Human Capital Blog

Coach's Corner: Mike's Journal

I spend a good chunk of my professional career training and certifying coaches in the Frame of Mind Coaching Method, which requires that clients journal with their coach throughout the coaching period. Here is one such example of a recent journal.

Coach’s Corner: John’s Journal

As a coach who works with highly driven, high-profile individuals and executives, I focus on mindset and use journaling to uncover the beliefs that profoundly influence results in all aspects of their lives. I provide journaling prompts, which launch them into a deeper journey of self-discovery and learning. The data I extract from the journals is extraordinarily valuable and allows me to quickly and effectively use such self-reflection to guide the client toward a more empowered mindset. Below is another example of this approach.

ASTD 2013: See You in Dallas

In just three days, 9,000 training and development professionals from more than 80 countries will convene in Dallas, Texas, for the profession’s biggest event of the year: the ASTD 2013 International Conference & Exposition. For four days we will gather as a community to network and build relationships; share best practices and challenges; learn from thought leaders and peers; and explore the emerging topics and breaking trends in the field. With top content filling 300 education sessions; an EXPO Hall bursting with 380 exhibitors; world-renowned keynote speakers Sir Ken Robinson, John Seely Brown, and Liz Wiseman; and a conference bookstore boasting the latest training and development titles, the ASTD International Conference & EXPO truly is the premier learning event.

When Your Change Is Met by Their Resistance

Most people do not like change. Whether you are a training and development professional or a CEO, if you represent change, then to some people you represent the enemy. Luckily, you can master the switch by navigating your new orders in a way that breaks down others’ hesitations.

Opportunity Works

As discussed in the previous blog posts in this series, opportunity is important to leadership because it’s important to the people being led. There’s one critical point that needs to be addressed: the pursuit of opportunity often involves purposeful discomfort.

Paradoxes That Raise the Bar in Training and Development

Do we deliver the present or find the future? Do we drive for performance or develop people? Do we play to our strengths or shore up weaknesses? Whether running our own businesses, selling our services, or teaching our clients, paradoxes abound in everyday life. Carl Jung once observed that “only paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.” And the ability to see and think in paradox is an important stage in adult development that lets us look beyond our initial assumptions, our side of an argument, or even the natural preferences of our personality.

Coach’s Corner: Sally’s Journal

All of my coaching clients are required to use a private, online journal for the purpose of submitting an entry every day for the duration of our coaching period. The goal is for them to use the journal to truly understand their values, their beliefs, their perspectives on the world, and their patterns of thinking. This insight enables me to help them reflect on their lives and make slight changes that result in transformational outcomes, creating an unparalleled journey for the client.

Growth Through Opportunity

As explained in the last blog post in this series, opportunity is a powerful motivator. That makes providing opportunities for people an important part of a leader’s job. It is so important that Albert Einstein said this about the importance of opportunity: “All that is valuable in human society depends on the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”

Developing Whole Leaders

In the February issue of T+D magazine, the cover story discusses the challenges facing human capital development (HCD) in a global workforce. The article cites the need for collaboration and results-driven learning in Asia; talent growth and retention in Latin American; and future-focused planning in Europe.

Coach's Corner

As a coach, I require that my clients journal in a private and secure online journal every day for the duration of our coaching period. The goal is to use the journal to really understand their values, their beliefs, their perspectives on the world, and their patterns of thinking. This insight enables me to help them reflect on their lives and make slight changes that result in transformational outcomes.

The Power of Opportunity

In the last blog post, I explained that leadership, as a topic, has become more complex than it needs to be. When you get right to the core of leadership, it’s about creating opportunities for those you lead. Leadership is about those being led, not the person doing the leading. The leader’s main job is to provide people with opportunities that help them stretch, grow, and excel.

Leaders Create Opportunity

For all of the advice leadership “experts” peddle, it’s amazing how complicated they make the topic of leadership. The requirements that they tell us we need to meet to be called a true “leader” get longer, more idealized, and more complicated, causing many people to opt out of the chance to lead. Leaders are expected to be bold and calculated, passionate and reasonable, rational and emotional, confident and humble, driven and patient, strategic and tactical, competitive and cooperative, principled and flexible. Of course, it is possible to be all of those things…if you’re perfect!

Embracing the Chaos of Possibility

As a child, one of my favorite toys was a set of bricks made of cardboard that I could stack and build into just about anything. I used to love creating forts, race car tracks, cabins, buildings, castles, and more. Have you ever watched a child play with blocks, Legos, or other elements of creative construction? For that child, those random pieces can become anything, limited only by imagination. I still recall the feeling that all of the possibilities in the world existed in that chaotic pile of cardboard bricks.

The Big Data Talent Gap

This whitepaper analyzes the big data revolution and the potential it offers organizations, explores the critical talent needs and emerging talent gaps related to big data, offers examples of organizations that are meeting this challenge head on, and recommends four steps HR and talent management professionals can take to bridge the talent gap.

Consulting on the Inside

The Power of Play

For us to be fully engaged, we need a rhythm between push and release, between drive and recover. We need to recharge those batteries. And our research shows that play—bringing out the FEBI pattern called the Collaborator—correlates with positive emotions.

Hello From Your New Human Capital Community of Practice Manager

Meet Your New Community of Practice Manager

How Positivity Leads to Success

There is overwhelming evidence from research in positive psychology that people who are happy are more successful. Positivity is related to higher levels of job performance, supervisory evaluations and perceived customer service. Positive people perform better because they are more motivated and more effective. This is due to a number of benefits associated with experiencing positive emotions:

Positive Leadership Coaching the Double Bottom Line

I’m not as a huge fan of 360’s as I used to be. Of course, they provide critical data to help leaders become more self-aware. Unfortunately, every time people get a 360, it takes them about a month to get over the assessment! Most people blast through all the “good stuff” and head straight for the negative comments and lowest scores. For some reason, we’re all just that insecure. Happens all the time—a student brings home a report card with four A’s and a C. What’s the first question that well-intentioned parents ask? “So, what’s with the C?”

Giving Form to Those Brilliant Ideas

Have you ever had a client that is full of great ideas but lacks the ability to follow through and turn them into great actions? I’m sure we all have a client or friend who has claimed to have invented the iPod, Facebook, Amazon or Silly Bandz (those squiggly rubber bands kids wear that sell around $200 million annually). Maybe you are that one who is always beating your head against the wall when you see someone else become widely successful from an idea you had years ago. No matter how brilliant our ideas are, not all of them can become reality. But when we have an idea that could be realized, how is it that some people are able to do that, whereas others are not? Get ready to brush the dust off those stacks of scribbled ideas on legal pads and napkins, and see how they could gain new life!

Human Capital Newsletter-March

Spring is here! The weather is warmer, the days are longer, and it’s time to get out and about—which I can’t wait to do. Indeed, this spring I am taking several trips in an effort to bring you the latest trends in human capital and to tell you first-hand what today's thought leaders are saying. So I’ve hit the road, and I’m curious to see how many ASTD Human Capital Community of Practice members I will meet along the way!

Six Pillars of Creativeship

Today, leadership is about “creativeship,” defined as the creation of sustainable cultures and business models. Creativeship enables businesses to compete and thrive in this world of unprecedented technological advances, globalization, shifting economic drivers, government intervention, changing workforce demographics, and the emergence of corporate social responsibility.

Strengths-Based Talent Management

People who have the opportunity to do what they do best every day are happier and more successful. A strengths-based approach to managing talent recognizes the value of emphasizing strengths and adopts practices that help employees identify, use and develop their strengths at work.

Organizations Investing More in Talent, But Question the Results

According to Mercer’s new Talent Barometer Survey, 60 percent of organizations worldwide report increasing their investment in talent in recent years. However, a much smaller percentage of respondents, 24 percent, say their plans are highly effective in meeting immediate and long-term human capital needs.

Driving Beyond Distractions

One of the most frustrating things to encounter as a training and development practitioner is to spend the time and effort to provide our clients with the tools they need to succeed, only to see them not follow through on their training and ultimately no change occurring. Even as I write this I’m shaking my head at the thought of it! So why is it that even the best designed intervention often fizzles away, losing its steam as work behaviors return to business as usual? One big reason is that we are competing for our clients’ time and attention with a whole host of distractions and other obligations.

Positive Leaders Spread Productivity

Everyone wants happy, productive employees. But that’s not easy, mainly because you can’t make people positive or happy—only they can. However, they can catch positivity from a leader. It’s as if positive leaders spread a “healthy” virus.

Leadership Training Company Watch List 2013 Announced

TrainingIndustry.com recently announced its 2013 Leadership Training Companies Watch List, which is intended to help buyers of training services evaluate leadership training providers Selection to the 2013 Leadership Companies Watch List was based on the following criteria: new and innovative service offerings, unique approach to leadership development solutions, commitment to thought leadership, and quality of initial clients.

Mentoring: The Timeless Success Factor

Mentoring is a genuine commitment to helping the career development of a less experienced, less knowledgeable colleague. At its best, mentoring is a collaboration that is truly shared. Done well by both the mentor and mentee, the experience can be transformative.

What Does Zen Bring to the Training and Development of Leaders

I’m inspired by my recent conversations with Anthony Quintero to add my “Zen leader” voice to these virtual pages. By “leadership,” I’m not referring to a position on an organizational chart, but rather, adopting Kevin Cashman’s inside-out definition[1]: authentic self expression that creates value for others. Not only is the training and development of leaders the calling of our profession, but as trainers and developers—through the value we create for others—we, ourselves, are leaders. And what does it mean to be a Zen leader? Again, I’m not referring to a fixed formula for leadership that’s “out there,” but rather to realizing our own true leadership capacity, that is, our authentic self expression that is at once individual and universal and comes out clean—not in service of our own ego. When we get out of our own way, we realize the Zen leader in us.

[1] Cashman, Kevin, Leadership from the Inside Out (Provo, UT, Executive Excellence Publishing, 2000).

Human Capital February Newsletter

How important is it to you that the people around you at work—or the people you’re responsible for training—are happy? Does happiness make a difference in productivity? How much does your CEO care about having a happy workplace? According to Dr. Steve Gladis and Dr. Elizabeth Cabrera, people who experience more positive emotions are more successful. Positive employees make better decisions, have better interpersonal skills, and are more creative, productive, and resilient. Companies can, therefore, gain a competitive advantage by creating positive work environments. I asked Dr. Gladis and Dr. Cabrera to write a blog series on this topic and they replied… wait for it… positively! You will find their blogs in the “Happiness” tile on the Human Capital Community of Practice page.

Positivity Blog Introduction

This series of blog posts by George Mason professors and authors Dr. Beth Cabrera and Dr. Steve Gladis will explore how positivity helps everyone at work be more successful, from the guy who delivers the FedEx packages, to the people on your team, to the CEO.

Manager Performance Map Helps Entire Team Succeed

Managers need to be able to quickly and succinctly analyze business information in order to develop complete skill and task appraisals that will direct staff development so. Like any project management effort, a tool or system that can simulate alternative solutions and visualize implementation plans is necessary. Enter the Manager Performance Map (MPM).

How Could Neuroscience Change the Way We Manage Change

In part four of this four-part series on what neuroscience can offer to the Human Capital Community of Practice, Dr. Erika Garms explores change management—both on individual and organizational levels—and looks for opportunities to ease the pain and increase the success of change efforts.

Employee Development Practices That Don't Break the Bank

In today’s struggling economy, employers have been forced to cut back on virtually every business expense and investment regardless of whether or not it’s a good idea or a necessary expenditure. In the last few years those that have been able to stay competitive and profitable have turned to implementing creative solutions to running their organizations with less. Employee development is not exempt from these cut backs and in fact, insuring that our workforce is performing at their optimum potential is more important now than at any other time. So where are today’s training and development professionals turning to for guidance?

Strong Words

A fulcrum of our coaching practice—and for many of us in managing and consulting—is working with individual strengths, either the characteristics finding virtuous expression of one’s best attributes or the competencies manifested in work or social roles. Strengths are increasingly being recognized as the centerpiece of engaged, productive transactions within our everyday duties and endeavors. Discovering those strengths that uniquely speak to (and for) us is an early step in launching an engaged, effective coaching effort.

Leadership Self-Assessment

Whether you seem to be a “born leader” or are uneasy with the role of leader and need to develop leadership skills methodically, you will discover valuable insights through a self-assessment. You will want to examine your skills, traits, competencies, abilities, and experience.

Is Feedback Valuable or a Resource Sink?

Part three in a four-part series on what the Human Capital Community of Practice can learn from neuroscience.

Zenger Explains Why Waiting to Train Leaders Is Bad Business

In the recent HBR Blog Network post, “We Wait Too Long to Train Our Leaders,” author and well-known leadership development consultant Jack Zenger contends that “leadership development can be taught at any age — and that companies wait far, far too long to begin.”

Strategies for the Scattered

Neuroscience is a field buzzing with new findings that are indisputably attention-grabbing. But what practical value do these findings offer for those in ASTD’s Human Capital Community of Practice? In part two of this four-part series on what neuroscience can offer to the Human Capital CoP, Dr. Erika Garms examines two related functions critical for our success in the workplace—focus and attention. Readers will learn what supports and challenges focus and attention so they can improve their own performance, and coach or train others in their organizations to improve their performance. We will also explore the facts and fiction surrounding multitasking, which may change the way you allocate your time and energy.

Did you read the entire introductory paragraph to this blog before becoming distracted by something either externally or internally?

ASTD Webcast: Four Key Skills to Change Company Culture

Gadgets are smart these days. You can buy a refrigerator that tells you you’re out of milk. Your car knows when its tires are low. You can even ask your mobile phone for parenting advice. We owe the increasing power of our toys and tools to the fact that all of them now sport powerful operating systems.

Better leaders through "brain hygiene"

Are you fascinated by new research coming out about the brain? Do you wonder about how the new research could affect you personally, or the work that you do? The ASTD Human Capital Community of Practice is hosting a four-part blog series, “What the Human Capital CoP Can Learn From Neuroscience,” to serve up the latest interesting nuggets of neuroscience and show you how they relate to our work. Series guest blogger, Dr. Erika Tierney Garms, kicks off the series with the first installation, “Better Leaders Through ‘Brain Hygiene.’” Be sure to catch it! We encourage discussion about the topic each week, so please feel free to join in.

Handling Common Career Coaching Challenges

The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce offers tips for handling the trickier career coaching scenarios.

Four Key Skills to Change Company Culture

Organizational initiatives often fail not because they are inadequate but because the company doesn’t support the four critical competencies of a high-performance culture operating system. Joseph Grenny’s latest research and case studies on high-performance cultural operating systems reveal the DNA of organizations that execute superbly and innovate consistently.

Overcoming career-limiting habits

In a recent study on change management, my colleagues and I found that 97 percent of employees report they have some career-limiting habit that keeps them from achieving their potential at work. These habits cost employees raises and promotions they might have otherwise received.

How do you link different change initiatives?

Orion are studying how the brain works and what this means for leaders and HR. This neuroscience is beginning to highlight some interesting information about leadership and change. Information that will change how HR supports the business.

Change management is an essential skill in HR and never more so than in helping to link up and explain the many change initiatives that companies undertake all at once. These can range from small changes like a re-organisation of a team to large business transformation projects that impact every facet of the business, suppliers and customers. Much of this change is driven by factors outside of the direct control of HR, so how can HR help people and management make sense of the changes and join the dots?

Cross Training Is Not Only for Athletes

I believe improving on your strengths will improve performance. But, at a certain point, a manager utilizing the same skills over and over may find their professional development at a standstill because they are not being challenged to do something new. The question becomes, how do you improve on this employee’s development? The answer is cross training.

Why Learning Is Never Enough: Implementing a Multi-faceted Change-Management Strategy

You’ve just finished facilitating an entertaining and informative training course. Judging by the enthusiasm of your training graduates, they can’t wait to implement the ideas they’ve learned. Two months pass and one day, while visiting with a training graduate, you notice the training participant manual lying under a pile of papers on his desk. You think to yourself: “What exactly has he done differently as a result of attending that training?”

Implement a Proactive Coaching Approach to Diminish Your Distance

Today, managing a virtual team is the standard. Team leadership is an important part of achieving the objectives of an organization and coaching can be the ideal tool to ensure your team members are performing to their highest potential. The challenging part can be in effectively managing at a distance. Fortunately, the various modes of technology can provide us with the capability to diminish a fair amount of the distance. The key is utilizing the available resources to achieve the desired effect.