Anything HR by Ed

Making Your Recognition Count

2023-10-07T22:44:00.007+08:00

If You're a Learning and Development Professional, Here's Why You Should Join the Philippine Society for Talent Development (PSTD)

2023-08-25T09:56:00.003+08:00

If you haven't joined PSTD before, now is the best time to join. If you have been a member in the past, now is the time to rejoin.

In a rapidly evolving world, where AI, digital learning, and hybrid work arrangements are becoming the norm, the role of learning and development (L&D) professionals is more crucial than ever. As an L&D professional, your responsibility not only involves guiding others' developmental journeys but also continually nurturing your own growth. One exceptional platform that addresses both these aspects is the Philippine Society for Talent Development (PSTD). This is a remarkable year for the Society. Leaders and dedicated members have created some breakthrough initiatives that make this an ideal organization to join if you are a learning and development practitioner. In this article, we will delve into two major reasons why joining PSTD should be a priority for any L&D professional and explore the plethora of benefits it offers.

1. Continual Nurturing of Your Professional Growth

As an L&D professional, your effectiveness is deeply intertwined with your commitment to personal growth. The landscape of talent development is evolving rapidly with the influx of AI, digital learning tools, and novel work arrangements. To guide others effectively through these changes, you must remain at the forefront of knowledge and innovation.

PSTD understands the vital importance of keeping your skills up to date. Through its community of practice, PSTD facilitates conversations, research, and collaboration that help you keep abreast of what is in the field. The opportunity to engage with fellow practitioners who are equally passionate about growth and learning is invaluable. PSTD acts as a fertile ground for sharing insights, discussing emerging technologies, and exploring best practices. This environment of constant learning ensures that you are well-equipped to lead others on their developmental journeys.

2. Contributing to the Professional Growth of Peers

Being part of PSTD means you not only focus on your own growth but also contribute to the advancement of your peers. In an era where collaboration and knowledge sharing are paramount, society provides a platform for you to share your experiences, learnings, and insights with fellow L&D professionals. Your journey can inspire and guide others, fostering a collective elevation of skills and knowledge.

Additional Benefits of Joining PSTD

Apart from the pivotal reasons mentioned above, joining PSTD unlocks a treasure trove of benefits:

Access to a Digital Library: Gain free entry to a growing collection of learning videos tailored for L&D practitioners, enhancing your skill set and knowledge base.
Publications Partnership: PSTD's partnership with Australia Awards and Alumni Engagement-Philippines gives you free access to numerous publications, keeping you updated with the latest trends and practices.
Resource Abundance: Access studies, research, tools, templates, and engaging conversations on emerging L&D technologies, enriching your toolkit.
Monthly Newsletter: Receive the monthly PSTD newsletter packed with news and articles about talent development, helping you stay informed.
Exclusive Discounts: Benefit from substantial discounts on training, venues, HR services, and more through PSTD's merchant partnership program.
Network Expansion: Interact with passionate, growth-oriented practitioners through PSTD events, expanding your professional network.
Personal Branding: Actively participate in society events to enhance your personal and professional brand.
Mentorship Opportunities: Get a mentor or become one, further enriching your learning journey.
Get Certified: Gain recognition and expertise by becoming certified as a Training Analyst, Designer, Facilitator, Manager, and eventually, a Master Trainer.
Bonus: Join PSTD today and receive free access to the Foundations of Training online course, valued at 3,000.00, absolutely free!

The field of talent development demands a commitment to continuous growth. PSTD offers a unique platform that not only nurtures your own professional journey but also empowers you to uplift others in the field. With its diverse benefits and robust community, PSTD is undoubtedly the ideal space for every dedicated L&D professional. Join the society today and embark on a transformative journey of growth, collaboration, and excellence. Together, let's shape the future of talent development. #PSTDroadto1k

The HR In My Mind

2020-12-08T11:04:00.004+08:00

Note: It's been a while since my last post here. I've been posting blogs at my company website. So, if you are missing a lot of my writing, please check them out here at ExeQserve.com

I think now, more than ever, companies must strive to hire a good HR person and empower that person to contribute to organizational change.

Think about it, if the person in charge of HR will be responsible for anything and everything HR, that person will hire people, take charge of their development, and develop a strategy to keep them aligned, engaged, and contributing to organizational performance. As they say, it is not rocket science, which makes the HR work that much harder. There is science in rocket science, in HR, you have to know when to apply science and when to apply art.

When you look at HR professional CVs, you will see ones with a lot of suffixes like the conventional master’s degrees, and certifications. I’ve always seen that as a good first sign. This means you are looking at someone passionate about deepening knowledge in HR. However, it’s no guarantee. I met people who take certifications to make themselves marketable. The certifications don’t reflect in their work.

Meeting hundreds, maybe more than a thousand HR professionals made me reflect on what it takes to be an HR professional needed at this time. To make sense of the HR in my mind, I used an Iceberg framework to describe the competencies and traits. This may be a long post because as I discuss the characteristics of my ideal HR, I also want to share my critique on what I see as a prevalent attitude of HR practitioners in the Philippines. So, here goes.

Knowledge

Considering the complexity of HR work, it is expensive to hire HR professionals who are lazy about learning. I often see companies who look at years of experience in handling HR transactions, and knowledge of labor laws as a basis for hiring HR. I believe that mastering the administration of HR services continues to be important knowledge. If HR is to play a bigger, more strategic role in the organization, we need to continually update our knowledge on how we can lead or facilitate organizational alignment, and employee engagement. It is also important for HR to be deeply immersed in the business so we know how our work impacts the organization’s business performance.

Skill

For HR to move from transactional to a strategic partner role, we need to develop a strategic mindset, apply problem-solving, and decision-making skills and change management. I also think that HR should fully immerse in talent development if this is part of their responsibility. I’m not talking about conducting training, although that Is not bad. I’m talking about developing a talent development strategy that truly develops talents. Why, because many existing talent development strategies are failing to bring in ROI and failing to develop employees’ potentials.

Social Role

Below the surface of the iceberg are the drivers of the pursuit of necessary HR skills and knowledge. I think that HR professionals who pursue higher knowledge and truly practice more strategic HR skills see themselves as more than just administrators. They see themselves as leaders, who play an important strategic role in guiding other leaders and facilitating alignment and engagement. I believe that HR professionals who go beyond putting together training calendars and budgets see themselves as talent development champions. They are not satisfied with the traditional approach to training. They look for best practices, engage their stakeholders in developing and implementing a strategy that works. This makes them credible activists.

Self-Image

I think confidence plays an especially important part. I’m not talking about projecting confidence, but real confidence. I think that confident people can afford to be humble to recognize their own ignorance, so they are not afraid of feedback or criticism. The best HR professionals I know are empathic. Because can put themselves in the shoes of others, they are neither defensive nor territorial. They are courageous enough to be vulnerable and taking risks. Because of this, they learn faster and grow faster.

Traits

The HR in my mind is not afraid of change. They don’t just welcome feedback, they seek it. They comfortably build a harmonious relationship with people in the organization, and outside of it, which is a contrast to some HR practitioners I know who tend to have an adversarial relationship with the other people in the organization. A good HR professional promotes alignment, not just compliance. Sadly, many of the HR professionals I know are still control freaks to the extent of people being afraid of them rather than respect them. Do you know what follows fear? Resentment. You don’t want an HR that is resented by employees. You want one whom people listen to and go to for their concerns.

Motivation

At the bottom of the iceberg is what drives an HR professional to develop one’s capacity to contribute to organizational success and the employees’ professional success. We have learned from various motivations theory that money is maintenance or a hygiene factor. In short, it shouldn’t be an issue. Let’s admit, our being a 3^rd world country, compensation will continue to be a basic and security need. Some HR professionals I know don’t seem to grow out of just securing their jobs. The HR in my mind is obsessed with pursuing organizational success and understands that the employees’ happiness is closely linked to it.

The Power of Training Follow Through Sessions

2019-06-30T21:42:00.001+08:00

It always pleases me when clients allow ExeQserve Consultants to touch base with participants again after a training and have them tell their stories on how they applied their learning in the workplace.

One of the things we at ExeQserve offers clients is a free follow through session. When we run Team Building Events, Leadership Training, or Coaching Workshops, we offer our client companies free follow through sessions. When they say yes, we integrate follow through in the design. The participants identify leadership development projects or re-entry action plans. They are given a fair amount of time to apply their learning and prepare to present the results during the follow up sessions. This is what we learned from offering this value-adding service.

A follow-up session separates the grains from the chaffs. This is especially true for Leadership Training. Follow through Sessions are exciting times for real leaders who worked on their projects and are pleased about their experience. We often hear reports of increased productivity. Raised revenues, and improved performance. Those who attend the training to comply with the HR’s instruction to attend make up lame excuses for not working on their projects. The lesson for us is this. Leaders respond to Leadership Training. Non-leaders are overwhelmed by it.
Follow through Sessions, reflects on the leadership in the organization and HR/Learning and Development Head more than it does the participants. We manage to have follow up sessions because some clients made the learners accountable for applying the learning in the workplace. There is this magical thinking that a training should change people, and that if people fail to change, it is the training’s fault. Training doesn’t change people, leadership does. Training provides the tools for change. Leadership makes people accountable for change.
Not all HR Managers or Training Managers are interested in a free follow through session. The sad part of the training practice in the Philippines is this, Many HR and Training Managers still don’t appreciate the magnitude of their roles, or if they do, they don’t have the leadership capacity to act on it.
A Follow through session builds people’s confidence in trying new things. I write this article in the hope that those who are keen about talent development integrate learning follow-up sessions as part of their learning and development strategy. For change to become permanent, it needs to become a habit. A single learning event can’t make people change. Repeated practice of what they learn does. We need to look at learning as journey of many steps and repetitions rather than an event that we tick off from our activities checklist.

I learned one powerful lesson from my last follow through session. Each of the participants said that what helped them succeed is consistent follow through which their leader is keen on doing to them. For people to learn, they have to be accountable for learning. For them to do be accountable, the leaders in the organization including HR need to find the leadership in them to make others accountable for their own leadership growth.

Bring ExeQserve Training to your organization to know how this can work for you.

Moving Towards Talent Development

2019-02-10T20:57:00.002+08:00

UPDATE: It's finally happening! PSTD is hosting the Talent Development Summit on May 31, 2019 at the PICC. If you are Head of Learning and Development, Head of HR or Manager who is keen on developing a culture of talent development in your organization, or a consultant responsible for the people development of many organizations, you should be part of this. Know more and share more. Please check this link for more details.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Board of Trustees of the Philippine Society for Talent Development (PSTD) formerly known as Philippine Society for Training and Development. What I share here is a personal opinion and not representative of the organization’s ideals and initiatives.

It’s time we do this! I believe it is time we break the barriers that hinder training or learning and development managers from really creating solutions to help people achieve their full potentials in the organization.

No, I don’t think Talent Development is another play with words like from human resource to human capital, or from training and development to learning and development. I think that if we make the right choices, those who will oversee talent development will truly bring people development in the forefront of organizational performance. I do think, however that for us to be able to do this, we need to change our mental model about the things we do today. For many organizations, we have this disjointed approach that makes us ineffective in what we do. We created all sorts of HR silos that don’t talk to each other. People in the organization can’t make heads or tails of what we do so they just blindly comply with whatever it is we think we are doing.

When PSTD announced the change in name, people started asking what Talent Development is and how it is different from training and development. I often compare talent development as a whole play ground while training as seesaw. In talent development, aside from training, we have other developmental systems we can put in place like, performance management, career and succession, knowledge management, culture building, coaching and mentoring, etc. However, now that I think about it, I think I’m wrong to use that playground metaphor. The reason is that metaphor still indicates that the talent development elements are not necessarily connected. I think that shouldn’t be the case. There is a need to develop an integrated, seamless and efficient system for talent development that starts the moment HR thinks of hiring a talent, to having that talent achieve his/her full potential in the organization. I would like to share here how I see it.

Competency Development – I believe that integrated talent development system should be resting on a solid framework. It is important for HR professionals to learn competency mapping, position and talent profiling, and assessing competencies so that they can identify what’s already there and what needs improving.

Recruitment as the start of talent development. Having clear organizational competency model, it will be easier to determine which ones are required before hiring decision is made and which one’s can be developed if potentials are there. A good competency-based assessment system should help us determine gaps and provide career development road map right at the onset.

Career-pathing starts at the onset. If the person who used to oversee training is now responsible for talent development, he/she will now have a vast means of well, developing talents. When the career path is set, learning and development initiatives are more tailor-fitted, but not only that. The talent development manager will now be more fully empowered to engage in all the 10-20-70 of it.

Performance Management implementation and administration is often separate from training and development. It is often handled by a different person or very seldom used as a tool for a concerted developmental effort. Embracing a talent development framework that connects recruitment, training, and performance management, among others will use this very powerful tool if wielded properly to align development efforts that can lead to performance improvement - the true reason why we have a performance management system in the first place.

Succession Management is one side of a coin, career development is the other. A good talent development strategy should lead to a deeper pool of talent.

Culture building is an essential ingredient in talent development. Without a culture of learning, without having all the leaders of the organization having the sense of ownership to do their part in talent development, this can easily swiftly become irrelevant and waste people’s time. I believe that if organization’s are to succeed in transitioning to talent development, those who champion this should offer solution in how to build the necessary culture that will make talent development thrive.

As head of the Programs and Professional Development committee of PSTD, I, together with like-minded HR and L&D professionals are embarking on a series of research and development work that will offer solution so we, who wish to embrace this role may succeed in truly developing talents in our organization. If you are interested in joining us, please let me know.

For the Next Time You Buy Training

2019-01-15T21:37:00.001+08:00

People in charge of planning and implementing training programs, those who look for training service providers are stewards of important human capital investments. Some of these sizable investments can easily go to waste if we do not make enough effort in making the right buying decisions, and if we fail to ensure that the learning is applied in the workplace. I’m a training consultant. I talk to a lot of HR practitioners and people in charge of training all the time. It’s easy to see when a client did not do his homework when ordering training. It is also clear to see when the person I'm talking to only cares about buying and not the quality of learning or opportunities for application. I’ll be frank. I hope this does not discourage you to seek my services.

Here are the signs:

They look for training titles not learning objectives
The look at topic outlines not training design
They look at the price not value for money
They book the training and then look for participants rather than the other way around
They don't care about follow through

Sounds familiar? Sounds like something you did recently? Don’t despair, we’ve all been there. However, I think we owe it to our company to do better. In this post, I wish to share what I believe we need to do so we can get the most out of our learning and development investments.

Don’t settle for training wish-list surveys in identifying training needs. There are a number of ways to more accurately identify learning needs. When you do that, you end up with a laundry list of training titles with no learning objectives. There are more useful sources. Among them is the company’s strategic plan, a well-designed performance management system, or if you have a competency-based system, a competency gaps assessment. If you don’t have any of this, you can start by asking your stakeholders questions like; what the target learners are having difficulty doing or achieving. What kind of skills maybe lacking? If they are unable to finish a project on time, don’t jump to the conclusion that they need project management training. There are many reasons for performance gaps. Learning gaps are just among them.
If you have a training calendar and you don’t have specific target participants for the training, you are already doing something wrong. I have seen it too many times! Those who need the training don’t attend for whatever reason. Those who are available end up attending the training, regardless if they need it or not. What a waste of money!
When you compare proposals, look at the learning objectives and see if they match your expectations. That’s hard to do if you haven’t established your own learning objectives. If you haven’t set your expectations, it will be easy to get distracted by over-promising learning objectives that intend to impress you rather than deliver. This is why those in charge of training management have to deepen their understanding of learning concepts and theories. There are just too many false prophets out there. Don’t be the gullible one.
As a former training manager, myself, and as someone who continue to receive proposals and promotions, I see a lot of training outlines that are packed like overloaded pizzas. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you might end up picking a course because it promises so much learning for such a short amount of time. There is a method in designing and outlining training topics. A good training designer structures the design so that the learning moves from awareness, to comprehension, to application, to analysis, to synthesis, to evaluation, or if they use the more modern version, reverse the last two elements. Many training are loaded with so much topics that they limit the opportunity for deeper learning. They also limit the use of methodologies other than lecture and presentation. This is why many trainers who don’t design their training well depend a lot on humor to keep their participants interested. As a result, learning is at the shallow awareness level.
Look for well-designed training. A well-designed one incorporates various methodologies that allow for formative evaluations. This means that the trainer uses training tools to facilitate learning and determine if participants are learning. In a well-designed training, the trainer becomes more than a subject matter expert, he/she becomes a real learning facilitator that helps the learners absorb the most from their experience. If you are paying for an expensive training whether, it is in-house or a public run, you are well within your right to ask how it will be facilitated. Ask away, demand answers. If they are not willing to give you the information you need, run away from them. A well designed training ties in what was learned in the classroom to what needs to be done after. A good trainer devises methods to solidify learning in a way that it is clear for the learners how to apply them in the workplace.

There is an enormous value to the persons in charge of buying training to learn the difference between good and bad training. When we know and apply ourselves to our role, the company benefits, and most importantly, the employees too!

If you are keen in developing your competency in learning and development, I invite you to join the Philippine Society for Training and Development

Finding Your HR Voice in Helping Shape Organizational Culture

2019-01-14T21:09:00.000+08:00

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter Drucker

I totally agree with Peter Drucker here. Your strategies and plans can easily be upset by poor organizational culture. Therefore, it is important to be more deliberate in building an organizational culture. It starts with the leaders. Someone once told me that if you want to change an organization, start by changing the minds of the leaders. Now, that's easier said than done! HR, whom I believe should act as the organization's super ego has its work cut out for it!
So, HR, what can we do? I believe we can do a lot. Here are a few things I have in mind.

First, find your voice. This is the most important first challenge. No use screaming at the top of your lungs if no one is interested in hearing you. Dave Ulrich, the foremost HR guru speaks of one important HR competency and that is of a Credible activist. Credible activists are HR leaders who are capable of calling people to action because of who they are and what they represent. Three things are critical to persuasion; ethos, pathos, and logos. Here's how it applies to our HR work

Ethos - we like to listen to people who know what they're talking about; people who have the credibility of matching wisdom with action. Credibility building is important. We won't allow a person to do surgery if that person is not a doctor. We won't allow just anyone to fly a plane just because he thinks the airplane dashboard looks familiar. Credibility comes from constantly seeking knowledge and applying those knowledge. I don't think a person can be called an HR person if one is not willing take the all necessary journey to full HR-hood. Sure, you can be a person assigned to HR but I refuse to call you an HR person, if you refuse to learn the ropes. I mean as far as culture building is concerned, there's so much to learn! There's human, organizational, and business dynamics, leadership, change, risk, communication, etc. Learn!!!

Logos - In my many interactions with people in HR, I notice a frequent pitfall. They make recommendation based on "because other companies do it too." That just won't cut it! We accept ideas because they appeal to reason or logic! If your managers accept proposals on such a flimsy premise, they are not worth their salt! If we are to go to management for a change that will require a hefty amount of investment, we need to speak of what problem it is addressing, or what opportunity we are chasing. We need to speak of return on investment. That means we need to know what we speak of when we tell management we need to invest in organizational alignment, a competency-based HR, a performance management system, etc. If we don't have the willingness learn and present the business feasibility of our initiatives, we'll fall flat on our face.

Pathos - how is your ability to appeal to emotion? Leaders capable of directing a movement are great communicators who are capable emotionally connecting with their audience. Therefore it is important for HR professionals to learn to communicate well. It's not enough to just know the HR trade, it's essential to communicate, demonstrate empathy, sympathy and compassion. When we talk about organizational vision, mission and core values, it is important to draw from within each of the organizational leaders, and individual employees if possible. It is important for people to relate with company's culture at a personal level. It's hard to communicate with authenticity if you don't own what you're talking about. If as HR Leaders we are able to facilitate the culture building by drawing out the shared sentiments of the people, it is easier to get emotional buy-in for them.

I like what Bill O'Brien said; "The quality of the intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor." HR professionals are intervenors. Our interior condition improves when we open ourselves up to learning. I don't think there's any way around it.

If you need help Facilitating Organizational Alignment, Check out the link.

Why Build a Culture of Recognition?

2019-01-07T09:44:00.004+08:00

HR Professionals go to great lengths trying to put together employee engagement programs. We know all the traditionals; Christmas party, company outing, sports fests, etc. We also include all sorts of rewards and recognition programs like incentives, merit increases, employees of the month or year, etc. With all these efforts, employees can easily get disengaged if the primary factor for their engagement fails to well… engage them.

Based on Herzberg's research, Recognition is one of the top employee motivators that a manager or a company can invest in.

According to Gallup, managers who fail to give feedback fail to engage 98% of their employees. But those who do give feedback based on an employee’s strengths reduce disengagement in their teams to under 1%.

Great managers recognize the importance of employee engagement in achieving organizational success. When employees are engaged, they feel profound connection with the company, take ownership of its goals and do their best to contribute to its success. When they are disengaged, they sleep-walk through the day or act out their unhappiness.

Keeping employees engaged is an everyday challenge that managers must succeed in to get the most out of each employee. To do this, they need to recognize that factors, including their behavior in the workplace, impact on employee engagement.

This Gallup Question, “In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?”, is a powerful reminder of what managers can do to improve motivation and engage employees.

This is the reason why employee engagement surveys feature questions about how members perceive their supervisors. The questions might as well be a checklist for behaviors that leaders must demonstrate if they are to engage employees.

In this graphics, I encircled all the factors that recognition influences. I encircled the obvious one in red, the rest in black. That's 9 out of 12 factors that are positively affected when managers appropriately recognize employee performance and behaviors!

In my conversations with clients and managers, I often hear them say that the reason why they don’t give recognition is because their employees haven’t earned them. They say that they are results-oriented, and that unless there is good result then, recognition is not deserved. However, there are many ways to give recognition that lead to better results. When we become too stiff with our recognition, we fail to fuel positive attitudes and behaviors.

I run a workshop on the Arts and Science of Recognition, and what I learned from running that workshop is that many managers have mindsets and lack of necessary skills that hinder them from giving out recognition. They struggle to give meaningful, timely, appropriate recognition consistently. I also realize that there is a thinking that recognizing is a sole responsibility of supervisors and managers which is further from the truth. I think that building a culture of recognition empowers people to appreciate efforts and aligned behaviors at all levels and from all directions.

At ExeQserve, everyone is encouraged to recognize behaviors and efforts that are aligned with the company values. This our way of motivating and encouraging everyone to maintain alignment. We're very serious about recognition and values alignment.

I believe it is a worthwhile endeavor for HR to do some paradigm shifting in the way we put together our Employee Engagement Strategies. If you are interested in building a culture of recognition in your organization, please let me know. Also check my training on the Arts and Science of Recognition

The Effect of Competency-based HR in People Management and Development

2019-01-02T09:13:00.000+08:00

More and more companies are beginning to realize that if people are to contribute to or deliver desired results, they must be competent to do the things they have to do. Companies are moving towards competency-based HR approaches to find the right persons for the job, communicate the “hows” and “whats” of work, and provide the necessary learning opportunities for them to develop their competencies. People in some companies are getting promoted because they show readiness for the new role, not just great performance in their current roles. We have proven time and again that being successful in one’s current job is no guarantee that the person will perform as well in a new role requiring a different set of competencies.

This competency iceberg model shows a holistic view and relationship of the factors involving competencies. It is important for those who get into hiring people and developing their competencies to understand how all these factors play a part in a person's performance. When hiring or designing interventions, it is important to ask; what attributes are necessary for demonstrating the competencies that drive performance?

I’m looking forward to a future where HR professionals are aware that some of their past beliefs don’t hold water anymore. When you apply competency-based HR, a lot of things change. It doesn’t make the work of HR easier, it makes our work more relevant. Here’s how I foresee it.

HR Functions	Traditional	Competency-based
Recruitment	· Academic background · Years of experience · Intelligence · Skills	· Demonstrated knowledge · Demonstrate skills · Proof of positive attitude and habits · Developmental needs are identified at the onset
Learning and Development	· TNAs based on surveys training Wish-list · Hours of training is a key measure · Training Calendars · Training as cost	· Learning needs are identified based on competency gaps · L&D approaches are varied and more strategic · Focus is on application of new competencies in the workplace · L&D as investment
Performance Management	· Results-oriented or activity-oriented · One-size-fits-all · Focus is on appraising and rewarding performance	· Balance between results and competency expectations · Performance Management tools are customized to communicate clear and specific expectations · Focus is on promoting and developing competencies
Career Development and Succession Planning	· Seniority is a major factor · Highly intuitive · Often unclear or absent	· Readiness is assessed based on a candidate’s ability to develop and demonstrate a predetermined set of competencies · Developmental interventions are focused

I’ve always believed that the most important developmental jobs of HR involve hiring people who have the most important competencies in place, and the potential to grow competencies essential for their future in the organization. HR should be able to provide the necessary developmental interventions to enhance employees’ competency, engage them to take interest in their growth while in the organization.

I believe it pays for HR professionals to equip themselves to facilitate building a competency-based HR system. If you need help, let me know.

Why Organizations Should Invest In Assertive Communication Training - Edwin Ebreo

2018-12-11T23:13:00.001+08:00

” Conversation is the most powerful learning technology ever invented. Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation.” - Jay Cross

The quality of conversation, however depends on the organization's communication culture and the ability of the individuals to communicate effectively.

Let me share a few experiences that I’m sure you can relate with.

I went to a company in Bicol to present ExeQserve’s Training program. I was talking about the importance of assertiveness when the CEO blurted; "That’s nonsense! My job is to tell my people what to do, their job is to follow and not question. Why would I want them to talk back to me?!"
Whenever I run a Trainers’ Training Course, I would ask the participants who are trainers themselves, what kind of challenges they experience when facilitating training. Here are the top answers; know-it-all (people who share their thoughts or experiences), participants who ask a lot of questions, participants who challenge the trainer.

Shameless plug: ExeQserve is running an Assertive Communication Training on August 10-11. Check out the details below

This typically happens at the end of the meeting; the leader will ask the attendees if they have any questions, the answer would be no. The leader will ask if there are any other suggestions, again, the answer would be no. The leader will again ask, if the attendees think they can commit to the agreed action, the answer would be a resounding yes. After the meeting, the participants start asking questions about things they did not understand during the meeting and start commenting about agreements made. Some even become prophets of doom, predicting that the ideas won’t work.

In a design engineering company, I asked one of the design managers if they are going to compete on a new technology, the manager said, “you know what, an engineer presented a prototype a few years ago, but when the decision-makers started asking questions and aired their concerns about the marketability of the product, the engineer folded and gave up on his project. Now, it may be too late for us."

There are plenty of studies that prove Filipinos in general are not assertive. We avoid conflict, we don’t like being questioned, specially if the person asking the question is seen as lower in rank. It has its advantages. It speeds up managerial decision-making and projects harmony at the surface. I believe however that it creates more harm than good. A lot of money, effort and opportunities are lost just because a person said yes instead of no, or said no instead of yes, filtering information and not engaging in productive debates, or giving constructive feedback.

There’s a lot to gain from better flow of communication – better collaboration, better coordination, which leads to better cooperation. Talking about all these however is easier said than done. We are talking about a life-time of programming here that needs to be changed. If that change is to happen, an intervention is needed. We need to be trained for Assertive Communication!

First, people need to understand how assertiveness is different from passiveness, aggressiveness, and passive-aggressiveness. They need to learn how to shift their paradigm from their current preferred approach to communication to a more assertive way. This is not easy because fear is a factor in the way we communicate. We are passive because we are afraid, we don’t have power. We are aggressive because we are afraid of losing control. We are passive-aggressive, because we are afraid of accountability. Assertiveness requires courage, a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to take risk with others.

Communication Rights and Responsibilities

They need to learn about listening and managing conflict. Now, learning these requires practice. People need to learn how to assertively have a conversation with their boss, their peers and their staff. Creating a culture of effective communication requires that everyone is on the same page about assertive communication norms.

As ours is typically a highly paternalistic culture that promotes downward communication and discourages constructive feedback, leaders need to create an environment that promotes psychological safety to embolden people to do two things; speak as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong. When people find the right combination of confidence and humility they become assertive communicators.

Want to know how to equip your people for assertive communication, call ExeQserve at 8933199 or take a look at our Assertive Communication Training in the Philippines.

Why Subject Matter Expertise is Not Enough

2018-12-05T08:58:00.000+08:00

We all had that experience. We had that college professor who has PhD, multi-awarded, well-known in the field, sucks at teaching. You also must remember that professor, that teacher who inspired and motivated you to learn, made you pay attention and engaged you to learn. Having subject matter expertise and having the ability to help others learn require two different set of skills.

But we often fall into that trap. Many universities hire professors based on educational and professional attainment, not teaching skills, not their ability to facilitate learning. In companies, we tap people who know the job well and make them trainers without equipping them with the necessary skills to design a strategy for conducting training and facilitating the learning process. It’s often a hit or a miss. Some people are natural, they are engaging, they are able to logically arrange their topics and come up with creative ways of making learning fun and easy for the learners. Others will need to be equipped otherwise they will read from their presentation slides until the participants eyes roll up to the back of their heads.

I’ve seen this too often. I see it in conventions, public seminars, even in-house training where the resource persons are tapped for their subject matter expertise, not their ability to facilitate learning. When they fail to engage, the learners are at the losing end.

This is why I think it is important for subject matter experts to invest in the other aspects of facilitating learning. I believe those who are passionate about sharing what they know should make a serious effort to deepen their understanding of the learning process, theories and concepts. I also believe that it is important to learn about learning activity designs that lead to optimal learning. Of course, all these are necessary in applying the right learning facilitation approaches and training delivery. Lastly, As far as sharpening the saw is concerned, it helps to develop some awesome skills in engaging the learner. Learn skills in attending to the learners, observing behaviors, asking powerful questions, and most importantly, how to effectively listen.

When the subject matter expert is well rounded in his/her ability to effect learning, the learners get the most of their investments of time, money, and effort. S/he also successfully helps change a person’s life.

Want to develop your company subject matters' expertise in training, call ExeQserve at 8933199 or check out our Train the Trainer Program.

The Additional Benefits of a Succession Management Program

2018-12-03T21:28:00.001+08:00

We all know that the ultimate benefit of establishing a succession program is having a deep bench of talents ready to takeover key positions if and when needed. As they say, however, the journey can sometimes even more beneficial than the destination and I’d say that’s true for Succession Management.

Check out ExeQserve's Succession Management Training

How else is having a Succession Program beneficial to your organization, let me count the ways.

Better Recruitment - A good succession management program enables the organization to identify the competencies needed for key jobs. If the program is comprehensive enough to include not just the C-level executives but the managers, the company gets to have the profile for all managerial or leadership roles. This can be useful in recruiting. A good recruitment process helps identify the competencies the candidates already possess and the ones they still need to develop. This paves the way for better career development planning for the hired ones.
Clearer Learning and Development Path – Competency-based individual development planning clarifies what the employees need to develop, hence they are deliberate in their pursuit of learning as they journey towards their career destination in the organization.
More Custom-fitted learning and development strategy – Nothing beats a clearly defined set of competencies as basis for learning and development. Matching your employees’ individual development plans with your learning interventions, and then having the right system or tools to assess learning and application is a training and development dream come true!
Development-oriented Performance Management System – Many of the performance management system practices are focused on KPIs and using them as basis for reward. Nothing wrong with that, but a well-defined succession program, paves the way for identifying performance criteria and feedback mechanism giving managers a more holistic tool for performance improvement and competency development.

Building a Coaching and Mentoring Culture – Here’s where it gets really delicious! When managers are involved in succession management, they take on the coach and mentor role. Providing them the necessary training gives them the incentive to use it because they know they are developing their own pool of potential successors.
Better retention - There are evidence that when employees look forward to growing professionally in their organization, they tend to stay. A well-communicated succession program tells promising employees they have a future in the organization which makes them think twice about leaving.
Leadership Development - A good succession program develop leaders not just as successors but the incumbents as effective leaders and people developers.

There really is a lot to gain from building a well-designed succession management program. If you need help putting one up for your organization. Call ExeQserve at 8933199. Or check out or In-house Succession Management Training.

The PSTD Master Trainer Certification Program

2018-12-03T10:02:00.001+08:00

I am proud to share that I play an active role in the development and now the implementation of the Philippine Society for Training and Development Master Trainer Certification Program. If you are a training professional and want to validate your practice, I enjoin you to explore this certification.

This program is a product of painstaking efforts of numerous training and development professionals and thought leaders in the industry. The development span 3 years and finally it’s here. I wrote this blog to encapsulate its what, why and how. I also want to share what’s ahead in case you are interested to play an active part in this movement.

The Master Trainer Certification Program is aimed at helping elevate the learning and development practice in the Philippines by establishing professional standards and providing the means for training and development professionals to meet those standards. It has several objectives as stated in the Policy. They are:

Establish a structure that ensures the systematic and deliberate development of certified training professionals
Establish certification categories that cater to the various interests of member Training and Development Professionals and organizations
Enable PSTD to continually enhance its training and development services and deliver its curriculum by aligning its training programs with the standards established in this policy
Enable certified trainers to continually develop their proficiency and improve their practice through a system that develops, assesses and recognizes training and development competencies.

There are 5 Certification Categories:

The Assessment Process is evidence-based. Applicants will show proof of competency by presenting portfolio, conduct demo facilitation as needed, and undergo an interview process before an assessment panel. This emphasizes that we certify practice not knowledge. Certified professionals should be applying what they know and not just… know.

The all-important question you must be asking right now is why you should pursue certification. This is not a PRC licensing thing, and who is PSTD to say that you are certified or not to do what you are doing? My personal answer is you should! This is peer-reviewed certification. PSTD is the premier learning and development association in the Philippines. Also, we aim to get this certification recognized by other organizations as well. We eye CSC, TESDA, PMAP, IBPAP, and later on International organizations. I passionately believe that we are at the cusp of something big for the training and development practice in the country and all of us in this profession should take part.

Who should pursue this certification? The quick answer is all people who have training and development responsibility! Learning and Development Managers, Training specialists, Subject Matter Experts, Technical Trainers, Training Consultants! If you are a Training Manager, the competency model gives you an instant benchmark for building the training competencies of everyone in the organization who need to up their training game. Learning and development is such a huge investment not to take seriously, right?! If you are a consultant, the recognition adds to your reputation. It's a way of telling your clients that your practice is recognized by the society.

Wait, there’s more!

The MTC, as we like to call it shall trigger a lot of development in the organization. We are realigning all the current developmental programs, continually fine-tuning the systems and processes of assessment. We are also looking into more advanced developmental opportunities for the members. This will be a journey rather than a one-time event. It will need the help and contribution of people who are inspired and motivated to make this thing a success. As of today, I have already secured the commitment of a number of training professionals who will help by joining the Programs committee and the teams with specific goals of observing and improving the assessment process, aligning the programs, doing research and development and marketing. If you are excited by all these, I invite you to join our committee and play and active part. If you are not yet a member or need to renew, this is the best time. The best time, indeed.

If you want to know more about the Certification program. click this link.

You may download the application guidelines here.

Tune in for more articles on this subject matter!

More photos from the November 28 Foundational Course!

Monitoring and Evaluation, the Training and Development Waterloo

2018-12-02T09:47:00.000+08:00

I have been working in the field of training and development for more than 20 years. I’ve managed several training units, managed learning and development initiatives as HR manager, and as a consultant for 15 years, worked with training managers from different industries. In all those years and experience, I have seen very few training managers or departments that have decent monitoring and evaluation strategy. I was as guilty as the multitude. I learned monitoring and evaluation a few years after I started consulting. It was born out of my frustration of training initiatives’ failure to prove change of behavior and performance.

Where are we at right now? I think the advent of technology is changing the situation. Learning management Systems or LMS, the really good ones provide tools for managers to monitor application of learning in the workplace. Some companies are developing good four-level evaluation strategies. However, the practice has not reached tipping point in the country yet. In the number sessions I did for practitioners in the county, I still see very few hands when I ask people if they have a good training and development monitoring and evaluation system in place.

This model shows how Managers should match their measures with strategies to ensure achievement of M&E objectives

Why is this an important issue? I think having a good monitoring and evaluation system is not just about having a system to know if your learning and development intervention is working, I think it does more than that. A well-designed system, one that clearly defines the role of HR/L&D, Top Management, Line Managers, and Learners in ensuring application of learning, makes people more accountable for the part that they play in the process. Good M&E systems link learning objectives to performance, and performance to business objectives. This gives a clear line of sight between business priorities and employees’ capabilities.

I believe a good learning and development manager does more than line up training schedules for the year. The most important job is to identify learning needs, match interventions with those learning needs, and develop a strategy that makes everyone responsible for seeing to it that learning translates to individual and business performance.

Question is, when are we going to start liking that idea?!

Shouldn't We be Worried?

2018-10-14T15:51:00.001+08:00

This news article from ABS-CBN News captured my attention today. It is not the first time that people caught errors in books used in schools. I saw another article written by Mr. Antonio Calipjo Go, academic supervisor, Marian School of Quezon City back in May. His findings? Here's a quote from the article: "The 363-page Grade 3 “English Learner’s Material” written by 15 “authors” and reviewed by three “reviewers” has 430 errors, while the Grade 3 “Araling Panlipunan Learner’s Material” written by Manalo, Capunitan, Galarosa and Sampang — a veritable joke book that is so funny simply because of its sheer stupidity — contains 1,308 errors!"

This problem has festered the Department of Education for a long time. It makes one wonder if they still consider it a problem. It baffles me that a government agency responsible for educating our children, the future of our nation, can be so sloppy in their work of ensuring that our children get factual information. I am supposing that highly educated people are employed in that agency, so why these sloppiness?

As an HR professional, I am deeply concerned! These children will soon enter the world of work. What will happen to them if they are getting such bad education? What can we do to make this government agency more accountable for the quality of education they provide our children? Maybe we need to think further ahead when it comes to talent development and ensure that the children, future of our country are properly equipped to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Any suggestion?

Are You Inadvertently Making Coaching Look Bad?

2018-09-23T19:15:00.002+08:00

The purpose of coaching is to help people achieve their full potential. The job of the coach; whether this person is a Manager, a supervisor or a professional coach, is to facilitate the process of discovering one’s own ability to capitalize on one’s strengths, make oneself accountable for facing up to a challenge, have the resolve to make decision and stay with it.

Many companies are using the term coaching to address behavioral or performance issues too frequently that people are starting to associate the word coaching to scolding (although they don’t actually get scolded… I hope) or worse, punishment. So, imagine how an employee would feel as he or she is called for coaching. The typical question people ask is “I wonder what did I do this time”, or “This is what I get for making such mistake”.

We need to stop using this term this way and make use of coaching fully as a way to help employees achieve high performance by focusing not only on their weakness but most importantly on their strengths.

For this to happen, we need leaders who are not only equipped for coaching but most importantly, leaders who are motivated to bring the best out of their employees. We need to stop using coaching as a contingency or corrective measure to put an employee back in line.

Managers or coaches need to find better opportunities for coaching. Here are a few suggestions:

Helping employees create a personal career development plan
Facilitate goal setting and action planning
Problem-solving and decision making
Strengths development
Strengthening team work by coaching an entire team

There are many developmental opportunities for using coaching. Make sure that you are using it more than just as a corrective measure.

Dimple Star, MIASCOR, PCOO; What Can we Learn as HR Leaders?

2018-03-24T09:50:00.001+08:00

In recent news;

Dimple Star recently received a 30-day suspension order from the LTFRB. This happened after one of their buses figured in accident that resulted to 19 deaths and 17 injuries. The government agency conducted an inspection that showed the company’s buses are ill-maintained. This is not the first time something like this happened. Sadly, it won’t likely be the last.
4,000 MIASCOR employees are bound to lose their job because of a few employees who stole items from OFW baggage.
PCOO is again the laughing stock of the Internet due to a photo of their company ID that went viral in social media. This is not the first time. At one time, they mistakenly used the logo of Dole Philippines when they should have used the logo of D.O.L.E. , the Labor Department.

What is common here? I’d say culture. An organization’s culture is the manifestation of its values and behaviors that contribute to its social and psychological environment. It represents what is allowed and/or encouraged. All organizations have culture, but many leaders know or care little about shaping them. This is why, I think HR plays an important part in shaping the organization’s culture. Here are my recommended steps following John Kotter’s Change Model:

Create a sense of urgency for change. Cite numerous examples of companies or organizations that suffered the fate of the three organizations I mentioned. There are so many, you won’t run out of sources. Help management recognize the need to start a deliberate effort towards culture building or culture change. You can also send this article if you like.
Form a powerful coalition for change. Get executive sponsorship, rally the managers towards building a desired culture that lasts. Have a conversation about organizations with good or bad reputation. Compare your organization and recognize opportunities for improvement. Get their buy-in on the need for change.
Envision Change. You and the rest of the organizational leaders need to agree on what kind of culture you want to build. One that sustains the company and protects the interests of its stakeholders including the customers, especially the customers.
Communicate desired change. Talk to people about how things that do not contribute to growth can endanger the whole organization including themselves. There are so many cases to reference from. Explain how change performance and habits can only result to better future for your organization. Explain the importance of not tolerating misalignment and mediocre behavior. Model the way in demonstrating proactiveness and other behaviors you want others to manifest.
Remove barriers to change. And what are these barriers to change, you may ask? Resistance due to lack of buy-in, hesitance due to lack of competence to act on the desired change. Confusion due to lack of a clear road map. As you plan to change the organization’s culture, you will need to develop a road map that capacitates and motivates people to align with the change. Embrace concepts like Kaizen, 6S, ISO standardization, business process re-engineering, Six Sigma. Anything that raises awareness and habits of performance.
Generate short term wins. Recognize early adapters. Point out positive and blooming changes. Reward people who demonstrate alignment. Broadcast initial successes to motivate people to pursue more changes.
Build on the change. See what’s working and not working. Learn lessons from initial implementations. Ask people for their inputs on how much further we can go with improvements.
Institute the change. Make the new behavior part of the culture by teaching it to new entrants and leaders. Ensure that it is part of your on-boarding program, your leadership and management development initiatives, your employment policies, general assemblies. I have a client who promotes safety awareness by including a “safety minute” as the first part of their meeting where a participant talks about a safety practice or issue and what should be done. Also, ensure that changes are reviewed for further improvement. Be watchful of what you recognize and what you tolerate, because what you tolerate becomes your norm.

Imagine, if the three organizations I mentioned have measures that encourage positive behavior or discourage mediocre behavior. They may have not suffered what they are experiencing now. I hope we all learn something from their experience.

If you are interested and recognizes that you need help in your culture-building initiative, reach out to me through 8933199.

Lessons Learned from Training Trainers

2018-02-25T10:08:00.000+08:00

I conduct a good number of training, from leadership, management, strategic thinking, customer service, assertiveness, personal mastery, creativity, teamwork, HROD, to coaching and mentoring. I customize programs based on the unique needs of my clients. One of the most challenging and most fulfilling of them for me is training trainers. I’ll tell you why. When I conduct training for trainers, I recognize the multiplying effect of my efforts. If I do well, I could help trainers help other people become effectively equipped to do their jobs. It is challenging, especially when you deal with trainers who have developed bad training habits. Many have this notion that if you’re eloquent, funny, and can present well, you are training well. If people are entertained, agreeing with you, inspired by what you said, and gave you a high rating because they appreciate everything that you said, they are learning. I just don’t believe that is true. So here are a few things I learned and tried to do when I facilitate training for trainers.

A good training is a well-designed training. Some subject matter experts line up their topics logically but fail to apply the right methodologies to make the learning process work. This is why I spend a good amount of time, helping trainers appreciate the fundamental concepts of learning and how they apply in the training design process, so they can design courses that lead to better learner engagement and synthesis level learning.
Listen to Bloom – Benjamin Bloom developed the taxonomy of learning and it’s a great gauge of how deep trainers go with their training. At cognitive domain, the levels are knowledge or awareness, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A good training in my opinion, reaches synthesis and evaluation. Many seminars I attended go as far as attempt for comprehension. If you are a subject matter expert and your audience understand and appreciate what you said, you can get good evaluation rating, but many of them wouldn’t know how they will apply what they learned if they didn’t have an opportunity to practice applying it with the guidance of a trainer. It’s like explaining how a bicycle works, how beneficial they are to your health, how fun they are to ride, and go through the steps of riding a bicycle without giving them a chance to try riding one. People will feel excited about the idea of owning a bicycle but will not have the confidence to try and ride it. At the very least, I think training should go as far as application level. Which means they've tried riding the bicycle, fail, go back to the saddle and ride again.
A seminar is not a training - A speaker in a seminar is a resource person, hence I call my self a trainer or learning facilitator rather than a resource speaker. A seminar is a formal presentation where resource speakers present their topics of expertise while the audience listen and process the knowledge they gain if they can. The resource speaker wouldn't know the difference if the audience really learned or not. A trainer facilitates learning by helping participants learn a concept and guide them through the development of necessary knowledge, skills, and attitude to do a task. A seminar presenter uses lecture and presentation, while a trainer employs various methodologies not just to entertain or engage their audience, but to use the best learning tools to help learners learn. A resource speaker basically says, here’s what I know, do what you want with it. A trainer walks with the learners through their learning journey and helps them cross each learning milestone.
Presentation and platform skills are helpful but not sufficient. It sure is helpful, but one skill that trainers need to learn more than that is facilitation of learning. The range goes from walking the learners through the steps of getting things done, to helping them process their learning through conversations, reflections, abstractions and learning decisions. Some people think that if they have stage presence, can carry a crowd, have them tap the shoulder of their seatmates, and stimulate their affects, they’re good trainers. They’re good public speakers who can entertain and momentarily inspire a crowd, but if the crowd goes home or back to work not knowing what to do with what they heard or saw during the learning event, they didn’t learn. If they didn’t learn, maybe they weren’t trained.
Training is done not when the event is over but when the learners have learned. In one speaking engagement, a participant approached me and said thank you and that he learned a lot. I said you haven’t learned anything. At best, what I did was make you aware of what you need to do. When you decide to apply the knowledge, you gained from the seminar, make mistakes and improve from there, go back to me and say how much you’ve learned. When I conduct trainers’ training, I walk the participants through the learning activity design process, get them to practice presentation and facilitation. At the end of the training, they would have designed a course, and demonstrated how to present and facilitate. I would have a gauge of how much they have really learned from the program aside from the smiley sheets that fill out in the end. Some participants would complain that my lessons are quite challenging, and they feel they exerted a lot of effort. I would reply by asking, but how much have you learned? Can you quantify it? They almost always can.

Learning is an internal process. It is activated by the learner's decision to learn. The job of the trainer is to create the condition to help the learner gain the confidence to pursue learning. That's at the back of my mind every time I facilitate training, and that's what I try to help trainers learn whenever I conduct a training for trainers.

If you want to know more about how I can help your company trainers develop the necessary learning design and facilitation skills for optimal learning, please contact my company exeQserve through 459-9603 or visit ExeQserve Website. You may also join us on July 25 to 27 for a three-day Training the Trainer Workshop.

Developing an Integrated Competency-Based HR System

2018-01-29T18:54:00.001+08:00

It makes a lot of sense!

Mapping the competency needs of the organization and making sure that people’s competencies are aligned with the company’s strategic direction is a good route to take. But it takes more than providing the necessary competency-based learning intervention to make people demonstrate the expected behaviors at work. It takes a comprehensive and integrated HR strategy to build a competent organization.

It all starts with determining the necessary competencies to push the company forward towards its goals. It helps to recognize what people should be doing and what kind of behaviors they should be demonstrating.

Hiring people with the right competencies or have the necessary aptitude for developing them is an essential part of the process. I have always said that a wrong hire can not be corrected by training. It helps to start with hiring the right people. The problem with using competency models to screen out candidates is, it is possible for your hiring yield to decline because you’ve become more stringent in your screening. It helps to have a strategy for attracting and getting the necessary talents on board. When you start your competency-based HR journey in recruitment, you might be able to save some money for filling competency gaps through learning and development.

There will always be a need for learning and development initiatives. As the organization adopts new strategies, people must learn new competencies. Developing a strategic learning and development plan should support the company’s goals by equipping people to demonstrate the necessary competencies at work. Learning, however is not the be-all-and-end-all of competency development. It takes follow through, coaching and mentoring to develop the necessary habits that yield result. This is the reason why, competency-based performance management should be aligned with the company’s competency development initiatives.

There is a need to rethink performance management. A lot of global companies are dumping their annual appraisal for more regular feedback to aid performance development. I believe that a competency-based approach can help managers make expectations clear and performance feedback, even clearer.

This is the reason why I designed and developed three training programs to help HR and OD Managers in developing their competency-based HR Systems. It is not yet complete. I started with competency-based L&D in January, I’m running another one in May, next will be Competency-based Recruitment which is already slated in March and, finally, Competency-based Performance Management training in April.

If you are keen in developing your company’s competency-based program and you don’t know where to start, I suggest that you join me on these following dates and click the images for registration details.

The Case for Competency-based Recruitment

2018-01-14T20:18:00.001+08:00

Know more about ExeQserve's Competency-based Recruitment Training

Many organizations now use competency models to develop talents in their organizations. Without a strategy for recruitment that utilizes the same competency model, however, their talent development initiatives will have limited success. That’s because, as I have always said, a wrong hire will not be corrected by training. There are competencies that require some fundamental abilities that should be found before making a hiring decision. If you hire a manager who does not have the aptitude for strategic thinking, training that person will have limited if not no result. It would be like watering a soil with no seed in it.

Having a competency-based recruitment strategy on the other hand, can help in the success of a company’s competency-based learning and development program by providing the necessary raw materials of people or talents to develop. It also helps by lessening the need for training if the competencies being sought are already visible during the screening thereby lowering the cost of training overall. If aptitudes necessary for demonstration of competencies are found during screening, talent development initiatives become more effective because the learners respond better to the learning.

I must say that the starting point in competency-based talent development is finding the right talent to develop through hiring. Finding the right talent means finding job fit; people who have the needed technical and leadership competencies to do the job, and possess the competencies that are core and aligned with the culture of the organization. There are a number of things that need to be done in order to achieve this;

A method of identifying the needed core, technical and behavioral competencies for each position;
A strategy for “casting a wider net,” or sourcing because competency-based recruitment means having a more stringent screening process that weed out unqualified candidates that would have been otherwise, hired simply because they have the needed years of experience and familiarity with the work;
A set of screening process to surface the needed competencies if they are present in the candidates for the job. This means having paper-pencil tests or computer based tests to determine aptitude, and behavior-based interviews to determine if those aptitudes have been applied in the past, having the idea that past behaviors predict future performance;
Having the right on-boarding program to ensure engagement of talents as early as possible and induct them in the organization’s culture; and
A way to equip all those involved in the hiring process to use the tools available for profiling, sourcing, screening and on-boarding talents.

Putting together a competency-based recruitment process can be quite taxing. I’ve gone through that task and what I want to do now is share the strategies and tools that I’ve developed in the past.

Check out ExeQserve's Forthcoming Training on Competency-Based Recruitment below.

It takes a collaborative effort between HR and the rest of the management team to build the competency-based recruitment system and make it work. For everyone to contribute well, they need to be properly equipped with knowledge and skills. They also need to buy into the process and take ownership of the role they play in sourcing and screening. If you need help equipping your management team with the necessary tools, I encourage you to take a look at ExeQserve's Competency-based Recruitment Strategy Training.

HR as in Human Relations

2017-12-10T09:21:00.000+08:00

The first time I heard the term HR was when the company I worked for decided to change the name of Personnel Department to HR Department. I honestly thought it meant Human Relations. I also thought it was a great idea. It all make sense! I thought HR is in the business of building and strengthening human relationships in the organization, so the ignorant and inexperience me thought, brilliant! I was a bit disappointed that it was a mere play of words, a relabeling of the term personnel administration.

The thought of HR meaning human relations was never lost on me. I’ve always thought that it was a very important job of HR. The more I think about it, the more I feel that our job is less about ensuring compliance but more about building a strong relationship that promotes collaboration, coordination and cooperation. The word that comes to my mind is neither respect nor fear but trust. I believe that if there’s more trust, there’s going to be more respect and fear is not needed. I made a causal loop to visualize the cause and effect of trust in the many things that HR does in the workplace and how it impacts on the organization.

So, here’s the causal loop explained; If trust in HR is high, people’s willingness to cooperate is high, when cooperation is high, issues resolved is high, when people see that issues get resolved, the quality of communication improves as well. When people know they can talk to HR, the amount of collaboration increases as well. It goes for all the other loops.

The next question would be, how can HR build trust? People has to see us as a Partner rather than a mall cop or a school principal, or a compliance officer. As a partner, we tap on our formal authority less and our ability to ask humble inquiries on issues that matter more. Edgar H. Schein wrote the book, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. It shows how asking for help and inquiring is more powerful than telling. This means that instead of prescribing solutions to problems or issues, HR goes into facilitation of conversation that leads to co-created solutions and it starts with questions like why is this happening? or how do you see this issue? or how do we solve it? Asking these questions without waiting to pounce on an opportunity to force your own solution. This of course, does not apply in all situations but it applies to many situations. More even handed conversations lead to better understanding and respect of what each brings to the table. When people see that we are actually listening rather pretending to listen so we can be entitled to being listened to (does that make sense?), there will be better and more authentic listening from all parties, which leads to us appreciating people’s inputs better and them experiencing the same with us.

The source of compliance is authority, the source of alignment is leadership. I believe HR people need to be better leaders. To be better leaders we need to learn how to be better at relating to and with fellow humans. We need to do this deliberately. Very few people wake up one day endowed with great human relations skills. If you feel that you need learn these things, start your journey now!

The Role of HR in Building a Culture of Trust

2017-12-03T21:32:00.002+08:00

There are a number of books written to emphasize the value of trust in an organization. Patrick Lencioni wrote “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” where he highlighted that trust is the foundation of teamwork and that the absence of it is a dysfunction that leads to other dysfunctions. Stephen Covey wrote the book “The Speed of Trust where he emphasized "The ability to establish, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders – customers, business partners, investors and coworkers – is the key leadership competency of the new, global economy." Francis Fukuyama wrote “Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity” where he cited the difference between high trust and low trust cultures and how high trust culture tend to do better than low trust ones. Despite all these information about the value of trust in an organization, many companies in the Philippines continue to struggle in building trust. The HR leaders, I believe who are at the core of organizational relationship can do something to build a high trust culture. It’s not easy, but I believe it’s doable. I believe a good HR manager can facilitate the building of a high trust relationship in the organization if they haven’t done so yet.

Source: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-overcoming-the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team/

What does a high trust culture look like? I believe trust manifest in the quality of communication that happen in the organization. It shows in how goals are clarified and fine-tuned via dialogues where people are encouraged to ask questions, voice out concerns and affect changes in decisions, business strategies and tactics. When people don’t second-guess their co-workers or their bosses, they gain the confidence and comfort to do their best at work and hold themselves accountable for reciprocating the trust.

I think that Step 1 of building a high trust culture starts with HR opening shop for conversation and dialogues with employees where formal authority is set aside so no coercive influence gets in the way of clarifying directions, raising concerns and co-creating solutions and road maps. When HR clearly advocates common good rather than protect the interest of a sector, they gain the respect of both their peers in management and the employees who depend on them to take care of their welfare. I think that an HR Manager’s real power does not come from his or her position title or what the company policy says he or she can do but in his/her ability to build a trusting relationship with the employees.

When HR gains the trust of everyone in the organization, they get the opportunity to spread this trust throughout the organization by facilitating collaboration, coordination and cooperation in the organization. It helps when people trust HR rather than fear them. HR gets more cooperation for its programs and because the programs succeed, the satisfaction is higher, motivation is higher, which leads to higher performance.

HR needs to be seen as more than an organizational authority, we need to be seen as leaders who can build bridges of trust that make people feel safe to be at their best when they are at work.

In the Philippines HR Group, the country's largest Facebook Group of HR Professionals, non-HR members ask whether their company is being fair or not. They'd rather ask the people in the group than go to their own HR Department. They say it's easier but it feels more like it's because it's safer. If I am an HR manager, I would rather encourage co-workers to go to me to seek clarity because I can give it better than anyone else. But for that, they need to trust HR. For that to happen, HR needs to be trustworthy.

Why Develop a Competency-Based Learning and Development Strategy?

2017-11-11T16:35:00.001+08:00

I think that there is a golden opportunity for HR and Talent Development Professionals to make a significant contribution to organizational performance. That is if we can get our act together and develop a strategy that lead to increased capacity and improved performance.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably already know that my pet peeve is HR or Training Managers showing me their training calendar whenever I ask them for their training plan. That’s it! Their strategy for addressing the learning and development needs of the employees is schedule training for them based on a survey of which training Managers and employees wish to attend.

We need to change this! We need to go beyond just listing training titles on our calendars and call them training plan. A plan is a strategy, and a strategy should be aligned with the goal, and by goal I mean organizational business goals. I believe strongly that an organizationally aligned competency-based learning and development strategy will work. Here’s what I propose:

Take a close look at your company’s strategic objectives and initiatives and ask, what kind of competencies are needed to achieve those goals?
Ask; what do those competencies look like in action? When you’re able to define the competencies and their behavioral indicators, you have to ask if the incumbents possess those competencies or if there is a gap. You'll need a gaps assessment tool for this.
The next question to ask is, if the gaps are caused by a lack of knowledge, skills or necessary attitude and if it is something that can be addressed by a learning and development intervention?
Here’s an important question to ask, what kind of intervention is most effective in addressing the competency gaps? Formal classroom training is just one of the many options, there’s coaching, job instructions, mentoring, exposure to projects, etc.
How will you ensure that learning translates to performance? Often, the department does not have a strategy for this. They deal with training as event that you tick off from your list of things to do. This is why a lot of the training money go to waste because even a well-designed and delivered classroom training will be rendered useless by a lack of implementation and follow through plan. Who will be responsible for following through, and the training department, what does it do to ensure that learning is applied to the workplace? There has got to be a strategy for that.
Then you draw a plan with clear set of objectives, clear strategy for implementation, clear roles for the department, the managers, the participants and other stakeholders, clear strategy for monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness. When these are clear, designing the intervention is more effective and efficient.

I know this is easier said than done, that’s why I developed a learning program to help Learning and Development Professionals and anyone who is interested in developing a good competency-based learning and development strategy. Join me on September 5-6, 2019. Let me help you by teaching you how and giving you the following tools as a bonus.

A soft copy, completely customizable competency catalog that you can use as a starting point for doing your own
A template learning and development strategy document with recommended strategy on how to implement your learning and development plan
Templates for competency gaps assessment, worksheet for lining up Learning and Development programs
A new and improved Individual Development Plan (IDP) that covers the conversation between manager and employee that begins as planning and leads to evaluation of impact of learning in the workplace
Training Monitoring and Evaluation Tools.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR MORE DETAILS

Developing Leadership by Improving Internal Conversations

2017-11-02T19:57:00.001+08:00

Think about it. The times you spend not talking to others, you spend talking to yourself, whether consciously or unconsciously. The quality of your internal conversations affects the quality of your external actions! Do you spend time encouraging yourself, scaring yourself or deceiving yourself? These factor-in on the decisions you make that impact on your interaction with others, with things and eventually with the quality of your results.

A Gallup research shows that 70% of managers are making their team worse. A lot of them fail to communicate effectively, fail to motivate, empathize and build a strong working relationship with their team members. Where do you think this is coming from? I believe it comes from a lack quality intrapersonal communication skill, a lack of quality internal conversation. Is it of no wonder that people attend training teaching them how to do things but fail to do so because there is an internal conversation hindering them from taking risk with their new knowledge?

One of my staff talked to me about a time in his previous employment when he resented being sent to an interpersonal skills training because he felt that he did not have a problem relating to others. So the whole time, he was trying to endure the training and continued to question the wisdom of him being sent there. I told him about the story of a CEO of a very successful company distributing electrical products who attended my Basic Supervisory Training. I asked the CEO why he wanted to attend the training when it was clearly for his front-line supervisors. He said two things; first, there’s always something new you can learn from someone and second he wanted to learn what his team was learning so they can speak the same language. During the session, he asked a lot of questions and acknowledged his own learning opportunities. Imagine, I told my staff, how different his internal conversation was compared to the CEO’s. It’s the kind of conversation that makes you a successful CEO, I told him.

What does your internal conversation do to you? It does a lot. It helps you understand your current emotional state. It’s called self-awareness. Knowing, recognizing, acknowledging how you’re feeling help you understand what you need to do. If you’re clear about your personal motivations, your ability to self-regulate helps you point yourself towards the decisions that leads you closer to your goal. Without the ability to self-regulate, we get driven by our fear, doubts, or anger. Imagine how you deal with others when you’re being driven by those negative emotions. It hinders you from understanding others and that gets in the way of effectively relating to them. When you have barriers like these, you’ll have difficulty connecting with others and I tell you, leadership is all about connecting with others. To connect with others, you must effectively connect with yourself first.

If you think about the reality of all these and the urgency for all of us to improve the quality of our internal conversation, isn’t it a wonder why very few organizations invest on interventions to help people reach within themselves and bring out the best of themselves? It’s because people tend to resist the idea of needing to improve emotional intelligence. It’s almost insulting it seems to be sent to a training that tells you to be more self-aware, to have better self-control and to deal with others better. We need to think differently about this thing. We need to change our mindset and start exploring and accessing information and opportunities to deal with ourselves better.

If you want to know more about how you can develop personal mastery by improving your internal conversations, check THIS.

HR’s Role in Maintaining Discipline in the Workplace

2017-10-23T21:19:00.002+08:00

Discipline is a line function. I believe that to be true, but HR plays a very important role in making discipline a shared responsibility. I recently initiated a survey in Philippines HR Group, an online community of HR Practitioners in the Philippines about their practice in implementing disciplinary action. The result shows us where most of us are in terms successfully sharing the responsibility for maintaining discipline in the workplace. Let me share my analysis of the result and my opinion on why and how HR can help the organization build a culture of accountability. I also came up with a 5-level model that shows how I think HR can grow from being solely responsible for disciplining to making everyone share the accountability to organizational alignment.

Click to enlarge image

HR does most of the disciplining - From orienting employees on the code of discipline, catching violators or acting on reports, issuing notice to explain memos (NTE), conducting investigation and issuing and implementing disciplinary action. To me, this is level one. It’s ok to do it if managers are not ready to take on their role in maintaining discipline in the workplace. I believe that HR should work towards preparing managers share responsibility for this role by training them and helping the realize that making HR do this alone is untenable. This breeds a low trust culture where managers could not address performance and behavioral issues that they must go to HR so that they can deal with the problem. It promotes a cat and mouse culture where people try to avoid getting caught by HR while managers don’t feel responsible for calling people out for violating company policies.

HR does all the paper work while managers discuss disciplinary action and implementation to employees - This is a good next step. When managers are not yet strongly familiar with policies and procedures for implementing discipline, HR takes on the role of the technical expert who ensures that all documentations are in order by doing all the documentation themselves. This should be a temporary situation. Equipping managers and providing them tools will make the process more efficient. Note that the survey shows, a lot are at this level. There are rooms for improvement!

Managers are very familiar with policies and procedures, issue NTE, conduct investigation for non-grave offence, issue disciplinary action memos, discuss them with employees, submit record to HR and seek HR’s advice as needed - It is quite a challenge to achieve this level as many supervisors dread this part and would gladly have HR do this instead of them. However, they are the best people to be responsible for this. When people know that their managers are keen on implementing discipline, they become more compliant because their managers are closer than HR. To achieve this level, HR needs to work with line managers and equip them with the necessary mindset, knowledge and tools for maintaining discipline in the workplace.

Manager take on a more proactive approach to ensuring compliance with company policy – When managers realize that the way to avoid violation of company policies is to implement positive discipline by modeling the way, communicating and reinforcing performance and behavioral expectations. When managers serve as champions of good behavior, people become clear about norms and boundaries. They recognize the seriousness of alignment and behave accordingly. To achieve this, managers need to be oriented and buy in on the concept. HR’s job is to provide the information and resources to help managers become capable of positive disciplining

For me, the utmost level of company discipline is when everyone in the organization is so aligned with the company’s core values. When the company culture of accountability is strong, all the rules make sense and people don’t just comply, they advocate them. This is a tall order, I know but I believe it can be done. It starts with having a clear and authentic set of core values that the company’s leaders model. HR hires people who are aligned with these values, the leaders talk about the values every chance they get and point out behaviors that are consistent with them. When the culture is strong, the organization builds an antibody of sorts that make people who are misaligned, leave the company or fail to get regular employment.

In many organizations, HR strive to master the labor code especially in the area of disciplining and termination. There’s nothing wrong with that. I believe, however that it should not be the end. The ultimate goal should be to build a strong and aligned culture that makes people advocate discipline, wherever they are in the organization. It will require a lot of hard work but I think it’s worth doing.