer informal methods.

There is a whole classification of eLearning development tools that install themselves as new ribbons in PowerPoint.

Feedback is a powerful intervention for improving human performance. Everyone gives and receives feedback every day in the workplace. Given appropriately, feedback can enhance a person’s motivation, competency, and self-image. Given inappropriately, feedback can leave a person feeling resentful, patronized, confused, stupid, and ashamed.

In nearly every organization, leaders are being held accountable to do something they cannot do-motivate others. Leaders can't motivate people, because people are already motivated. The question is not if a person is motivated but why.  

How do you make off-the-shelf content more engaging for your learners? You’ve got the content, but how do you get learners interacting with new concepts and applying them to their real jobs as soon as possible?

Coaching is a powerful and underutilized technique for improving human performance. Every manager can coach others to achieve mutual goals.  Coaching serves different purposes including building competence, encouraging teamwork, securing trust, setting expectations, and measuring success. Different contexts can benefit from different approaches to coaching.

Wake up your online learners! Learn best practices and proven strategies to keep online learners motivated and engaged.

You’ve nailed down your strategy (finally!). Your people want to help the business succeed. Your customers want what you’ve got. So, what’s standing in the way of success? Chances are you haven’t unleashed your hidden heroes - your managers.

The comparison between training games and videos (or lectures, or textbooks, or e-learning, or webinars, or any other training technique) is as meaningless as comparing apples and oranges.

Motivation is the energy that accelerates behavior. Often trainers and instructional designers devote a lot of effort in designing reward strategies, convinced that finding the right reward for the right participant will endow the participant with the motivation to learn. Many of us think of motivation as a "carrot and stick" kind of enterprise, with the mechanism influencing motivation located externally. This chapter will help trainers to choose whether to use reward strategies, and if so, how to use them wisely, with a greater understanding of the consequences of their choices.

Whether you deliver online or in-person training, there is nothing more powerful than managers who support training with well delivered coaching.