For those of you who have been following the Coaching for Leaders show and blog, please note that we now have a new site specifically for this audience. Please visit us at:

CoachingforLeaders.com

We are excited to continue to conversation with you on our new site!

I’ve been very blessed over the years to serve thousands of people who were attending programs that I was either sponsoring or instructing. While the vast majority of my experiences working with people have been positive, too often I’ve seen good intentions morph into bad execution. Many of these can be prevented and I challenge you to avoid these 6 stupid ways you will waste training dollars:

1. Not willing to participate yourself
If only I had a dollar for every time I’ve been told by a group of employees that their manager is the one who should really be in the training. It’s striking how rarely managers show up in the classroom with people they’ve sent to training. Unfortuantely, sometimes it’s the case that the manager was the one who most needed the class.

Even better, tell people you’re coming to the training with them and then don’t show up. People love that.

Is the training really beneth you? Do you know it all already? Fine. Keep it to yourself. You still need to show up when you ask all your followers to do so. It demonstrates that you take the process seriously and it also ensures that you get on the same page with what the team is learning. Oh, and you might actually learn something too.

2. Using a training class to give feedback
Sadly, this is a common tactic by managers who are too uncomfortable giving people honest feedback. Instead of giving Mike candid feedback about his mediocre customer service skills and have an adult conversation about how he can correct the issue, Mike gets told nothing but suddenly gets recommneded or registered for a customer service training program.

This almost never works. The follower rarely gets the message and the company has only succeeded in wasting money since Mike doesn’t take the training as seriously as he would if he knew why he was there. And, on the rare occasion when the message is received, it only makes the situation worse since Mike shows up resentful in the training course and angry that you couldn’t give feedback to his face (hard to blame him).

Training is what you do after you’ve give the tough feedback…not before.

3. Doing nothing to be flexible during training
I’ve seen leaders do heroic things for followers over the years to ensure they could get the most out of training: clear the company schedule for the class, reassign projects to others, change work shifts to allow for learning, and much more.

Unfortunately, the opposite also happens. Followers who are already stretched to the absolute maximum in their daily responsibilities are suddenly sent to training and no accomodation in made to ease their workload. Even if you can’t make accomodations, at the very least acknowledge people for the extra time investment you are asking them to make and thank them formally for doing so. This costs nothing and takes moments, but I’ve seen it skipped so many times.

You can require someone to show up for training physically, but not mentally. If they aren’t there mentally, it’s a waste of time and money for everyone.

4. Sending one person to training and having them come back to train everyone else
This is almost always done as a cost-saving measure. There are multiple reasons why this is a bad idea. First, I have never seen a case where an employee comes back and does anywhere as good a job as the professional who taught (and perhaps designed) the class.

Second, it’s almost always the case that the “training” that happens when the one empowered employee returns looks a lot like a 5-minute summary at the next staff meeting. Even if everyone is paying full attention to their colleague (doubtful) they miss all the details and any exercises that were done during the class to practice new skills.

Finally, even when the training is fantastic and the employee has a career-changing experience, the minute they go back into a work environemnt where everyone else is still doing all the old stuff, they get discouraged and go back to old habits. Culture is powerful in your organization, and it defaults back to the majority. If the majority of people need the training, the majority of the people should be in the training.

5. Failing to provide practical application opportunities
Why would you send a follower to a training program on presention skills and then never give them a chance to give presentations? I don’t know either, but I’ve seen it happen many times.

Yes, it is first and foremost the responsibility of each person to drive their own professional development. That said, you bear the responsibility as a leader to also provide opportunities to apply what has been learned, especially if the organization is investing in their new skill development through training. Unless they use it, they’ll lose it. Application opportunities should be there during or shortly after the training process.

6. Going silent
The average manager stops thinkng about employee training the minute after the training program starts. Once people are in training, they think their job is done and are onto other things.

This is the point where your work is just beginning. Regular conversation between them and you should be happening both before, during and after the training. You want to discuss training goals, application opportunities, concerns that come up, alignment with professional development, and what they are learning in the classroom. Good training providers will support and encourage this too.

Each person in training is being challenged with new ideas and different ways to look at the world and your business. The creative potential to innovate may never be higher. Sit down and discuss how they are processing what’s being learned. Take this opportunity to think differently. If you don’t, your competitors will be only too happy to do this with your employee after you’ve already made the financial investment.

Avoiding these six things doesn’t ensure training success, but you greatly reduce the risk of wasting your training dollars.

Jane Hart from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies is once again crowd-sourcing a list of valuable technology tools for learning professionals. One of the highlights of her many resources is the annual list she publishes of the Top 100 Tools for Learning.

I’ve been participating the past couple of years and have revised the list to include the landscape for 2011.

	Dropbox Picture the ability to have access to your files anywhere, on any computer, on any device, and having any changes you make automatically sync back and forth to all your devices in real-time. Picture the ability to create a folder that works just like all the other folders on your computer, except that this one lets you share the contents of the folder with someone else. Picture having a public folder inside your dropbox that lets you publish files and photos to the web that you can then link to easily in an email or online. Those are just some of the benefits of Dropbox, though I continually find additional uses for it and am amazed that their basic plan is completely free. No more email attachments that are too big to go through and no more wondering if you’re working off of the latest version of a document.
	Google Reader It is super easy to create a customized news source using Google reader and add to it over time as you find other websites with feeds that you find interesting. My Mom signed up for an online weaving magazine’s RSS feed. I like the local Ladera Ranch feed on the OC Register’s website, as well as the latest Apple-related gossip coming from MacRumors. CommonCraft has a great tutorial to help you get started. If you have an iPad, try NewsRack as your RSS reader, which plugs right in to your Google Reader’s feed.
	LiveScribe Echo Smart Pen For capturing ideas, taking audio meeting notes, or communicating ideas using hand-drawn audio pencasts, there’s no device that beats the LiveScribe line of smart pens. I recommend their latest model, the Echo, though any livescribe pen supports the overall functionality of you drawing on a piece of special paper that captures what you’re saying and what you were writing/drawing when you said it. I could go on and on, but instead suggest that you check out their demos on their home page.
	PowerPoint PowerPoint has been getting a bad rap these days, since so many people use it poorly. However, it should be like a blank canvass. People like Nancy Duarte and Garr Renolds have been doing their best to cure us from our PowerPoint ills, but there’s still much room for healing the world of death by PowerPoint. It isn’t just about making beautiful PowerPoints (though certainly we are captivated when people do just that), but it is also what the research is telling us about how learning is best facilitated. I highly recommend you check out Ruth Clark’s Evidence-Based Training Methods: A Guide for Training Professionals with more on best practices for how to effectively use technology in training initiatives.
	Picnik Sophisticated photo editors like Photoshop still mostly elude me. Plus, they can be expensive. Try out the world’s easiest photo editor, Picnik and you just may find it suits all your needs. It is online, so you don’t have to install anything on your computer and you can do other things like create photo collages, make photo cards, crop/resize, get rid of red eye, and even give your photo a virtual picture frame. Picnik also plugs into your photos on services like Facebook and Flickr, allowing you to edit photos you’ve stored there and then keeping the image located in the place where you prefer to store your photos.
	Articulate eLearning Suite When I get the inevitable question as to why I have yet to switch over to a Mac, my answer always comes back to the windows-based eLearning suite from Articulate. You create all your eLearning courses from a program that is familiar to most of us: PowerPoint, accessing all the commands from a custom menu that gets installed inside the application. It is easy to record an online course, add quizzes, include video clips (either from sites like YouTube, or ones you create and publish on your computer), and to publish the course in a number of different formats (including ones that make your course compatible with a Learning Management System (LMS) like Moodle, Blackboard, or Articulate’s own LMS.
	Evernote Experts like David Allen keep reminding us that the time has come to free our brains up from holding on to inconsequential information, to leave room for the creativity and innovation that is ready to burst forth. Fans of theGetting Things Done (GTD) approach say we should capture those thoughts, ideas, should-dos and must-dos in some kind of a system. For my tasks, I use an online service called Remember the Milk that does everything I need it to do and more when it comes to prioritizing and managing all those to dos. Evernote, however, is where I try to store everything else. It is my online, virtual filing cabinet, where I can store ideas, articles, websites, web clipping (a portion of a site), photos, PDFs, and emails. My favorite Evernote trick is to take a photo of the whiteboard after a brainstorming meeting. Later, it allows me to search my notes for those brainstorms and can actually search the hand-written, whiteboard writing to allow me to go back and follow up on the ideas that were generated during that particular meeting.
	Screenr When people just want to dip their toe in online learning, there’s no easier way to do that than using Articulate’s free, web-based service called Screenr. It lets you “film” something on your computer screen and post that video on Twitter, or on your blog, Facebook, or via email. They limit you to five minutes or less, but it is a great practice to be in the habit of keeping things concise and do shorter, more targeted learning modules. When I send people to their site, they often are under the impression that you have to post your video to Twitter when you’re done. However, if you tell it that you prefer not to post it to Twitter, it stores it on their site and you can then post the link or embed the video on a limitless number of places on the web. Here’s a great Screenr that tells you how to embed your resulting video on Moodle, an open-source LMS.
	ZooTool While Evernote is used to capture most of my ideas and notes, I prefer saving links on the social bookmarking site called ZooTool. I was recently introduced to ZooTool by a former student who guest co-hosted on our TechCouple podcast and haven’t looked back since. You can tag each bookmark you save, so when you want to go back to find all the bookmarks you’ve saved that have to do with eLearning, for example, it is merely a tag search away to have them all accessible to you, or to someone you send the tag link.
	Moodle This open-source (meaning free, except that you have to invest in having somewhere for it to be hosted; whether you have an IT department to do that for you, or whether you use a hosting company that has Moodle as one of their install options) allows you to have a no/low cost learning management system for storing classes, resources and for tracking learners’ progress in a class or certification. We host all of Innovate Learning’s classes on this system and I also use it at a number of the different universities where I teach/consult.

That’s it for my top ten tools for learning professionals. Thanks again to Jane Hart for all the work you put into creating the Top 100 on your site.

You can participate by creating your own list of ten and then posting a link or list on her site (or just post something in the comments below). If you just want to glean from the ever-growing list of recommendations, visit her Top 100 page for 2011 here.

Learning objectives are a crucial part of developing training courses and to ongoing course improvement. They steer the direction of a training program or individual course and help in the development of an evaluation program.

What is Important to Learn?

Learning objectives help us to ask, ‘What is most important for participants to learn in this class and how will I know when the learning has occurred?’ While there are many definitions used in clarifying learning objectives, the one I have found most useful comes from an expert in the corporate training world.

Mager (1997) defines a learning objective as (p 3):

… a collection of words and/or pictures & diagrams intended to let others know what you intend for your students to achieve.

• It is related to intended outcomes, rather than the process for achieving those outcomes
• It is specific and measurable, rather than broad and intangible
• It is concerned with students, not teachers

Designing Course Objectives

All my course objectives are designed using Mager’s (1997) criteria for a measurable learning objective. Each objective conveys what the learner should be able to do, under what conditions, and how well they should be able to do it. I refrain from using words like ‘understand’ or ‘appreciate’ in my objectives, as they are neither descriptive nor measurable.

Course objectives are different than topics, in that objectives are geared more toward instructional design, while topics tend to be more useful in the marketing of a course (internally or externally to the organization).

Mager describes the three components of a useful objective as (p 53):

1. Performance. It describes what the learner is expected to be able to do. Use action verbs to ensure clarity (examples of action verbs include: describe, sort, compare, contrast, create, present, explain, list, and solve).
2. Conditions. It describes the conditions under which the performance is expected to occur.
3. Criterion. It describes the level of competence that must be reached or surpassed.

Below is an example of one of the objectives from Introduction to Business’ management and leadership module.

Performance: Draw an organizational chart is the desired performance, or what the student is expected to be able to do.

Conditions: The conditions under which the performance is expected to occur are pretty basic: anytime/anywhere. There are no special conditions that make drawing an organizational chart any easier or harder. If I were testing the students’ computer skills in this learning objective, the objective might read, “Given a computer with Microsoft Word 2007 installed, create an organizational chart (including position titles) for a company that has adopted a functional structure with at least three levels of management.”

Criteria: The criteria in this case is that the org chart they draw contains at least three levels.

Developing and revising learning objectives does take some thought and effort, though the payoff in clarity of focus and ease of measuring programmatic and individual learner progress makes it well worth it.

For more on the topic of learning objectives, as well as a chance to test your skills, watch this online course. It is published in Flash and therefore may not be viewed on iphones/iPads, but instead must be watched on a web browser that has Flash (Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, etc.). The course uses examples of building learning objectives in college-level courses, but all the same concepts and approaches still apply in the corporate training realm.

 http://innovatelearning.com/il-demos/learning_objectives/player.html

Pick up virtually any popular leadership book of the past 10 years and you’ll see a common theme: leading yourself first. In fact, most leadership books go out of their way to make this point before getting into how to lead others. A great example of this is Stephen Covey’s wildly popular book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habits 1, 2, 3, and 7 are about leading yourself.

I recently completed my doctoral dissertation at Pepperdine University on how executive coaches utilize the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with the leaders they work with. Even if that topic is not of great interest to you, the results of the study are an important reminder for all of us who want to lead others. Executive coaches (the people who are hired by companies and paid many thousands of dollars to develop a single leader) are an important group of people to understand since, while they may be small in number, their important work affects many people in organizations.

I studied a group of 15 North American executive coaches and set out to understand how they use the MBTI. What I discovered was their process for doing this, along with the thing that they say they talk about and do the most. So, what is it that executive coaches do most with leaders when they are working with the MBTI?

Raise their awareness. Both self-awareness and organizational awareness. In essence, help leaders understand themselves and the world around them better. In fact, they do this three times more than anything else.

Leadership researchers and authors get it, executive coaches get it, but do we get it? Do we fully understand the importance of knowing ourselves well enough so that we can lead others? I know that I don’t (despite my efforts to the contrary) and I’m guessing that you may not either. It’s an important reminder for all of us that if we genuinely want to lead others, we need to start by learning about the person in the mirror.

If you’d like to learn more about the details of my study, follow this link to view my audio/PowerPoint presentation of the study and results:

Audio/PowerPoint presentation of my study and the results

If you really want to get into the details of my study, follow this link to download my full dissertation:

Link to download a PDF of my full dissertation

I welcome your thoughts and questions about this study in the comment forum below.

Over the last several years, I’ve been very fortunate to instruct leadership classes onsite at one of Southern California’s major defense contractors. Like any defense organization, the constant security of their facilities, knowledge, and expertise is of critical concern to both them and the government. As such, the security folks at the facility are continually in search of effective ways to remind employees of the everyday importance of security procedures.

I’ve seen many efforts in the past to remind employees to stay vigilant about security…some which sent a memorable message, and some which did not. Yet, the best example of an effective message came just last week.

I was walking into the room where I normally teach and was struck by a sign outside the wall. The large sign posed a simple question to the passerby: “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you ignore security procedures?”

Below the question was a large picture of a flag-draped coffin.

Informing people about what they are supposed to do is step #1. Many leaders understand this part and do it well. What is often missed is the next step, which is a strong call to action as to why people should WANT to take the action you recommend. I know for me, if there isn’t also an emotional call along with the logical argument, the information gets buried with the thousands of other messages.

Do you need people to take action? If so, what can you say that will get them to WANT to follow your advice? Appeal to people’s higher motives and you’ll get enthusiastic cooperation instead of mere compliance.

Anytime we work with leaders, we teach them a framework for learning about the long-term goals of the people they lead. It’s important to know this to keep people engaged and everyone working towards a shared vision. That doesn’t mean it’s easy…and the question came up in a recent client forum, “What if an employee doesn’t seem to want to talk about their long-term goals?”

Obviously, it’s an obstacle for a leader to not know the long-term goals of the people they are leading. Here’s a process to follow when you run into this:

First, be curious (gently): If you’re getting the sense that an employee doesn’t want to discuss their long-term goals, you should naturally want to know why. If you you’re getting resistance to this in conversation, you might ask something like, “It seems like you may be concerned about discussing this…can you tell me more about that?” Be sure to ask in a curious way and not a demanding way. How you ask is as important as what you say. Think “Curious George” and don’t be accusatory.

Second, don’t push: If being curious doesn’t lead you anywhere (or if you’ve skipped step #1 due to an employee saying something very direct like, “I don’t want to talk about my goals.”) then take a step back. There are at least two common reasons people don’t want to talk about their long-term goals: either they either don’t have them at all, or they don’t include working for you or your organization. Either way, pushing further isn’t going to be helpful for either of you.

Third, listen and observe: Effective leaders should always be listening, and even more so when they are trying to problem-solve. Does this employee seem engaged? What do they talk about in the workplace? What are their peers saying about them? Is there a type of work they seem to enjoy more than other things? See if you can determine whether the employee simply doesn’t have long-term goals yet, or if they are not engaged with your organization.

Fourth, build confidence: If you determine that your employee might not have long-term goals, you can help support their development of this skill by recognizing when they have short-term achievements. Help them build their confidence level now so they can use that confidence to support long-term goals later. Point out their achievements and use examples to back them up. Discuss your long-term goals with them as well. People need to see good examples of goal setting to learn this skill.

Finally, move on: Regardless of what you do as a leader, some people will never want to discuss their goals. You can’t force someone to open up. As long as someone if meeting their job requirements, move on to spend your time developing the people that do want to learn and grow. For every person that doesn’t want to discuss long-term goals, there are many others aching for a leader that will engage. Spend your time there.

Leaders are supposed to be great at inspiring us, having vision, creating strategy, and developing teams. But salespeople…really? Heck, yes.

It used to be that people got jobs, showed up for work every day for thirty years, dealt with poor leaders when they had to, and retired more or less satisfied with their contribution to the world.

In case you didn’t already notice, those days are over. Not only it is the norm for most people to work for multiple companies throughout their careers, but also the perspective of the next generation has changed. New hires want immediate gratification, and when they don’t get it, they leave. Today’s leaders often shake their heads (I know I have) when we see this happen and blame this crazy next generation of workers with their issues of entitlement. It’s a cop-out.

The problem is that many leaders don’t have a clue what’s going on until it’s way too late. They don’t know what the 25 year-old single mother who’s been working for them for three months really wants out of her career. They don’t get that the kid right out of college would actually work a lot harder on the current project if he knew how it would help him start a business someday. They don’t understand why the over-achieving employee suddenly leaves for a job that seems eerily similar to what he’s doing now.

Leaders need to be salespeople. Real salespeople. Salespeople that take the time to listen to their employees. Salespeople that understand what they are saying and hearing what they aren’t saying. Salespeople that can link goals with the skills they are learning in their current job.

People make decisions with the information they have. If you want the people you lead to make decisions with a long-term perspective, here are key skills you need:

1 – Listen: You have to make time for it. 20 minutes over a performance review once every six months isn’t going to cut it. Once a month is better. Once a week is ideal. Set aside time where you won’t be disturbed. Find out what’s really going on. Ask good questions. Be quiet.

2 – Summarize: Let people know that you’ve heard them. Once they’ve talked, summarize what they’ve said. (This shocks people.) Few people listen well anymore…and so no one believes that you did listen until you show that you did. Don’t be cocky about it – but demonstrate that they were heard.

3 – Reframe: The employee who has the task of ordering supplies and wants to start her own business someday needs to see how the two connect. That’s your job. The leader has perspective and can see that learning to manage inventory and keep expenses down will be a valuable skill for a business owner. She doesn’t see it…but you do. You need to link the two. You need to be the one that reframes her thinking.

These three steps are simple, but hard. Listening is hard. Reframing is hard. Get people to help you. Find others with experience who can help you put the pieces together when you can’t. Nobody expects you to have all the answers…but you need to learn to sell if you expect to lead people over the long-term.

I think you’ll agree that this 2 minute video from Purplefeather artfully captures the importance of communicating with emotion in our daily interactions:

What messages are people getting from you that are plain and ordinary? How can you use emotion to inspire a more powerful call to action?

People who want to influence the world in intelligent and meaningful ways need to continually keep their knowledge up-to-date. You will rarely find someone who successfully leads organizations and people who does not also do a lot to consistently to drive their own learning.

Several colleagues have asked me recently where I get knowledge on such a wide variety of topics, so here are six things that I do in order to get smart and stay smart…as well as some of the struggles I’ve had in keeping it that way.

1. Read Books
I have a love-hate relationship with books. There is no better way to keep one’s knowledge current than by reading a good book, especially one that relates to your work and by an author that has really done their homework on the topic. You get the in-depth coverage in a book that you’ll never get in a magazine, newspaper article, or podcast. And yet, I struggle with getting what I consider to be “enough” books read.

Like many things in life, there just seems to always be something more urgent than making time to sit down and read a book…laundry piling up, the toilet that needs to be fixed (still haven’t done that), and email to answer. Reading books takes time and many of us have many demands on our time. That said, I have every intention and desire to read more books than the 8 books I completed last year.

Here’s a few ways that I’ve upped my book reading this year. First, I set a specific goal of reading 20 books in 2011 so I can more easily track my progress. I track my reading on Shelfari.com so that I know what I’m currently reading, have read already, and plan to read in the near future. I’m a bit behind my goal at the moment (I’ve finished 5 books in 2011) but substantially ahead of last year’s pace. You can see what I’m reading at:

http://www.shelfari.com/DaveStachowiak/shelf

Second, I listen to audiobooks as often as I can. I’ll search iTunes for the book I want and, if available by audio, consider listening to it that way. Then, I can make great use of driving time or exercise time in filling my mind with new information. I know audiobooks don’t work for everyone, but for me it’s a great way to learn.

Bonni and I also joined a book club this year, which has helped me get a head start on reading more in 2011. For me, it’s a big incentive to finish a book in a timely way when I know that I’m going to be meeting people to discuss it in detail. It’s also been a good way for me to challenge myself with books that I wouldn’t normally have picked up on my own.

Finally, I record notes of what I’m reading that’s significant in Evernote so that I can come back to points later that I know I’ll want for future reference. See more on Evernote below.

2. Listen to Podcasts
Podcasts are essentially on-demand internet radio, and most of them are free. In addition, other than an occasional sponsor announcement, they are generally commercial-free. The easiest way for most people to access podcasts is via iTunes, where you can click on the Podcasts tab to see what’s available. Once you subscribe to one, it will sync with your iPod or other music device so you can listen at your convenience.

There’s literally a podcast for everything and, like everything on the internet, there are awful podcasts right along with some of the most amazing podcasts and learning that you can find anywhere. Most of them are in the 20-60 minute range and many reputable organizations publish great content as podcasts. More often than not, I’m listening to a podcast in the car instead of the radio. Here are a few of my favorites that keep me up on what’s going on in the world:

• HBR IdeaCast
• Marketplace from American Public Media
• NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
• Business Tech Weekly

I also subscribe to our church’s podcast so I can catch all the sermons when we’re gone for the weekend. I’ve even recently partnered with my friend Sandie Morgan at the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University to produce the Ending Human Trafficking podcast.

You can’t get everything from podcasts, but you’ll be amazed at how much expertise is out there in the world that is completely available for free. Check it out on iTunes and give a few a try.

3. Increase Your Vocabulary
Most people only work on their vocabulary when they are studying for a standardized test like the SAT or GMAT. However, building your vocabulary over a lifetime will help you greatly increase your ability to learn about the world.

You don’t improve your vocabulary in order to impress people…you do it so that you understand the words you see in print and learn from those who are respected in your field. While it’s admittedly been a bit since I did this formally, I have at a number of points in my life completed vocabulary lessons and refreshers that have helped me to learn and communicate with a lot more confidence.

I’ve used the Princeton Review Word Smart a number of times over the years to refresh some of the best words to be able to grasp in professional conversations and reading. The audio versions in particular helped me to really get lots of words down. Some people think the stories they use to teach the words are a bit cheesy, but I personally loved them since I think it’s a great way to remember new words.

These days, you can also find tons of vocabulary builders for devices like your iPhone and iPad. I haven’t used any of these yet, but I see that Princeton Review now has Apps as well for vocabulary building. Just search for Princeton Review on the App store and you’ll find lots of other options too.

If you prefer books, 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary is another classic that I’ve read before and found extremely helpful. It’s not quite as fun as the above options, but the content is invaluable.

4. Listen to NPR
Don’t listen to commercial radio. Almost half of any hour of commercial radio is filled with advertisements that generally are a waste of your time. When you want to listen to music, grab your iPod or try satellite radio if feasible. When you want to learn about the world and you’re not listening to an audiobook or podcast, listen to NPR.

NPR, like public television, is funded primarily by the public and not by advertisers. That means that they have more editorial independence than most news organizations since they are not beholden to what advertisers want them to air. Also, no commercials either (unless you count the twice a year they ask you to support the station during the pledge drives – and yes, Bonni and I are members).

Great shows like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Marketplace (a daily business show) will keep you up-to-date on what’s going on in the world. I get tons of information that I constantly use in interactions with clients by listening regularly to NPR. Plus, NPR publishes lots of podcasts (see above) that are a great way to keep up when you miss a live show.

What I like best about NPR? They actually recognize that you are an intelligent human being and don’t tell you what to think. They generally present each side fairly and let you come to your own conclusions. Personally, I want to hear both sides of a story or issue – because I need to be able to understand the perspective of clients (and others) who view the world differently than I do.

5. Read Industry Publications
Decide what’s important to learn and seek out the publications that the leaders in your industry are reading. If you don’t know what those are, then keep you ears open at conferences and professional conversations for the publications that people cite and refer to. Even better, ask the people you respect in your field about what they are reading. In my industry, these are the ones that I feel are most critical and see referenced a lot:

• Harvard Business Review
• Chief Learning Officer
• Talent Management Magazine
• Leader to Leader Journal
• Wall Street Journal
• Fast Company

So, I subscribe to all of the above either physically or electronically and make time to incorporate them into my reading…and what works best for me right now is not letting myself take them off my desk at home until I’ve at least skimmed each issue. I don’t read every article, but I do at least look at every article so I know what conversations are going on. When I do read an article and I believe it has something of value for me, I either scan or save it into Evernote, my personal knowledge center for articles and blogs.

Evernote allows you to scan in PDFs (and many other formats) and then categorize articles/notes into folders and tag them according to content. This way, I can search for tags like “employee engagement” and “studies” when I’m looking for ideas on engagement that have research backing when designing content for a client or writing a blog. Plus, you can save audio and picture notes as well. I like to save notes on dry-erase boards from client engagements into Evernote so I can reference them later.

The above snapshot is what my Evernote desktop application looks like right now. I use the paid version, but you can it for free as well and it syncs to many mobile devices. If you really want to know more about how to use it in detail, check out Michael Hyatt’s excellent blog post on Evernote.

6. Read Blogs
Yes, it’s true that there is a lot of junk on the internet. It is also true that there is amazing content out there on well-respected blogs that you can’t get anywhere else. In fact, in some industries, well-established bloggers have already set a new standard for industry news and discussion.

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to start using a newsreader in order to grab good blogs and content on websites you want to keep up with (again, ask around and observe in your industry if you don’t already know what blogs to be reading). A news reader will pull new content via RSS (real simple syndication) technology from websites automatically so that you don’t need to go visiting sites all the time to see if there are new posts. To learn more about RSS, check out Bonni’s brief video below.

I use the free Google Reader which then links to an app called NewsRack on my iPhone and iPad. Use whatever you like, but subscribe to blogs via RSS so that you save time and get all the content you want. Be smart about what you subscribe to as well. For example, if I find that a blog isn’t valuable or that I can’t keep up, I unsubscribe from it. I don’t want to be overwhelmed with content…so I try to only subscribe to things that I read regularly.

Regardless of what combination of the above six methods you use, you need to make a time commitment to get smart. For me, I budget at least an hour a day (more if I can) to do some combination of the above activities. That’s just barely enough for me to keep up, so schedule more time if you can and make it a priority – which is hard to do since the benefits to getting smart are rarely immediate – but can be profound over your career and lifetime.

Have other suggestions on getting/staying smart that I didn’t mention? Be sure to leave a comment below and add to this list.

One of the age old questions when giving someone tough feedback is whether it’s appropriate to say something nice first, to “lessen the blow” of whatever is coming next. After all, we all want to keep relationships strong with colleagues and employees.

First of all, let’s just acknowledge that few people enjoy giving tough feedback. I’ve shied away from giving tough feedback to people enough times to know that it almost always comes back to bite me even worse in the end. I well remember delaying tough feedback to a class participant a number of years ago in hopes things would resolve themselves…only to see her behavior continue and ultimately cause a major disruption to a multi-month project with a client. When I finally did intervene, it became painfully apparent that a brief conversation weeks earlier would have avoided lots of pain for all of us.

I’m convinced that if we want to lead, we need to tell people what they need to hear, as uncomfortable as it may be. Probably the most common method is to say something nice to the person before moving into the real issue. I can’t disagree with the intention behind this. Particularly if we don’t know someone well, it’s more comfortable to start with something positive and then transition into the tougher issue. However, there are three ways this often goes wrong:

1) The leader isn’t sincere in their positive feedback – people pick up on this quickly, especially if the only time they hear positive feedback is right before tough feedback. When this pattern repeats, they simply stop hearing the positive feedback.

2) The leader doesn’t provide any evidence of the positive feedback – if people don’t hear specifics from the leader as to why they did a “good job” they may quickly dismiss it as insincere flattery. People don’t believe they “did a nice job” unless we show them how.

3) The leader spends too much time on the positive feedback and “glides over” the real issue that needed to be addressed. This is a huge problem in many organizations, since the leader assumes the message was delivered while the other party (hearing 90% positive feedback and 10% tough feedback) incorrectly assumes that things are going great.

Pierre Martineau famously said that, “The greatest enemy to communication is the illusion of it.”

Here are two ways to start tough feedback with someone, based upon the situation. The first way is useful if you have rapport with the other party, and the second is useful when you don’t.

With Rapport
When you already have rapport with someone, skip the positive feedback. The reason for positive feedback in a situation like this is to build rapport before the tougher conversation. If you have this already, it’s not necessary to spend time on rapport building – and you’re just as likely to make one of the three mistakes above when trying to give positive feedback first.

When I was a manager, I would walk around our business and often spend time simply pointing out things that people were doing well and giving them specific examples of what I saw that I liked. The first few times I did it, people were shocked…and then they loved it (and told me so). I made this a regular practice so they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I noticed that things they were doing well.

When I did need to sit down and give someone tough feedback, two things happened: they knew I wasn’t out to get them because I had already demonstrated otherwise many times before, and they often took action to resolve the situation quickly since they knew I cared and wanted to see them succeed…and would notice when they did. I kept positive feedback and tough feedback separate. Over time, this established trust.

A word of caution: You can’t do the above overnight (although it takes less time that you’d think) and if you don’t have rapport with someone, see below.

Without Rapport
When rapport doesn’t exist already (like with a new employee) it’s a little jolting to give someone tough feedback without saying something else first. In this case, I agree with Dale Carnegie’s advice, “Begin with praise and honest appreciation.” You just need to be sure you do it right and not take it too far.

To give positive feedback, point out something they have done well and then give a specific example of a time or situation where they did this. That keeps the feedback genuine, starts to build some trust, and lessens the chance that they’ll perceive it as insincere flattery. Then, move on to the tough feedback. In a ten minute conversation, opening with something positive is, at most, 30-60 seconds. Any longer and you risk them not perceiving the importance of what you really need to say.

Once you’ve given feedback, this is a critical point to remind ourselves that you don’t yet have rapport or trust with this person and that you should start working to build it. There are many ways to do this, but one immediate way is to notice behavior changes from your feedback and recognize them as soon as they happen. Too many leaders put people on ignore when they are meeting or exceeding expectations. Build trust by showing people that ideal behavior gets lots of attention too.

People are different and unique situations arise daily in organizations, but these general guidelines will assist you in starting feedback well and building future leaders.

For years I’ve suggested to clients that putting in a good hour or two of planning at the beginning of every week would help them to be dramatically more effective than if they simply started the week without a plan. While it’s always made sense to me to do this on Sunday evenings, I’ve advised people to make use of whatever time makes most sense to them: Friday afternoon, Saturday morning, etc.

I have a recurring task that shows up every Sunday on my task management system to “plan the week” so that I would be sure to never forget to take this action myself. I am always sure to take time on Sunday evenings (or sometimes Monday mornings) to plan things out. This is supposed to make me much more productive and successful.

Only problem? For me it hasn’t worked.

Sure, lots of great things have happened in my life in the recent past…but when I consider the gifts that God has given me in comparison to what I accomplished in 2010? Drawing a big blank. In fact, I’m having a tough time thinking of anything that happened last year that wasn’t either a repeat accomplishment from the prior year or that dramatically improved my effectiveness in my life, career, marriage, volunteer work, etc.

Now, before you comment and express concerns that I’m going off the deep end, let me assure you that I haven’t and that I’m wonderfully happy in almost every area of my life. Amazing things have happened in recent years and I probably wouldn’t got back and change anything, even if given the chance.

What’s the problem? I usually put off planning my week to late Sunday evenings when I’m pretty tired after the weekend. I quickly scan the week ahead, generally copy and paste whatever I spent my time on last week into the coming week, work around changing appointments and priorities for the week, and call it a night. Takes a good 5-10 minutes, on average.

The upcoming week looks a lot like the previous week, but that’s not a big deal. Week after that? Same thing. Then, multiply that 52 times a year and you get…well, pretty much the same thing for a year.

Zig Ziglar once said, “Some people live 80 years, and some people live one year, 80 times.”

There was a time that I planned my time to be in alignment with some weekly priorities, and even monthly priorities. However, it never lasted since I didn’t have a detailed plan in writing…and really I didn’t take the planning that seriously. After all, it was never long until phone calls, people who needed me, appointments, schoolwork, and tons of other things came up.

In his book Predictably Irrational, author Dan Ariely says, “In running back and forth among things that might be important, we forget to spend enough time on what really is important.” That’s assuming of course, we even know what’s important. For me, coming to a major transition in my life (finishing a degree in the coming weeks) has had me wondering if I’m clear on what’s important to me. In the past few months, it’s become increasingly clear that while I have some general clarity on what’s important to me, I’ve rarely taken consistent action in the recent past to turn desires into reality.

That’s why I was intrigued when I found the free Creating Your Personal Life Plan ebook and Ideal Week template from Michael Hyatt. In the past few weeks, I’ve worked through this book and template to get full clarity on paper as to what’s important to me and (even more helpful) what the consistent actions are that I will take to get me to these objectives. I haven’t even completed the process yet and already I’ve seen the following results that I can tie directly back to some of the initial actions I’ve taken:

Getting more sleep (7 hours on average)
Exercising 3 days a week consistently (4 days coming soon)
New business opportunities
Major website update
Podcast on iTunes with my friends at GCWJ
Rebalance of work responsibilities that will better align with my gifts
Opportunities to connect with new friends
Started blogging again (thus this post)
Reading at least an hour a day

As much as I should know this with the field that I’ve studied and taught in for years, it constantly astounds me how powerful we become when we get clarity in writing about our goals and action items.

Time management tools and weekly planning only gets you so far if you don’t have long-term goals for where you are going and how you plan to get there. Perhaps you’ve already been doing this for a while and seen wonderful results come out of it in your life. If you have, then I’d love to hear what’s worked for you too – leave a comment and help us learn from you.

However, I’m willing to bet though that most of the people reading this post have spent even less time planning weeks, months, years, and life than I have. I bet you are as irrational with your time as I have been.

My suggestion? Take at least one of the following three actions:

1) Download and complete Michael Hyatt’s Creating Your Personal Life Plan ebook (yes, it will take a day or two of work)
2) Read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
3) Grab the May, 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review Magazine (cover story: How to Get More Done)

We are in alignment with God and we serve others better when we are intentional with our goals and actions first. I’m going to have a much more productive year in 2011…take action now so you do too.

It is the time of the year when the Jazzercize classes are packed and there’s a line for the treadmills. Many of us yearn for new beginnings and a new year gives us an opportunity to consider what changes we want to make in our lives.

As is the case most years, I suspect there will be more elbow room in Jazzercise and the ellipticals will be ready for our feet when we’re ready to hop on. It is so easy to have our aspirations translate into a lack of follow through.

Here are a few ideas to help keep your resolutions and achieve your 2011 goals.

Make it measurable

Just saying that you’re going to spend more time with your kids or learn a new computer program for work isn’t going to cut it. Answer the question of how will you know when you “got there” at the end of the year and you’ll be on your way to measuring your goal.

State it as an affirmative

Part of the way we set goals can be self-defeating. Instead of saying that you’re going to stop doing something (e.g. stop eating poorly), it can be very helpful to state the goal in a positive way (e.g. start eating healthy). Affirm yourself and the goal in the way you phrase it and be reminded of why it is so important each time you look at it.

Track it

Speaking of “looking at your goals,” you need a way of tracking how you’re progressing toward your goal.

In the interest of eating healthy and exercising regularly, I have found a combination of a calendar posted on my wall where I see it every day and an iPhone application as a good means for raising my consciousness surrounding my goal attainment.

I enjoy using technology to help track goals, but you can definitely get a lot of mileage out of a paper-based approach. Check out these great printable paper productivity tools, highlighted by Lifehacker.

Each time I’ve dedicated myself to tracking what I eat and how I exercise using the free LoseIt! app, I am successful at losing weight. I easily get distracted by the rest of life, however, so this year I’ll be using their new feature of having accountability partners in my goal setting. Without sharing the details of my specific weight, I can instead just specify a weight loss goal and share my progress with individuals of my choosing. Those of you with iPhones can’t go wrong with LoseIt! as a tracking tool.

For the big picture tracking, I enjoy the Vision Board iPhone app, which allows me to create various categories of goals and include quotes and photos to paint the picture better of my goals.

As it gets down into the details of executing the plans, I still am a huge fan of Remember the Milk. If you’re a pro user ($25/year), you can use their iPhone (or Blackberry) app for free, giving you access to your tasks on your mobile device, as well as over the internet. I also love that you can email individual tasks via email, or entire lists over email, which makes it easy to forward emails that come in for future follow up, leaving an empty in box.

Keep it attainable

One of the other reasons we fail to achieve our goals is that we get carried away in terms of setting them. Pick three to five of the most important things you could achieve this year that would make the biggest difference in your life. Build your systems around making sure that these big dreams are fulfilled and if you’re able to do even more than that – you’ll be that much further ahead.

Give yourself lots of reinforcement around your top goals. Tell people about your goals. Write them down. Post them (and track them) somewhere where you’ll regularly be reminded of how you’re proceeding toward them. Build relevant reward systems into your goal setting, so help keep yourself motivated toward achievement. For example, don’t tell yourself you’ll take yourself out to dinner for a week if you achieve your exercise and healthy eating goals, as you’ll negate the importance of the goal as well as possibly sabotage your early successes. Instead, consider telling yourself that you’ll buy yourself a new workout outfit, or schedule a beach walk with a friend once you hit your first milestone.

RESOURCES:

ARTICLE: Making your resolutions stick (Lifehacker)

ARTICLE: Two lists you should focus on every day (Harvard Business Review)

BOOK: Getting things done (David Allen)

ARTICLE: Remember the milk and getting things done (GTD)

BLOG: 43 Folders (productivity)

Let us know in the comments section what else you’ll be doing to maximize your potential in 2011 and beyond.

Many people look at beautifully designed pieces and think to themselves, “I could never do that.” In fact, any of us can become adept at design, with some practice, exercising our creative minds, and looking at good examples.

Five design tips for non-designers

1. Hang on to examples of good design. If you find a website you think is well-designed, use an online bookmarking service, such as www.delicious.com to hold on to your favorites. Keep a manilla folder of design ideas. These items will give you inspiration when you need it most.
2. Determine in advance the reason for your design. Before you even begin putting the first word on the page, know what you’re trying to achieve. Are you featuring and spotlighting something? Are you educating and teaching? Do you want to motivate someone to act? The purpose of your design will guide you throughout the process.
3. Choose a color scheme and stick to it. Use an online color scheme creator, such as http://www.colr.org/, and choose three or four colors that you’ll stick to in all your design pieces. Make your PowerPoint match your handout and any other materials that go along with the project. Websites like www.flickr.com even let you search by color for photos. Just be sure you have permission to use whatever photos you find that match your design
4. Use grids to capture attention and build visual interest. As you examine good design, you’re likely to find that the layout was composed by visible or (most often) invisible grids, or horizontal and vertical divisions of space. Plan out in advance how much information needs to be conveyed on your design piece and use grids to call attention to key parts of your message.
5. Try your design a few different ways. As I recently redesigned our blog, I tried seven different variations on the same theme for the new graphic at the top. As I experimented with moving the various components around on the page and worked with a few different layouts, I found the one that most closely achieved the objective we were seeking and had the greatest visual appeal.

More Design Techniques

Graphic design inspiration

Design links from the author of Presentation Zen

Beyond Bullet Points Blog on PowerPoint design

Inspiration on visual communication, including visual notetaking (mindmapping)

Let us know your design ideas in the comments section.

State governments aren’t particularly known for their success rates in using resources efficiently to produce good results.  That said, at least one notable exception exists when we all learn how to drive a car.  In that area, most states have the system down cold for helping new drivers get around safely and effectively.

When we attend a typical class and try to learn something, it usually goes something like this: Someone with some level of expertise facilities the course.  That person decides what knowledge is important and spends lots of time lecturing about the key things we need to know.  Often, we are tested on our knowledge through homework, papers, exams, and class participation.  At the end of the class we get a grade that, in theory at least, measures the success of what we’ve learned.

The problem with this traditional model is that it doesn’t encourage or measure behavior change.  That’s not a big deal if we’re learning to appreciate 18th century literature, but it becomes a huge issue if we’re driving a motor vehicle and haven’t learned to put our new knowledge into practice.  Of course, most state governments already know this and they’ve developed a fine system to address this challenge.

Here’s how they ensure that new knowledge translates into behavior change during the driver’s education process and how we can learn from it to coach and develop others:

Activate

Unlike most of the school classes I attended when I was a teenager, I could barely wait to start the first day of driver’s education class.   Many of my friends were already driving and I had a very clear picture of how learning to drive would be of great benefit to my independence and social activities.  Nothing was going to keep me from graduating from the class as quickly and successfully as possible.

Activation is probably the most important step in the learning process.  When an individual has activated their readiness to learn, very little will stop them.  This usually isn’t an issue when teenagers are learning to drive.  However, it’s a big issue in professional development.  As leaders and coaches, we don’t often take time to activate an individual’s excitement and passion for learning a new skill.

It’s essential that as leaders and coaches, we communicate up front with individuals to learn about their current skill set, discuss the benefit to them of enhancing that skill set, and an link those skills to the areas that are important to their long-term goals.  Failure to do this can mean that you get the same level of commitment to the learning process as I had with high school physics.  I learned it because I had to in order to satisfy a requirement, but I only make the minimum investment needed in order to get a decent grade in the class.

Understand

I remember the first day of driver’s education class.  I was super excited to get there and start driving.  I didn’t realize until I arrived that they don’t even let you near a car until you are a week or two into the classroom portion of the course.

Once we had a firm understanding of the rules of the road, they tested us several times on different skills to ensure that we remembered exactly what we had been taught.  Only then did we graduate to the vehicle portion of the class.

When developing someone, we have to provide that individual with a framework and understanding of the skill first before we ask them to take action.  Without that foundation, they have no context for the actions they will take as part of the learning process.  In addition, we want them to learn from those that have already developed past knowledge rather than have them spend valuable time and resources reinventing knowledge that already exists.

We can use various methods to verify that understanding is present including conversation, observation, or even testing.  Verifying understanding is critical so it saves both them and us from undue frustration later in the process.

Coach

As soon as I passed that last exam in the driver’s education classroom, they handed me the keys to the car and said, “Have at it…good luck!”

We all know that didn’t happen.  In fact, I distinctly remember never leaving the parking lot for the first “driving session”.  Probably the first thirty minutes or so was lecture from the instructor in the car reminding my friend Andrea and me all about the rules of the road and then gradually having us practice some very basic skills like backing up, turning, and parking in a parking space (multiple times, I might add).

Here’s the thing: I had been a passenger in a car all my life.  It looked easy.  I mean, how hard can it be to park a car in a parking spot, right?  Turns out the first time you do it…not so easy.  In fact, I remember being a bit surprised at my lack of ability to maneuver the vehicle perfectly the first time around.  The whole time, the instructor was coaching us by giving both positive reinforcement and interrupting at the right times to correct poor behavior before it became a habit.

I knew what to do, but the actual behavior took several tries to get right.  Same situation when you are developing somebody else.  Just because the knowledge is correct in their minds doesn’t mean that the resulting actions are appropriate.  If you’re not there to provide positive reinforcement and correction during those times, they develop bad habits that could stay with them their entire careers or lives.  Active coaching is key at this stage of the learning process.

Apply

After a full series of driving sessions, I eventually graduated from driving school and received my license.  Later that day, I took out my mom’s Chrysler Concorde for the first time by myself.

However, even though I was as fully licensed to drive as any other person, I still was spending lots of mental energy to remember everything I had learned.  That entire first solo drive, I was carefully remembering each rule and procedure, mostly out of fear that I would do anything leading to an accident or damage of my mom’s car.  In the coming months, I would learn valuable lessons from the occasional near-miss and varied weather conditions on the road.  Plus, I’d still get some occasional coaching from my parents when they were in the car.

Gradually, the coaching and driving experience built the confidence that I didn’t have when I first received my license.  I consciously thought about the rules of the road less and less as good habits laid a strong foundation for my lifelong driving skills.

When we are developing others, this stage can one of the longest and most frustrating for the leader or coach.  That’s because nothing takes the place of experience and allowing people to make some of their own mistakes and learn from working independently.  We can still jump in an provide limited coaching when appropriate, but we also need to step back and allow the individual to take primary ownership for their own skill development at this point.

Master

We’re at the point in life where our insurance company actually provides a discount for the number of years Bonni and I been driving.  Certainly it doesn’t mean that we still don’t occasionally make a mistake now and then on the road.  However, for the most part, we get into the car in the morning and don’t give a second thought to the rules of the road.  We don’t have to…we’ve been so proficient for so many years that it now is a matter of just an occasional refinement and adjustment when we make a mistake.  The skill is almost fully mastered.  In fact, with some resources and structures, we could probably teach others.

This is exactly the point that you want other to eventually reach.  The timelines vary substantially with the skill being learned.  Learning a new ordering system might take days or weeks to master.  Learning to master more complex skill sets like customer service or sales could take years.

The key for all of us is to recognize the importance of all five stages in the skill development process.  Failure to spend adequate time activating, understanding, or coaching for new skills might shorten the development timeline, but ultimately leads to reduced performance and bad habits.

When it matters that people learn things correctly for the long-term (like is does when we’re learning a complex skill like driving) let’s take the example from the DMV and embrace each of these steps for the best possible outcomes.

I used to take such pride in my great ability to multitask. It turns out that what I was doing wasn’t really doing two things at once, but rather slowing myself down by quickly switching back and forth between two things.

NPR quotes neuroscientist Earl Miller as he reminds us, “People can’t multitask very well, and when they say they can, they’re deluding themselves…” We are actually more likely to make mistakes and to slow ourselves down when we attempt multitasking.

Here are a few tricks to stay efficient when you’re working to get a lot of stuff done quickly:

1. Close down your email application (unless, of course, email is what needs to be done). Hearing an audible reminder that an email has come in, or seeing the email indicator icon appear can cause us to lose focus on what we’re doing. Check your email at scheduled times and you’ll actually be better able to hit your project deadlines and get back to people promptly and professionally.
2. Consider scheduling meetings at odd times (not on the hour) and only schedule an hour if the problem you’re attempting to solve requires that much time.
3. Each morning, make a list of the three to five most important things that you need to get done that day and block time out to meet those goals. I use an electronic system for my tasks (www.rememberthemilk.com), but in this case, I go old school and write each primary goal on a sticky note. I stick each task on the bottom of my monitor, so I can visually track my progress toward achieving what I set out to do that day. At the end of the day, I then get the reward of checking them off in my electronic to do program and considering what is most important for the following day.
4. Read Crenshaw’s The Myth of Multitasking and use his time tracking system to assess and then enhance how you spend your time each day. Alternatively, check out the Emergent Task Tracker, shown on Lifehacker.

Feel overwhelmed already? Pick one of the four recommendations to start with and let us know your other tricks of the trade in the comments section.

People often ask me how I am able to keep up with all of the latest technological developments, sites, and gadgets. It is mostly through what is often referred to as a PLN (personal learning network), made possible through RSS feeds, Twitter, and through leaders like Jane Hart from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.

Jane provides incredible tools for learning professionals and is a person I benefit from “virtually knowing” often. One of the highlights of her many resources is the annual list she publishes of the Top 100 Tools for Learning. It’s easy to participate by creating your own list of ten and then posting a link or list on her site. If you just want to glean from others’ recommendations, visit her Top 100 page here.

I’ve made a top ten list the last couple of years. Here’s what I think are worthy of a visit this year by learning professionals, along with a brief description:

Â	Google Reader It is super easy to create a customized news source using Google reader and add to it over time as you find other websites with feeds that you find interesting. My Mom signed up for an online weaving magazine’s RSS feed. I like the local Ladera Ranch feed on the OC Register’s website, as well as the latest Apple-related gossip coming from MacRumors. CommonCraft has a great tutorial to help you get started. If you have an iPad, try NewsRack as your RSS reader, which plugs right in to your Google Reader’s feed.
Â	Dropbox Picture the ability to have access to your files anywhere, on any computer, on any device, and having any changes you make automatically sync back and forth to all your devices in real-time. Picture the ability to create a folder that works just like all the other folders on your computer, except that this one lets you share the contents of the folder with someone else. Picture having a public folder inside your dropbox that lets you publish files and photos to the web that you can then link to easily in an email or online. Those are just some of the benefits of Dropbox, though I continually find additional uses for it and am amazed that their basic plan is completely free. No more email attachments that are too big to go through and no more wondering if you’re working off of the latest version of a document.
Â	Picnik Sophisticated photo editors like Photoshop still mostly elude me. Plus, they can be expensive. Try out the world’s easiest photo editor, Picnik and you just may find it suits all your needs. It is online, so you don’t have to install anything on your computer – and you can do other things like create photo collages, make photo cards, crop/resize, get rid of red eye, and even give your photo a virtual picture frame. Picnik also plugs into your photos on services like Facebook and Flickr, allowing you to edit photos you’ve stored there and then keeping the image located in the place where you prefer to store your photos.
Â	Articulate eLearning Suite When I get the inevitable question as to why I have yet to switch over to a Mac, my answer always comes back to the windows-based eLearning suite from Articulate. You create all your eLearning courses from a program that is familiar to most of us: PowerPoint, accessing all the commands from a custom menu that gets installed inside the application. It is easy to record an online course, add quizzes, include video clips (either from sites like YouTube, or ones you create and publish on your computer), and to publish the course in a number of different formats (including ones that make your course compatible with a Learning Management System (LMS) like Moodle, Blackboard, or Articulate’s own LMS.
Â	Techsmith’s SnagIt Besides Outlook and my web browser, the program I use most often is a screen shot capture program called SnagIt. Instead of writing confusing paragraphs about how to perform a function in an application or online application, I simply capture a screenshot of it and add any arrows, highlights, or instructions onto the image. TechSmith also has other programs like Jing (an even easier way to quickly teach someone how to do something and sending them a link to the instructions – video-based or screenshot-based – stored on their site for free) and Camtasia Studio (a robust online learning and video production set of tools with an amazing set of features and a recession-proof price tag).
Â	PowerPoint 2010 PowerPoint has been getting a bad rap these days, since so many people use it poorly. However, it should be like a blank canvass. People like Nancy Duarte and Garr Renolds have been doing their best to cure us from our PowerPoint ills, but there’s still much room for healing the world of death by PowerPoint. It isn’t just about making beautiful PowerPoints (though certainly we are captivated when people do just that), but it is also what the research is telling us about how learning is best facilitated. I highly recommend you check out Ruth Clark’s Evidence-Based Training Methods: A Guide for Training Professionals with more on best practices for how to effectively use technology in training initiatives.
Â	Evernote Experts like David Allen keep reminding us that the time has come to free our brains up from holding on to inconsequential information, to leave room for the creativity and innovation that is ready to burst forth. Fans of the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach say we should capture those thoughts, ideas, should-dos and must-dos in some kind of a system. For my tasks, I use an online service called Remember the Milk that does everything I need it to do and more when it comes to prioritizing and managing all those to dos. Evernote, however, is where I try to store everything else. It is my online, virtual filing cabinet, where I can store ideas, articles, websites, web “clippings” (a portion of a site), photos, PDFs, and emails. My favorite Evernote trick is to take a photo of the whiteboard after a brainstorming meeting. Later, it allows me to search my notes for those brainstorms and can actually search the hand-written, whiteboard writing to allow me to go back and follow up on the ideas that were generated during that particular meeting.
Â	Screenr When people just want to dip their toe in online learning, there’s no easier way to do that than using Articulate’s free, web-based service called Screenr. It lets you “film” something on your computer screen and post that video on Twitter, or on your blog, Facebook, or via email. They limit you to five minutes or less, but it is a great practice to be in the habit of keeping things concise and do shorter, more targeted learning modules. When I send people to their site, they often are under the impression that you have to post your video to Twitter when you’re done. However, if you tell it that you prefer not to post it to Twitter, it stores it on their site and you can then post the link or embed the video on a limitless number of places on the web. Here’s a great Screenr that tells you how to embed your resulting video on Moodle, an open-source LMS.
Â	Posterous There is no easier blogging tool that I’ve found other than Posterous. Set up an account and they provide you with an email address that you can send blog entries to in the future. Attach photos to your email and Posterous will automatically create a gorgeous gallery for your photos. Email a YouTube video link and Posterous will automatically embed the video on your blog site. Send a video file you captured on your smart phone, digital camera, or video camera and Posterous will convert the video to a type most easily viewed on the web and will embed your video in their online video player. You can create group blogs by inviting contributors over email. Posterous also has an easy way of creating pages for your blog, so you can have an About Me/Us page, or a page that lists some recommended resources. You get the best of both worlds of having a blog and a website. There are many free Posterous blog templates, so you can make it look just the way you want it to…
Â	Delicious While Evernote is used to capture most of my ideas and notes, I prefer saving links on the social bookmarking site called Delicious. I’ve been using Delicious for years and it makes it so easy to save, share and search a library of all your web links / bookmarks in one place. You can tag each bookmark you save, so when you want to go back to find all the bookmarks you’ve saved that have to do with eLearning, for example, it is merely a tag search away to have them all accessible to you, or to someone you send the tag link to… You can also connect with contacts on Delicious and share bookmarks that way, but I don’t tend to use that aspect of this social service all that often.

 

That’s it for my top ten tools for learning professionals. Thanks again to Jane Hart for all the work you put into creating the Top 100 on your site.

Is your organization behind the times when it comes to incorporating eLearning as a learning mode? While online learning is not always the answer to an organization’s learning challenge, there are certainly plenty of times when it makes perfect sense.

Learning Management System (LMS) – in order to track the learning in your organization, you’re going to need an LMS. Broadly speaking, there are two different types: the ones that come with your purchase of eLearning (such as if you were to purchase courses from an eLearning provider like Element K) and the ones that are a ‘blank slate’ where you can add your own content. The confusing part is that the content providers do let you add your own content (for a fee), not to mention that you can add content that another company makes for you (assuming they provide you with a license to do so).

Innovate Learning is a small business, so we don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on our learning platform. We use Moodle, which is an open source (meaning programmers built it for free, to contribute to a larger sense of mission) LMS. My LMS is hosted by Collaboration Resources (my Dad – a Christmas gift a few years back – we’re a whole family of geeks). Those without a geek for a Dad will need to explore companies that host Moodle, one of which is Moodle Rooms. 

Content Creation Tools – once you have a means for tracking courses, it is time to start building. These tools come in three broad categories: asynchronous rapid eLearning tools, live eLearning delivery platforms and sophisticated eLearning design applications. The most important factor in selecting a tool is whether the content will be able to snap in to your LMS and be trackable. Acronyms like SCORM (shareable content object reference model) and AICC (Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee) are standard ways that courses are put together to allow them to ‘talk to’ an LMS. All our courses are SCORM-compliant and they fit in our Moodle site, but they also can easily be uploaded in a client’s LMS, as SCORM is to trackable eLearning as Kleenex is to tissues.

Here are the applications we use for each of these purposes, but recognize that there are a lot of choices out there and it is always important to choose the right tool for the right job:

• Asynchronous rapid eLearning: Articulate eLearning Suite (create trackable eLearning from PowerPoint, build quizzes, record or import audio, easy to use, gorgeous final product/player template with lots of customization abilities), Camtasia Studio (inexpensive, easy to use, create trackable eLearning from PowerPoint, build quizzes, record audio), Adobe Captivate (build software demonstrations and simulations by ‘recording what you do on your screen,’ makes you feel like you’re using the product, perfect for training on proprietary software)
• Synchronous rapid eLearning: DimDim (free live/scheduled meeting/training software), though you can also check out Mikogo, which is similar.
• Sophisticated eLearning design applications: We actually no longer see a need to use any sophisticated eLearning tools in our business, since the solutions we’ve found do every thing we need them to, without having the barriers of entry of being challenging to learn or having difficulty fitting with our other solutions. One example of a sophisticated design application is Adobe Flash.

Other than the other tools mentioned above, you need your basic office applications, particularly Microsoft PowerPoint to best leverage some of these content creation tools.

Let our community know in the comments what your go-to tools are for getting started with eLearning.

Labor Day weekend is almost over and it’s back to work for the last few months of the year…I won’t even tell you how many days left until the holidays. Costco has Christmas decorations up and I’m already getting emails from the Dana Point Turkey Trot asking me to reserve my place for Thanksgiving morning.

This is the part of the year when things really start to move fast for all of us. Summer is officially over, many of us have family members who are going back to school (or we’re going back to school ourselves), we’re starting to think about holiday plans, and yes, we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to complete all of our professional goals before the end of the year.

Here’s the problem: many of us get overwhelmed and we don’t even think about coming up for air until January 1st. Plus, there is just more and more stuff coming our way each day that we need to do something with (emails, requests, meetings, projects, etc.) Here are five practices that I use to help control all that stuff:

1) Embrace Inbox Zero
As I write these words, both of my work and personal email inboxes are completely empty. I follow a system called Inbox Zero, made popular by 43folders.com

You can Google Inbox Zero for more info, but the basic premise is to do one of four things when you are reviewing e-mail messages:

• Do it (if less than two minutes)
• Defer it (schedule for another time if longer than two minutes)
• Archive it for future reference (if you’ll need it again someday)
• Delete it (if there is no current/future action needed by you)

Using this method, I’m able to keep my inbox clean and almost always empty by the end of the day. As a result, email doesn’t stack up untouched for days and weeks.

2) Maintain a Central Notes System
Almost all of us take regular notes during conversations, telecons, and meetings. The problem is that many of these notes end up in all kinds of different places. The key is to have one system that holds all your notes so you can reference them quickly and easily.

For me, I take a blank pad of paper to every meeting and put the other party’s name at the top of the page with the date. At the end of the day, I type the key points of my notes into either Highrise or Evernote, depending on the context (Highrise if it’s a conversation with a current/future client, Evernote for everything else). If I’m at a computer or mobile device while taking notes, I use Evernote. Both of them sync the notes to all my computers and mobile devices.

I’d like to go completely digital someday, but I’m not yet at the point where I’ve seen a good enough software solution to take notes on my iPad during a client meeting. Hopefully we’ll see a decent solution for this soon.

3) Use One Calendar
Too many people run their lives off multiple calendars in different places and, as a result, miss important events or cannot accurately plan their time. While I realize this isn’t always possible in every environment, I find it very useful to utilize the same calendar for work, home, and personal events. I use BusyCal on my Mac so that I can see all my information in one place.

If you are using multiple calendars, consider consolidating to no more than two calendars (if it’s not practical to have work and personal calendars combined). If possible, consolidate this down to one calendar so you have a single roadmap to run your day. Stop spending time mentally keeping track of multiple calendars. At work, talk to IT about getting your work calendar talking to your mobile devices. In your personal life, use Google Calendar or MobileMe to link calendars between computers and mobile devices. Use systems when you can overlay calendars if need be to see it all in one place.

4) Schedule a Planning Hour
For years, I’ve spent 30-45 minutes on Sunday evenings planning out all the important things that need to get done in the coming week. I look at my goals, project plans, and task lists, and plan out the week. I also am sure my weekly plans align with my long-term goals.

I block time during the week for important tasks. For example, if I have a set of important client calls I need to make early in the week, I’ll block a 1-2 hour spot for it on Monday or Tuesday and be sure focus on just that work. I also limit how much people can interrupt me during that time. I’ll turn my phone and e-mail off for that hour or two so I can focus (they’ll leave a message if it’s important). If someone interrupts me, I’ll say, “I’m in the middle of an important task. Can I get back to you at 4 o’clock?” Of course, I’m sure to follow up when I promise.

The plan always changes by the end of the first day of the week, but having a strong starting point keeps me in control of my scheduling decisions and allows me to make time for important tasks. One tip: always leave at least 20-30% of your day unscheduled for the inevitable unplanned stuff that comes up (perhaps more if a big part of your work is responding to the daily needs of others). Trying to control every second is almost as bad for your stress level as not scheduling at all.

5) Keep Tasks Deadline Oriented
The fine folks over at Getting Things Done have mostly gotten me into the habit of only putting something on a task list for today if it really needs to get done today. I’ve been the master at breaking this rule in the past. Nothing is more demotivating than starting a day with 50-60 things on a “wish list” when you know there is no possible way to tackle even a small portion of it.

Be realistic and only put the things on the task list that must get done today. Use project lists for other tasks that don’t specifically need to happen today. Putting this habit into practice has brought me a lot of peace and a much greater sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. Plus, I don’t have to push the postpone button on every task at the end of every day…also very demotivating.

I’m confident these five practices will help you run your day by the clock and your life with a vision.

I was remembering the other day about my first couple of years working professionally. It was in the early ’90s. Email was just being introduced into the workplace. I received around ten emails a day, only about half of them requiring an answer. Most of the time, if a co-worker had a question, they would walk down the hall to ask it.

Contrast that to today’s work… I work both as a professor and as a business owner. During the school year, I receive about 100 emails a day from students or related to the business of the university where I work. As a business owner, it can fluctuate, but my non-university email can get another 100 or so when we have a lot of classes or projects going on with our clients.

Regardless of how we started, most of us today have to fill the role of what Peter Drucker coined as “the knowledge worker.” Industrialized nations today have shifted the majority of their workforces from using our bodies to build things, to using our brains to produce something of value to another. This is not necessarily a good thing in every aspect, as illustrated so well by the book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew Crawford.

The pace of work today is rapid. We’re confronted with all these forces, pulling on our time and attention. How then do we manage it all? How can we prioritize what’s important and not become overwhelmed?

Time management authors and course providers have been capitalizing on these questions for decades now. One such guru who is providing great tools and ways of working at our peak performance is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done.

Getting Things Done

If this is the first time you’ve heard the phrase ‘getting things done,’ Trent Hamm of the Christian Science Monitor’s The Simple Dollar, clearly articulates what this system is and how to apply the various principles in your work in a series of posts, listed below.

1. A New Practice for a New Reality
2. The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
3. The Five Phases of Project Planning
4. Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools
5. Corraling Your Stuff
6. Getting “In” to Empty
7. Setting Up the Right Buckets
8. Keeping Your System Functional
9. Making the Best Action Choices
10. Getting Projects Under Control
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
12. The Power of the Next-Action Decision
13. The Power of Outcome Focusing
14. Five Key Things to Remember

I use a combination of David Allen’s GTD system, along with some of the classic approaches described in the Franklin Covey system, such as considering our various roles and prioritizing tasks around our roles. If you want a great training system to walk you through getting started with GTD, check out their GTD system product.

In this post, I’ll tell you about some of the tools I use in my own GTD system. One of the things David Allen emphasizes is that each of us needs to make the principles work within our own preferences and styles. Since I enjoy making use of technology to streamline my workflow, you’ll note a number of applications along the way that can assist you as you seek to live a knowledge worker’s life.

The Basics

While some of us have complex systems we use to accomplish our goals, you can start by ensuring you have the basics for your way of organizing.

A planner

Your planner can be a physical planner (Franklin Covey still tops my list of planners, though I’ve stopped ever carrying something physical around with me). You also can have something electronic that you use, though make sure it is something that can be with you at all times (such as via your smartphone).

Your planner / planning system should have both a calendar for time-based appointments and tasks, as well as a robust to do list. I use www.rememberthemilk.com for my to dos and Outlook 2010 for my calendaring system.

A note-taking tool

Again, you can either carry note-taking tools around with you, or use an electronic one (assuming again you’ll have access to it via your smart phone). I use a combination of my LiveScribe Pulse Smart Pen (see video below), along with a great online notebook system called www.Evernote.com.

Circa notebook system that I use which allows you to add and remove pages with ease, due to their unique punching system. The $58 for a Circa desk punch seemed expensive when I first saw it, but I can tell you now that I don’t regret my purchase in the slightest as I’m able to make notebooks/pages from any paper now (including the paper I use to record using myLiveScribe pen that I print from our laser printer).

Once you have the hole punch, you can create all different sizes of notebooks out of whatever printed material you want. Lifehacker has some terrific printable notebooks and planners that are highlighted on their site.  Best part is – - they’re free.

Workflow Processing and Organizing Tools

I highly recommend that you read Getting Things Done, if you haven’t already. It will help you see that it isn’t about using the right planner or having the correct smart phone. Rather, Getting Things Done is about a set of key principles and systems that help you live and manage by them.

Once you’ve finished the book, I recommend ordering a set of system guides from The David Allen Company. These guides are great for keeping close-at-hand in your workspace and include practical guides and checklists as follows:

• Mastering workflow
• Incompletion trigger list
• Workflow processing and organization diagram
• Weekly review
• Natural planning model
• Project planning trigger list
• Horizons of focus

I reach for my system guides more often than I reach for an envelope or a stamp. Probably the best one is on how to process and organize workflow. Allen outlines how to take “life’s random inputs” (such as email, phone calls, ideas, incoming mail, and requests) and process and organize them all.

Below is a graphic of the tools I use for the various systems prescribed by Allen. After that, I briefly describe each tool and how it integrates with my own GTD system.

gtd-tools

The first question asked in the GTD workflow system is regarding whether or not the item is actionable. If the answer is yes, Allen prescribes having systems for projects, deferring tasks, and delegating them.

When my projects involve more than just one or two people, my go to system is called Many Moon. It is an easy-to-use online project management system. You can add projects, milestones, tasks, and keep track of who has committed to what by when. It also integrates with Google Docs, making it easy for a team of people to comment on a document or spreadsheet that is related to the project from within Many Moon, keeping more of your information in one place.

You don’t attend too many project meetings in a company before you see a gaggle of notebooks being lugged along. I prefer to use a notebook system called Evernote. It is an application they refer to as being “in the cloud.” That means that all the items you put in this notebook are stored on a computer on the internet, as opposed to your local hard drive, so the information can follow you wherever you go. Need to access your notebook on a different computer? It’s there with a desktop application that syncs with your data stored “in the cloud.” Need to see your information while on the road? It’s there using an iPhone, Blackberry, or iPad app. At an internet cafe, without a smart phone or iPad? No problem. Just log in to your account using an internet browser and all your same information is there.

Evernote is great for project-related information such as ideas, meeting notes, and you can even record your thoughts via an audio note. After a meeting where you take notes on a whiteboard, fire up the Evernote iPhone application and take a photo of the brainstorming you did. Later, you can email the photo to the attendees and also have it on your Evernote notebook for storing and future searching. Evernote is so smart, that it can search text in photographs, even hand-written text.

I also use a cloud-based system called DropBox for all the PDFs and Word Docs that I want to have available to me for a project. Evernote makes for a great storage system, but if you have documents, such as PDFs or Word files that you want to change often, as opposed to just referencing, DropBox will likely make for an alternate solution. For a little more clarification on how DropBox can work for you, let’s turn to the folks at CommonCraft:

For tasks that need to be deferred or delegated, I use another web-based service called Remember the Milk. Remember the Milk is my favorite task manager – and trust me when I say I’ve explored many of them. I can access my to do list on my iPhone (regardless of whether or not I can get a connection to the internet at that time), over the web, as well as in print (I don’t use their print features, but a friend at work likes to have a hard copy to doodle on throughout the day to help her stay focused and she loves the design of the printouts).

I can also forward emails to my Remember the Milk to do list, including some added text to indicate which folder/list I want the tasks associated with, when they are due, and how they should be tagged (tags let you categorize things in different ways; so you might have tags around where you need to be when you complete a task – such as @computer or @phone, as well as what activity they relate to – such as research, course preparation, or eLearning creation).

If a task is not actionable, many of these same tools may be used for storing items for reference, incubation, or on what Allen calls the “someday/maybe” list.

One last tool not mentioned yet that I make use of for storing websites for future reference is called Delicious. It is a bookmarking service that makes it super easy to call up websites you want to view later on. It is also a “social” service, meaning that you can share categories of links with people that may have an interest in the same subject as the bookmarks you’ve stored. For example, here are all the bookmarks I’ve saved on my Delicious account that are related to GTD.

One of the best companies around at making things easy to understand is CommonCraft and they developed this easy-to-understand vision of what Delicious can do for you:

A friend of mine recently moved to another state and has been courageous in already signing up for some HR-specific networking events. She asked for my advice and the first thing I reminded her was that most people are uncomfortable networking and that she is not alone. I do not perceive myself as an expert, though it helps when I remember that many of the people I will be meeting are just as wary as I am of this seemingly forced opportunity to connect as I am. 

Before

Before you go, it is critical to have thought hard about your personal brand and what you most intend to communicate to others. McNally & Speak (2003) write: 

“Your [personal] brand takes shape as a result of your ability to make what you do distinctive, relevant, and consistent.”  

They have a great way of helping you think about what you want to project by developing a personal brand model. 

Roles 

You begin by identifying the different roles that you play for others in your life. You can keep your roles specific to a professional capacity, though I have found that if I think of my personal and professional lives together, it helps me maintain better balance in life, particularly in keeping my most important relationships protected and prioritized. 

Standards 

This part of the exercise is where you consider how you deliver your roles. These are like your standards of service. What level of performance can others expect from you? Keep in mind that one of the best ways to build a brand is to be distinct – so think about how you are unique in what you deliver to others. 

Style 

Last, consider how you interact with others. Since a brand ultimately comes down to a relationship a company (or a person) has with a customer (or a person with whom they interact), the way we will relate to others becomes an important aspect of our personal brand. 

I suggest that before you attend that networking event, job interview, or annual planning meeting that you reflect on these three elements of your personal brand. You can consider buying Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd to go through their exercises and to solidify your approach, or just get out  a piece of paper and begin by writing down your roles, standards and style. 

While working on my doctorate, one of our professors, Vance Caesar, had us go through this exercise. It was quite revealing and I highly recommend you spend some time articulating your brand in this way, as well.

Final preparations