War Stories

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Chris Saint Cyr

Gold stars from the National World War II Monument in Washington DC.

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. …there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” ― Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

A Gold Star Banner displayed in a home means a family member was killed in action.

A war story is just a war story. There are no true war stories. There are some that are blatantly false and made up, told by posers. Most are are recollections. Sometimes they are embellished, minimized, mixed with other memories, or just misremembered. Many people think veterans tell stories to impart some sort of moral or lesson. However, a war story is told to remember a loved comrade, relieve bothersome anxiety, or to get a rise out of the listener. Sometimes the story teller does not know why he tells the story. He just does.

I want to share two war stories today to remember my comrades in arms who died defending freedom. These stories are told from my perspective, what I remember from the time I learned of each death, mixed with conversations of those closer to the Soldier. Fairy tales begin, “Once upon a time, in land far away…” War stories begin, …

(Once upon a time) I remember watching CNN in the day room (in a land far away) at Diyala Provincial Police Headquarter in Baqubah Iraq in late March. There was a report about recent activity in the increasingly violent insurgency. They were showing images of a bridge just outside Ramadi where a truck from the 744^th Transportation Company had been blown up by an IED and tossed over the edge. This attack resulted in the first war death of a New Hampshire National Guard Soldier since Vietnam.

SPC Jeremiah Holmes died in that attack. I did not know Holmes, but several Soldier from my battery had been assigned to deploy with 744^th. Holmes worked with a Soldier who had been a section chief in my first howitzer section for a couple years. Everyone I spoke with who knew and remembered Holmes described him as a great guy. The 744^th held a farewell event for family and friends during Thanksgiving weekend 2003. A picture of him kissing his 10 month old son on the day 744^th departed New Hampshire appeared in the paper. That young man never knew his father. Soon he will be learning to drive for himself.

744^th arrived a few weeks in Iraq before we did. At the time we felt a little safer being in a fixed site rather than traveling the roads as 744^th did. Our sense of safety quickly eroded over the next few days. Attacks around Iraq resulted in injuries to other New Hampshire National Guard members. Two Soldiers from our company were wounded in Mosul, but that is a different story for another time. Even though I never met SPC Holmes, his death changed the way I looked at the war. A few days later the insurgents directed their attention to our humble abode.

The 744^th nor SPC Holmes had been in Iraq long enough to learn about IEDs. We all grumbled during training about how sneaky the observer controllers (OC) were about hiding those pesky bombs. On this first attack, 744^th learned just how easy the OCs were being on us. The insurgents were experts at hiding roadside bombs. Homes death taught us all an important lesson about situational awareness and the danger we faced during our time in Iraq. This lesson was learned well. The reality was even if we detected 99% of IEDs, it only took 1 missed IED to kill us or a comrade in arms; and that is the beginning of my next story.

I remember (once upon another time…) walking into our Tactical Operations Center (TOC) on 15 October 2004 to see if they knew why our internet connections were not operating. We had been in Iraq for several months and little phased us so the look on the faces of the TOC staff however told me something really bad happened explaining the internet interruption. Before I could ask, the senior NCO walked into the room with the phone we used to call home and secured it in a wall locker. We were in a communications blackout. That could only mean someone died. I hoped it was not one of ours. “What’s going on?” I asked. The answer dashed my hopes as I learned SPC Alan Burgess from the platoon our company had in Mosul died.

The day started like every other patrol in the city. The squad departed the forward operating base and found activity on the streets was normal, always a good sign. The squad and its leader always expected attacks and hoped for uneventful trips. Most days they did find enemy and engaged or were engaged. Today they expected no more, no less.

In fact this platoon had several significant engagements with the enemy during their time in Mosul. In fact one Soldier had been shot in the chest the week SPC Holmes died. After being shot, the squad returned to base and drew a new tactical vest for the gunner and returned to patrol the streets of the city. The gunner and driver had changed places on the second patrol Just before sun rise, the patrol located the insurgents that shot the Soldier earlier and again engaged them in a fire fight. The gunner turned driver dismounted from the armored vehicle, to attack the disable vehicle containing the insurgents. He was shot again but this time in the ankle!

Today was different. The streets were busy. People were engaged in commerce. There was nothing to indicate death awaited them. The squad was stuck in the normal traffic of the city with no where to maneuver. This is exactly what the enemy was waiting for, a sitting duck.

What happened next, happened quickly. A vehicle in the opposite lane charged directly toward the patrol. SPC Alan Burgess saw the danger and began to engage the enemy. According to some witnesses time slowed down as the car came to a stop. According to others time accelerated. Each tells the war story the way they remember it. The driver of the attacking vehicle was dressed all in white, a sign of one who is about to be martyred. SPC Burgess recognized that danger, but a moment too late. As he released his machine gun to seek the safety inside the armored vehicle, the car bomb exploded. Burgess and civilians in the area were killed. Dozens were injured. Alan left behind his girlfriend and four year old son.

Alan was a loved and respected member of the unit. His loss effected everyone in some fashion. Like Holmes death, it served as a reminder about the fragility of life.

Neither story has a moral. The heroes do not live happily ever after. These are war stories, not fairy tales. Sharing these stories however provided me an opportunity to remind people that Memorial Day is not Veteran’s Day. It is a day to remember those who gave all defending freedom. These stories are reminders that real people died protecting freedom. They were not statistics. As members of the National Guard, these two Soldiers are part of a tradition older that the U.S. Army, protecting family, friends, and neighbors from the evil in the world.

The poppy was inspired by the poem, *Flanders Field*, by John McCrae based on his reflections of poppies growing in a WWI cemetery between the white head stones.

As Memorial Day approaches, take time to attend a memorial service. Instead of becoming angry about having to wait for a passing parade, give thanks to those whose sacrifices the parade honors. Ask a veteran to tell you about a lost war comrade. Memorial Day is not about the beginning of summer. It is not about fun and family picnics. It is not a paid, work-free day. It is about remembering those who died so we may live free and enjoy our lives in peace. Remember them.

Photo Credits

WWII Memorial Stars: pxhere.com, no other information provided. pxhere.com license.
Gold Star Banner: author.
Jeremiah Holmes: US Government Photo.
Alan Burgess: US Government Photo.
Poppy: pshere. ibid.

More Information

About Buddy Poppies: http://www.vfwpost4103.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HISTORY-OF-THE-BUDDY-POPPY.pdf
Veteran cemeteries: https://www.cem.va.gov

Three Ways to Improve Employee Performance

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Chris Saint Cyr

Locker doors showing repetition. The idea is to repeat new knowledge and skills to create better habits. — Repeating new skills and knowledge helps develop new habits and improve employee performance.

Spaced repetition is a concept from Know, Can, Do by Ken Blanchard. It is a simple method instructors can use during training to help students retain what they learned. Few organizations have the money necessary to keep outside trainers available indefinitely. Organizations must rely on supervisors to identify ways to have employees repeat what they learned during training, to increase the return on the training investment. Here are three simple ways supervisors can engage employees and increase behavior changes desired from training.

The first method requires employees to verbally report what they learned to the supervisor. The second method is to requires the employee to type their classroom notes. The third way requires the employee to present the information and methods learned for other employees. Each way engages different learning strategies, increases retention, and reinforces desired behaviors.

When employees return from training they are excited about what they learned. They often do not have time to process how to connect what they learned with their job. As a result, desired changes in behavior do not occur. Plan time to meet with the employee after the training. Require the employee to tell you about the information and techniques taught in the class. Ask the employee to demonstrate the skills taught. Allow the employee to watch you do at least one of the tasks taught and correct your performance as appropriate.

Ask the employee questions about ways to implement the lessons learned into work routines. Ask how the skills can be taught to other team members. Before you end the meeting, task the employee with the second method of spaced repetition, note preparation.

Person typing notes to improve learning. — Typed class notes permits sharing knowledge with others, ensures you can read them yourself in the future, and creates an opportunity to present what your learned by using your notes as an outline

Preparing class notes is an important way to reinforce learning. Students should take up to a page of notes for every hour of class. More than that and they are not listening. Less and they have nothing to refer to after class. Typing the notes after class creates another repetition of the learning. Typing notes allows the student to share what they learned with others. Typed notes are easier for others to read. Typed notes can be stored in a file folder in a drawer, or digitally on a computer. Weeks or years from now anyone who was given a copy of the notes can pull them up as a reference.

Another great reason for preparing typed notes is to share them within your professional network. Teaching employees to share notes with their network provides an opportunity to communicate with people they do not see everyday. Their notes provide a reason to open a professional discussion with their peers and expand their influence. Your employees derive benefits when they share their notes with others.

Notes do not have to follow a formal outline, but do need an easy to follow format. At the top of the first page of note place the title of the class. Include the name and contact information for the instructor. Recording the instructor’s contact information allows the student the ability to contact the instructor in the future. It also provides the instructor credit for the ideas presented. Include the date(s), length, and location of the training. Tell your employee to take credit for the notes by including his or her by-line and contact information. People are more likely to contact the employee with topical questions before the trainer. Good notes establish the employee as a subject matter expert. When the employee presents the information, another repetition occurs strengthening the important lessons learned.

After the credit and training information, arrange the notes so they make sense. The note taker may find it make sense to rearrange some information. Create topical groups regardless of the order presented in class. Often instructors and classes deviate from the instruction model creating situations where information is presented out of order. Making those changes makes the notes are useful. Use topic headings if appropriate. Use different fonts or bold for topic headings. If the trainer used a slide handout, refer back to it rather than typing out all the points from the slide. This is especially helpful for diagrams.

Carpenter showing how to drive a nail. The picture shows how allowing an employee to show others new skills, the employee's new skill improves, and others learn too. — Allowing the employee to show others what was learned presents another repetition of the skill and creates an opportunity for others in the organization to learn new skills and knowledge.

An added feature of the typed notes is that it allows the employee to prepare for the third step in the supervised, post-training, spaced repetition; the presentation. The employee uses the typed notes as an outline for the staff presentation at a selected time in the future. Schedule the presentation close to the date of the original training. The notes are the work of the employee and not subject to any copyrights by the presenter. That means the company can reproduce and distribute them without seeking additional permission. An exception is if the student’s note are direct quotes from the instructor or training material. Avoid plagiarism accusations by requiring the employee to use his or her own words.

During the presentation, the employee tells the others what he learned in the training. He tells how he has applied the lessons in his work and personal life and the results he observed. He shows others how to complete one or more of the skills. He provides each an opportunity, either individually or as a group, to practice one of the skills. Using this method expands the knowledge of the whole workforce for the price of sending one employee. Even if other employees previously attended the same training, this event serves as another spaced repetition, reinforcing the skills and knowledge learned. The presentation develops confidence in the employee and establishes them as a subject matter expert.

Pink flamingo pattern repeated several times to remind readers to repeat new knowledge and skills. — Spaced repetition is the secret for employees to develop new habits and improve performance

Too often organizations send people to training to learn but never follow up to reinforce those lessons. The three steps outlined here provide a model for supervisors to follow to ingrain those lessons. These three steps spaced over time reinforce learning. Meeting with the employee in a few days after the training allows them to show you what was learned. Requiring the employee to type class notes and provides another repetition. Sharing those notes allow employees to expand their sphere of influence. Conducting a brief training event reinforces the learning for the employee who attended the training, and also broadcasts some of those skills and knowledge across the organization. Using spaced repetition is a great way to increase your company’s return on its training investment.

Photo Credits

Lockers by Jan Laugesen from Upsplash.com with Upsplash license.
Typewriter by rawpix from Pexels.com with Pexels license
Carpenter by rawpix from Pexels.com with Pexels license
Flamingos by Designercologist from Pexels.com with Pexels license

3 Ways to Use Spaced Repetition in Training

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Chris Saint Cyr

In first grade, we learned the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Spaced repetition in school allowed us to learn where they came from, why they came, and that they really landed on Cape Cod first

Albert Einstein said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” It is all those things you know, but you could not tell someone how or why you know it. If you think back to your school days and the lessons you learned you would find out that you did not learn as much as you think. You learned the same things over again in different grades. For example you learned about the Mayflower and Paul Revere’s ride in First Grade. When you in perhaps Fourth Grade, you spend another year learning American History but instead of the fairy tale version, you identified and learned what caused the pilgrims and patriots to act. When you studied American History again in middle school, you identified the consequences of the actions of key events and figures in history. In high school, you were asked to think critically about how history could have been different if historical people made different choices. Your learning about American History was spaced over time. Each time you added to what you previously learned. As an adult instructor or leader, find ways to introduce spaced repetition into your training. As a trainer you can build on earlier lessons whether the training event is a few hours or a few weeks.

As a trainer you have a responsibility to develop lessons that build on each other to reinforce earlier lessons and help students understand why skills and information taught earlier are important. Using spaced repetition is easier when your lessons occur over days or weeks. Spacing important learning points in a lesson that lasts only hours is more difficult but not impossible. Start by knowing the learning goals of your lesson. Here is a link to preparing learning goals: https://saintcyrtraining.com/2013/08/27/inspire-others-to-go-forth-and-do-good/.

After you identified the important learning goal of your lesson, you know what points to target for spaced repetition. Arrange your lessons so each learning goal is a logical building block. As you complete lessons for each learning goal, do a quick review to show how learning goals build on each other. Each review serves as a spaced repetition of early lessons.

Practical exercises allow students to use skills, ideas, and information learned earlier in the training to make connections and employ spaced repetition.

Another method to employ spaced repetition is to develop practical exercises that require students to use skills learned earlier. For example if you are teaching a group of students to navigate in the woods you would teach them how to read a map, how to use a compass, how to calculate ground distance, and how to calculate the difference between the magnetic and map north readings. After teaching the lesson on distance, you give the students an azimuth and direct them to move along that azimuth for a certain distance. This activity requires them to use the compass and practice the skill of determining distance while moving along the ground. In the final exercise you give them two points on a map to go and find on the ground. This exercise requires your students to read a map, use a compass, calculate the difference in north readings, and measure distance on a map and on the ground. Each exercise builds on earlier lessons and gives an additional repetition space over the course of the training event for each learning goal.

Training events occurring over a longer period of time allow instructors to create more space before each repetition improving retention. Begin each new session with a brief review of prior learning. Ask students to share how they applied what they learned in their lives. Ask for them to report on the results achieved. At the end of the session, ask the students questions to make connections with past lessons. Ask how implementing today’s lessons will improve results by adding the skills learned today to the skills they learned before.

Using spaced repetition during training sheds light on lessons.

Repeating information throughout a training event allows students to make connections to each learning goal. Students understand how each learning goal related to the others. Students improve their understanding of the overall main idea by making connections between learning goals. Spacing the repetition of the basic building blocks of the main idea reinforce those foundational lessons improving retention. Developing various exercises to support each learning goal allows the student to see, feel, hear, and understand the skill in practice by doing it. Spaced repetition is a great way to improve your students’ skills when they return to their world. They know, understand, and do what they were taught which is the objective of every training; changing behavior. Add spaced repetition to your training and watch the light bulbs illuminate in your students.

Photo Credits

1620 by Robin Booker from pixabay.com using pixabay license
Map and compass by Hendrik Morkel from unsplash.com using unsplash license
Lightbulb by Fachy Marin from unsplash.com using unsplash license

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Value of Changing Habits for Leaders

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Chris Saint Cyr

Character is the intersection of a variety of factors. Habits and values are two of those factors. Other people make judgments about your values from by observing your habits. When you tell people you value providing quality feedback to your followers, that is a statement of a value you hold. People who hear you observe your behavior and decide if you really value coaching and counseling your workers. When they see you counseling others, they know you value that behavior. On the other hand, if you never

A military leader using a battle drill. Battle drills are effective habits learned through repetition.

coach and counsel your employees, everyone knows you are all talk and counseling others really is not important to you. Given that habits are nothing more than routines people use to simplify life, then deciding to change your habits enables you to align your behavior with your stated values. When those habits involve influencing others, you become a better leader.

Anyone can apply the principals in this post to any habit they want to change or create. For the purpose of discussion, I will continue to use the counseling example from the introduction because it is a leadership task often overlooked by supervisors. The steps are simple; the principals sound.

The principals for changing habits are the same as those for problem solving. Work on one habit at a time. Understand what habit you want to change and why. Know the desired result. Develop a solid plan to implement change. Identify people for support. Steps for habit change include:

identifying the habit you want to change,
identifying the motivation for change,
identifying the cues or triggers, what is the routine, and what is your reward
identifying where in the cycle you can make a change,
developing a plan to implement the change,
evaluating your results.

Like setting a goal, you need to be specific about what habit you want to change. Provide answers to all the who, what, where, why, when, and how questions. Write down those answers. Writing down things helps organize the thought process. When you write down things, you can let those thoughts out of your head and delve deeper into your analysis of the habit.

In our example, you want to become a better counselor to those you supervise. Counseling helps them become better employees that work independently. Employees that work independently allow you to focus

Creating the habit of counseling requires leaders to examine hurdles that prevent execution. New habits continue once the ball starts rolling,

on the future so your group remains relevant to the organization. Your planning ensures mission accomplishment which creates happy customers. Happy customers develop loyalty improving everyone’s job security. So employee counseling is important.

Simon Sinek encourages us to start with why. Understanding WHY allows you to focus on your motivation. This helps you identify what is important to you. After you identify what is important, compare those values to your habitual actions in different situations or events. Ask yourself if those actions are congruent with your values. Sometimes your habits align with your values. Sometimes your habits run contrary to your values. You do not realize this until you analyze your habits.

In our example of counseling employees, you say it is important, yet at the end of every evaluation period you realize you did not counsel your employees. You identify it as a habit you want to develop. You identify your motivation for developing this habit as becoming an effective leader. You know effective leaders improve organizations.

Every habit has a cue or trigger. The cue is the signal to begin a routine outside your thought process. When the routine is complete, you receive some sort of reward. To change your habit, figure out the cue or trigger, identify the routine, and the reward. Take time to write down the answer to each part of the whole habit so you can better understand what happens.

In the case of counseling employees, identify what cues block counseling sessions. What actions or events prevent you from taking time to prepare and execute employee counseling? What rewards can you establish to encourage you to change your behavior? Write down your answers. Use this information to create cues to execute the counseling. Calendar reminders are simple and easy triggers to begin a habit you want to start.

Now that you understand the habit and your motivation for change, focus your attention on change you can invoke. Common strategies include recognizing where the cue or trigger is initiated and avoiding that trigger, substituting a different routine, or changing the reward for the old routine so the habit is not rewarding. Treat this part of the process like a science experiment. Try different approaches at different parts of the habit cycle until you find something that works. Be easy on yourself. Habits form to reduce the work our brain has to do. It takes time and repetition to break an old habit and create a new habit.

Preparing to counsel employees is a time intensive process. Once you develop a habit cycle, the process becomes easier because your mind creates shortcuts to execute the key parts of counseling. In addition to calendar reminders, notify the employee of a date and time for the counseling. If an employee knows about the ‘appointment’ they will help you prepare. The employee will remind you. They may offer ideas about topics they want to discuss during the counseling. Learn to take notes about performance during the week. Figure out which cues work to develop routines to make counseling easier.

As you move down the time continuum, measure the progress you made with your new habit. Figure out how it made your life better. Use this success to start a new habit cycle to align another habit with your values.

As you start to counsel your employees, you measure your progress from the documented counselings. Each session documents the time and person counseled. Use the data to learn whether you are meeting the intervals you wanted, or if you need to tweak your routine a bit to meet those time hacks. Figure out how you can measure the employees improvements from their regular meetings with you. Compare their new behaviors to those occurring before you started your counseling. At the end of a rating period, you find you have plenty of documentation to validate your evaluation.

As your habits become more aligned with your values, you develop character. People will believe you will do what you say because what you say, you do. They develop trust you are the person you say you are.

People follow leaders that walk the talk. You need to do what you say to develop power in order to influence your workers, peers, and senior leaders. Your habits either put you out front or at the end of the line.

As you begin to habitually counsel your employees, they learn you care about their success. They know you listen to what they say. They trust you to look out for their welfare by helping them improve. You become their role model; someone who has character. You developed the power to influence their behavior and they follow you. Your senior leaders heed your advice because of the improvements you demonstrated increasing your influence.

The foundation of leadership is character. Two defining factors of character are your values and habits. Your habits tell others what your values are. They see your values in everything you do. Creating habits aligned with your values increases the influence you have with senior leaders, your peers, and those who report to you. Often leadership instruction sounds much like personal self-improvement. However, when you create new habits you develop power and influence, create trust, and cause the change you desire in others through your own actions. When your words and actions influence others you are a leader regardless of your title. Analyze your habits. Increase your influence. Become a better leader.

Photo Credits

Red Smoke — Pxhere.com, CC0, no additional attribution available
People Talking — by mentatdgt from Pexels.com, CC0
Geese in Formation — Pxhere.com, CC0, no additional attribution available

Breaking the Ice: Classroom Introductions

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Chris Saint Cyr

Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy breaking lake ice. — USCG Icebreaker Healy

Whether you are teaching adults a college course lasting several weeks, workers about a new process in a half-day training, or conducting on off-site seminar lasting a few days, breaking the ice establishing norms, and identifying expectations is a critical first step. Setting the stage is an often overlooked learning activity by inexperienced trainers. New trainers believe the time available to puke out their information is too valuable to waste getting to know each other, what comes next in class, or how student performance will be evaluated. However, adults learn better when they know something about the others in class, understand class expectations, and know how their learning will be evaluated. Using these suggested activities will help you create a climate to prepare your adult students to learn at their best. Tailor introductory activities to meet your time frames.

Introductions

Introductions are important. It is easy to stand at the front of the class and brag about your background, then go around the room asking each student to share their name and something about themselves. That really does little to help students connect to each other. There are dozens of ice breaker ideas. Here are two.

Ask students to break out into groups of three to six. Have them select a recorder. Each student reports one thing that makes them unique, what they do in their current work position, any special resources they bring to the class, and a question or concern they have about the class (ⁱ⁾. Give the groups 15 to 20 minutes to work on the exercise and then report back to the class. This activity allows a small group to meet with others, and the whole class to develop an understanding about the class members as a whole.

Group of people putting their hands in the center of the group. — Student introduction exercises are more effective when students actually talk to each other.

A second introduction activity is a mixer. During this activity, students form two lines facing each other. For two minutes the pairs discuss whatever they want. At the end of the two minutes, everyone moves to their right or left, those on the end spin around facing the opposite direction. Repeat as many times as desired (ⁱⁱ⁾. This activity allows each student to meet several students and know something about the others.

Setting Expectations

Stephen Covey talks about seeking first to understand. You can do this in your class by finding out what your students expect during class. Ask the class what they expect to take from the class. You may choose to record these expectations on a flip chart or whiteboard. Completing this exercise allows you to understand what students think about the topic of the class. You may find that some of their expectations are not in line with your learning objectives. This provides you an opportunity to adjust your training to meet student expectations, or explain why the training is not set up to meet those expectations.

Now that you understand their expectations, you share yours. Your list may include expectations about breaks, class participation, note taking, or any other expectation you want to share. This activity allows students to understand how best to interact with each other, the material, and you during the training or educational event.

Tell Students about the Class

In this part of the introduction, tell the students how you conduct your class. Letting students know you ask lots of questions helps them prepare answers. Likewise if they know you are going to present some material, ask some checks on learning questions, and follow up with a group activity for each learning step, they can mentally prepare and know what comes next. Tell them if you are planning on doing individual worksheets, small group exercises, videos, and what to expect in the way of slide decks.

Introduce your learning goals. Depending on the course of instruction, you may have one or several terminal learning goals. Each terminal learning goal may be supported by one or more enabling learning goals. Develop one or more task steps or learning activities to support each enabling learning goal. During the initial introduction, provide only the terminal and enabling learning goals. Introduce the supporting task steps and learning activities at the being of the block of instruction for that learning goal.

A group of students sitting around a computer working on a group learning exercise. — Students need a variety of activities to remain engaged. Telling them what learning activities happen in class prepares them to participate well.

Tell students how they will be evaluated. No one likes a pop test at the end of training. Let them know if there will be a test. Will it be a written, hands-on, or a little of both. If written, how is the test constructed; short answer, multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc. Adult students need to know how they will be evaluated so they can participate in ways that maximize their individual learning styles.

Tell Them about You

Before you talk about yourself, talk about the facility. Where are the bathrooms and emergency exits? Are there any safety issues they need to know? What is they wifi password? These are simple things that reduce stress.

Now introduce yourself. Bragging turns off people. Tell a story that is relevant to what students will be learning. Tell students why your story is important to help them learn. Share why you made choices you made, and how those choices affected your learning. Be modest. Let students know you made a mistake or two on your journey. Your mistakes communicate you are still learning and it is okay for them to make mistakes in class. The whole point of your introduction is to establish, in a personable way, why students should listen to what you say.

Explain your teaching and leadership style. Let them know if you prefer to be contacted at a certain time of the day. Provide contact information so they can reach you with questions after class.

A quality introduction sets the stage and establishes the climate for your training or educational event. Students develop a better understanding of others in the class with brief introductions establishing trust. They know your expectations, those of other students, and have an opportunity to share their expectations with you. Introducing learning objectives ensures students understand the topics they will learn. Discussing how learning will be evaluated allows students to prepare for the evaluation. Letting students know something about you establishes reasons they should trust you as a teacher and instructor. Tailoring introduction activities to the time allowed for the training ensures students are prepared to learn. This learning step is easy to skip, but reduces the effectiveness of training. Experienced professionals use introductions to create a positive learning environment for their students.

————- Photo Credits ————–

By U.S. Coast Guard/DoD – DoDMedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2338112

All hands in by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Huddled around computer by Fox from Pexels

———- References ———-

iKnowles, Malcolm S. Designs for adult learning. (2009) American Society for Training and Development. Alexandia , VA.

iiPeterson, Deb. Adult ice breaker games for classrooms, meetings, and conferences. (2018). ThoughtCo. Retreived from https://www.thoughtco.com/c lassroom-ice-breaker-31410 1/20/19.

Strategic Planning for 2019

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

A strategic plan is the start of an organization’s future. Like a foot race, the leaders need to develop short-term and long-term goals in order to achieve the desired organizational change.

Last January, I wrote a post on creating a personal development plan by picking a future destination for your life and figuring out what goals and task steps you need to complete to achieve your plan. I mentioned that my inspiration was the process of beginning the development of a strategic plan for an organization I run. We just completed that plan, which again made me think about the importance of goals and planning not only in our lives but for organizations. The important lesson from this process for me was that quality long-term plans require long-term effort to complete. The ideas I had a year ago only slightly resemble the final plan. The benefits of developing such a plan go beyond having a road map to follow on your journey through time. The process established priorities and revealed unknown strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. If you follow the steps in the process outlined here, you will find hidden treasures as you plan your organization’s future. This is not an overnight project, but rather a short trip to identify what is important. As a leader, you have an obligation to set up your organization for future success. The principals are the same as developing your personal development plan, but more people are involved in the process.

Every strategic planning process begins by gathering facts to help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This process is called a SWOT analysis. Use other people to work on the SWOT assessment. Others have different perspectives on your organization. Vendors probably have a better understanding of you supply lines. Customers see how well your customer service responds to problems customers face. Line workers know what quality controls work, and which need improving. Managers know about the quality of employees and challenges of training and retaining good people.

Key people in every organization have different view points based on their training, education, and backgrounds. Use these different perspectives as you create your SWOT assessment..

When working on your SWOT assessment, think of strengths and weaknesses as internal issues. Gather information from your employees and internal contractors. Opportunities and threats are external issues. Key people in your organization may have some perspective on opportunities and threats, but your best information comes from those outside the organization. Ask your vendors and customers about things you do well and things you can do better.

There are two major theories about identifying strengths and weaknesses. The first is that you should ignore your weaknesses and only continue to develop your strengths. The second is you should build your weakness in order to become more rounded and effective in more areas. A third theory is to focus on your strengths, but examine your weaknesses to identify those that have the potential to destroy you. No matter how strong your strengths, some weaknesses prevent you from reaching your full potential. You need to develop those weaknesses to allow your strengths to propel you higher.

For example, you might run a small retail store and know little about employment law and accounting. You contracted with an HR firm to help you with employee issues and a CPA for accounting. Even with their help, if you do not know some basic principals you may find you still end up in trouble. You might deny an employee a right because of an on-the-spot decision that results in a law suit. Your accountant discovers you do not verify your monthly financial report and starts to divert your money to his or her accounts. Your accountant ends up with the beach villa and you end up in debt.

Analyzing threats and opportunities is challenging. The challenge lies in the fact that what appears on the surface to be a threat may be an opportunity in disguise. Like strengths and weaknesses, you can focus on responding to either, but it is probably better to recognize and conduct some risk mitigation for a few threats and focus on your opportunities.

Reach out to your vendors and customers. Develop a short online survey and ask them to complete it. You may learn of a feature customers want but you do not offer. A vendor may tell you about a potential problem in your supply chain not known to you.

Your facts help you determine where your organization is right now. Facts do not tell the whole story. No person ever has all the facts, not even Google. People fill in gaps with assumptions. It is dangerous to blindly assume anything. Use facts and good judgment to reach reasonable conclusions. As you gather more facts, reassess your conclusions and assumptions in order to continue being successful.

Role up your SWOT assessment as a grid with the SW in the top two quadrants, and the OT in the bottom two quadrants. This allows you and others to visualize the relationship of all the facts.

I attended a few classes on leadership when the instructor encourages students to write their own obituary. Organizational leaders need to do a similar exercise by envisioning what they want others to say and think about their organization. This exercise allows leaders to pinpoint their organization’s future. There was a time when people talked about The Phone Company when referring to AT&T, or dreamed of paying off their Sears card. Instead today, people have a choice of phone companies, and the executives at Sears dream of extracting themselves from their debt quagmire. When Walmart opened its first store, Sears, Newberry’s, and Woolworth’s were the retail giants. No one ever doubted they would stay in business. That is why it is important for organizational leaders to see the future of their organizations.

Values, or guiding principles, are an important part of creating your organization’s strategic plan. An exercise I use in my training requires students to select their values from a list on a worksheet I provide. This is an awesome group activity that needs to start before any planning retreat. Include this as part of a pre-retreat survey. Ask survey takers what values best reflect the organizations and provide a list. Limit them to a few answers to focus on the most important, three to five. Provide a space for them to enter an answer not provided. During our values focus group, we struggled to narrow down three similar values into one. One participant spoke up and suggested we keep them all because they are necessary to the work we do as a team. BAM! Teamwork had not been offered as a value or principal, yet it was the very term to describe what to describe what we were trying to say.

Now that you have an idea about where you want to lead the organization in the next few years; you understand the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; and you know what guiding principles are important, you can start to chart the path. Identify two to five activities or achievements your organization needs to accomplish to reach their destination. Think of each of these as milestones. Each should build on and support the others. Limit your strategic goals to five or less.

For example, you decide you want to become the premier craft brewery in your region. You spend one or two years learning about medium levels of producing brew. In the second year, you develop your brand and marketing plan. In your third year you develop a pub menu that comes from local suppliers and appeals to your target audience. In your fourth year you renovate your space to make your customers comfortable and encourages repeat visits. Each goal depends on the previous goal to reach success. You cannot do all of them at the same time well, so you focus on one area, building on success each year.

Focus your efforts to redefine your organization and create changes.

Use some of the information from your SWOT analysis to focus your strategic goal setting. You may recognize that you seek to achieve a particular task, but one of the critical resources was identified as a weakness. Strengthening that weakness will help you achieve your goal. Use product ideas from your external surveys. If your customers are asking for it and you are not figuring out how to meet their demand for it you can bet your competitor will.

Just because the focus is on one goal does not mean you ignore everything else. Complete activities to support your main effort, and prepare for the transition from one goal to the next. Figure out which supporting activities are essential for the completion of the main effort. Schedule those tasks on your organization’s calendar. Assign a person by name or title to supervise and complete each task. No matter what, the main effort needs to be the main effort.

You only have to plan the task steps of each goal as the start date approaches. Many things may happen in the world as your strategic plan becomes reality. Action plans at this stage only require two to four steps.

A final step in strategic planning is resource allocation. Knowing there can only be one main effort, every resource in the organization must be poised to support that effort. You cannot plan on your master brewing becoming an expert on using modern technology to brew old fashion recipes and then slash your travel and training budget the next year. The two ideas are incongruent. Ensure your resources are aligned to support the main effort.

Strategic plans are like road maps in that they are only helpful when drawn out. Anyone who has tried to follow verbal directions knows how hard it is to remember whether you were supposed to turn left at the third traffic light, er was it right? When your plan is written you can refer back to it to remember what comes next. A document is easier to share with others increasing understanding across the organization. You can use your plan to lure investors, employees, and customers. Even if you leave the organization, your replacement knows why certain things are being done, and understands what comes next.

An organization’s strategic plan become its map for the future. Use it to find ways around difficult terrain and arrive at your desired destination.

Strategic plans can be a one-page document, or a multi-page report. You want enough detail so there is no question about why the organization is changing, how it plans to change, or what changes are coming. If you have a small organization you can farm out the work to a consultant. There are benefits of hiring someone outside the organization to write the plan even if you have the resources to do it yourself. They can remove jargon making the messages clearer. That fresh set of eyes serve as a common sense check.

December and January seem to be the time of the year people pause and reflect. As one year ends and another begins people recognize the importance of planning for change. I provided some ways your organization can plan for the future by analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Gathering and analyzing facts allows your organization to reach reasonable conclusions and make informed decisions about future objectives. Aligning short-term goals with long-range objectives ensures your main effort has support. Clarifying your values helps develop the direction. Creating a written plan ensures you have a solid picture of how to use your resources over the next few years. The plan serves as your map. With your map (written plan) and compass (values) in hand, navigating the uncertain of the future is easier. Take some time this season to draw your organization’s map before it starts the journey in 2019.

_________________________

Photo Credits

Starting line by Martin Roz from Pexel.com CC0 License

Builders by Michael Gaida from Pexel.com CC0 License

SWOT by Author

Map Saddle by Author

Note-Taking Guides in Training

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

Taking notes during class is a tried and true method to improve information retention. Developing a note-taking guide or workbook is a great way to encourage your students to take notes during class. A good note-taking guide is more than the traditional presentation handout with three slides on each page and lines in the right column. A good note-taking guide requires active participation by students to record and receive all the information. It takes time to develop a good guide. It begins as you plan your lesson. Here are some tips and ideas to make a great note-taking guide for your students in leader training.

Using your slide deck is a great place to start. You can simply replace key text with underscores to create blank spaces for students to complete. If you select the two slide per page option, the slide is large enough for the student to write their answers. If you develop great slides, the kind with pictures and little text, using the fill-in-the-blank method will not work. A little creativity, however, allows you to incorporate pictures into your note-taking guide and still provide a space for the student to insert keywords for retention. The SMART Goals page is an example of using this idea. Using pictures in your workbooks reinforces the ideas from your slideshow. You need to creatively find ways so students will insert the keywords to help them remember the meaning of the picture.

There are times when text is necessary such as introducing laws, rules, definitions, or quotes. Replacing keywords from the text with blank spaces is a great way to ensure students record the key ideas from messages requiring lots of text. Often, students who do take notes in a traditional notebook try to copy every word of every slide. When they take notes this way, they miss the supporting information spoken by the instructor. The blank space replacement method permits enough writing to reinforce important messages from the slide, and also allows the student to listen to the explanatory message from the teacher. Providing some additional space allows the student to record connections they make from the information to their experiences.

Copy the high points of your lesson outline into a separate word processing document. Using this method provides the same information as slides, but allow you to reduce the information in the workbook. It also is a great way to provide a note-taking guide if your slides do have lots of pictures instead of text. Go back and delete important points and replace them with the blank line. The blank lines send a message to students that the missing information is important. Having the high points puts students on notices about the general direction of the training. They know when important information is coming and are understand what the main ideas are versus the supporting ideas. Another method is to provide the category of information and then place an empty numbered list below the heading.

Training classes should have learning activities sprinkled throughout allowing students to practice what they learned. Use individual, collective, and small group activities during leaders training. The note-taking guide is the perfect place to insert worksheets, instructions for exercises, or a place to record reflections of the learning activity. Frequently individual worksheets become separated from students notes. When they return to the notes later in their lives, they lose the benefit of the lessons learned during the classroom exercises using worksheets. If those learning steps are part of the class workbook, they are available to students days or years later when they reflect on finer points of the training that they want to remember at that later time.

As you prepare the note-taking guide, you will find it tempting to include everything from every slide in your presentation. Do not do it. I took a two-day class some time back. The students were provided with copies of the slides later. There were over 300. I have a two day class on professional decision making I teach. There are less than 80 slides. The note-taking guide allows students to note the most important learning points from your lesson. No one is going to easily find the information they are looking for by reviewing 300 slides. When I attend a training, I try to limit my class notes to one or two typed pages per hour of class time. With that number in mind, you should aim to only have one or two workbook pages for students for every hour of class. This number does not include any worksheet activities. If the class I took with 300 slides had information from each slide in the note-taking guide, the document would probably be 150 pages. Notes should be a summary of what is learned in class. A 150-page notebook is not a summary.

Flow charts showing processes and decision points are great for inclusion in note-taking guides. The page includes all of the steps and decision points but excludes text. Include text for the most critical points so students have that information after class. Leaving most of the steps empty however requires the students to pay attention and fill in the blanks. When they leave class, they have a model of the whole process. The remember more of the process because they wrote it down in the note-taking guide. They can return to it anytime and review the process improving the quality of their work without supervision in the future. Their behaviors conform to the organization’s expectations which is the point of conducting training.

Developing a note-taking guide for leaders training is a way instructors encourage students to take notes during class. A well designed note-taking guide serves as a workbook by including adequate space for structure and unstructured note-taking, forecasts what points will be made during the training, includes worksheets for use during learning activities, provides pictures with meaning, process charts for student completion, and improves lesson retention. Students structured notes to refer to in the future to share their learning with others, and to refresh their learning. An ideal note-taking workbook is one or two pages for every hour of training exclusive of any learning activity worksheets. The guide is not a copy of the slide deck used in the presentation, rather it complements the slide deck. A well designed note-taking guide improves learning but takes time to develop. Development begins as you work on your lesson plans. Your students will leave class thinking you are the profession expert you professed to be when you provide a quality note-taking guide.

Image Credits

Person Taking Notes: PXHere.com-no attribution information.

Workbook page examples: Author from examples of his note-taking guides.

The RSA language is from NH.gov.

Veteran’s Day 2018

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

I was honored to be the guest speaker for the Woodsville, NH Veteran’s Day Ceremony this year. I spent a part of my military life learning the basic art of artillery there and was humbled when asked to address the crowds knowing those who I looked up to years ago would be listening to what I had to offer. This is what I said.

Thank you. Commander, fellow veterans and guests:

I was asked to speak today about what it means to be a Veteran, and I will. However, given that at 11:00 am Paris time 100 years ago today, the final shot of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, was fired, I must recognize that event. WWI began in August 1914 as a result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Serbia. Before long, the nations in central Europe were at war, dragging their allies with them. In the four years of fighting around the world, 8.5 million Soldiers lost their lives and more than 21 million were injured. These numbers exclude civilian casualties. Even though the United States was involved in the war about a year, we lost 116 thousand Soldiers, 53 thousand to combat and 63 thousand to non-battle deaths such as disease and accidents.. Four point seven million troops served in the US armed forces during WWI, nearly 5% of the population. Today only 0.5% serve in our armed forces.

During this war, the world saw the first widespread use of submarine warfare with attacks on civilian passenger ships. The first widespread gas attacks caused panic on unprotected, unsuspecting troops. Before long both side were gassing the other. Commanders ordered waves of human, online attacks previously used to mass offensive firepower. The problem with the tactic in this war was a crew of three to five men armed with a new machine gun had the firepower of a division and mowed down line after line of troops. Artillery grew larger and projected shells farther than cannon crews could see. Forward observers called in corrections over great distances against enemy positions. Planes, invented in the previous decade, took to the sky to observe enemy movements. Before long they were armed and pilots were dueling each other for control of the skies. Pilots learned to drop bombs in trenches, the basics of dog fighting, and ground crews learned how to control the firing of machine guns in order to avoid shooting off propellers. Before long, large armored beasts crossed no mans land crossing trenches and brought another new weapon onto the battlefield.

In the last months of the war, a new killer emerged. Influenza cropped up in the winter of 1917-18. It followed troop movements around the world but was a nuisance rather than a threat. However, as the little germ found new hosts, it, like the other battlefield warriors, adapted and became increasing lethal targeting those of fighting age. In August, outbreaks began in several small pockets knocking out whole units and military posts. As infected Soldiers moved around the world, the new, more lethal virus moved with them causing even more death. Before this battle ended it was estimated 1/3rd of the world’s population became infected and at least 500 million people died from the flu.

However, on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day in the 11^th month of 1918, the 11^th Field Artillery Regiment of the US Army fired the last round of the war. This day has become a day to honor all those who served in our Nation’s armed forces. Today we recognize the sacrifices those individuals make to protect us all and keep us free.

What is it like to be a Veteran, the topic I was asked to discuss? I can only speak with any knowledge about what it is like for me to be a veteran. Every veteran has their own experiences and stories. They are all unique to each individual. Even Soldiers who fought in the same battle on the same day only yards apart have different perceptions about what happened. An example is April 9, 2004. I along with about 100 other Soldiers of which about 50 were from our company, were engaged in what some claimed was the largest attack on a fixed Army position since the Viet Nam War. I do not know if that is true, only what I was told.

Most of the things the other Solders tell me seem to make sense and match what I remember. I talk to others who were only a few feet away, and their stories about the same events sound like they happened in a different place and time. Still there are enough commonalities between those who served that with one or two words I can raise a response from other veterans. Those few words tell a whole story to them. The Army PT belt, drill sergeants, and basic training. Words that tell stories with those I severed with include, the rocket room, 40mm sponge, thee dumpster, and “light ‘em up” all have meaning. In my second deployment, I forbid my platoon to use the phrase “light ‘em up” because the near disastrous consequences from the term.

We were tasked to interdict mortar crew in The Projects that had just fired at our position. When we arrived we found lots of civilians out after curfew, but no obvious insurgents. It was dark and I wanted to see better so I instructed the squad leader to bring the HUMVEEs around and like them up. He refused and I repeated my order. He insisted that he was not going to shoot unarmed, innocent civilians. Silence. As I realized what he said and what I meant my heart stopped. He did shine the HUMVEE lights on the civilians after I clarified my order. It is funny now, but wasn’t then.

There are other things that have meaning in my career. Service members during the Cold War had their problems. Units stationed along the Iron Curtain lived with the fear of the Soviets racing through the Fulda Gap with divisions of tanks to invade western Europe. Decades later, I found myself in an airport in Leipzig Germany. There was a map on the wall showing where we were. I said to the young Soldier beside something like, “Holy cow, we are in East Germany!” The young Solider responded, “You mean eastern Germany Sergeant.” He did not know about East and West Germany nor of the Berlin Wall. His experience in that airport was different from mine even though we stood in almost the exact same spot.

Some veterans spend a career and never see combat. Others see much combat in a few years. Some come home and go on with life like they just went off to college. Others struggle from the unseen scars left by their experiences.

Some of the veterans standing beside you out there returned home after defending freedom and democracy to be booed, jeered, and spit upon by protesters. They do not know the elation of the welcome home parades received by veterans of WWI, WWII and those from the Gulf War and GWOT era. Their experiences were different than mine.

Because of these commonalities and differences two things seem to hold true. Some veterans learn ways to deal the events from their military service and lead productive lives. Some veterans never figure out how to deal with those experiences. Those who learn to deal with those events seem to find strength by associating with other veterans. Those who do not isolate themselves thinking they are they only ones feeling what they feel and die at their own hand. Suicide is too common an experience for too many veterans. The VA reports on average 22 veterans commit suicide every day. There is help for those struggling. Find out the numbers for the Veteran’s Crisis Line ((800) 237-TALK (8255)). Put it in your phone. You may never need it, but someone you know might.

I’ve been fortunate to been able to serve my nation at the State of New Hampshire for over 36 years. Like many, I planned on doing 20 and getting out. Every time my end of enlistment neared I found new challenges to conquer and I extended. I’ve met and worked with some really great people I never would have met here in New Hampshire, across the nation, and around the world. I have seen and done things others only dream about doing. What is it like to be a veteran? For me, it has been great!

Photo Credits

Poppy field from PXhere.com

Truman’s Battery by Dominic D’Andrea, a US Government work

Checkpoint Charlie from US Government collection

Veterans Crisis Line from https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

Character — the Foundation of Leadership

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

Character is the sum of a person’s habits and qualities. It is the center of a Venn diagram of your skills, knowledge, abilities, values, relationships, past experiences, habits, and personality. Developing good character helps develop a good reputation, which helps gain influence. Others determine whether or not you are a good leader, or have the potential to be a good leader, by observing common traits in the character of other good leaders. Developing good character traits is within your control.

In his book Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek tells a story about the order leaders in the military eat. He reports that without orders or instruction that enlisted military members eat before the noncommissioned officers, and noncommissioned officers before officers, according to rank. The reality is, those lessons are taught to junior leaders. As a brand new howitzer section chief, I decided to eat during a break in firing, before the rest of my section. I reasoned they could go to chow when we resumed firing, but I needed to be on the gun to supervise operations. As I neared the front of the line, I was approached by my platoon sergeant. He noted he had not seen several of my Soldiers yet. He sent me back to my gun without chow and directed me to eat after the rest of my section. The military trains leaders well, and learning to take care of troops is a key lesson that is taught.

The battery resumed firing before I was able to eat. I still had Soldiers going to chow. I did eat that evening. The last guy from my section brought me a plate of food because he knew I would miss chow during the fire missions. I learned the lesson of why leaders eat last. When leaders take care of their troops, their troops will take care of them.

That first lesson I learned during field feeding taught me the importance of taking care of those you lead. When your followers know you are taking care of their needs, they know they can focus on their tasks required to accomplish the mission. They know you have their back. That only happens when leaders receive trust from those they lead. Trust turns into respect. Respect creates disciplined organizations. Disciplined organizations accomplish great things in the face of adversity.

Anyone can build the kind of character that encourages others to follow them. Look at each element of character. To acquire any of those attributes, potential leaders need to act. Action is the key to leading others.

Knowledge

Leaders need education. Three pillars of gaining knowledge include institutional education, personal development, and real world assignments. Each provides different opportunities to learn.

Institutional education provides general information about the topics included in the course of study. The lessons learned in the classroom provide a background to help people think and reason when problem solving. One learns the theory behind the practice.

Real world assignments provide opportunities to apply classroom lessons. New graduates are given low level, simple issues to resolve. They are closely supervised to ensure they understand the expectations as they apply their knowledge. These opportunities allow people to apply their classroom knowledge and make mistakes on low-risk assignments in order to develop deeper understanding of underlying principals in their lessons.

Self development describes a variety of educational means. Examples include reading topical books and journals, asking for extra assignments to meet stretch goals, field trips to locations relevant to the work, and self selected training events or conferences. The smart young leader figures out what knowledge s/he needs to improve his or her performance and finds a way to gain that knowledge. Self development is viewed by more senior leaders as a key indicators of younger leaders potential for greater responsibility. It is demonstrative of their diligence.

Skills and Abilities

Most of the skills and abilities required of leaders have little to do with doing the work of the organization. Knowing how a machinist works a piece of metal, a warehouse employee finds a widget, or what day employment taxes need to be filed generally are important details for others. Knowing those things need to be done and finding the right people to do them is the leader’s job. Leadership requires skill to develop effective processes, the ability to apply influence to seniors, peers, and subordinates alike, and ensure resources are available.

Many have said that leaders lead people, and managers manage things. Someone can be a good manager and a bad leader. Leaders who are poor managers never become good leaders. Managing resources is an important skill so your followers have required resources to do their jobs.

Habits

I had a friend, Gerry Berry, who often said something like, “You always make time for the things that are important to you.” This would often come up when we would discuss doing something together outside of work; we being a few of us. It was rare that our little group of friends could always find the same day and time to do something with everyone. He would direct that line to those who had previous commitments as a way of reminding all of us about the importance of how we choose to use our time. Others determine what we value by the choices we make including how use of time.

Gerry developed an aggressive form of cancer while he was still young. He dreamed of building a barn for his wife and son so they could move the horses they loved to his home. Several of his friends developed a plan to build the barn before he died. At no time were all his friends present on the property at the same time. However, over the course of a week, everyone found some time to participate in some way. What do your habits tell others what you find important?

Experience

Unlike the other factors discussed above, we only have limited control of our experiences. A person may seek out experiences, but sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time with an open mind and properly prepared for some experiences. There are plenty of experiences people can control and obtain. You can choose to hike the Appalachian Trail and gain that experience. You can choose to develop a speaking program and present it to several local civic groups to demonstrate expertise in a subject area. Not everyone can go to Harvard, but most people can complete college if they really want and have a college experience. Not everyone can perform in Carnegie Hall, but there are plenty of performance venues if you want to perform.

Trying new things and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone allows you to understand more things in life. You become more emphatic with the plight and victories of others. You learn and gain knowledge. You learn about abilities you did not possess and you learn about others. There are plenty of things you can do to broaden you experiences.

Relationships

I often heard an expression that one can tell much about another by the way s/he treats those who can do nothing for them. Too often we treat co-workers better than friends or family members and our bosses better than co-workers. We believe we have to display our best behaviors at work, and we should. If we go back to the integrity thought, our treatment of friends and family is really a reflection of what we do when others are not watching. Yes, you have to be on your best behavior at home.

People of character treat everyone with respect and dignity. That does not mean you have to agree with everyone all the time about everything. Actually, to give that impression is disrespectful and not helpful. How you disagree with others is a true indicator of your respect for another person. It is okay to agree to disagree. People notice the character of your relationships to determine whether or not they should develop one with you. People want and need to interact with others. People who value others, find others value them. You demonstrate your value others by paying attention to them. Ignore your phone. Your social media feed will wait until you are alone. Focus your attention on the person in front of you.

Be on time. When you tell someone you will meet them at a certain time, do it. Adopt the idea that being early is being on time, being on time is late, and being late is unacceptable. Never keep your boss, a client, a friend, or a family member waiting.

Do what you say you are going to do. If you fail to fulfill promises, no one will trust you. It is better to under promise and over deliver than miss a deadline.

Personality

There are lots of personality tests out there. People take them for many reasons. Your tested personality is irrelevant. Many personality test questions ask what you prefer. What you prefer does not dictate what you do. What you do matters, even if it is not your natural preference.

Learn to take charge of your preferences, control them, and do what is necessary in any given moment. There are times to speak and times to listen. There are times for action and times to wait. I think this ends with, “There is a time to every season under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). These lessons are from ancient knowledge. Wisdom comes from learning when and how to apply them.

The foundations of character date back eons. Periodic reviews, such as this blog, keep lessons fresh in people’s minds. Each of us can change our behavior to improve our character.

Character is the foundation of leadership because it forms a solid base of power to influence others. Character is the focus of your knowledge, skills, abilities, values, relationships, and personality. People are predisposed to behave certain ways in situations based on each of these factors. Because people are self-aware, they can judge how their behaviors in each area affects their chosen path. People can choose responsible character building behaviors rather than their preferred responses. Successful leaders understand when and how to match their behaviors to those required for best results. Application becomes easier with practice and reflection. People make mistakes. Smart people learn from their mistakes. Work on your character in order to build a strong foundation as a leader.

Photo Credits

Venn Diagram by the author Creative Commons Attribution

Chow Line from US DOD by SSGT Greeson, USMC public domain

Knowledge Management by Roberto Saltori from flickr.com CC Attribution Reuse

Wild Blue Yonder from pxhere.com CC0

Nature Forest House from pxhere.com CC0 — cropped by the author

Charting Your Course on a Flip Chart

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

Low-Tech, Message-Rich, Flip Chart

Slide decks are high tech training tools when used properly help improve information transfer by embedding several types of media as well as text. Too often, they become little more that a high tech chalk board. You remember chalk boards, those black things teachers wrote text on they wanted students to remember. If a teacher took time to write something on the chalk board you know it was likely to show up on the next test. Most slide decks fail to emphasize what is really important. With so much text, there are no powerful points in text based presentations. Like a chalk board, an easel with chart paper is a low tech teaching tool that is portable. Yes you can write words on chart paper which may serve as a tool to share important points. You can also use chart paper to record students thoughts and ideas during a class discussion. You can pull out those ideas later in the class to reinforce important learning points. When well planned, a good trainer draws a picture as s/he speaks, really draws on the pad a picture. Students are amazed at the trainer’s ability to draw while speaking. Using chart paper effectively in training takes planning, preparation, and practice.

As you work your lesson plan, think about different ways you plan to present material. Slide decks have become the go-to media because trainers sit at their computers and spill ideas related to the information in an outline that becomes their slide deck. Full of text, those presentations could almost serve as a text book read by students negating the need for your class. There are lots of ways You can find ways to improve your slide decks. Look for articles else where on my site, but if you want students to remember what you teach, you need to begin to master more than presentation software applications.

Creating the outline of the points you want to make during a training event is still a great place to start. You use the outline to identifying your learning goals. You do not need to present every learning point to students on a slide deck. Now that you have your lesson outline, you can figure out various learning activities to teach those points. A slide deck is on way. Other learning activities include student discussion, cooperative learning exercises, media presentations, and lectures. Instructors who use only slide decks limit their ability to transfer knowledge to students. Flip charts are a versatile method to improve transfer and retention.

Using a facilitated discussion allows students to share what they already know. This knowledge may not be known to everyone in class. This method involves the student. Student involvement increases information retention. If this information is foundational to later points in your lesson and you intend to refer back to it, chart paper is the perfect method of capturing and presenting these points.

Many of us know, “a picture is worth 1000 words,” yet still use thousands of words on hundreds of slides to communicate ideas in training. While it seems chart paper was born for text, with a little planning, preparation, and practice, you too can become a chart paper artist. There are two secrets to drawing on chart paper in front of an audience. The first is to plan how to use each page of chart paper during your presentation. For example, on page one you will record things students expect to learn in your course, page two is a list of responses from the class to a discussion question, and the third is a picture you selected to show achievement. You must know which page in the chart paper is going to contain your pictures in order to apply the second secret. Many instructors place notes on each page of their flip chart to keep them on topic rather than using a regular lesson outline.

The second secret to becoming a well known chart paper artist is sketching your drawing with light pencil lines on the selected page before you present. There are two ways you can accomplish this successfully. The first and easiest is to use a projector and trace the important lines lightly with a pencil. The next is the classical grid method. Print an image and impose a grid system over it. Recreate the grid on your chart paper. Copy the lines from the small print to the large paper lightly with pencil until you have the image you want. In both cases, you can see the lines well enough to recreate the image as you present your message verbally. Your students will not see the lines.

I built on this gem during an instructor development class. During my presentation on using chart paper I asked a student to draw the picture I described. I asked the student in the break before this section to help and share the secret with him. The class was pretty impressed with how well the recorder was able to capture what I was saying without more instruction from me. About half way through the presentation I asked my recorder to select another student to replace him, but not explain how he created what I wanted on the page. This exercise demonstrated the power of using chart paper in a well thought out presentation for all the future instructors.

A third way to use chart paper is recording student responses to discussion questions. This is a great way to save those ideas for activities later in class. Record their responses as closely as possible to what the student actually said, particularly if you plan to use the responses to counter ‘common’ arguments to a course of action. When the time comes to reuse the page in class, you can return to the flipped pages or hang the page(s) somewhere easily viewed.

You need to know some other things to effectively employ chart paper during presentations. Use high contrast colors such as black, red, blue, brown or green. Print large and neatly, do not use script. Letters should be at least one and a half to three inches high. I found printing in small all caps with the first letter larger helps me print neater. Keep your text straight. Use a pad with preprinted lines, or add pencil lines to pages you intend for text. Alternate the color of each line item. Alternate colors help the students understand which ideas belong together. I like to use black for the title of the page and then red or brown with blue or green in the body. Allow students to do your writing for you. This engages them more. Movement helps keep everyone awake and paying attention, very useful after lunch.

Writing takes time. Use this time to encourage students to take notes as your write. You know they have time to write down important points if you are writing them at the same time. When creating illustrations or charts, students demonstrate improved understanding of processes. They also participate more because they think and reflect as you draw resulting in a livelier class.¹ Student participation improves student retention.

Slide decks are great to standardize messages and presentations. They are also a great way to put audiences to sleep ensuring the message is completely missed. When used well, presenters embed a variety of media, not just text, to keep the attention of their students. Even though chart paper is low tech, it is a media form that keeps student attention. Using chart paper requires the presenter to move away from the podium. Chart paper allows the presenter to make important points by selectively writing down need-to-know information. A blank page allows the presenter to draw a picture saving 1000 words of writing while capturing student attention. Instructors can display information from more than one page to be simultaneously allowing reference to the page throughout the lesson. Student ideas on important discussion points can be preserved for later use in class. The simple pad of chart paper on an easel seems passe, but used well, it remains an important tool in the box of any great presenter. Think of all they ways you can use it in your next presentation.

Reference

1. Dlugan, A. Jan 29, 2013. Six minutes speaking and presentation skills. Flip charts 101: How to use flip charts effectively. Retrieved 9/24/2018 from http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/flip-charts-101/

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Improve Decision Making Skills

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

paint-chips_pxhere Decision making is a critical leadership skill. Use your decision making abilities in and out of the office to improve both your work and personal lives. People making good decisions inside and outside the office derive many benefits. Learning to make good decisions is a first step to becoming a well respected leader.

There lots of benefits of being more decisive. Making conscious choices allows you to shape your life path reflecting your values and priorities. Without taking action, you find yourself drifting through whatever circumstances come along. Learn to set goals and develop action plans to achieve those goals. Writing down a plan of action for a goal is easy. Choosing to implement the action steps is what make your dream reality. There is lots of information available in the internet about setting and achieving goals. I contributed some of that content by sharing things I do to accomplish my goals and dreams. Here is a link. https://christopherstcyr.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/time-to-reflect-plan-act/.

hourglass-cropped_pxhere Some decisions should be delayed, but most can be made quickly. Making decisions at the correct point frees the time by avoiding waffling that robs not only your valuable time, but also energy. Avoid going back and forth over the same options. Making a decision at the appropriate time eliminates stress, confusion and anxiety you feel about making mistakes. Most decisions fail to work out as planned requiring adjustments along the way. Taking greater control builds your trust with others and your confidence to make good decision. Decision-making skills are like exercise. When you exercise more, you develop fitness factors that increase your physical ability. Making decisions increases your self-confidence and your ability to make better decision. You create positive momentum because it’s easier to make decisions when you believe in yourself and your abilities. 

Every time you make a decision, you learn. You learn about how your decision affects others. You learn what information is important when making future decisions. You identify sources for help and advice. Your choices reveal your character to yourself and others. A big lesson learned is how your willingness to learn from adversity provide valuable feedback about areas you can improve.

Becoming more decisive is simply a decision, your first important decision to be more decisive. The most difficult time in any moment of decision is the space between deciding to do something and making the first step. Law enforcement calls this space the Fatal Funnel. doors_choices_choose_open_decision_opportunity_choosing_career-546878 It is that space between being outside of a key engagement area such as a room, and being in the engagement where you gain control. It is like being in the doorway. You are neither in the room or out of the room, but that space is the most dangerous because you are completely exposed. As soon as you step left, right, or move forward, the danger decreases. Motivate yourself because once you take action, you recognize more opportunities. You can only see the doors in the next room by fully stepping through the door directly in front of you.

Generally one makes a decision because a problem or opportunity comes into your awareness. Do your research. The first step to making a good decision requires properly identifying the problem or opportunity. You requires the correct information to properly frame the situation. Obtain facts and figures researching on your own or consulting those with the relevant expertise. 

You will never have all the relevant fact and figures available in a moment of decision. Learn to analyze the available information to develop reasonable assumptions. Plenty of analytical tools are available to reach reasonable conclusions. Learn what tools are available. Identify which ones work best in different situations. Each situation requires a unique solution, but frequently problems and opportunities fall into five categories; simple, complected, complex, chaotic, or disordered. Different skills are required for each category. Developing skills and understanding for each category is easily each a topic for additional blogs.

Start with small, simple decisions in areas where you feel confident and where the consequences are relatively minor. I encourage those who follow me to be brave, make a decision and learn lessons from the consequences good and bad. I frequently have new employees come to me with their tails between their legs because a decision they made went wrong. My first question always is, “Did someone die, become seriously injured, or did something blow up or become seriously damaged?” Most of the time the answer is no. That means we have time to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. This allows employees to practice and work their way to more significant decisions. Working through the problem or opportunity with them builds their confidence. Trust your judgment and accept any consequences or criticisms that may arise in order to learn important lessons for future decisions. 

Making timely decisions is important. Give yourself a timeline, but do not make it artificially short. If you have 12 months to find a speaker for a training conference, identify when you need to make that selection. Speaker bureaus may require three to six months notice for most speakers. That provides you up to nine months to complete your research which includes the perimeters such as cost, expertise, and other requirements for the speaker. In fact, the first step in your research requires you to identify what information you need to gather to decide who your speaker should be. That means you probably should not select the speaker in the month following the date you were assigned to make a selection. Use the time to gather facts and information. However, do not put off a decision of little consequence that can be made today, such as the pattern of the paper plates for the snack table. Use more time to make a choice for those decisions of great consequence. 9cd72001ef8b5fc00d4fe85767d2-1433771 Do not waste time with decisions of little consequence. Learn the difference between the two.

Face your fears. You will make mistakes. Baseball players who only hit a base hit three times for every ten times they face a pitcher receive large paychecks. They fail 70% of the time! There was a time Babe Ruth held the record for the most home runs batted in Major League Baseball. He also held the record for the most strike outs. Tim Ferris claims to periodically go without food for days while sleeping in a tent at night to remind himself that if a decision he makes results in the loss of all his wealth, he can still survive even if it means not having food for several days and sleeping on the ground. Fear of making mistakes is a barrier to becoming more decisive. Mistakes are a part of life. Unfortunately people often learn more from failures than from victories because they analyze what went wrong when they fail, but rarely analyze what went right when they succeed. 

The best way to become decisive is to decide to make decisions. Decision making is a skill required of all leaders. Leaders who make decisions develop a reputation as being decisive. Every time you make a decision, you learn from your mistakes and successes. Making decisions is simply learning a process then accepting the results of the process and acting on them. Decide to be a respected leader by making decisions.

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All photos from pxhere.com used with a 0CC license.

The Cynefin Model graphic was created by the author and is based on the work of David Snowden and Mary Boone. For more on this model read A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making at https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making.

Can Do, Building Skills

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Chris Saint Cyr

people-auditorium-meeting-sitting-student-education-1246944-pxhere.com-modified.jpg Many organizations confuse training and education. Training is a process of teaching people skills. Education is a process of transferring ideas or knowledge. Often organizations educate people but call it training. People learn ideas and gain knowledge from education. People learn skills from doing the required task. Education is necessary to build skills. Building a skill is not required to aquire knowledge or learn new ideas. This is were the disconnect between education and training occurs. Trainers think passing ideas and knowledge to learners means learners understand how to use the information to complete tasks. For people who posses skill in a given area, this may be true. More often, new learners need practice completing the skill one task at a time after receiving foundation ideas and knowledge. People learn skills by doing.

beach-sea-coast-ocean-horizon-cloud-83500-pxhere.com-modified.jpg In the movie, The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi teaches Danny several karate defensive moves through the process of household chores. Miyagi never tells Danny why he is expected to complete certain tasks in the prescribed fashion, only to follow instructions. Eventually, Danny learns the basic skills of karate.

Most adult learners require understanding of the ideas behind a skill. Education is required to pass along knowledge and ideas. Typically ideas and information are presented in slide decks lulling learners to sleep. Transferring knowledge requires communication. Sleeping students receive less information that alert students. Showing images related to the task while discussion the action supported by an idea improves knowledge. Require students to take notes during your talk so they can access knowledge during skill building exercise.

Students remember slides with images better than slides with only text. Use an image that has something to do with the information presented. Trainers committed to improved slides often turn to photographs or computer generated drawings. Charts and graphs are also images. Charts and graphs help learners understand how information relates to similar information. Images of flow charts showing steps required to complete a task, or data comparison puts information in perspective.

Follow up each bit of knowledge with a check on student learning. This can be in the form of questions, asking students to discuss their understanding, or a short worksheet. Learning checks ensure students received the knowledge, understand it, and remember it. This step serves as the base for the next step, building skills. If the foundation is defective, the structure eventually fails.

person-smoke-military-portrait-soldier-army-732095-pxhere.com Completing the educational piece of the training sets up students to work on skills. Whether the skill is making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, conducting an analysis of data, or building a rocket motor to take a space vehicle to Mars, knowledge is the basis of the skill. Skill building exercises begin the process of changing ideas and beliefs into actions to achieve results.

Skill building exercises can but used as checks on learning as described above after the introduction of certain information, or as separate learning steps after information transfer. In the example of analyzing data, students may need to understand data base basics like data entery, how reports are generated, or how to write a standard query language command. The instructor determines what information students need to know and develops a means to transfer that knowledge. The instructor follows up with some questions. The skill builder requires students to enter certain portions of data from a stake of 3×5 cards. The exercise teaches students how to find data in a source document, how to work the software, and develops understanding of how errors may occur. These exercises reinforce information provided students during the education portion of the training.

Another exercise might require the students to organize the cards manually so they understand the process databases use to organize data. The teacher might ask a group to alphabetize the cards by last name. Another group organizes the cards numerically by phone number. A third group sorts the cards by age of the person. The first two are pretty simple. The last exercise helps them understand how the computer has to calculate the year and then sort by month and then day. That is a more complex task than just alphabetizing, especially of the date fields include month by name rather than by number.

work-person-people-girl-woman-hair-790938-pxhere.com.jpg Every skill building exercise should be developed to allow students to connect the skill to information learned during the educational portion of the training. Connecting knowledge to skills improves understanding so when things go wrong, students can trouble shoot the situation. Teachers and instructors cannot teach students how to respond to every possible situation they may encounter. Connecting skills to knowledge allows students to effectively solve problems in the real world.

As students work their projects, they will make mistakes. Making mistakes is an important part of skill building. Mistakes in training are opportunities for instructors to provide deeper information, improve understanding, and identify areas where knowledge may not have been transferred effectively. Mistakes allow students to rely on what they learned to correct mistakes on their own. Correcting mistakes allow the student to practice again.

Instructors share information with the class based on student mistakes improving overall understanding. People absorb only so much information in an abstract sense. As they begin to develop skills, mistakes hand-guitar-tool-leg-hammer-nail-704019-pxhere.com.jpg present opportunities to provide additional information and improve understanding. Use mistakes as opportunities to expand student knowledge of how a task step effects the overall skill.

Sometimes instructors fail to effectively transfer information to students. The information may have been communicated poorly, or the student may have a barrier preventing reception of the message (like sleeping during your boring slide deck). The instructor should accept responsibility for the lack of transfer and send it again. In the process, the instructor may learn other students failed to receive the information correctly. Restating the information using other terms may improve understanding. Asking a student who demonstrates understanding to explain is another way to help students learn.

Training and education are not the same thing. Education is an important part of training. Education is simply passing knowledge or ideas from one person to another person. Training requires the transfer of skills. Skills are best learned by doing. Training is doing. Instructors identify critical knowledge and tasks required to learn a skill when they develop training. During the educational portion of the training, the instructor passes on knowledge and ideas to students related to the skill. During the doing portion of the training, the instructor develops exercises to build skills one step at a time so students can complete the task upon completion of the training. Students develop skill by doing activities. Training develops skills so people know and can do. Next time you are assigned to conduct training, develop lessons that transfer knowledge and incorporate doing.

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Little Leadership Lessons

Helping Leaders Lead Better

Author Archives: Chris Saint Cyr

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3 Ways to Use Spaced Repetition in Training

Value of Changing Habits for Leaders

Breaking the Ice: Classroom Introductions

Strategic Planning for 2019

Note-Taking Guides in Training

Veteran’s Day 2018

Character — the Foundation of Leadership

Charting Your Course on a Flip Chart

Improve Decision Making Skills

Can Do, Building Skills

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