Are you warmed up?

Well, this week's Q&A post is all about doing an energiser before training or a workshop. Looking at the world of sport gives an example overview of why we should do this. Before any sports-person embarks on their competition, they prime their bodies. They go through intense training several weeks prior to condition their bodies in the right way. On the day itself, they body needs to get the adrenaline flowing so your reaction times are quicker and sharper. The body needs to be in a state of readiness so it can take on its challenge. During the competition, the sports-person paces him/herself. They know full well that their body can only handle so much, so they have to make sure they're not over-stretching themselves. And once completed, they warm down. The body has just been through an exertion of energy and power it doesn't normally have to sustain. The warm down helps the body to say, it's ok, you can relax now.

So, if you question the need to do an energiser before training/workshop, think of this example. The key is, make sure the energiser/exercise you get the group to do, is relevant to the task ahead of them. Don't play Lego and have fun, if you're in a conflict resolution workshop. The delegates won't appreciate it, your credibility will go down the pan, and your objectives will not be met.

The question for this week then is - What's the best energiser/icebreaker you've taken part in (or if you're an L&Der, that you've designed and delivered)?

Email and work are not the same thing

You there. The one who says they are working when they are answering emails. You and I need a serious chat. Modern work life means work-related communications happen through email in the first instance, person-person second and by telephone third. But let's be clear about that - emails are only a communication medium, they are not work.

Doing work means that you are acting on something communicated to you, and producing a result of efforts. This is working. To claim that you have spent x hours 'working' by answering emails, you are misunderstanding the nature of what it means to work. Yes, you probably do receive hundreds of email, but - BUT - they are simply someone communicating a message to you they wish you to do something about. Responding to your emails is not doing something about it. Forwarding your email is not doing something about it. Passing on the request to someone else is not doing something about it. You are only doing something about it when the person sending you a message is satisfied their expectation has been met.

Why does this grate on me though? It's not about the blackberry culture we're now in. That's an expected way of working now, to be always connected to work. It grates on me because of the perception people think it gives of being busy. Yes, it does give the perception you are busy. Are you being productive or effective though? That's a whole other matter.

UPDATE: Thanks to Sheridan Webb for pointing me to this questionnaire - Busy or Productive? - that can help you to consider the above for yourself.

Getting senior management buy-in?

I love reading stupid comments. Check that. I don't love reading stupid comments. Stupid comments make me angry. Check that. Stupid comments make me incredibly frustrated that people don't pay enough attention writing better. What am I blathering on about? I've just read a tweet about getting senior management to buy-in to the value of L&D. Hmm. It's an age old discussion. A rather pointless one though if you ask me.

It's a simple message really. You can't expect anyone in your business or organisation to value what you do, if you don't show them why first. This is true of any department and not restricted to L&D in any way. Let's stick with L&D though. So, you want to be taken seriously? Here's my list of what has to happen. Caveat: I'm only talking about internal L&Ders, externals can adapt the list for their purposes.

1) Understand the needs of the business. Don't listen to what managers think they want. Take note for sure, and reference, but managers rarely understand their actual needs. For example, Bob approached me asking for presentation skills for his team. After some discussion, I found that presentation skills was part of what his team needed. The other part was how to deal with challenges, discussions and difficult people. That's not presenting at all, that's a mix of facilitation skills and active listening techniques.

2) Develop content with the business. You may know what makes a great piece of training design, and what exercises you enjoy using, but have you checked that's how the audience will receive it? Say I thought using Lego for every exercise regardless of topic was the way forward. I might then go on to deliver some training with this exercise to a group of managers who immediately refuse to take part in the exercise because they see no relation to what they do on a day to day basis. Buh-bye Lego exercise and your credibility.

3) Deliver it with a business leader. It's fine if you want to deliver training by yourself, there's no harm in that, but only your immediate audience will see how good you are, and if you're lucky they'll praise you to their manager. Delivering with a business leader though means that you will immediately create conversation amongst other business leaders about the work you are doing, because they're a peer group and they like to spread good news as well as gossip.

4) Follow up with a session to review the content. Your audience will talk about you more and be more likely to remember their training if you produce a follow up.

5) Have a calendar of some sort. Seriously, this is such an easy win but so easily overlooked. People like to know when they can expect to attend a session if they're not able to make the one you're organising next week. Making it available and visual also makes it easy for people to refer to.

6) PR what you do. You have to, have to, have to do this. No-one will know about the work you are doing unless you talk about it in some way. Be clever and smart about this, don't just spam messages all over the show. You want people to see you're being a benefit not a nuisance.

7) Meet with business managers regularly. Not weekly, but quarterly at least. Find out how the business is doing. What's going on. Where's the business heading? Vision? Strategy? Business plan? They will then see that you are taking the business seriously, not just L&D but the business.

And that's only some of what you should be doing. You should be doing other things too like being consistent, have a training budget and manage is closely with Finance, and attend regular conferences or workshops yourself. But that list above is a good place to start if you want the business to take you seriously. It takes time though. From experience I can guarantee that getting the above right means you will be taken seriously by your business. Then, getting buy-in from various groups is easier as you've shown clear reasons why.

I should add, it's not a do all or die list. Do the ones that make sense.

Is there a bit of Punjabi inside you?

A break from the norm of L&D type posts brings me to wanting to write about my culture. Sparked by some bhangra being played on my way into work this morning! It's important to immediately clarify that there is a difference between being Sikh, and being Punjabi. Already confused? Sikhi is a religion, and as some of you will know, I am Sikh. Those who practise Sikhi, have defining characteristics such as the clothes they wear, and typically look something like this:

I, clearly, am not a practising Sikh. I hope to be some day, though.

Being Punjabi, though, is quite different. Punjab is a state in North India, with borders on Pakistan, close to the Himalayas and has a population of approximately 80 million.

Historically, Sikhi originated in the Punjab area, and as such many Sikhs are Punjabi. However, being a Punjabi, doesn't mean you are Sikh. Those living in Punjab are also Hindu, Muslim and Christian. So, the commonality they share is the Punjabi identity.

I want to give you some insight into what it means to me to be Punjabi.

The music. Bhangra. That's what it's all about. Traditional bhangra is played on simple instruments such as a tumbi or a dhol. And there's normally someone who will sing lyrics. The lyrics are normally meant to be quite tongue in cheek, taking a poke at Punjabi stereotypes, and also often about wooing a girl. Lyrics aside, for me, it's the rhythm produced from the instruments that I love. You grow up learning how to dance to the music, your social circle encourage it, at parties everyone's doing it, and it's contagious! Not many artists have managed to break into UK mainstream music except for Punjabi MC, with Mundian To Bach Ke. Since then there have been others, but not in such a big way. Anyway, every time I hear a good bhangra song, I want to dance. It's dangerous when sitting at my desk when listening to a good song as I'll be mentally bopping away, trying to refrain from physically doing the same, and trying not to look like I have ants in my pants.

The food. I love Punjabi cuisine. It is awesome! Every part of India has a different style of cooking. Sure they're all spicy, but they tend to have very different consistencies. Typical Punjabi food tends to be quite thick and/or creamy if it's curry based, quite dry if it's meat, and quite spicy if it's vegetarian. You may recognise saag, tandoori chicken or matar paneer. MMMmmm... A very traditional meal for families on Sunday's is to have parathas... oh mama. These things can fill you up for a day.

The culture. Punjabi's are a very social people. Everything is about socialising and needing an excuse to socialise. That's why parties are so big, not because we know that many people, but because we love being social. Sure there might be alcohol free flowing, but that's more of a gradual happening over time. It's all about throwing a big bash to show off how well you can socialise. Cynicism aside, it creates for a wonderful atmosphere where everyone mucks in and enjoys themselves. Even if it's a home dinner, you can expect 3-4 different families. And in some cases this is a weekly affair!

And those three things are at the heart of why I love being Punjabi. I've talked specifically about Punjab here. This isn't to say the other states in India are vastly different, it's akin to describing why those from North England differ from those in the Home Counties to those in London to those in West Country.

Make training fun?

Last week's Q&A post on the use of role plays in training was a nice experiment and turned out just as I wanted. My thanks to all who took part in it. For me, the important thing to bear in mind for future Q&A's is to not bother with a summary post at the end of the week because:
1) I'm not that important
2) My readers can wean their own conclusions from people's comments
3) I didn't actually say anything different

So, on to this week's Q&A.

If you are promoting training, should one of your key selling points, be "it's fun!". I read far too many training types who think that this is a valid selling point. As you may gather, I'm not convinced. I'm not concerned about the structure of the training, or its content, or the style of delivery, my questions this week is restricted to:

When promoting training, internal or external, how does the word "fun" help or hinder this promotion?

Role Play? No thanks

This week's inaugural Q&A post was on the topic of role plays within training. The question I posed was this: "Often in training it's necessary to practise the skills you are learning. But, is role play the best way to achieve this?"

There's been some excellent comments from the following people: Rob Green, Wendy Jacob, Matthew Warrener, Sarah Durbridge, TheHRD, Doug Shaw and Mr AirMiles. Here's a precis of their comments:

Rob talked about it being difficult to get into character for a role play as he's not facing the person he's likely to come across. Once he tries though, feedback can be useful.

Wendy was clear in stating "There is no realism in acting out a semi-scripted conversation" and "You can't plan for every response and scenario and, while I see some merit in discussing on a practical level how a new skill might be used, I've yet to experience a role play which hasn't been a painful experience for everybody."

Matthew made an excellent point when he said "...customers DO NOT HAVE SCRIPTS! We can discuss and debate customer/event scenarios but lets leave role playing to the cast of Fame!". I couldn't agree more!

Sarah thought about it from the trainer's point of view too and talked about role play feeling unreal and embarrassing for the participants.

TheHRD made an interesting observation when he said "I've found that in our culture people like to use it...not because they find it real but because they find it helps to practice".

Doug made a nice quip and said "I have scriptophobia, a fear of role play."

And Mr Airmiles provided a great comment, "There are other ways to practice and apply classroom learning - Micky Mouse Land role plays aren't one of them...".

There's plenty in the comments you can read and learn from, and I'm grateful for the contributions. I have to add my tuppence though. For me, you just need to consider the purpose of using role play at all. If it's a service based offering you have, create a duplicate environment, a simulation of sorts, where the person can not only practise what they've been taught, but become conscious of the environment they're in, the people they have to interact with, and apply themselves naturally.

If it's to practise a learned behavioural skill such as Assertiveness, or Feedback, this is much harder to control for in a training environment as the situations you create will never be true to life. You can't account for emotions, reactions, beliefs, culture, that a person holds within them. In these places I've always found it more useful to encourage planning of conversations and discuss those as the preparation can raise awareness, you then have to trust they'll actually 'do' it when they go back to work.

In the main, I don't believe role plays have a place in training any more. There are better and more effective ways at embedding learning - skills practice, simulations, video feedback, are all  If you do choose to use them, just be very clear about the objective. They'll work fine as thought starters, but won't help to truly practise skills.

Thanks to all above for contributing this week.

Death to the CV!

A few weeks back I met a Twitter friend Mervyn Dinnen for the first time and had a very good chat about all things social media, how we found ourselves using it, and about life in general. Mervyn's at a point in his career where he's trying something daring and I wanted to support this with a post of my own. He's looking for his next career opportunity, and I don't doubt that he'll find something. You can read his dedicated blog to find out what he does and what he wants to do. I will tell you though about his methodology for finding this job.

He is doing it without any form of a CV at all. Instead he is using purely social media/networking tools to help him find a job.

A quick point, Mervyn is in a fortunate position that he can invest time in this experiment. I wish Mervyn the best of luck in doing this.

He's calling it social recruiting. Makes sense. What I want to do is take a look at the idea of this and provide some of my thoughts. In effect, Mervyn is saying if a company is interested in him, he won't send over a CV. He wants his blog, his Twitter account, his LinkedIn profile, all to be the source of information that any potential recruiter would need. And based on that, they can contact him for an interview.

What fascinates me about this, is the sheer challenge to conventional job seeking methods. The Employ Kyle campaign saw some innovative use of social media to promote himself. And there have been many people using YouTube to promote themselves. Recruiters in the world today (in-house as well as out-sourced) should take note of what's happening in the world of social media, and learn quickly. I'll make mention of one other recruiter I know on Twitter, Andy Headworth. Andy is an absolute advocate of social media, and puts a lot of time and effort into figuring out how the various tools can be best used. You should check out his site.

Coming back to Mervyn though, he's got some real challenges that stand in his way:
1) Recruiters will insist on a CV - they will not understand how you can't have one, why you haven't got one, and what you possibly think to gain by not providing one.
2) Companies will put pressure on recruiters and on Mervyn for providing a CV - because they want the paper trail. They want the safeguard that says, "we choose to go no further because blah blah blah".
3) Practically, people haven't got time to engage with a candidate in this way - the beauty of what Mervyn is trying to promote here is, you have to visit his site, you have to read his tweets, you have to search him out on LinkedIn. That's far too much time to invest in a time poor economy.
4) It's just not the done thing - regardless of the ways social media is providing new ways of communicating and providing information, at risk of a cliche, the world just isn't ready for things like this. Challenging recruiting conventions is almost as laughable as challenging airport security.
5) His approach will be classed as the latest social media fad/gimmick - companies haven't got the time to indulge an approach like this. Social media? Just stick to email and phone thanks.

I am following Mervyn's job hunt with interest. I hope either you do too, or are interested enough that you'll pass on a recommendation for him.

Role Play? I'm just not into that

Seeing there are plentiful blogs to welcome you, get you kick started and provide ample advice on setting realistic resolutions for 2011, I'm going down a different track. I'm starting a weekly posting on something within the L&D world which would be interesting to open up to you all. In effect, I want you to write the blog.

The idea is simple enough. I pose a situation, you respond and I'll try write a post to collect thoughts on (potentially) solving said situation. I'll tweet it out once a day until Friday.

Often in training it's necessary to practise the skills you are learning. But, is role play the best way to achieve this? I've never been a fan of role play. But before I get into it, let's have a quick thought about why they're used. Effectively they're used to help people take a look at how they might use a learned skill and receive some feedback on it. That's about it really. Like I said, I want your help in writing this, so let me know your thoughts, and on Friday, I'll pull them together.