Here is this week's article in our Unleash Your Potential Newsletter . . .

Tom stepped into the meeting room, but from his perspective it might as well have been a jail cell. He was a prisoner in his own work day. Why? The PowerPoint slide projected on the screen said it all. "Welcome to our Refresher Training." Refresher training might be needed for some people but Tom already knew all this material . . . but the training was mandatory. Besides, he had a desk full of more important work. He told himself how stupid this mandatory training policy was; that he hated to attend training on stuff he knew.

Mary's supervisor asked her to attend the coaching skills training being provided by the company. The problem was that Mary wasn't a coach. She wasn't even a supervisor. She didn't see any value in attending this workshop. All she could think about was, "What good is this going to be for me?"

Kat was really excited about the workshop session she had registered for. It was on a topic she was interested in and wanted to learn more about. She saw how mastering these skills would help her reach her goals. She arrived early and sat close to the front. The problem became clear very early on though. The material was too basic. She already knew this stuff! She was disappointed to say the least. She put out her own money and time for something that was going to waste both of those things.

I'm guessing you can relate to at least one, and perhaps all of the scenarios you’ve just read. These are just some of the common barriers that get in our way of being the most productive learners: we are forced to be there, we don't see the learning as relevant or valuable, and we feel like we already know the material.

Read on for three specific suggestions that will help you jump over your learning barriers.


Also posted in Learning and Training.

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Several months ago I received a call from a writer doing a story for Entrepreneur Magazine. After a fifteen or so minute conversation, I was told my comments might be used in an upcoming issue of the magazine. I thought that sounded cool. A week or so laters I got a call confirming some information and was told the piece would be in the June issue.

It wasn't.

Since I hadn't gotten a contact person's name (duh Kevin!) I assumed that the story had been cut and thought nothing more about it.

Until I got another call saying that a version of the original story would now be in the November issue. I thanked the person (and got their name and email address . . . I DO learn eventually).

So now there is a couple sentences from me in this month's Entrepreneur Magazine. While I am glad it is there, I think I'll remember my lessons (be patient and get a name!) longer than I will remember what was said in the short article.

If you want to read some thoughts about Customers and how trade-ins can be a valuable way to serve and retain Customers, you can read it HERE.

Also posted in Customer Service and Learning.

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I recently mentioned my upcoming book here, and we are getting closer and closer to having books in hand.

I have started a blog about the book on the redesigned Vantagepoints website. It will include reviews, endorsements, excerpts and a whole lot more in the days and weeks ahead.

I hope you will check it out.

Also posted in Learning.

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We finally got some pictures from the Junkyard Golf event loaded. If you read the post from 10/27, here is a little better view of what I was talking about.

Enjoy!

Also posted in Creativity, Learning, Teamwork and Training.

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I was helping my 7 year old 1st grader Kelsey work on sight words this morning. When I turned up the flash card, "Play," she looked at it and said, "happy, no, fun, no play!"

When we learn to read by sight at first our brains try to figure it out by memory, not just by phonics.

I can think of no two better words to connect with play than happy and fun.

Can you?

Also posted in Creativity and Learning.

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I spent Tuesday night playing, laughing, and most importantly, learning with about 130 people. I was the "speaker" at the Rainmakers Main Event. Rainmakers is networking group started in Indianapolis that is growing very rapidly. I proudly sit on the Board of Directors and was pleased to be asked to speak.

Which is fine, except that I didn't really speak.

Instead I was the "Club Pro" as I had 130 people playing Junkyard Golf.

Junkyard Golf was invented in its original form by Bernie DeKoven - a very bright friend and colleague of mine who is committed to fun (one of his websites is deepfun.com). I had played the game and for a variety of reasons decided to make it my Rainmakers "speech." This is fine except that rather than the typically allotted 15 minutes, I would need an hour. With some persuasion and a lot of mystery (which could probably be another blog post), I convinced the leadership group to trust me.

When we walked in about an hour before the event was to start, toting all manner of junk (from boxes, to computer equipment to rope to plastic to used satellite dishes to toilet seats), I suspect the trust level dropped a little bit.

The game is played by people in small teams (we split them into teams in a fun way - though it was a bit of a logistical challenge with so many people and limited time). Their task? To take the pile of junk as resources (and anything else they can find) and create a miniature golf hole and test it to set "par."

Once the holes have been created and tested, round two consists of teams moving around and playing the various holes (we had 21 of them).

In the final round, the small teams debriefed their experience, using questions I provided them. The questions I created specifically for this group and situation include:

• What did you observe about how your team formed?
• Did leaders emerge?
• How would you characterize your teamwork?
• What was the experience like from an interpersonal perspective?
• Think about your team's and your personal creative process. What made you feel successful? What was easy? What was the hardest part?
• What was the most fun about this exercise? Why?
• While you'd never play Junkyard Golf in "real" life, what about this experience reminds you of real life and real work?
• What will you do differently now that you have had this experience?

Hopefully my brief description helps you see that in fact, there was fun, laughter and learning. And hopefully you'll never see a pile of junk quite the same way again.

If you are intrigued by this short description of my version of Junkyard Golf, you can learn more from Bernie's other site - Junkyard Sports. If you ask him questions, tell him I said hello.

If you want someone to facilitate this kind of event for you and your organization, contact either Bernie or myself. Either of us would be excited to be your "Club Pro."

Also posted in Creativity, Learning, Teamwork, and Training.

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I help people become better leaders and I believe deeply in the value and power of reflection. Which is why I am so excited about the new blog Slow Leadership that was started by my colleague Adrian Savage.

The blog's tagline sets a tone and perked up my ears... "Dedicated to helping leaders reflect fully on what needs to be done, then give it whatever time it deserves to do it properly."

Take yesterday's post, Hey, I Can Take It!, where Adrian lists nine statements that might apply to you as a leader then he tells you why we need to get off of the high provided by pressure and reduce our workaholic tendencies.

This is a very good post and a blog I've added to my reading list.

I encourage you to do the same.

Also posted in Learning and Leadership.

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Take a minute right now. Get yourself a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen.

Yes, do this right now before you read on.

Then draw a tree. When you have finished your tree, you can read further.

Having done this with groups before I can tell you with some certainty what you see in front of you.

If you are like most people you will have drawn a wonderful tree from the perspective of the ground upward.

This tree has a lot in common with many people you see in workplaces all around the world. You see the tree from the ground up, and you see the physical presence of the people on the shop floor in their cubicles and offices.

Did you know that in most parts of the world the amount of biomass of the roots of a tree is at least as much as what we see above ground? In other words, when we are looking at a tree, we are literally only seeing half of it.

So it is with people. There is much more to us than what can be seen. Unfortunately too many people choose to bring their physical selves (their hands), and even their mental selves (their heads) to work (if they didn't they likely wouldn't have the job for long), but leave a huge portion - their emotional selves (their hearts) at home.

What do you bring to work everyday with you? If you don't bring your heart, you are missing tremendous opportunities. Here are five reasons why you should bring your whole self, heart included, to work each day.

Read the five reasons HERE.

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Last week I was reminded of something that has always impressed me. I was reviewing with a Client a draft of a meeting agenda I put together. She said, "Don't forget the Safety Minute." I had forgotten.

It has been a few months since I did work for Chevron so I had forgotten the expectation that every meeting begin with a "Safety Minute." Someone who will be at the meeting is responsible for reviewing one item related to safety whether at home, in our car, or at work. It doesn't matter what the topic is, as long as it keeps safety in the forefront of everyone's mind.

When the meeting began, on cue, a participant shared some statistics and ideas related to fire safety at home. What impressed me most was how engaged everyone was in the conversation. The safety minute was more like 7 or 8.

Is every safety minute in every meeting this well done or effective? Likely not. Is that a reason to stop the practice though? Definitely not.

Do Chevron employees worldwide know that Safety is more than just a word in the corporate vision? Do they know and believe that it is a value of the organization?

Of course they do.

And there is the lesson for us as leaders. Knowing what we value in our organizations isn't enough. We need to find ways to make it visible and real to everyone.

What are you doing?

Also posted in Leadership.

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That is the title of one of the chapters in David Deford's new book, I Wish to Be Useful. (Note: David contacted me and we helped him run an initial promotion for this book. I wouldn't have done that if I didn't think the book was good!)

In this chapter he mentions two contrasting characteristics found in cancer patients: transmitters and transformers. The transmitters transmit their angrer, grief, sorrow and negative feelings to everyone around them.

Transformers on the other hand look for positives in their situation. They attract positive thoughts. They look for ways to make, as David says in the book, lemons into lemonade.

While we in the workplace aren't typically facing something like cancer, we do find these two types of people in our midst.

The transmitters spread gossip, cynicism, and tear away at the effectiveness and productivity of teams. Not surprisingly, they often find themselves as loners - or with a small core group of close colleagues. It makes sense. Why would you choose this if you don't have to?

The transformers are leading the charge. They are optimistic and excited. They help rasie the energy and morale of those around them, regardless of their job title. They build consensus and start a positive spiral of results on the things they touch.

While I may have described them in extreme, both of these personalities exist in our workplaces. And both of them are contagious.

As a leader, which of these are you, and which type of behavior seems to be spreading in your organization (and what are you going to do about it)?

As a member of a team, which of these are you, and which is most prevalent on your team (and how can you influence the virus)?

Also posted in Leadership and Teamwork.

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After my recent tele-seminar on Goal Setting for Leaders, one of the participants wrote me with this question.

Can you share some suggestions about how to keep the identifying obstacles portion of the process from turning into a bitch session/negativity bath?

Focusing on the "how do we move beyond this" is way more important to me, but sometimes we struggle on the "here's the 47 reasons why this won't work."

I thought this was such a good question, that I decided to post my answer here.

My answer to this comes in two parts.

1. If the goal has been successfully set and you already have people engaged in and excited about achieving this goal, you should have a major problem here. Most of the time when people get bogged down in why something won't work it is because they are trying to defend the status quo. So if you find yourself at this point, you may want to (hint, hint) back up and get stronger agreement to the goal itself!

2. There is a difference between "why won't this work" and "What is in our way?" Identifying obstacles can be an empowering conversation. You are identifying obstacles now so you can break them down, jump over them or go around them when the time comes. Keep this distinction in people's minds and you have a shot at avoiding the "negativity bath."

I hope these thoughts are helpful to you.

Managing and facilitating groups through negativity can be a real challenge and while I know that topic in general deserves more than a couple of paragraphs in a blog, these thoughts will help you avoid the negativity so you will have less of it to deal with. In other words these thoughts are preventative more than solution focused.

And, as we've all heard, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure . . . While this may not be a universal truth, it certainly applies here.

Also posted in Leadership, Teamwork, and Training.

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One of the tasks that come with being a leader is setting goals. Goals for ourselves, to be sure, but often we need set goals for our groups/teams or the larger organization. While we may instinctively know that we should include people in the creation of goals they will be working to achieve, too often the press of time and the lure of expediency leaves leaders setting the goals, and simply sharing them with those charged with achieving them.

The Four Reasons

There are four significant reasons why we need to get others involved in creating of the group's goals. Any one of these are reason enough to create a conversation about the goals rather than creating a PowerPoint presentation with the goals already formulated.

To gain Agreement. There are actually two agreements you want to gain.

1. Agreement on what the goal actually is.
2. Agreement that the goal is worthwhile and beneficial.

Once you have these agreements you will increase the clarity of the goal for everyone. Goal clarity in itself has a very positive impact on ultimate goal achievement. With agreement you will increase focus on the goal as well. Take the time to create both of these agreements and you have a stronger chance of achieving the next item . . .

To read the other three reasons, click HERE

Also posted in Leadership, Teamwork, and Training.

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Pumped, stoked, I don't know what the hip word is. I'm excited!

Vantagepoints on Learning and Life, my new book is getting closer to being in my hands (the website is getting a major makeover, but you can look now if you don't want to wait).

You may be thinking that anyone with a new book coming out, even Stephen King, would be excited.

But my excitement comes from more than just that. It comes from some very specific things I am learning about how we are going to market the book. It is going to be amazing. It is going to create massive success. And yes, you'll read all about it here. The excitement also comes from the focus I am gaining at this stage of the process.

Imagine a 20 minute brainstorm after a 2 hour conference call that ended at 9 pm on a Friday night. The energy in the room was real. The focus was (and is) fantastic. And the learning was liberating.

Excitement can come from more than an anticipated outcome. It can come from learning something. It can come from focus. It can spring forth with the energy generated by those things.

In the end, it doesn't matter to you that I'm pumped up. But as a leader, member of a team, or trainer it is important to remember that we can engage others (and ourselves) in higher levels of excitement and enthusiasm in a variety of ways.

And those ways are in our control.

Turn up your own excitement knob today. It's time to get pumped!

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, Teamwork and Training.

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The scene is repeated in meeting rooms around the world every day. A problem has been identified and a group has gathered to solve the problem. When ideas are needed, the group decides to brainstorm. And all too often this exercise leads to a short list of not-that-creative ideas.

We know that if we generate more ideas we have a better chance of finding better ideas. This leads us to the logical conclusion that if we can find techniques to create more ideas, we will find better ones. No one technique however will guarantee the perfect solution. Instead your goals should be to have a variety of approaches to help stimulate idea creation in your repertoire. By doing this you will improve the overall quality of ideas by virtue of having more to choose from.

Whether you are unhappy with the current creativity of your group or are having good success with brainstorming sessions, but would like them to be even better, any of the eight suggestions below can help.

Look at problems in different ways. Get the group to change their perspective on the problem. Once people "lock into" one way of looking at things the idea flow will slow to a tickle. Have people take a new persona. Ask them to look at the issue from the perspective of another group – accounting, HR, or sales for example. Ask them to think about how their Grandmother or an 8 year old would solve the problem. These are simple ways to force people into a new perspective and the new perspectives will generate more ideas.

Click HERE to read the rest of this article from this week's Unleash Your Potential newsletter.

Also posted in Creativity, Leadership, Teamwork, and Training.

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This morning's New York Times has an article titled, As Reality TV Hits Maturity, Networks Lower Expectations. (free reg. req'd).

After a lengthy article talking about how most shows in the reality genre have lower ratings than last season, the most important and lasting comment comes at the end. Mark Burnett, producer of Survivor and The Apprentice, and others says the future of the genre is not unlike the future of any other form of television. "It all comes down to quality. The good shows work; the junk generally fails."

This is true for us too.

Trends are important, but can be overly enticing.

If we are introducing a new product, following a trend can be valuable, but it will only help sales and profitability if the product is good, regardless of the trend.

If we are trying to improve the work processes in our company or team, the advice of the trendiest guru will work, as long as it is sound advice.

If you are the training department, build solid training, don't just introduce a workshop based on the business book "everyone" is talking about.

What am I saying then? Trends are valuable to us, but we can't chase them to chase them. Keep them in mind, but make sure that what you are building is high quality first, then fit it to, or market it in conjunction with the trends.

We all know that we need to keep first things first. In this case, quality is first and the trends are second.

Also posted in Leadership, Teamwork, and Training.

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Yesterday my son Parker participated in a Middle School tennis event where each of the three Middle Schools in our school system played each other. Part way through the coach of the high school programs spoke to all three teams.

He knows that the collection of kids here is the future of his High School tennis program. He was encouraging and shared one key message: You become a better tennis player by playing tennis matches.

He said that too many kids focus only on lessons, receiving many shots from a pro who hits the ball right to them. While he didn't say that lessons or clinics were bad, he stressed over and over the importance of playing matches.

I couldn't help connecting those comments to our work.

Too many training companies (and internal training groups) focus on selling training. Training is important, just like some tennis instruction is important. But what we really need in order to improve, is to play matches.

Training needs to be a component of our development programs, and technology gives us a variety of newer approaches to provide additional content and advice, on-going feedback and support of all kinds. All of this is important and needed, but these things can't be seen as an end in themselves, but rather a means to the end of playing better in matches.

Our challenge as training and development professionals is to provide tools and processes to support these efforts beyond just sending someone to a workshop.

Our challenge as leaders is to support, reinforce and expect people to take their development seriously and expect them to try out what they have learned, practicing it until they become proficient and successful at integrating the ideas and techniques into their work.

Our challenge as a member of a team is to support each other and hold each other accountable for adopting new norms, behaviors and skills on the job.

And our challenge as professionals is to find ways to practice the techniques we have learned, until they work for us consistently.

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, Teamwork, and Training.

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If you've worked on a problem in a group, you know that our creativity is enhanced when we can all see the ideas being discussed. This is why meeting rooms have flip chart easels and offices have whiteboards.

I have seen a few offices with whole walls available as whiteboards and have always loved the idea. If I were building a perfect meeting room, along with some necessary technology, I would include wall-sized whiteboards. In fact, if I were build a new office for myself that had enough wall space beyond book shelves, I'd have it in my office too!

I ran across a post on a blog last week that I can't find now, that linked me to Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog and a post he made on this topic some time back.

If you are intrigued by the concept of "really big" whiteboards or would like the details on materials and costs, you'll want to read this post.

Also posted in Creativity and Teamwork

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In yesterday's post I told you I was interviewed on BBC Radio. Now, through the magic of the internet and all things digital, you can hear the interview.

Click HERE to listen to me talk about Hugging on BBC 5 Live.

Hugging is an important act - one that most of us don't do nearly enough of.

Listen to the short interview and then get up and hug someone!

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I've been called many things in my life (more than I know I'm sure !), but until early (1:40 am my time) this morning, I'd never been called "a hugging expert."

That is what the Breakfast Club hosts on Five Live BBC Radio in London called me.

They interviewed me regarding an essay I wrote called Hugging for Health. This essay will be in my forthcoming book - Vantagepoints on Learning and Life. Here is a tidbit of what I shared:

"Kevin, what is the perfect hug?"

"In short, the perfect hug includes eye contact before and after the hug, the hugger is present during the hug, focusing their thoughts and energy on the 'huggee' and the hug is gentle - consider it a gift to the other person - not an invitation to wrestle."

That may not be exactly what I said, but it is close.

A fun way to spend five minutes on the phone, even if it was in the middle of the night.

Besides, I'll probably never be interviewed directly after the CEO of Lloyd's of London again.

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Here is this week's article in our Unleash Your Potential Newsletter...

When we deliver training for our Clients, we do everything we can to make the entire experience fun. In fact, I have had hotel employees tell me their meeting rooms look like an Elementary school classroom when I'm there!

Why do we take the time to "redo" a room? Why do we spend time to design activities and exercises that will engage people completely in the learning experience? Why do I believe it is important that people leave saying they had a good time?

It isn't a marketing ploy.

It is solid learning theory.

Think about some of the most emotional times in your life. The times when you were stressed; times when you faced a major challenge. It is often in our darkest and most challenging times that we learn things that we will remember and use for a lifetime. We have all had these experiences and have these lessons, but you've probably not stopped to think about why those lessons are so engrained in your mind.

Click HERE to read the rest.

Also posted in in Learning, Teamwork and Training.

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There may be 50 ways to leave your lover (at least according to Paul Simon) but according to my friend Rosa Say on her awesome blog Talking Story, there are at least 65 ways to become a lifelong learner.

This post is a summary of the topic of lifelong learning on her site for September. I encourage you to read it, explore her blog, and answer three questions about her list of 65.

1. Which of these to I do regularly?
2. What would I add to the list?
3. What am I going to do (or try) today?

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, and Training.

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