Improve Your Training by Considering the Setting

If you are charged with training members of your organization—whether you hold a one-time training session on a new program or you hold a full-time job as a corporate trainer—there are several critical elements that can impact the effectiveness of your training session. One of these elements is so simple it is often overlooked: the setting. Considering the setting of a training session is critical to ensuring that you meet your learning objectives.

In truth, there are myriad things a trainer must consider to maximize the value of the training experience—the organizational culture and policies, e.g. But it is imperative to consider the physical environment in which the training will be conducted because the set-up of the training environment sets the tone for the rest of the training experience. Giving thoughtful consideration to the setting of your training is called conducting an environmental analysis.

Room Setup
The physical setup of the room plays a major role in the productivity of your training session. When considering how to set up your room, consider your learning goals and methods. If it is important that your participants interact with one another, you should set up the room so that it is easy for them to interact and they feel more comfortable doing so. In this case, a traditional classroom setup, with the instructor at the front of the room and the participants all facing front, is likely not ideal. You may want to consider putting participants at round or u-shaped tables to encourage social interaction. This helps form a sense of belonging among participants and is less intimidating to them, which could be beneficial if the material you are covering is new or complex.

There are many other factors to consider when thinking about room setup: lighting, temperature, availability of/proximity to restrooms and beverages, comfort of chairs and tables, distractions, sound/noise. Technology is another important item to consider; for example, techsoup.org cautions that technology in a training facility can differ from what you may be used to. As a trainer, consider it your responsibility to arrive early to your training destination to become familiar with all these items and take the initiative to change what you can if you feel it is not conducive to the best learning environment. You may be surprised by how easily participants are distracted by a room that is too cold, or by people walking in front of you every time they get water, and these things can have a negative impact on their learning experience. Bottom line: do what you can to ensure the room is comfortable, everything works the way it should, and the energy among participants is maximized.

Psychosocial Considerations
In addition to the setup of the room, there are psychosocial considerations to think about. In other words, as the trainer, you should consider social aspects of the training process that will have an impact on the participants’ experience. There are a number of things you can do to enhance your participants’ comfort level with you and the overall training session:

• Arrive early to setup, and take this opportunity to chat with participants before the training session begins. This will allow them to feel more comfortable with you.
• Mistakes happen. When they do, remain calm; you can even use humor to diffuse a technological glitch or slip of the tongue. Ensuring that participants do not see you flustered will enhance your credibility in their eyes.
• Establish ground rules. It is important to clue participants in to what you expect from them, as well as what they can expect from you and the session. Facilitator Steve Davis suggests that “following good ground rules [is a] huge positive step toward healthy relating,” which in turn helps create a positive learning experience for your participants.
• Have participants introduce themselves, no matter how large a group. This way, everyone is on a first-name basis and is likely to feel more comfortable interacting with and sharing in front of one another.
• Call participants by their first names. If you are conducting training with a room full of doctors, they may prefer to be referred to by their title and last name. However, for the most part, being on a first-name basis with your participants puts everyone at ease and contributes to a comfortable learning environment.
• Determine who participants are and why they are there. Don’t assume you know the motivation behind your participants’ attendance in the training session. For example, if you know the training is mandatory, it would be easy to assume participants have a captive-audience mindset, and you may neglect the opportunity to find out what they hope to learn from the day’s session. Talking to your participants to find out their level of experience and goals for the session will help you direct the training session so that it truly benefits the participants.

Keeping these tips in mind when you conduct training will allow you to create more effective, productive training sessions and ensure that your participants leave the session with knowledge beneficial to them.

Two Simple Habits for More Professional Emails

Have you ever sent an email to someone you were trying to impress that you immediately wished you could take back? Perhaps you forgot to send the attachment. Or perhaps you realized after you sent it that you had a typo. Perhaps you included a supervisor in an inappropriate email forward. These kinds of things have happened to most of us, and we usually lament them because we realize we have made a bad impression. This article presents two simple habits to develop that will help you make sure your emails always make a good impression.

Habit #1: Change the way you view email
There is a great paradox with the way most people view an email. Most senders think of email as a strictly utilitarian tool; it exists to get things done. Ironically, most receivers view the email they receive as an online extension of the sender’s personality. Therefore, if your emails are terse, confusing, rude, offensive, or poorly written, the receiver tends to assume that email reflects the same personality traits in the sender—you.

In a world in which email is now the primary way by which people communicate, it is critical to your professional image that you shift your thinking about email. Learn to think of your emails as an online representation of your professional (and/or personal) image. And assume that people make inferences about you based on the emails you send. Changing your view of email in this way will help you learn to edit your emails accordingly and make it easier to apply the tips provided in this article.

Habit #2: Follow your netiquette
Netiquette is a term for online etiquette. Once you accept your email practices as an extension of your online persona, the logical next step is to follow the same etiquette online as you do in person.

There are many things you can do to make sure your emails reflect the professional image you want to portray. Here are a few easy tips.

1. Proofread!

First and foremost, make sure your emails are error-free. This means proofreading your emails for typographical, grammatical, and spelling errors. If you are not confident in your grammar and spelling, the internet has no shortage of helpful resources. Here are just a few:

* Purdue OWL (online writing lab) offers quick, easy tips for all things grammatical.
* Grammar Girl is an excellent source for grammatical tips. You can even search for specific questions. If you have a grammar question, chances are you’ll find an answer here.
* Patricia O’Conner’s book, Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, is a wonderful book to have on hand no matter your grammatical skill level. She supplements all of her grammar tips with easy-to-remember, and often humorous, examples.

2. Swap the order in which you compose your emails.

Attach the attachment first.
Somewhere along the line, we all got into the habit of writing the email first, then attaching the attachment. Of course, the problem here is, when you are busy and hurried, you often forget to attach; then you have to follow up with that embarrassing “Oops!” email. There is no law that says you have to write the email content first. So when you know you have to send an attachment to someone, attach it first, then write the email. Make this a habit starting today, and you’ll never have to send that “Oops!” follow-up email again.

Don’t type the recipient's address until you’ve proofread your email.
When composing an email, do not include the addressee’s name in the “To” line until after you have typed and proofread your email. This forces you to make sure the email is perfect before your hand hurriedly clicks that “send” button or, even worse, you click “send” accidentally—perhaps even before you’ve finished composing!

Make it a habit to swap the order with which you’ve been traditionally creating emails. From now on, add the attachment first and the recipient last. This will save you a great deal of time and embarrassment.

3. Remember the receiver
When communicating online, it is so easy (and, all too often, convenient) to forget that there is a human being on the receiving end of that communication. Ask yourself this (and answer honestly): Have you ever sent an email to someone that said something you would never say to their face? Chances are, most people have. Albion.com suggests that you “remember the human”; in other words, remember the Golden Rule and ask yourself how you would feel if you had just received the email you are sending.

If you remember the receiver, most of the other emailing best practices should come pretty naturally. Emailreplies.com offers a whole host of tips for best practices, such as:

* Don’t use ALL CAPS. Even if you are in a hurry, people tend to read this as “yelling” (not to mention that SPAM blockers tend to filter emails containing all capital letters).
* Consider whether “Reply to all” is really necessary. Does every person who received the original email really need to see your response?
* Be careful of emoticons and abbreviations. This is especially true in today’s global workforce because many international recipients may not understand what “lol” or ;-) means.
* Do not use email to discuss confidential information. Many people in organizations have found this out the hard way. If you are unsure of whether something is too sensitive to discuss via email, choose the safe route and talk to the person face-to-face or on the telephone. Remember that emails are archived; that means they can be retrieved and the information could be potentially harmful to you or someone else. Take the time to make smart decisions about who and what you email.

Developing these two simple habits, and the behaviors that support them, will ensure that your emails represent the professional image you want to portray online.

How to Influence Your Managers

Demonstrating your value as an employee in your organization often depends on your ability to do what is called “managing upward.” In other words, how good are you at influencing those of higher rank than you so that they not only see the value in you and your ideas, but also work to help you implement them and give you the recognition you deserve? Research shows that there are common characteristics that make employees more likely to successfully influence supervisors.

Argue Constructively

It is often assumed that supervisors want to be surrounded with “yes” men and women. However, a study by Kent State professors Dominick Infante and William Gorden found that supervisors prefer employees who demonstrate argumentativeness, but in a constructive, non-aggressive manner. If you argue constructively, your manager is much more apt to view you as having a good grasp of the issues at stake. He or she is also more likely to think you can handle the stressors associated with increased responsibility, such as more complex projects or delegation responsibilities.

Constructive arguing means being engaged, articulate, friendly and relaxed, and open to the potential of a negative response. In other words, be more concerned with having a positive interaction with your supervisor than whether he or she says “yes” to your request. This will get you farther in the long run.

Show the Reasoning and Benefits of Your Requests

Managers are much more likely to be influenced by your request if you provide them with logical rationale supporting it, rather than an emotional plea. Employees sometimes make the mistake of internalizing their requests so that they become defensive if questioned with the reasoning behind them. Business consultant Lonnie Pacelli suggests that you stick to objective facts and "avoid emotionally based assessments." Being willing to show the “why” of your request or message increases the likelihood that your supervisor will respond positively. Additionally, if you can go a step farther and demonstrate the benefit of your request, you are more likely to be successful. For example, demonstrate how your request contributes to the bottom line of the organization. University of Denver researchers Jacqueline Moorhead and Michael Spangle suggest, “reasoning that, in some way, addresses organizational values also many enhance the receptivity of managers.” Become an organizational advocate. In other words, contribute to the solution, champion useful ideas, and share messages that affirm your colleagues and your overall organization.

Watch Your Tone

The first point indicated the importance of constructive arguing; by the same token, it is critical that you edit any potentially unconstructive messages. It’s not just what you say, it’s also how you say it. Make your message and your tone as positive as possible. Avoid messages that come across as judgmental or blaming, such as “You knew that was important to me!” Take care never to embarrass your supervisor or be rude or disrespectful to her or him. Your messages and your tone should always convey openness to feedback (even potentially negative feedback) and a commitment to the working relationship.

Build the Framework for Collaborative Communication

Influencing your supervisor is not a one-time event. It takes time to build a framework in which your supervisor comes to expect positive exchanges and views you as receptive, trustworthy, and able to meet challenges. You can help build this framework by always maintaining a focus on the positive. Being receptive to things like feedback, changes, and challenges conveys an overall positive attitude to your higher-ups. It’s acceptable to communicate to your manager how you are trying to meet his or her expectations. At the same time, don’t hesitate to let him or her know that they, too, are doing a great job. And use your manager as a resource for advice and feedback. Creating a climate of validation and respect increases the likelihood that you will influence your manager when the time is right.

These guidelines do not offer a quick fix—if you have had a challenging relationship with your supervisor and want to influence them today, you’ll need more time to implement this framework. However, if you follow these guidelines over time, you’ll find that you will build relationships with your higher-ups in which your input and ideas are valued—ultimately creating a more rewarding working climate for you!

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Involving People, Improving Groups

As the newest member of the Emu team, I felt it was my responsibility to ensure that I fully understood the mission of Emu Consulting and what we do for our clients. I knew Emu’s tagline was “Involving People, Improving Groups,” but I wondered: Is that really representative of what we do?

Being the leadership and change management guru that he is, of course Dr. Gertner (Doug Gertner) was receptive to my desire to sit down and discuss this mission statement qua tagline and whether it truly communicates Emu’s values. Turns out: Yes, it does!

Our goal at Emu Consulting is to provide organizational training and development. But what does that really mean? It means we do work with the people in an organization to improve the everyday communicative process people go through in order to do their jobs effectively. We want to help people get along in their work groups so that their positive relationships benefit each other and, ultimately, the organization at-large. Lynne Cooper, author of Listening Competency in the Workplace: A Model for Training, defines training as applying to a specific, necessary job skill while development aims at broader objectives. I like that definition because, for me, it demonstrates the difference between training and development but also illustrates how the two are inextricably linked. So Doug and I help train organizational members to develop the skills that will help them and their organization attain those broader goals.

All of the training we provide at Emu looks at the interplay between the individuals and the work groups to which they belong. Although we train people in various skills—listening, teamwork, conflict management, time management—the focus is always on both individuals and the groups to which they belong because in an organization, one person’s communication always impacts the larger work group. By the same token, the culture of the work group always influences interpersonal communication. You cannot separate the two; their relationship is always symbiotic.

So, in effect, long before I came along, Doug nailed it when he crafted the tagline that says so clearly what we do: we involve people in order to improve groups.

There is a second and equally important piece of the concept of involving people, and that has to do with the way we train. At Emu Consulting, we love to really get our participants involved. Our seminars are all hands-on, activity-based learning. And most important, we have fun doing it—because this is our passion!

If you would like to improve your work groups—and have fun doing it!—contact us today. Or, to learn more about the various seminars we offer, visit our Training page.

The Only Constant is Change

Dr. G here. I was speaking with a client of ours today, who was concerned about some pending changes in her organization and what it would do to the community that we had helped them to build among their staff. This conversation reminded me of the many changes that each of us has witnessed and experienced over the past year. The economy has seen radical change, causing adjustment for every business and organization, for every family, and for each individual. The new year often brings changes, and we wonder if our nation will see more changes after having voted on that very platform last year.

The permanence of change in our lives is as true for us in business today as it was for the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Every industry faces the constant prospect of changes in technology, regulations, and personnel, which challenge both financial and human resources. For managers and supervisors who are faced with numerous transitions daily, a first step to handling change is to understand the dynamics that characterize it.

According to well-known author and management consultant Kenneth Blanchard, seven elements are present in the face of any workplace change (click here if you’d like to read more about these seven elements). I bring up these elements in this blog entry to ask: How have you experienced and accommodated changes in your life?

Emu Consulting has seen several changes of late, including new course offerings and a new associate, as well as changes brought on by the economy and by more personal transitions. We've found that our own experience, as well as the models and understanding we have of change, help us to manage our own change and to ably serve our clients during their critical times of transition.

As you navigate the turbulent waters of change, let Emu Consulting be your collaborator in guiding you on the journey. Contact us at 303-377-8081 or doug@emuconsulting.com. Wishing you well during these interesting times.

Too Much Time On Your Hands? Not Likely!

Dr. F. here, asking: What would you do with an extra hour in each day? That’s the question my business partner, Dr. Doug Gertner, asks his seminar participants. I think it’s a great question, and one that people are often excited to answer. In fact, most people could easily generate a veritable catalog of things they would do with an extra hour in a day. (I, myself, would choose the company of a good book almost every time). But, think about this, if you had an extra hour each day, that’s 7 extra hours a week, 28 extra hours a month, 336 extra hours a year! That’s a lot of extra time! NOW what would you do?

Although, at Emu, we teach people detailed skills for managing their work–life balance so they have that extra time, I think one of the simplest things you can do to make more time in your life is to avoid the “technology trap,” or what Dr. Gertner refers to as “technological ADD.” We all do it—telling yourself you’re working, all the while checking your email or Facebook account every 30 seconds. Thinking, “this report (insert your own job-appropriate noun here) will only take a few minutes, so I’ll go see what’s on sale at Zappos.com and THEN I’ll start on it.” Before you know it, half your day is gone and all you have to show for it is…well…nothing (except maybe a higher credit card bill).

I read something interesting recently. According to Dr. David Greenfield, a psychologist who specializes in internet addiction, we are addicted to checking email and social networking websites mainly because it stimulates the part of the brain that releases dopamine when we feel “rewarded.” And email or networking sites reward us unpredictably, meaning most of the time they give us nothing exciting, but every once in a while, we get something that really gives us a charge—a coupon, or a friend request, for example. And that’s enough to keep us coming back.

So, how do you cope with this? Is it really an addiction? No, not really. (Well, for some people it may be.) But most people simply need to learn the skills of managing time better. Emu offers seminars to teach people these skills. But, for now, try focusing on your “technological ADD,” and remember that there’s really no such thing as multi-tasking. So, logout of that email and focus on the job at hand—and the more long-term reward that comes from being able to say “job well done”!