2
oct
0

Do You Know Your Audience’s Learning Preferences? Tips for Better Instructional Design

Posted by Corporate Training MaterialsNo Comments

Trainers tend to choose training models that focus on the content that they need to be addressed. However, they also need to know how their target audience learns the best. Learning preferences is the missing link in almost every instructional design model. There are also ways that trainers can design their sessions to create a better learning environment.

Tips for Better Instructional Design

Before trainers design their training sessions, they should determine what participants actually need to learn. According to Bob Pike, rather than waste time covering material that the audience already knows, trainers should do the groundwork to learn where the critical learning needs are so they can keep their session focused and engaging.

Trainers should make sure they design training that communicates a specific outcome for participants. Learners should be able to understand how gaining new skills or knowledge is tied to their own job success and career path. When audiences can see the training’s benefits, they are more likely to stay interested and motivated to finish it.

Pike has revealed that the foundational principle of the instructor-led, participant-centered training approach is “90-20-10.” This is the key to maximizing learner engagement, and the goal is to keep the total course length under 90 minutes, changing pace every 20 minutes, and promoting participant interaction every 10 minutes.

Trainers should think about their audience and objectives to determine what kind of sequence they should deliver content in to best enhance learning. Also, a tiered content approach works for many audiences. The tiered approach is a hierarchical triangle:

  • Tier 1 – High-level audio-visual information should be up top. This is where learners get an overview of the topic and learn the basics.
  • Tier 2 – More text-based “meat and potatoes” content is second. This includes detailed strategies, instructions, helpful tips, and more.
  • Tier 3 – Interaction happens last. Trainers should encourage participation through quizzes, games, or the application of new skills. Hands-on engagement has been proven to improve retention and learning outcomes.

Instructional Design is an ongoing and ever-changing process. Even when trainers find a successful session format, they should still keep looking for ways to improve engagement, retention, and on-the-job results.

Learn more here!

 

27
sep
0

Leadership Skills That Are Critical to Success

Posted by LeadershipNo Comments

 

Leadership skills are critical to success. Unfortunately, however, it is easy for a leader to lose focus and end up struggling. There are many derailments that can lead a manager astray. The key is identifying the potential outcomes of complex situations and overcoming them effectively. Preventing being derailed is ensuring leadership success.

There are a few important areas that leaders need to work on when they are focusing on building their leadership skills. These include:

  • Organizing (Giving attention, focus and performing problem-solving)
  • Relationships (Information sharing, working with others, working as a team, being supportive, and coaching)
  • Learning initiatives (Competency development and enabling the learning application)
  • Emotional management (Perceiving emotional climate and the response to the emotional climate)
  • Career management (Making ethical choices and performing career anchoring)

Specific Traits and Skills Needed

The line between a successful leader and a derailed leader can sometimes be very thin. Common work situations can cause a good leader to get off track. But leadership failure can fortunately be predicted and be prevented. There are a certain behaviors that can derail any leader’s career, but knowing what they are can help. There are certain traits that show the difference between a good leader and one that is derailed.

Researchers have identified the below personal traits and skills that differentiate between successful leaders and derailed leaders:

  • Diversity of Experience. Having a limited range of experiences derails leaders and can create behavior challenges. A lack of experience creates issues with problem solving, working with others, learning effectively, and addressing the emotional climate of different groups. Having a diverse leadership experience brings success.
  • Emotional Stability and Composure. Being emotionally volatile can derail leaders and can lead to challenges with working with others, teaming up, and having supportive coaching behaviors. Leaders need to have awareness and effective management of the emotional climate. They must be stable and calm in order to lead their team.
  • Handling mistakes. Mistakes can happen, and successful leaders need to handle them with the right skills. They should not manage mistakes by blaming others, demonstrating defensiveness, and refusing to move beyond failure. Poor mistake management creates problems with working with others, learning applications, awareness of emotional issues with the team, attending to ethical challenges, and problem-solving.
  • Interpersonal skills. Being insensitive to others is a large source of derailment. Manipulative and insensitive behaviors interfere with building networks, fostering cooperation, and getting the most from team members. When communicating in ways that others experience as abrasive and intimidating, the leader is unable to develop them. These behaviors affect information sharing, working relationships, coaching opportunities, feelings awareness, and emotional climate reading. Leaders must be able to have good interpersonal skills in order to ensure the team is operating effectively.
  • Integrity breaches. Breaches like betraying trust, promise breaking, and being duplicitous result in behavior challenges in the ability to build and mend relationships, the ability to understand the emotional needs of others, and the ability to make choices that foster commitment from others to achieve goals. Leaders must be honest, transparent, and honorable to succeed.
  • Technical and cognitive skills. While leaders often have excellent technical and intellectual abilities, if overused, these behaviors may come across as overconfident and arrogant. Overplaying behaviors can generate difficulties with problem solving, relationships, learning new skills, and career opportunities.

Learning More

Watch HRDQ’s webinar “Leadership Skills That Are Critical to Success”.  You will learn the five key behaviors that can severely limit effectiveness, what leadership skills are critical to maintain and ensure success, ways to predict and pinpoint problems that can cause career derailment, how to develop and align critical competencies, and how to create an individual personal development plan.

For more information on how to prevent leadership derailment, check out “Leadership Unlimited Profile” by HRDQ. It serves as an “early warning” leadership development tool by quickly identifying trouble spots and building the skill sets leaders and managers need to stay on track and take charge of their careers. Participants will learn how to measure key career behaviors, understand the management skills needed to maintain and ensure success, learn how to predict problems and avoid career derailment, develop and align critical competencies, and create an individual personal development plan. Click here to learn more: Leadership Unlimited Profile.

 

 

25
sep
0

How to Become a Remarkable Leader: Q&A with a Leadership Expert

Posted by Leadership, UncategorizedNo Comments

Anyone can call themselves a “leader” but truly being one isn’t so easy. A remarkable leader has important qualities like honesty, integrity, courage, and dedication. They inspire their team and encourage growth and satisfaction. A remarkable leader is someone who people want to follow.

Being a remarkable leader doesn’t come down to just one trait. There are quite a few parts of being a remarkable leader, and some of their common traits include:

Champion organizational change
Build relationships and develop others
Solve problems and make decisions
Demonstrate collaboration and teamwork
Taking responsibility and accountability for the team
Manage projects and processes
Set goals and objectives for the team

The most important thing, however, is that the leader continually learns how to be the best manager they can be. Certain tools and products can help with this necessity.

Q&A with a Leadership Expert

Leadership expert Kevin Eikenberry is the author of the acclaimed book, “Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a Time,” which sets out to challenge participants to be more intentional about what, when, and how they learn. He shared a few thoughts with HRDQ on how to become a remarkable leader:

HRDQ: “How do you describe Remarkable Leadership and how does one become a remarkable leader?”

Eikenberry: “When you think about the word ‘remarkable’ it means that something is worth

talking about. Remarkable leadership is a choice that leaders make to become the best, most effective leader they can be. The goal isn’t to be talked about or to become the center of attention, but rather to be noticed for their skills and effectiveness so that they can make a positive difference for others and the organization. You become a ‘Remarkable Leader’ by making a choice to learn, by making a choice to improve, and by making a choice to make a difference every day.”

HRDQ: “How did you realize the need for a different type of leadership training solution?”

Eikenberry: “By talking to clients, observing the challenges that organizations have in helping

leaders grow. The challenge that organizations face is that training becomes an event. They build a workshop (or identify one to send people to), and then measure performance based on people’s attendance there. This is a fine thing to measure, but it doesn’t measure leadership development! We try to develop tools and solutions that match the way learning really happens. Training is an event, but learning is a process – so our goal is to provide solutions that become an ongoing learning process rather than a training event.”

HRDQ: “What is the advantage of the modular approach to training?”

Eikenberry: “Application! When people leave a general leadership workshop, regardless of how well-designed it is, or how skilled the facilitator is, they are in ‘overwhelmed mode.’ They have a ton of new ideas and a ton of work to do when they return. We like to say that when they get back to work, real life happens. By modularizing the material, people leave a short session with some specific and actionable ideas. While we as designers and trainers can’t guarantee they will go back to work and apply it, we have, through our design and the module approach, improved the likelihood that they can find one or more things to try right away. And success, of course, builds on success, so once people have successes they will be open to more learning and be more excited about the next module.”

HRDQ: “Who should participate in Remarkable Leadership?

Eikenberry: “While leaders at all levels, from new, first line managers to C-level participants, have had great success, the examples and situations are probably best matched to the first-line and mid-manager levels. Having said that, we believe the best success comes when organizations include a vertical slice of leaders in these sessions. While some of the more experienced or senior leaders may know some of the ideas, a refresher is always valuable and the interaction and relationships that can be built with a cross section of leaders involved can be a powerful part of the process.”

HRDQ: “What results can trainers expect to see after facilitating Remarkable Leadership?”

Eikenberry: “They can expect leaders to be better equipped to do the challenging and complex work of leadership. This program will not guarantee that people will try the skills and ideas they learn (nor will any other program). Remarkable Leadership will provide a platform for growth, extended materials to support it, and ideas for the trainers to help them support people outside of the classroom – where the application happens.”

HRDQ: “Are there any specific Remarkable Leadership stories you can share?”

Eikenberry: “We’ve delivered these materials in various forms and formats over the past four years. Because of that we have heard lots of feedback. The most powerful stories are of people who were encouraged and inspired by the ideas in Remarkable Leadership to go back and make a difference in their organizations and for their teams. We’ve heard lots of stories of promotions, improved working relationships, successful change and coaching efforts and much more. More important than my stories are the stories you will create as you use Remarkable Leadership with your leaders.”

Learning More

Attend HRDQ’s webinar “Leadership Development: 12 Ways to Develop Remarkable Leaders” on Oct. 16 at 2 p.m. EDT. Participants will learn the four reasons why many leadership development processes fail, 12 keys to a successful organizational leadership development process, strategies for developing targeted leadership skills in a relatively small period of time, and how to create relevant learning experiences to build leadership skills.

Click here to register: 12 Ways to Develop Remarkable Leaders .

This webinar is based on Remarkable Leadership: A Learning Series, which offers a flexible and practical learning experiences for leaders at all levels.

Click here to learn more: Remarkable Leadership

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25
sep
0

Team Building with ‘Jungle Escape’ Game

Posted by Teamwork GamesNo Comments

 

Successful teamwork isn’t always so easy to come by. It has many factors that go into it, and conflicts frequently arise while performances often decline. It’s not always simple to find the root of the problem.

Experiential learning and team building exercises can help. What at first glance may seem to be an unsolvable problem might have a clear solution in the context of a simulation. Putting everyday habits into a simulation highlights the ways we act as a team. It creates a safe environment where skills can be measured in action without jeopardizing an important team project.

Experiential Learning with Games

“Jungle Escape” is a game that builds and revitalizes teams. It’s an eye-opening diagnostic tool that takes teamwork back to fundamentals. Something as simple as measuring planning time against implementation time can shed light on all aspects of a team’s dynamic.

Experiential learning centers around the participant and their active involvement in the learning process. This is what makes it such a valuable method of instruction. The key characteristics of experiential learning are that it includes full participant involvement, lessons are relevant to the participants, participants develop a sense of responsibility for their own learning, and the learning environment is adaptable to the participants’ needs. Information is thus able to be retained better.

The Game Objective

The following is the plot of the game: Stranded in a jungle after surviving an airplane crash, teams are challenged to build a helicopter to exact specifications using only toy parts, limited access to an assembled model, and teamwork. Starting with a planning phase, they discuss how to execute the project, and then they begin to work.

When the team believes they’ve properly built the aircraft, the facilitator checks the helicopter for accuracy and then records the amount of time dedicated to planning and construction. The winner is usually the team that spends the most time planning, and they are then able to complete the project the fastest. Following the activity, team members take part in a discussion about team dynamics, offer insights, and create an action plan for improvement.

The Three Types of Teams

The scenario gives teams the unfamiliar task of constructing an escape helicopter. After carrying out the simulated task, teams are presented with their planning to implementation ratio, and introduced to three types of teams:

  • Fragmented. A fragmented team is characterized by autocratic leadership or groups that press the group into making quick decisions. This results in insufficient time to considering alternative strategies for accomplishing the project. Very fragmented groups don’t spend enough time planning and may not complete the project in the allotted time. There’s lack of involvement and conflict is suppressed or ignored.
  • Divergent. A divergent group is characterized by passive leadership. Group members are overly cautious in problem solving and decision making. There are too many alternatives considered during the planning phase which creates little time left for implementation. Divergent teams are often unable to reach a consensus and they try to resolve their issues through voting procedures, which may not work.
  • Cohesive. A cohesive team balances planning and implementation to achieve its goals. A cooperative atmosphere develops and everyone on the team is involved in structuring the work. Usually, assembly time only requires half of the planning time because many of the potential problems are avoided in advance. Consequently, the total time is usually less than that required by the fragmented or divergent groups. Cohesive

After learning which type of team behavior they’ve exhibited, the Nine Elements of Effective Teamwork give participants specific reflecting points to guide improvement. They help identify problem areas so that solutions and improvements are possible. They are:

  • Cooperative, Supportive Climate
  • Open Communication
  • Meaningful Involvement
  • Shifting Leadership
  • Clear Goals and Objectives
  • Agreed-upon Problem Solving Method
  • Consensus Decision Making
  • Healthy Conflict
  • Task Satisfaction

Learning More

While “Jungle Escape” is about team dynamics, it also provides a look at individual behaviors and how each individual can take action to improve the function of their group. Participants will be able to put their knowledge to work in any team situation or group interaction. It will instill in them a heightened awareness of what it means to be part of a team, and how each member of a team can be a leader – regardless of their title or rank. Learn more here: Jungle Escape Team Building Game.

Join training expert Gary Turner as he showcases the importance of group-process skills in team building with the webinar “A New Way to do Team Building Training.”  You will learn how to identify a group as one of three types of teams, nine key indicators of team effectiveness, how to help teams find the balance between planning and implementation, the characteristics of a cohesive team – and how you can help your teams achieve this ideal, and you will learn action planning steps teams can implement immediately. Watch the recorded webinar here: HRDQ Webinar- A New Way to do Team Building

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