HRD 2009 is nearing, while this year I will not be able to attend the whole conference I will be attending the exhibition.

What are you going for?

What are you hoping to achieve?

Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

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As times change more and more managers need to take responsibility for the design and delivery of training for their team.

Shortly the RapidBI team will be running a series on skills for managers to cover this, in the mean time here are some of the key points that should be done before running a session for another division or part of the organisation:Assumption that the following preliminaries have been completed:

• Training Needs Analysis (TNA)
• Audience Analysis
• Objectives/Outcomes
• Course Materials
• Participants contacted
• Travel arrangements made
• Very familiar with content

Preparation overview:

• Be Prepared
• Be early
• Check lists, check lists, check lists…
• Check and recheck everything

Preparation – check spelling within all communications with participants

• Letters, e-mails, web pages
• Course materials
• Training manuals
• Presentation material
• Feedback/ evaluation forms
• Name badges, plates or tags

Preparation – your contacts

• Venue coordinator (+ map?)
• Client contact
• Maintenance/security staff
• Hotel (+ map?)
• Transport

Preparation – the training environment

• Available 1 hour before/after
• Suitable size for people, materials, and equipment
• Visibility of screens, whiteboards, flip-charts
• Disability access?
• Lighting, temperature, ventilation
• Noise?

Preparation of venue – environment, layout etc

• Discussion: square, circular, U-shape
• Chairs/tables ergonomically suitable
• Sufficient space to write
• You can move around easily
• Location of external facilities
• Restrooms
• Beverages
• Public phones
• Emergency exits
• Safety and security issues

Preparation – Equipment and resources

• Cords and cables
• Projector(s), spare lamp (backup solution?)
• Computer/ network Login IDs and passwords
• Software installed and working
• Desktop icons and files on projection computer
• Extra copies and backup CD of all materials
• Screens, whiteboards, flip-charts
• Markers and eraser
• Size and style of writing
• Batteries charged
• Laptop
• Mobile Phone/ broadband dongle/ Wifi connection
• Other bits and pieces… and toys!

Preparation – You – are you ready?

• Food/drink supplies
• Water pitcher and glass
• Wheeled luggage and carry-ons
• Be aware of nervous symptoms

Preparation – practice – have you done enough

• Out loud, mirror, friends
• Timing and pace (know what can be skipped/skimmed)
• Ask to be told about habits and quirks -be prepared to be surprised!

On the day – meet and greet your learners

• Name and course title on whiteboard
• Wear name tag
• Find out about participants
• Meet and greet -use names
• First impressions DO count…

First Impressions
Dress -

• Professional, comfortable, suitable for group
• Avoid anything too tight (belts, shoes, underwear, clothes),or too loose (underwear!)
• Watch for excessive jewellery
• Clean, matching shoes
• Attitude
• Upbeat, positive

The day – the first few minutes

• Start ON TIME!
• Turn off mobile phones (yours too)
• Briefly introduce yourself and course
• Housekeeping details
• Restrooms, beverage facilities, public phones
• Breaks (synch. watches),meal arrangements
• Safety and ergonomic issues
• Rules of the room

Introductions
Establish your credibility (knowledgeable but not ‘elite’

• Individual introductions (~30 seconds)
• Who, why, what
• Maintain eye contact
• Thank them
• Preview the day
• Course outline
• Activities
• Question time

During the training – Smile -and have fun!

• Short anecdotes
• Eye contact -but don’t stare
• Use names
• Move around the room
• Check progress
• Help where needed
• Vary activities and instructional style
• Ask questions to ascertain learning
• Remember, you know more than they do about the content!
• Focus on the audience, not the visuals
• Provide a mid-afternoon snack

Delivery – your style, voice and tone:
Natural style

• Avoid being overbearing
• Speak slowly (esp. if you have an accent)
• Slow down/pause at important points
• Avoid monotones
• Speak loudly enough to be heard
• Don’t read the course materials!

Breaks
Time is money… stick to the schedule

• 10-15 min break every 60-90 minutes
• Give actual start time (Not: ‘Be back in 10 minutes’)
• First break reminder: locations of restrooms, beverage facilities, phones
• Start on time after a break (switch off mobile phones)

Dealing with your learners

• Be aware of why they may be there -and that they bring baggage!
• Difficult types (non-participants, hecklers, challengers, sleepers/drifters/dozers, monopolisers/know-it-alls, class clowns, talkers/chatterers)
• It’s OK to say “I don’t know”, don’t bluff; always follow up later

Delivery methods
Main Types:

• Lecture (avoid as much as possible)
• Exercises and Activities (60%+ of time)
• Discussion (you have facilitator role ONLY)
• Others:
• Demonstration
• Drill
• Role play
• Simulation
• Why, what, how, when, where, who
• Recap/reinforce – vital – need to do this on a regular basis
• Use graphics
• Use metaphors/analogies – real, made up and elicited from the group
• Use as many senses as possible
• Encourage self-learning (e.g. on-line help, Wiki, web 2.0 etc)

Closing the training session
Important for you and participant

• Formal (evaluation sheets)
• Informal (questions, body language)
• You can’t please everybody all the time, so don’t take criticism to heart

Allow 15 minutes for wrap-up

• Review outcomes achieved
• Invite questions (specific then general; remain behind to answer other questions)
• Give contact details
• Collect feedback sheets, name tag holders
• Thank participants for attending
• Clean up the room
• Return all borrowed items, security passes

Twitter and other micro-blogs are an increasingly useful communication tool. However like any tool there should be an agreed etiquette. One of the best I have discovered is by Margaret Mason and in the style of a RT (Retweet) on Twitter here I republish this important list:

Whether you’re a broadcaster, responder, or newbie, if you’d like to be a better citizen on Twitter, here are a few guidelines to help you navigate:
1. Watch your ratio.

If only a few people follow you, but you follow a thousand or more, many people will assume you’re a spammer. That’s because you probably are. Go away, spammer. We do not care about your Facebook app.
2. Think twice before twittering in an altered state.

One drunk tweet might be amusing. Unfortunately, when you’re drunk or high, Twitter is like a can of Pringles. You don’t want to break the seal.

One drunk tweet leads to 20 poorly spelled missives on one amazing house party. If you think texting your ex is embarrassing the next morning, try texting all of them.
3. Consider pausing between tweets.

Twittering 30-plus times an hour pushes other people’s messages off followers’ homepages, and sends mobiles into convulsive twit-fits (to say nothing of excessive SMS charges). If you have a lot to say, but still want to engage with followers without alienating them, consider making more liberal use of DMs.

Also, don’t you occasionally need to use the restroom? Please don’t take your phone in there. Thanks.
4. Keep small conversations private.

If you’re deciding what movie to see with your girlfriend, no one else needs to receive those updates. Hitting @ becomes reflexive after a while, but DMs are a better option in these scenarios.
5. Accept that some people will use lots of @s.

If you’re getting a lot of nonsensical @ messages because you don’t follow the same group of users, either subscribe to the people being mentioned so you can follow the thread, or turn @ messages off. And then stop complaining.
6. Be vague when twittering private social events.

The host may not want her sensitive extended circle to know about the handful of folks she invited for birthday drinks. Let them see it on Flickr.
7. Remember everyone can hear you.

This may seem rudimentary, but Twitter is a public medium, just like a blog. Eventually, your mom’s gonna read it. To say nothing of your employer and your parole officer.

If it could get you fired, be used against you in court, or impede your ability to get laid, be-still your typing thumbs.
8. What’s rude in life is rude on Twitter.

Passive-aggressive tweets are never as inscrutable as the sender thinks. When you’re being mean, even covertly, eventually everyone figures out the target. And then they start firing the arrows back your way.
9. Don’t compound an accident.

If you accidentally twitter a message that was intended to be a direct text, there’s no need to send a follow-up apology if the mistake is obvious.
10. Try to keep within the character limit.

Twitter is best suited to messages that stay within its 140-character limit. Otherwise, users have to scroll back and track your name through multiple posts. That’s not such a big deal if you do it occasionally, but it can become galling if you make it a habit.
11. DMs don’t necessarily require a response.

You don’t have to answer every time someone contacts you directly, especially if it’s a stranger. However, there’s a greater social price for ignoring a DM if your crew is mostly responders.
12. Leave when you want.

If you want to stop following someone, stop. There’s no need to send a breakup note. Unless you’re having Twitter sex.

Wait. Do people have Twitter sex? Yeah, of course they do. Direct messages (from a secret Twitter account) are an ingenious way to communicate with slightly creepy, but intriguing, one-night-stands. Besides, what dedicated Twitter user remembers their own cell number?
13. Plug moderately.

Lots of people ignore this guideline, but if you’re almost exclusively using Twitter to plug your blog posts, events, or products, or to ask people to vote for one of your projects on Digg, you’ll lose some followers.

The exception is if you’ve set up an account named after your product or service, which sets a different expectation among subscribers.
14. Answer your own questions.

All tweets are prompted by the question “What are you doing?” Many people don’t answer the question, and others are religious about it.

Does it irritate people if you don’t answer the question? Sometimes. Should those people take a deep breath? Possibly.

See the origional article

For me like life it is important that there are 3 twpes of people – those that like to give (broadcast in twitter terms), those that like to interact or respond (lots of @s) and those that are in the middle – generally broadcast, but respond when they can.

Mike

http://twitter.com/rapidbi

At first look Twitter is a confusing tool, with amore rounded look it becomes obvious what the benefits are, however, and this is the big one, the more followers you have (essential for growth) the harder it is to follow key people and harder it is to get your message seen’

with upwards of 100 messages an hour it is almost impossible to read all your fav twitterers.
in time we will be able to filter by geography, however at the moment one of the few strategies seems to be to retweet key posts a few times a day or different times on different days. Currently there are no platforms which schedule key tweets on a regular basis, but am sure they will come.

For me the past few weeks have been an invaluable experiment with Twitter as a tool, however I now think that I will back off and use it more strategically. I do have a personal twitter account, I may well use that now. for inane and routine posts. Time will tell

rising cost of learning and training

How to make money from Twitter?

This wonderful free service has no commercial opportunity, those that have tried have failed…
One of the missing features is the ability to have links on the ‘twitter background’ and this is worth paying for – what about offering for a small annual fee the ability to have an active link in the background area? Pay per additional link and pay to have an RSS feed?

Those that want it will but it – those that don’t wont.. and it wont interfere with third party apps – although some may be clever and list one of the links with each post…
I want twitter to survive and if the sums are right I think this could ensure the future of this brilliant service.

A thought today, as I was working on adding a background to my twitter page I thought it would be great if this were like my blog or site.
Twitter needs to find a business model – so

One of the missing features is the ability to have links on the ‘twitter background’ and this is worth paying for – what about offering for a sum the ability to have an active link in the background area? pay per additional link and pay to have an RSS feed.

I want Twitter to survive and if the sums are right I think this could ensure the future of this brilliant service.

Twitter people are you listening?

Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

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Ok so you are one of those people (like me) that uses social marketing sites as part of your marketing strategy. Is your approached integrated or haphazard?

Did you know that you can feed your blog posts to your twitter account or face book etc? You have to be careful about content as each is a slightly different audience, however if you can have more activity with less effort all the better.

Tools like Twitterfeed help take your blog content and put it on Twitter - great to tell the world that you have updated your blog – just dont do it more than a couple of times a day! – you aim is to inform people not swamp them.

You can use #Hash codes to help filter in or out content – so that you dont publish personal material on a business feed for example.

There has been some debate about the percentage mix of business and personal tweeting. Many say 70% personal – while others say 20%. me I am in the camp of 20%. My blog and twitter name are clearly business, but you want to know a little about the human behind the business too … right?

Equally if a business twitter, you dont want a link to a blog for every post – that just looks like and may well be spam. here is my approach – cannot say if it is right – but it is my goal:

blog 100% business – either direct in my specialism or an adjunct (I have other learning based blogs I use when visiting conferences and exhibitions.

Twitter – 70% business: one a day tip on leadership and or training/ learning & development

Once a week a major link to a blog article or useful content on a site 3:1 mine or others

20% personal – more over weekends

10% random thoughts and opinions on what is happening

What is your approach? do you integrate these platforms or keep them separate? why? share your thoughts here or links to your blog with the answers

no spam though – I have a rather good capture tool for this!

One of the best kept secrets in the training world is the daily digest from Training Journal.

Known as the TJ Daily Digest (once the UKHRD started by Fenman)this daily round-up of questions and answers of all things training is free again sign up here to receive it http://www.trainingjournal.com/subscriptions/discussion.php

Great for in-house training specialists to seek the opinion of like-minded colleagues, and for freelance trainers to ’show they can’ – but beware this is not an advertising medium – so great for brand awareness but not a place for sales, but a wonderful and valuable service none the less.

For the more adventurous of you annual subscription to the Training Journal comes with access to the TJ archive – training articles going back many years from this authoritative journal.

Is Twitter a serious communication tool or a “social notworking” solution?

I have to say that I find it as both. There are people that tweet about their breakfast, what the cat dragged in etc, and there are those that share learning nuggets, news and ideas.

The name of the game is selectivity. certainly I have found twitter more useful for finding useful web resources that I have with many blogs. Don’t get me wrong, blogs are great – but often contain too much information to skim and catch the cream. Both blogs and micro-blogs have their place.

Who do you follow on Twitter and why?
http://twitter.com/rapidbi