Digital Camera Inventor - Steven Sasson

How to get people to buy into a new idea...

Building a Virtual Team

A good process to follow if you are building a virtual team (or refocusing an existing virtual team) is to set up an agreed approach to ways of working. In order to do this, we must first look at what makes up an effective virtual team.

Shared objectives

The virtual team must understand what it is they are trying to achieve as a team. This means highlighting the team goals and objectives and linking this to organisational strategy wherever possible.

Knowledge of what to do

Further than knowing what their objectives are, they should also have clarity around how they should do their job and what you expect of them in the role. This might include processes and procedures and any plans they must follow.

Tools to do it

If there are certain ways of working, what are they? Are their preferred tools, technology, and guidelines they can use to achieve their goals?

Ability to do it

Do they have the ability and knowledge to use the tools of their job. If not, what can be done to help them develop?

Desire to do it

Are they motivated and inspired to perform their jobs well and to the ways you have agreed?

So, if you are aiming to move your virtual team to a position where they feel that all of the above questions are answered for them, you will need to establish ground rules with the team and ensure they are clear on what you are trying to achieve together.

 

Virtual team managers set ground rules during the initial team meeting. During this meeting, they must:

• Articulate team goals and objectives

• List roles and responsibilities 
  
• Determine when and how the team will communicate both formally and informally

         - Team meetings
         - Information sharing
         - Guidelines and rules for using different technologies
         - External communication

• Determine standards for when and how to coordinate team tasks

         - Communicating status to manager, team members, client
         - Tracking tasks
         - Risk management

• Set guidelines for collaboration

         - Brainstorming
         - Sharing documents
         - Making decisions

• Devise a strategy for relationship and trust building from a distance

         - Virtual community
         - Reliability
         - Conflict management

• Determine when and how to execute best practices for performance management

         - One-on-one meetings
         - Motivational and formative feedback


Working on these key ground rules and guidelines as a team will help ensure you begin from a starting point of trust. You may have a good idea of how you want to approach each of the elements that you include in your initial meeting, but if your virtual team feels that these are being thrust upon them rather than decided as a group, you may find that they rebel against them and your efforts will have been wasted.


There will of course be elements of the discussion that are not up for debate, perhaps where policy or process are important, and in these cases you should make it very clear why you have made the decisions you have so that there is no confusion or opportunity for dissent.

This article is a short excerpt from the Trainer Bubble training course materials for 'Managing a Virtual Team', which can be purchased from our website at www.trainerbubble.com

 

Networking - Increase Your Business Presence

Central to your networking strategy is the effect you have on those around you. Developing a strong business presence that ensures you leave an engaging impression on people you come into contact with will provide a cornerstone to your networking plan. This means that developing your business presence is critical if you want to guarantee that you consistently generate networking opportunities. However, understanding what makes up a strong business presence can often be difficult to grasp.

To make this process easier, we’ve split the idea of business presence into four key ingredients, which help you to focus on the necessary skills, behaviour and attitudes required to succeed.

Credibility

Delivering what you say you will and meeting promises. People are unlikely to risk their own reputation in recommending you if they do not feel you have a strong track record. They want to be confident that you will do what you say you will, meet targets achieve results and be consistently effective.

Personal Brand

Your image and how ‘marketable’ you are. A personal brand is about your values, attitudes and beliefs. It’s about showing people what makes you special and different and promoting that to people around you. It’s a statement of what you can do and how well you will do it.

Visibility

How aware of you your target market is. This is about making people think of you whenever they think of an opportunity that is linked to your skillset. It’s about ‘putting yourself out there’ and keeping yourself in the mind of others. After all, if people have never heard of you, they can never promote you.

Social Capital

Your influence and reach within your network. This is about being the person in your field of interest that is seen as being ‘useful’ and able to support the needs of others. Being someone who builds up social goodwill helps give you influence and puts you in demand. Social capital is built by aligning with key influencers and becoming one yourself. It’s about building strong relationships and personal goodwill.

This article is a short excerpt from the Trainer Bubble classroom training course materials, 'Business Networking', which can be purchased from our website at www.trainerbubble.com

Effective Business Presentations

A common misconception about presentations is that they are there to inform the audience. When you are making a business presentation your key aim should not be to inform, but to encourage your listeners to agree to the proposition and concept behind the idea you are presenting to them. This could be a solution to a problem, a reason to purchase a product, a new way of approaching a topic or just to accept your way of seeing an issue. You should leave your audience with a sense that they should change their attitude, behaviour or thinking as a result of what you have presented to them. All this means that you need to persuade your audience and to do that you will need to make the presentation relevant to them while making them like you and accept what you are saying.


Now you could put together a very impressive presentation that makes people laugh and gets them clapping at the end. However, if there is no supported action following the presentation, then much as they will be impressed by your delivery, they still might not do anything different as a result and therefore your business presentation has not been a success. That doesn’t mean that presentations shouldn’t impress people or make them laugh; it’s just that this shouldn’t be your main aim. Too many presentations focus on providing information rather than getting action and results. What you should focus on can be summarised by the following points…


Emotional buy-in - It’s important to make the audience want what you are offering, which means you have to get their emotional buy-in. The best method of achieving this is to demonstrate the benefits of your offering and appeal to their needs and wants.


Aim for change - You want your audience to think, feel or do something different as a result of your presentation. Without some form of change, there’s not much point in making the presentation at all. You might argue that some presentations are ‘just for information’. If this is the case, perhaps you should just send an email or find another way to get the information across.


Show the benefit - Every person sitting in the audience is thinking ‘What’s in it for me?’ If you can’t answer this question then you are aiming to fail. Don’t describe what your offering is, but rather what it does…for your audience.


Ask for action - Your business presentation will be successful if the people in your audience do something differently as a result. This makes it important to be clear about the actions people can take to benefit from what you have said.


You will notice that all of the points shown here focus on the audience rather than you. This shows how important it is to write a presentation that appeals to the people you are presenting to, rather than focusing on things you think you want to get across.


This article is a short excerpt from the Trainer Bubble training course materials for Business Presentations, which you can purchase from our website at www.trainerbubble.com

How to learn anything in 20 hours

Josh Kaufman does a fantastic TED Talks presentation on how to learn anything in 20 hours.

PowerPoint in training - When a good thing is not a good thing.

I thought I'd write a few words about a topic that often comes up in discussions about training, and that is the use of PowerPoint slides. I have received many emails, had many discussions and attended many meetings where the subject of PowerPoint in training is raised. What is obvious is that there are those that are strong advocates and others that are not so convinced by the use of PowerPoint. Personally, I fall into the latter category.

I should start by announcing that I think PowerPoint is an excellent tool and its use has helped presenters and trainers immensely over the last two decades. The idea of returning to acetates and an OHP fill me with dread. Having said that, I believe the fantastic ability and usability of PowerPoint means that those very users have become too reliant on the tool and training has suffered as a result.

As a trainer and training designer, I get very frustrated by people who equate a good training course with how many slides are included. I have even recently read a training design company's view that a days training should include between 60 - 100 slides. I'm sorry, but this is just poppycock! This would mean that you are displaying at best 10 slides per hour or 1 every six minutes. If you are showing slides at that rate, then you are simply providing no time for activities, review, discussion or even any meaningful commentary from the trainer.

This point brings me to the key element of importance regarding PowerPoint during training and that is the statement, ‘PowerPoint should support the message, it should not be the trainer supporting PowerPoint’. Without following this critical element you fall into the trap of letting the technology, not the content, become primary.

Training should be interactive and indulgent for the learner. It should allow time for the participants to explore the practicalities of an issue as well as to absorb the theory in a relaxed environment. If we simply present information to participants in a slide format we become lecturers, not trainers. To reiterate, PowerPoint should support training materials and the trainer in order to help the learner learn. This means using the tool as a reference point, a method of highlighting a point with an image or where it is not possible to demonstrate a point without a graphic or text based representation.

Some argue that they use PowerPoint as a method of ‘sorting their thoughts’ and although their training course has 2698 slides with it, ‘I won’t be showing most of those’. Well, great, but there is always the danger that someone else training your course will and besides that, surely there are better ways of laying out the structure of a course? That, to me, is why we invented Trainer Notes.

A regular study that is carried out by a website called, ‘Think Outside the Slide’, shows the dangers of PowerPoint and how it is perceived by the audience. Although the data is aimed at presentations rather than training I think it shows very well how problematic PowerPoint can be. The data reveals what annoys people most about PowerPoint.

The speaker read the slides to us - 69.2%
Text so small I couldn’t read it - 48.2%

Full sentences instead of bullet points - 48.0%

Slides hard to see because of colour choice - 33.0%

Overly complex diagrams or charts - 27.9%

As you can see, the speaker reading slides is the most annoying thing to people and although this study was taken in 2009, the same point has been top for every bi-annual study since it started. The author reads a lot into this and it is well worth a read, but my thinking is that the participants don’t like having the slides read to them mainly because they could do that for themselves. As someone on one of my courses recently said about a previous course, ‘The trainer was so intent on putting his notes on the slides, I couldn’t help but feel he should have just emailed his notes to us.’ This brings me back to the point that training should be interactive and involve the participants throughout. PowerPoint limits the potential to do this.

On a typical Trainer Bubble training course you will find something in the range of 12 – 24 slides per day. This will include the ‘title’ slide as well as two ‘objectives’ slides (one to open and one to close the session). PowerPoint advocates might feel that this is a bit sparse and that consequently the training course lacks content. This is certainly not the case and our thousands of customers will testify to this. The fact is, our training content is based in the Trainers Notes, where it should be, and the participants that attend one of our courses will gain knowledge through the information provided by the trainer, the activities they explore, the exercises they carry out, the discussions they take part in and then finally the supporting materials they see and receive. After all, as Confucius said, "Tell Me and I Will Forget; Show Me and I May Remember; Involve Me and I Will Understand."

Confucius probably had it right too , because from various research sources we know that we remember from: the Lecture (5%); Reading (10%); Audio Visual (20%); Demonstration (30%); Discussion group (50%); Practice by doing (75%) and Teaching others (90%). Even a good set of slides will only meet the Audio Visual element of this and at 20%, that’s not a very good return. Of course it’s not possible to make teachers out of all our participants and so the aim is to involve areas from each of these principles. A good training course will do this and allocates as much time and effort to each principle as the output justifies.

To sum up, PowerPoint is an effective tool to use during a training course, but it is only as good as the person using it. Let it support your training course, but don’t let it BE your training course.


Andrew Wood is the Managing Director of Trainer Bubble Ltd., a specialist provider of interactive and engaging training course materials for trainers. Visit their website at www.trainerbubble.com

Don't Give Up On Classroom Training

Times have changed in Learning and Development. Gone are the days when we could schedule a plan of classroom based training courses and expect that to cover the organisational development requirements for the coming year. Now we have to be much more able to adapt to market changes, organisational demands and employee needs. An organisation that is not willing to adjust their approach to employee development will soon falter in their attempts to progress and grow.

These new demands have seen a shift in focus and at the same time, emerging technology has stepped in to fill the void. E-learning, management learning databases, social media interventions, open learning platforms, video clips, development blogs and many other creative approaches to learning have made headway into most business training strategies.

There’s also been a growing demand for more formulated ‘on the job’ training, also referred to as ‘informal learning’, which has always been around of course, but is now being given some of the important focus it deserves, after all, we probably learn most of what we do in our job roles while actually doing our job. The issue with informal learning in the past has always been that it is very hard to track and manage this learning, but of course the fact that we have new tools such as learning management systems means that this has become a much easier task. This means managers have more control over the process and more importantly, they can provide evidence and reports to back this learning up.

The approaches I’ve described above are probably well on your radar and most businesses have begun to implement these ideas in one way or another. They’re very popular, not only because they are seen as innovative, but also because once the initial outlay has been made, they are often found to be a cheaper alternative to traditional approaches.

You’ve perhaps noticed by now that I’ve made a very good case for these methods of learning and this belies the original title of my article. Many readers who fight the corner of classroom training who were encouraged by the title are likely now creating small effigies of me to put needles into. However, to neglect the fact that these new methodologies exist and are actually an important part of learning and development would not only be insincere, it would also be hugely incorrect. These interventions are valuable, they do have a place and they can save money and help develop a strong approach to employee development. What they can’t do is provide every piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is learning.

It’s right that classroom training is not seen as the only way that people can learn and actually it never should have been. People have always learnt outside the classroom and if you don’t implement any of the teachings from a classroom then the learning will have been lost anyway, so ‘doing’ has always been a key component. This isn’t restricted to the classroom though, because if you don’t go out and do something different after you have watched a video clip or taken some e-learning or even read a book then the value is soon lost, it’s exactly the same.

Now, you could argue that the informal ‘on the job’ training doesn’t suffer from this problem because you are already doing something with what you have learnt and I totally agree. However, this type of learning has always existed. We haven’t made a magic new formula with informal learning; we’ve simply got better at recording it. So, if we needed classroom training before when informal learning existed, we still need it now.

Let’s not forget that classroom training has changed vastly over the years too. We used to take a much more presentational approach to classroom training and learning would be focused around an expert at the front of the room who would impart knowledge much like a professor lecturing a class. Now classroom training is much more engaging and inclusive and will be filled with activities, exercises, group work and, dare I say it, a lot of the new technologies that people are using outside the classroom. Good trainers hunt down relevant and interesting materials that will enhance and support the training content that they need to get across and training has improved immensely because of that.

Classroom training is really important and should sit side-by-side with any other development approach being used. Here are a few things I think classroom training gives you that e-learning and other technologies don’t do effectively…

1. A chance to physically practice skills with peers in a safe environment
2. Ability to openly debate and discuss issues with others (writing on forums or via emails doesn’t count for me)
3. The prospect of learning from an expert, your peers and people from different areas of the business
4. Provides an opportunity to review learning and ensure understanding at time of learning
5. Be able to relate your experience and knowledge with others and see how this fits into your wider understanding of a topic

These are just a few of the things I think learning technology is unable to provide to any effective degree currently. I’m sure there are other reasons why technology is not able to replace classroom training and I’ve also missed out the more intangible elements such as working with others and teambuilding etc. It’s clear that classroom training still has a place though and there are a lot of people who much prefer it to the often anti-social and data-led approaches that technology can offer.

When new ideas, technologies and approaches come along, it is tempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater and neglect everything that has gone before, but this can be a big mistake and while new ideas should be embraced, we should not forget the important role that ‘the old way of doing things’ can play. In fact, you could argue that most of these ‘new technologies’ are actually not new at all, they are just using new tools to do the old things we used to do. You don’t read a quote from Martin Luther King anymore; you watch a clip of him making it. You don’t view a diagram of that new product being developed; you scroll through a 3D plan of it.

A lot of training is also bringing technology into the classroom and I think this best demonstrates my thinking on how classroom training should be perceived in the modern world. It’s not that it is outdated and needs replacing, more that we need to best work out how to combine classroom training with the many other interventions that are arising these days.

So let’s not give up on classroom training just yet. It has just as an important role to play as it always had. We just need to ensure that it plays nicely with everything else that is emerging.

Andrew Wood is the Managing Director of Trainer Bubble Ltd. who design and develop training resources and course materials for download from their website. Visit them at www.trainerbubble.com to access a wealth of resources including a large section of free training resources and material.

Don't lose your marbles - Make a positive difference to your life.

I've never been one to get over losing easily. In fact, I distinctly remember pushing a marble up my brother's nose as a dirty faced 8 year old because he beat me at Ker-plunk. Not that I was any good at the game, I just didn't have the patience for it.

Maybe that's what makes losing so hard to take, knowing that you didn't really have the skill to win in the first place and you are just kidding yourself to even try.......

Of course the paragraph above is absolute piffle. However, it is the same message that is played in a lot of people's minds every single time they fail. The truth is, failing should be seen as a positive, a chance to grow, an opportunity. Losing just takes you another step closer to getting it right (as long as you learn from it).

That's a lot easier said than done, I hear you cry, and you're right, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. I can think of many things I've 'lost' throughout my life; football matches, card games, driving tests, job interviews and that special first date with Claire Martin in class 4c. At the time they all affected me in their own little way (particularly Claire Martin in class 4c, but I don't want to go into that right now), there was nothing fun about the loss and there shouldn't be. What matters is what happens afterwards.

Henry Ford once said "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right".

When I first read that quote I think I re-read it five or six times. It's not the easiest statement to make sense of, but it's one of the truest things I ever read. It sums up, for me, the fact that so many of us allow our beliefs to become our drivers and eventually these drivers become 'us'.

Stop and think about yourself and how many restrictive beliefs you have developed that are stopping you from really achieving what you want to in life. Go on, do it, stop, right now...and think.

Now consider where those beliefs came from. How much truth do they really hold? Now, now, don't start making excuses, or backing up the data with weak support...truly consider the facts of the matter. I would like to be so bold as to suggest there is not a lot of real factual evidence to back up your claims at all.

The good thing is, it's not too late to change, you just have to want to bad enough. So give it a go. It may feel uncomfortable at first, you may start to feel those old beliefs creeping back into your head. Blow them away, dust down the cobwebs of negativity and believe in yourself once again. I know you can do it and you need to know it too.

You see, I know that it works, I did it for me. I shrugged off my old beliefs and started afresh. I still fail, but I learn and move on and if people don't like the new positive me...I stick marbles up their nose.




Trainer Bubble provide lots of training course materials on personal development. The author of this article, Andrew Wood, is the owner. Visit today and view all of our free training resources and training course materials.

Understanding People's Behaviour - Banging Your Head Against a Wall?

I just came home to find my 13 month old son giggling loudly to himself whilst banging his head against the living room wall. My immediate response was to say, "Son, you're an idiot." and only once I'd managed to distract him from this pain inducing activity did I consider the possible consequences of my words.

Maybe this one time I was right to call him an idiot. Certainly banging your head against a wall is not the action you would expect from a sound mind. However, let's consider I call my son an idiot consistently over the next few developmental years. The likely outcome is.......an idiot.

You see everyone's behaviour is driven by their own self-image, and that self-image is built around the adult influences they receive in their childhood. These influences come not only from parents, but grandparents, uncles, aunts, teachers, sports coaches and pretty much anyone that they have regular contact with.

It is these influences that create our attitudes and ultimately our behaviours. For example; somebody that has always been told that they should stand up for themselves may ultimately become aggressive when placed in a stressful situation. Or somebody that is encouraged to always share and make others happy may develop a need to please people and will display submissive behaviour at times. I experienced this last type of behaviour with an old colleague of mine. Whenever we held a meeting he would wonder why he always walked away with more action points than anyone else!

Think about your own experience. Is there something you believe about yourself, which has been influenced by others? You may find that hard to do, as these beliefs have become a part of you and are shaping your behaviour all the time. However, they are there in all of us in varying forms.

Now, these drivers are not in themselves a problem. We all need drivers in our life, without them we would not achieve anything. It is when these drivers become negative or destructive that issues arise. There may have been times in your own experience where a person’s behaviour has seemed out of control or perhaps it was just that their driver was conflicting with yours.

So what can you do?

One thing you have to accept is that every person’s behaviour makes perfect sense to them at the time. Nobody sets out to make their life difficult and often it is because they feel they have no alternative in the given situation. No matter how bizarre the person’s action seems, it is rarely something they have manufactured.

Now you know that these drivers exist. The best thing you can do is start to identify them in yourself. Realise when you are being driven by an inner desire to react in a certain way and prepare for it. Once you know why you might be acting in a certain way, it becomes a lot easier to adapt and understand the consequences in an effort to minimise their impact.

Next, be prepared to spot behaviour drivers in others. If you can tell that they are being driven by an inner belief, consider how you might be able to have conversations that will provide antidotes. Often we do not consider how we present a message before we do so. Taking a little time to consider how the message is going to be received can really save a lot of time in the long run…otherwise your just banging your head against a wall.

You can find training course materials that help you get the best out of people from our website www.trainerbubble.com.

Ten Rules for a Successful Life

Why are some people more successful than others? Is it just that some people get all the luck and that’s just the way it is? Or is there more to it? Gary Player the famous golfer once said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get” and I think this statement has a lot of truth to it. I believe that success is a mindset and if I’m right, then that means that anyone can achieve it.

If you listen carefully to people you will notice that they become very adept at providing reasons for their ‘bad luck’. It’s the upbringing, the schooling, the boss, the partner and many other reasons including the fact that there are not enough hours in the day (eh?). I’m of the opinion that these limiting beliefs are a way of avoiding the simple truth; some people just don’t want it enough. It’s a lot easier to sit in your lazyboy chair and proclaim to the world that you didn’t get the breaks, than it is to get up and do something about it.

Now I’m not saying that everyone should want to be the best at everything they do, but I do think that those people who decide to live life in the slow lane forego their right to complain about it. If you really care that much then it’s up to you to change things.

So for those people that want to get out of the rut and move on in life, I’ve put together ten rules. If you follow them, I see no reason why success shouldn’t follow.

1. Nobody else is to blame for the way you are. Those things that happen to you (good or bad) simply create choices. You are a product of your own making.

2. The world owes you nothing. If you want the stars, buy your own ladder and climb. Nobody will give you a leg-up.

3. Thinking is not doing. Good luck rarely comes to the inactive. Hard work is a dream-maker.

4. Failure is progress. Every mistake is a step closer to success, as long as you learn from it.

5. Focus on the important things in life. If you spend too long worrying about the small things, that’s all you’ll end up with.

6. Take pride in what you do. There’s no shame in thinking positively about yourself. If you don’t love you, nobody else will.

7. Celebrate success. If it goes right, shout it from the roof-tops. You can learn from good stuff too.

8. Take what works and build on it. If you find success in one area, model it and apply the learning to other areas.

9. Stick with it. There will be moments when it all seems too much like hard work, that’s when you’re getting closer.

10. Share your success with others, there’s enough to go around. Successful people work together and build winning relationships.

There you have it, ten simple steps to achieving your dreams. So stop looking for reasons not to succeed and start working towards your goals. I’ve never once heard an elderly person complain about the things they did in life, but I’ve heard a few regrets about the things they didn’t.

Visit Trainer Bubble now, where you will find two great training resources on Success; 'Make a Difference to Your Life'and 'Think Your Way to Success'.