What are the obligations of managers? The answer to this question varies from organization to organization based upon a number of factors such as industry, culture, department, skill level of the team, etc. Regardless of the organization, at the very heart of this question lies a dilemma. If you need compliance, or supervision of employees, the things your organization needs managers to do well has a clear, well-delineated set of guidelines and boundaries. On the other hand, if the answer leans towards the successful achievement of goals, the things you need managers to do well are probably less defined. The objective of this eBook is to offer some insight into what we see as emerging principles in employee coaching for managers. The marketplace is changing, and so are our workplaces. While many traditional coaching models provide excellent guidance, they may not fully prepare our managers for success, without some modifications, for successful coaching experiences with today's workforce.  

As a training program manager, you likely spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to increase employee participation to ensure impact, value, and return on investment. Check out BizLibrary's "A Reason For Learning Every Season" resource to foster marketing & awareness for learning and development, so you can help your people take it upon themselves to learn something new and improve efficiency. Click below to download this White paper.

This is the second installment of of my five-part blog series on helping members of TrainingMagNetwork understand their expertise better. We believe in unshackling our thinking and providing learners as much access to content and this is what this post is about.   Trainers and content developers can no longer hold back learners from using other sources of knowledge. There is a breaking away from control as these new discoveries continue to sprout like mushrooms. This allows them to accelerate learning. It is in this openness that we encourage the learners to explore, create and develop. The Proliferation of Open Learning We have witnessed the dramatic increase in open learning. If you have been following the online trends, you will have noticed the popularity of sites like Coursera, edX and other spinoffs. The dramatic decrease in cost of producing learning materials contributes to the proliferation of open learning.   According to Caswell, Henson, Jensen, and David Wiley, "This marked decrease in costs has significant implications and allows distance educators to play an important role in the fulfillment of the promise of the right to universal education. At relatively little additional cost, universities can make their content available to millions. This content has the potential to substantially improve the quality of life of learners around the world."   But the cost is just one aspect. While technology made open learning easy, it is the current attitude requiring more flexibility and collaboration in learning that made this possible. Rigid and traditional approach to learning is a thing of the past.     According to Liyanagunawardena, Adams, and Williams, "Connectivity is usually provided through social networking, and a set of freely accessible online resources provides the content or the study material... For example, MOOC participants may create their own blog posts discussing aspects of the MOOC in different spaces and/or may use microblogs such as Twitter to express themselves."   eLearning pioneers like Jay Cross are advocating informal learning wherein unofficial and impromptu encounters between learners and people in the know take place. Jay posts that "formal training and workshops account for only 5% to 20% of what people learn from experience and interactions."   If you are a lifelong learner, you can find free and open courses at Harvard Open Learning. Are you looking for a new recipe to cook for lunch? You can just head to Youtube, watch a video and turn yourself into an instant chef. We haven't witnessed this level of openness before and this is just the tip of the iceberg. With technological development mostly done in the open, the high level of interactivity required to respond to modern challenges and the attitude of modern learners all converge to spice up Open Learning. The concept of Open learning is far more vast than what we have witnessed and I believe the best is yet to come.   The Philosophy Behind TrainingMagNetwork's Open Learning  Richard Baraniuk shares his vision of open learning which led to the creation of OpenStax, an open-source, online education system which allows teachers to share and modify course materials freely and globally. Different programs have varied degrees of openness and diverse implementations of the concept of Open Learning.   Over 50,000 (growing) blogs, white papers, articles, webinar recordings, live webinars, case studies, special reports, and many more At TrainingMagNetwork.com, we allow the members to search over 50,000 blogs and resources (growing each day). We believe we can only serve the learners by enabling them to access quickly, assist them to search with prompt questions and discover what they want in the abundance of content. They drive the learning - not us nor the designers, or any form of formal structure. In fact, we don't have a hierarchical learning design that is typical of other associations and learning providers. 

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our  guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview.  We start with Chapter 7. Chapter 7 People Who Lead People: Engaging Employees through Leadership In This Chapter: Differentiating between management and leadership Identifying leadership‐based engagement drivers Knowing why top leaders must buy in Identifying behaviors and traits of engaged leaders Training engaged leaders Recognizing the importance of coaching Identifying leadership best practices  

It’s common for venues to claim to be one-size-fits-all, but most are equipped for one type of event and ill-suited for others. So how do you find the ideal venue for your group’s needs? To help you navigate the labyrinth of offerings, the expert planning team at The National Conference Center has put together a comprehensive list of key factors any planner should consider when selecting a venue for a meeting, training or event. Click below to download this White paper.

This is the third installment of the five-part blog series about the The All-New TrainingMagNetwork.com Open Learning Environment. At Training Magazine Network, we capture the crumbs of insights as they happen. This level of self-awareness enables our members to keep track of their train of thought. While in webinars, reading white papers, watching videos, etc., members can quickly record the ripple of their insights. They also encourage real-time noting, sharing and tracking of other members' insights.   Savor the moment. As members go through all types of content that they find interesting through the help of a powerful search engine, they are constantly encouraged to record their insights as it happens. The key idea is to allow them to document what piqued their interest at the moment. Their learning preferences and interest areas are captured by the system. This provides them a unique perspective of their pursuit of expertise. Why Evaluate Insight? The idea behind evaluating one's insight is established by a huge quantum of studies. Organizations discover that giving appropriate feedback enhances personnel's ability to grow. As a matter of fact, neglecting a good evaluation or feedback mechanism is a recipe for disaster. According to Jane Bozarth "We often treat evaluation as an afterthought, focus on measures that offer little real information, or, when the effort looks difficult, just don't do evaluation at all. In looking at evaluation strategies, choose those that will get you what you need. Are you trying to prove results, or drive improvement? And above all, remember: some evaluation is better than none."  A founder of Triad Consulting Group and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, Sheila Heen delivers a talk on the importance of feedback. Giving the right kind of feedback takes center stage in sharing and tracking of other people's insights. Technology-Enhanced Feedback Mechanism  There are a lot of advantages in using technology as a feedback mechanism. First of all, the time and distance constraint is easily overcome. A good LMS (Learning Management System) can easily incorporate feedback mechanisms like forums where learners can discuss the ripples of insight.   Through this mechanism, peer learners can easily assess and give feedback on each other's ideas. This can be personalized even in a large group. On top of that, real-time tracking of feedback is easy with fast data transfer.    Insights Leading to Path to Expertise (Path2X)   The Training Magazine Network just released the first-of-its-kind member service we call Path to Expertise or Path2X. It incorporates a technology-enhanced feedback mechanism.

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our  guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview.  Here is Chapter 10. Chapter 10 Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl: Driving Engagement through Branding In This Chapter: Looking at the relationship between branding and engagement Defining who you are through your employee value proposition Branding internally and externally Using tri-branding to your advantage  

Bringing Everything into View As today’s organizations stare down the challenges of ever-increasing compliance regulations, unpredictable turnover, and rapidly expanding cultural and learning style changes among employees, companies are looking for new ways to automate and scale their training efforts. More and more, they’re finding that help in video. Adaptable to both formal and informal learning needs, video overcomes today’s most common training challenges. It helps instructors increase training quality, speed and effectiveness — all while significantly lowering program costs. But of course, today’s learning and development professionals already understand the potential that technology can offer in the modern training environment. Their real challenge? Convincing their organizations to do more. In this paper, we help L&D practitioners tackle that challenge head-on, including: • 5 benefits that help convince your decision makers to use video in more ways • 14 ideas for supporting and scaling formal and informal learning with video • 1 technology — the video platform — that simplifies the use of video for L&D  Video training is no longer a novel idea. It’s the new normal. Make sure your organization isn’t missing out. Click below to download this White paper.

Have you ever shared your thoughts with someone? On a grander scale, have you tried sharing your work or a potential masterpiece with like-minded people? Sharing your work simply means that it is where your mind is at. It is where your expertise can be found. The patterns of your insights showcase your expertise areas.   Of course you can imagine the satisfaction you get when you receive the approval of people you respect. But the approval of like-minded people is not the only thing. Rather, it's making your work bigger than yourself that matters.     In this fourth installment of my five-part blog series about The All-New TrainingMagNetwork.com Open Learning Environment, I'm going to talk about the importance of sharing your work. The Internet and a good portion of its supporting technology has been the result of open sharing of ideas. Inevitability of Sharing Insight Apart from the climate of openness, we can't expect to enjoy what many would consider to be the greatest invention of modern times. Buzzwords like "open source," "collaboration," and "crowdsourcing" are all synonymous to the sharing of ideas and the climate of openness that it entails.   Although the effort to share one's ideas is not something recent, modern development made it easier to collaborate. According to Josh Lerner and Jean Tirol in their book The Simple Economics Of Open Source, "While media attention to the phenomenon of open source software has been recent, the basic behaviors are much older in their origins. There has long been a tradition of sharing and cooperation in software development. But in recent years, both the scale and formalization of the activity have expanded dramatically with the widespread diffusion of the Internet."   On a more limited scale, programmers have been sharing source codes as early as the '60s and the '70s and this has been called "sneakernet" due primarily to the actual movement of files through people wearing sneakers. I'm sure you can imagine the inconvenience but you get the picture. There is no way ideas can be prevented from getting shared. The Power Behind Sharing Insight Matt Ridley shows that the great progresses experienced by human history have been the result of collaboration or the "meeting and mating" of ideas. I like the book Show Your Work by Jane Bozarth. It suggests a profound change of our outlook. When we share our work, we actually learn a lot better. I recall a story from a toxic waste company client about how they apply "Chalk Talk." After each training they ask participants to use chalk and blackboard (may be flipcharts, white boards and markers) to talk about what they have learned.   This is a powerful self-learning process that enables the learners to articulate what they know and correct themselves along the way. Let's call this the digital tracker.   At TMN we allow members to capture trends and patterns. They discover and learn and track what they are good at and they show it off in the "Trending Report."  How is Openness Beneficial to Organizational Performance   The advantages of collaboration to organizations are enormous. Bozarth opined, "Showing work offers increased efficiencies, the possibility of innovation and increased ability to improvise, and promises correction of longstanding deficits in organizational communication."   In another study, Martine R. Haas and Morten T. Hansen proposed that, "An organization's  capacity to share knowledge among its individuals and teams and apply that shared knowledge to performing important activities is increasingly seen as a vital source of competitive advantage in many industries."   While it's nice to think about the solo working genius, it's undeniable that we are at a time when certain problems are just too big for the individual to solve alone. We need the insights of other like-minded people whose expertise are in other areas.  Conclusion   The pattern of your insight is a clear predictor of where your expertise lies. While the solo genius presents an attractive picture, sharing these insights expands your horizons. It is only through openness that ideas take on a new life because they meet and mate with other ideas. Innovation becomes possible and inevitable when ideas are shared. Problem-solving is facilitated by not one person but through the contribution of others.

On July 30, author and keynote speaker Bob Kelleher will present a webinar for Training Mag Network members and our guests based upon his research and findings on the topic of his new book, Employee Engagement. Bob has generously provided several chapters of the book for you to download as a preview. Here is Chapter 14.   Chapter 14 All Aboard! OnboardingTechniques to Foster Engagement   Recognizing the importance of onboarding Seeing things from the new hire’s point of view Knowing what to do before a new hire starts, on the first day,  and in the first week Establishing performance expectations