Virtual Team Support

When I asked the question, it was not with any intention of publishing the answers.

But when the answers came back I was so gobsmacked at the replies I got that I just had to share them with you.

These people are part of my wider "team". I work by myself a lot when I'm not face to face with a client or working with a team in a session. Social networking technologies have for me replaced the "people you chat to in the corridor" that I fooled myself into thinking I wouldn't miss when I set up on my own.

So here was the question:

Who's got a story about a time they surprised themselves by being able to do something?

I posted it to my Facebook status update. Why was I asking such a leading question? Well, this is a large part of what I do. Helping teams function properly, helping managers deal with people effectively, helping sales people get through to their customers, all come down to raising self confidence and self esteem. Once we realise what we can do, no-one needs to teach or train us, because we have imense power and capability that for most people spends most of its time locked down by guilt or doubt.

These replies really made my day. If I could keep amazing positive people like this on tap, to see me through the more difficult days, I would. But of course, with Facebook, Twitter and other modern techonologies, I now can. 

Enough wibble: Here's what my friends said:

Brian at 18:25 on 22 April: I just got back from a jog I used to do 10 years ago and I completed the course.( I was shattered by the end )

David at 18:32 on 22 April Hmmm, I worked through my entire shift last night without telling my employers to go screw themselves - does that count?

Joanne at 18:59 on 22 April I lied on my CV with an employment agency and said I knew Powerpoint. Getting to my placement on Monday morning I found out I had to train people in using Powerpoint. I bluffed through it so well they had me training everyone in the office and 6 months later they called me back in to do it again.

Adrian at 22:39 on 22 April I decided to set up my own company - and do stuff that I want to do ..

David at 23:05 on 22 April Got close to setting up my own company - got let down by colleagues - that turned out to be a surprise too - on a lighter note, what surprised me most about myself is walking out on stage and singing in bands with who I regard as being very good musicians...

Jacqueline at 05:26 on 23 April I only went to college to learn accounts because my husband told me I would never be able to do it. I surprised myself by passing every exam first time and even more to have three limited companies up and running 5 years later.

Joanne at 14:54 on 23 April I'm scared of heights and managed to jump off the Sky Tower in Auckland!

Such questions - simple, open ended, story-based - give you really rich answers that talk about people's values, motivations, dreams, problems, issues, aspirations and goals. Stuff that is really really useful to us as managers and team members, yet we never seemt o get this information! This is because you can't egt at it by asking someone "What motivates you?" Yet you can get it easily by asking simple questions that draw out people's stories and experiences.

 

For me, it's a basic technique - I use it in teambuilding, in management development, confidence building, presentation skills, influence and persuasion courses, sales training. It's so versatile. Here's a challenge for you:

 

Go and ask 6 people my question, listen, and thank them for their answers. Feel free to email me and complain if you don't learn something interesting about at least one of them!

All the best,

Dave Bull
Team Coaching Network Ltd - http://www.teamcoachingnetwork.com

Turning Learning into Profit

I have recently connected on Twitter with Dr Ed Holton who is a professor of HR in the States. This led me to his blog, in which he argues passionately for more attention to be paid to how learners in the workplace transfer the benefits of their new skills so that they and their employers can benefit from it.

I think the problem is with the whole concept of training. 

What the organisation needs from its staff is changed behaviours, and what the staff need is more engagement with and fulfilment from their jobs.  Asking the question "How can we transfer learning from the workshop to the workplace" could be taken to imply that there is nothing that needs to change about what actually happens in the seminar room. In which case all we need for focus on is how to make teh trasnfer of learning happen.

Well, I think we all knows what comes next!

You'd think the Human Resources departments woudl be focused on the word "human". Many of course do, but sadly we often encounter the mechanistic approach in such departments. In short:

"Thank you for attending the training course on XYZ. You will be contacted in 4 weeks time to evaluate the amount you learned and the extent tow hich you have trasnferred your learning to the workplace. Your next 3 quarterly appraisal meetings with your manager will have (yet another) form to fill in assessing the extent of application of learning. Keeping your job after the next round of redundancies will be partly dependent upon your completing a detailed record of acheivement demonstrating the times and situations when you applied the learning and evaluating the financial benefit to the company."

Crazy? Well, yes, because I made it up and I tend to exaggerate, as you know.

What we actually need is a shift to what many of us are trying to do, which is to move away from training as an event and towards development as an ongoing relationship between a team and the trainer.

I work with teams over a period of time, in short sessions with lots of contact between sessions in a combination of face-to-face, email, telephone, and Moodle. In each session, learners are coming back knowing they are accountable to the rest of the group to verbally report back on applications of learning. Spread over time this becomes a habit and the team can take over where I leave off.

The downside for HR departments is that it is more complex to purchase and manage an ongoing development programme than to send employees on a "sheep dip" training course, make them fill in forms, then complain that senior management don't appreciate the value of training.

As training consultants then, I guess it's our responsibility to make the purchasing and management of longer-term ongoing team development programmes easier and even more transparent.

All the best,

Dave Bull
Team Coaching Network Ltd - http://www.teamcoachingnetwork.com