How to Build Trust On Your Team

Gaining trust from others
begins by giving trust to others.

"I'll get back to you on that."

I uttered these famous last words to a graduate student at UCLA when I worked for Siemens many years ago. I never did get back to him. I don't remember why.

Two years later, when I became chief administrative officer of an institute at UCLA, my failure to follow through cost me, big time. This graduate student became a young professor in our institute and told my boss, the director of the institute, that he preferred not to work with me on any of our project teams because he didn't trust me. Ouch!

For me, the moral of the story is that trust is often difficult to establish, easy to break, and hard to reclaim. I share the story with you to introduce the idea that despite the fragile nature of trust, there are four steps you can take to establish and maintain trust (at work or home).

• Understand the nature of trust
  
• Appreciate the high cost of low trust
  
• Assess trust on your team
  
• Tackle your top trust-busters

Understand the Nature of Trust
To build trust, we must first define it. Trust is the decision to be vulnerable to the actions of others, based on our expectations they will perform a particular action. A careful reading of this definition reveals that the nature of trust:

• Asks us to choose to rely on others. To trust or not to trust is a choice.
  
• Puts us at risk. Without vulnerability, trust is not needed.
  
• Involves our prediction about the behaviors of others.

To further understand the nature of trust we must also realize that there are four categories of trust within any organization¹:

1. Strategic: Is there confidence that senior management is setting the right direction?
   
2. Organizational: Can employees rely on the organization itself?
   
3. Personal: Do employees have confidence in their manager?
   
4. Team: Is there trust among members of a team?

If any one of these takes a hit, it often damages the others. This brief article will help you build team trust.

Appreciate the High Cost of Low Trust
Professor Robert Hurley from Fordham University surveyed 450 leaders from 30 global companies and found that half of them didn't trust their senior executives.² Another survey of 12,750 U.S. workers at all job levels and in a variety of industries came to these conclusions:

• 39% of employees at U.S. companies trust their senior leaders.
  
• 45% of employees say they have confidence in the job being done by senior management
  
• 43% of employees say they trust the way their company manages change (e.g., restructuring, downsizing, merging, expansion and growth).³

This epidemic of low trust infects employee morale, retention, recruitment, productivity, sales, customer service, product quality, and the long-term financial performance of the organization.

Failure of team members to trust each other is especially problematic in today’s increasingly interdependent work environment. Although matrix management (where employees report to more than one boss) may offer benefits in this environment, there are several potential disadvantages of the matrix approach. These include heightened conflict, power struggles, and slower decision-making.⁴ If team members do not have the trust needed to combat these matrix challenges, the matrix structure becomes a spider web – attractive from a distance, a trap in practice.⁵

Low levels of trust also have profound implications for senior leaders of organizations. When Professors Tony Simons and Randall Peterson studied 100 CEOs and executive teams, they found the teams whose members distrusted one another were less effective in collaborating and endorsing strategic decisions.⁶ No wonder the bible teaches that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

Assess Trust on Your Team
The survey below assesses overall team trust by asking you to indicate the extent with which team members act in the manner described by the question. Although there may be differences among team members, this assessment asks you to consider the general tendency among all members. There are five response options for each question.

• Never = 1
• To a Small Extent = 2
• To a Moderate Extent = 3
• To a Large Extent = 4
• Always = 5

Read each question and decide which one of the five responses best describes the extent with which most team members behave.

Overall, to what extent do you think team members...

1. Willingly share information, ideas, and suggestions with other team members?
   
2. Engage in cognitive/task conflict as needed, while minimizing emotional conflict?
   
3. Employ a quality, transparent, and collaborative process when making team decisions?
   
4. Manage the tension between self-interest and the organization’s interest well?
   
5. Act in a manner that is congruent with their words?
   
6. Provide honest, open feedback even if it challenges the prevailing point of view?
   
7. Manage their emotions well and respect the emotions of others?
   
8. Openly discuss challenges, knowing others will respond constructively and caringly?
   
9. Demonstrate their competence consistently as they fulfill their responsibilities?
   
10. Stay focused on key tasks and priorities?
     
    Score your team trust survey
     Scores 40 -- 50 = Team performs well most of the time.
     Scores 30 -- 39 = Team performs fairly well, except under pressure.
     Scores 20 -- 29 = Team performs poorly.
     Scores 00 -- 20 = Team does not perform.

Tackle Your Top Trust-Busters
How did your team do? Don’t be upset if they score poorly, the first step of any journey is to understand where you are -- to increase your awareness of your landscape.

If you read the 10 sentences in the above survey as statements instead of questions, you’ll know the top 10 keys to building and maintaining team trust. That’s right; the survey questions are also the answers to how to increase trust on your team. So, the next step is to try one of following three approaches to tackle your trust-busters.

1. Invite each person on your team to rate the overall team on these ten statements (like you just did). Then, have the team brainstorm ways they could improve the lower-scoring statements.
   
2. Rate yourself on these ten. Then, decide how you want to work on areas that need development.
   
3. Ask each team member to rate every team member. Then, tally the scores to gain an excellent idea of how each team member is perceived by all their peers.

I recently followed a variation of this third approach with an executive team. After reviewing their feedback with each of them during a one-on-one debriefing, each executive chose to work on his or her own trust issues. The CEO called last week to tell me how pleased he is with their progress.

Our willingness to trust others
is not always about the others.

I wish I could report that I used these ideas to build trust with the young professor at UCLA, discussed in the opening story. But I can't report it because I didn't do it. I didn't have the knowledge to build team trust. You do. Let me know how it helps you and your team.

Keep stretching when you're pulled,
Dave

^1. Robert Galford and Anne Seiblod Drapeau, The Enemies of Trust, Harvard Business Review, February 2003, 89
^2. Robert Hurley, The Decision to Trust, Harvard Business Review, September 2006, 55-62.
^3. WorkUSA 2002, Weathering the Storm: A Study of Employee Attitudes and Opinions, http://www.watsonwyatt.com/research/resrender.asp?id=W-557&page=1
^4. Mohammad El-Najdawi and Mathew Liberatore; Matrix Management Effectiveness: An Update for Research and Engineering Organizations, Project Management Journal, March, 1997, 25
^5. Thomas Sy; Stephane Cote; Emotional intelligence: A key ability to succeed in the matrix organization, The Journal of Management Development; Vol. 23, No 5, 2004, 437.
^6. Tony Simons and Randall Peterson, When to Let Them Duke It Out, Harvard Business Review, June 2006, 23-24.

P.S. Dave Jensen and his team transform proven leadership tools into your success stories. Dave is also a popular speaker at conferences, meetings, and workshops. He can be reached in Los Angeles, CA at (310) 397-6686 and http://davejensenonleadership.com/index.html

What’s In A Name?
Three Essential Elements to Building Your Personal Brand

What do Apple, BMW, Coca-Cola, and Brad Pitt have in common? In addition to being fabulous, they all have a well-known reputation, a brand. Now, if you are anything like me, this seems obvious for the large organizations on this list but Brad Pitt? A person as a brand? Doesn’t that only work for people like Mark Echo?

Beyond the Buzzword
The short answer is of course no. Everyone has a brand (whether you are keen to admit it or not). The term personal branding is a pretty hot buzzword being thrown around these days and you are probably familiar with the concept. But for those of you who may not spend your afternoon reading miscellaneous business blogs littered with the newest lingo and for those of us who can always use a refresher, here is a simple definition of personal branding: a self-application form of marketing, where you articulate your value to an audience, with the sole mission to build a reputation and credibility for your niche or idea - essentially, how to be yourself with skill.

As a millennial business professional, I realize just how critical this task is. With a world of possibilities in front of me it is essential to brand myself in such a manner that intrigues future employers, empowers the team around me, and sets the tone for my career development. The same is true for you.

However, knowing about this concept and actually using it are two very different things. So this leaves us wondering, “How can I use personal branding to advance my career?” This is an excellent question. While personal branding is an expansive topic and we will not be able to cover everything right here and right now, I want to share a few things that can help guide you when developing your personal brand.

1. Embrace the Youness of You
First, do you know what makes you exceptional? A wise man once stated, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” While the little children who read these words of the trusted Dr. Seuss often wonder, “how can I be anyone but me,” it is scary how often we lose sight of who we are in the midst of the humdrum of everyday adulthood. The first step in developing a powerful personal brand is simply getting to know you.

Ask yourself: What do you stand for? What drives your motivation? What defines success? What do you LOVE to do?

2. Stand Out Above The Crowd
We intuitively know that everyone is different, like snowflakes taking on unique shapes and patterns, yet we are taught from a young age to only focus on similarities so that conflict will not arise. Often we revert back to this habit in the workplace and mute our differences for the sake of corporate culture and not wanting to rock the boat. Yet the truth is everyone has something that marks him or her as a unique asset. Something not limited to a company or position (although certainly something that benefits the organization). Something good. The challenge is to find what differentiates you and how that difference is a strength, not only for your company and team, but for your career. Now is the time to stand out, not to blend in.

Ask yourself: Why are you different? What makes you better, different, or more special? What makes you unique? What makes you stand out?

3. Marketing Matters
After establishing what you stand for and what makes you stand out, the question remains: “What makes you compelling?” The third element of an effective personal brand lies in your ability to articulate your value. You know what you do for your company better than anyone. You know the intricacies of the work, the role that you play, and how your efforts contribute to the success of your company. Marketing yourself in the workplace may seem shady or selfish, but it is critical if you desire to grow your career. Let me suggest a paradigm shift from marketing to markEDing – where your goal is not to sell yourself but to educate your audience about the awesomeness of you. While possibly the most challenging of the three, this is the most important for advancing your career because it involves making connections, knowing your audiences, and communicating your value.

Ask Yourself: What is one thing you have done for your current (most recent) employer that wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there? In what critical areas do you add value? How does your team and/or organization benefit from your work?

The Light At the End
Using these elements to craft a well-executed personal branding campaign creates a strong, consistent, and specific association between you and the value you offer. To say that creating a brand and living up to it is easy would be a lie. It takes commitment to create, cultivate, and maintain a positive brand, but the results far exceed the effort.

Personal branding:

• Is the most effective way to clarify and communicate what makes you different, special, and valuable to employers and customers – and use those qualities to guide your career
• Is the most effective and innovative strategy you can use to achieve professional success and fulfillment
• Allows you to clearly communicate the unique promise of value that you have to offer
• Enables you to leverage what distinguishes you from others with similar skills and abilities

There is no time to waste! Figure out what you stand for, what makes you stand out, and what makes you compelling. Then, craft your personal brand statement - just do it.

Devon Scheef, The Learning Café
Contact Devon at DevonS@thelearningcafe.net or join The Learning Café on LinkedIn

Unhappy and Overworked!

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently banned Yahoo employees from working from home, it fired up a heated national conversation about work-life balance. It makes sense that this issue would hit people in such an emotional way; Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, a country where so many people were dying of stress-induced heart attacks and strokes that a new term was coined - karōshi, death by overwork. Here in the U.S., 86 percent of men and 67 percent of women work more than 40 hours per week, 70 percent of children have parents who both work, and more than 90 percent of American parents report work-family conflict.

Unfortunately, a lack of work-life balance can lead to serious health problems and lower quality of life. Stress is the #1 cause of health problems in the U.S., and a lion's share of that stress comes from our propensity to tipping the scales towards work and not enough towards 'life.' Leaving work at work and prioritizing exercise, hobbies, and enjoying personal time with friends and family is vital for maintaining a balanced life.

So what's the root of our overworking? Occasionally it's due to external factors entirely out of our control, but very often if we're honest, our overworking is self-imposed. We've overcommitted, said 'yes' a few too many times and put too much on our plate. We all have different reasons for doing this, but fear is often at the root of these decisions.

Here are some common fears and some helpful reminders when trying to get your life back in balance:

• If I don't work harder, I'll be let go. You might feel the pressure to maintain an aura of constant busyness to prevent the boss from thinking that they can function without you. Ironically, this can actually lead to a lack of productivity. Studies show that overworking actually makes you less effective, and our desire to be perceived as being 'busy' can override our desire to do good work. When you're struggling with this, think of a few great leaders that you know. They tend to have a work-life balance, don't they? Working hard and doing a good job is important, but to ensure that your work is effective and that you don't burn out, make sure that you are taking breaks, eating meals, and leaving at a reasonable hour.
• I need the money! Maybe you've been through a time of lack and now that there's work to be had you're taking as much of it as you possibly can to earn a higher commission or a big raise. Our culture teaches that money can buy happiness, so we're afraid that we won't be happy unless we make as much as possible. However, problems at work go home with us and vice-versa; so if you are working so much that it's causing problems in your personal life, no amount of money is going to fix that. Money doesn't buy happiness! Having a balance will actually enable you to enjoy the fruits of your labors.
• My colleagues won't understand. You know you should leave on time to get to your personal training or to bring your kids to a playgroup, but you're afraid that your colleagues will resent you if you leave before they do. When this is an issue, remember that people prefer to work with others that are balanced. It's no fun to be around someone who is constantly spinning their wheels and going in a million directions. Make sure that while you are at work, you are focused on work and not dividing your time by dealing with personal matters while on the clock. That will serve your colleagues much better than staying an hour or two late and adding to the stress in the workplace.

And remember, our work is important but no-one on their death bed has ever been reported as saying, "I wish I'd have spent more time at work!"

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ABOUT NEWLEAF TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT (www.newleaf-ca.com)
We deliver seminars, keynotes and coaching to help people and organizations better manage themselves, lead others and build business financial intelligence.  

Starbucks MUST be Making a Lot of Money!

Let's face it: a trip to Starbucks is not cheap. No matter how much you love your favorite blend, you gotta admit that nearly five bucks for a cup of Joe is amazing! Books have been written about the phenomenon of Starbucks undefined I mean how do you take a commodity as old as the hills, wrap an experience around it, and price it so high? As interesting as that is, the focus of this month's newsletter is to use Starbucks as a simple way of explaining the three levels of margin within a business undefined gross, operational, and net.

Margin is often referred to as an efficiency measure undefined how much of every dollar in sales can we hold onto at each of the three levels of margin.

Let's look at gross margin first undefined what is that?  Well if a business has a cost of goods sold (also known as cost of merchandise sold), that's deducted from the sale to arrive at gross margin. Service businesses don't have a cost of goods sold as they don't sell a tangible product, but Starbucks does of course! What are the costs of goods sold items at Starbucks when they sell a café latte for example? Well it would be the consumable items such as the cup (if it's disposable), the stirrer, the plastic lid, the card sleeve, the sugar packets, etc., and of course, the oh so glorious, expensive, special coffee! Taking a quick peak at the latest annual report from Starbucks shows their gross margins to be about 75% (so there's about 25 cents of product cost on every cup of Joe!)

What about operating margin? Well hang with me a while in the Starbucks Store undefined what do you see, hear, and feel as operating costs that are deducted from the gross margin to bring us down to operating margin? Yep, you got it undefined that would be the staff, the store rent; advertising, utilities, and insurance for that store, Wi-Fi costs, etc. Looking over the latest annual report on the coffee table (forgive the pun) shows this at about 27% (so there's about another 48 cents of store costs tied up in that same cup of Joe).  Are you feeling for Starbucks yet?

Now imagine ALL of the operating margins from all 20,266 stores being dropped on the doorstep of the corporate headquarters in Seattle. What do you see has to be paid for at the overhead level to get us down to net margin?  Yep, you can see it undefined all the central functions such as human resources; finance; I.T.; sales and marketing; research and development; legal; as well the executives (and they earn more than minimum wage!) and of course all the utility and property costs associated with that big office building. So what are we down to now, I hear you ask? About 10% net margin! So for every $1 in sales, Starbucks holds onto about 10 cents of profit at the bottom.  So next time you're in Starbucks, feel sorry for them, upgrade your product choice, and give them a lift on their margin!

What's the point of this little anecdote?  Well, think about the work you do everyday undefined where do you impact your organization's money-making model? Can you help improve gross margin by reducing the cost of goods sold? You are most likely part of the operating or overhead expense of your organization undefined what could you start, stop, or continue to improve margin at these levels? How could you educate your team and colleagues on the importance of margin? Remember from a previous artile, every wasted dollar has tremendous ramifications on margin. In the case of Starbucks they need to generate $11 of new sales for every $1 of wasted expense just to still get a 10% margin based on their present money-making model!

It may just be a cup of coffee, but it all adds up!
 
ABOUT NEWLEAF TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT (www.newleaf-ca.com)
We deliver seminars, keynotes and coaching to help people and organizations better manage themselves, lead others and build business financial intelligence.  

Part 2 of a 2 part series, part 1 published on Jan 28, 2013: Reverse Mentoring: Why and How to “Do it Yourself” with a Cross-Generational Mentoring Program

Five Steps to Success
Because this is a DIY mentoring project, we recommend keeping things simple. But you do need one or more managers who agree to oversee or coordinate your reverse mentoring program. This can be an informal role with fairly light responsibilities, which include:

Step 1: Define what you want to accomplish. Many companies have straightforward objectives that range from simply creating positive work relationships between older and younger workers, to more ambitious outcomes such as transferring technology savvy and new industry expertise or trends or cross training.

Also consider whether you’ll need the support of senior leadership to help your program succeed. If so, identify the key stakeholders and describe what their involvement will look like.

Step 2: Pair up mentors and partners. To a large extent, how you determine who will participate, and how you pair off participants, depends on your specific goals and the needs of the individual and the company. When pairing, consider that personal “chemistry” is often overrated.  The best matches are often mismatches, which broaden the opportunities for growth in both participants.

As you match mentors to students, consider the characteristics of each. Are they motivated to learn? Willing to be mentored by a younger colleague?

Step 3: Plan the launch. To kick off your program, host a two- to four-hour orientation meeting with all participants. The program’s coordinator can explain the definition and benefits of reverse mentoring, introduce partners to each other, and go over goals and guidelines. This meeting should be a comfortable, informal forum for everyone to get grounded and organized. Pairs can begin to discuss their own goals and expectations.

If possible, give each pair some brief training on how to teach and learn, and provide a planner that serves as a guide for the partnership. At minimum, describe a typical first meeting or activity that partners can use to get started. (See The First Meeting below.)

You should also cover tips regarding generational differences. Caution everyone about stereotypes and perpetuating stale messages. Comments like, “They don’t want to pay their dues” from tenured employees; and, “They’re stuck in the past” from newer employees, will shut down reverse mentoring efforts before they get off the ground.

Close the meeting by outlining any logistics and details involved in checking progress of the partnerships.

Step 4: Prioritize and persist. Your follow-up and tracking is crucial to ensure the program is effective. We recommend that for the first two months of a mentoring initiative, the program’s coordinator or sponsor plan a pulse-check every two to three weeks to confirm that your guidelines and ground rules are still in place. After the first two months, scale back to a monthly check. Ask for participants’ feedback, focus on catching any problems early, and ask about successes. Remind each participant that you’re available for support and troubleshooting.

How can you tell that the mentoring relationship is working? Look for the following success indicators:

• Are people taking the time to meet and work together?
• How satisfied are the partners with the progress?
• Are they benefiting from and enjoying the partnership?
• What ideas do they have to improve the program?

Many partners report that the most valuable part of a mentoring partnership is the opportunity to learn and stretch personally and professionally.  Publish, share, and celebrate these successes!

Step 5: Measure progress. Part of your plan should include means for evaluating the success of your program, including measuring and quantifying outcomes. The coordinator of the program should perform all monitoring of participating pairs, though he or she may need some help with evaluation.

Your evaluation might include questionnaires or surveys of participants, individual interviews, and/or observation of their meetings. You are seeking to measure some difficult-to-quantify outcomes, including individual attitude, behavior, as well as accomplishments.

If evaluations indicate that the program is not meeting its goals, be prepared to make some changes to the program, re-train participants, or otherwise support the program to ensure it is successful.

Success Story
A small group at Milbank Manufacturing in Kansas City, Missouri, started their reverse mentoring program in October 2012. “It’s gone well and I think we’ll learn a lot from each other!” says Millennial Christine Henry Vetter, a marketing specialist for the organization, who is paired with the CEO. “My overarching goals are to gain a better understanding of how Milbank operates at a 30,000-foot view, as well as to develop ways to make Milbank more multi-generation friendly.” CEO Lavon Winkler wants to use the program to understand the dynamics of Millennials and how companies can create opportunities that are exciting for members of that generation.

The Milbank pairs have agreed to meet once a month during the first year of their DIY program. After this pilot period, they will roll out reverse mentoring company-wide.

In Conclusion
Reverse mentoring can be a winning situation for everyone involved.  You can cement the loyalty, interest, and talents of your Millennial team members, and more experienced employees will realize that opening up to new and different ideas will more effectively serve their clients and drive earnings.  In other words, when you mix fresh, unbiased perspectives with detailed knowledge and strategic skills, the results are innovation and increased employee engagement across the board.

The First Meeting

The first meeting between the mentor and partner is like sitting down to write a book and staring at a blank piece of paper. How do you get started? The answer in this case is, by getting to know each other.

The mentor -- that is, the younger employee -- here takes the role of teacher. Regardless of who leads the conversation or sets the agenda, it’s essential that both partners remember the goal is for the manager or tenured employee to learn from a younger counterpart, and not take over the mentor’s role.

The mentor can start the conversation by telling stories, and encouraging his or her partner to tell stories, giving specific examples related to his or her personal and professional experiences. Share lessons you’ve each learned from experience -- whether on the job or outside of work. This will increase your credibility and breathe real life into your recommendations.

Here are some conversation starters to kick off meaningful conversations or conversations that count:

Talk about your work and life experiences. What have you done that was unusual or controversial? What experiences do you hope to have in the future?

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

Discuss strategies to balance work and personal life. What have you leaned that you could share? What compromises have you made? How do you feel about them?

What mistakes have you made that you thought would have a negative impact on your career? How did you learn from them?  What would you do differently?

What is the smartest decision you ever made, and why? What did you learn that you’d like to apply to the future?

What legacy are you creating or building? What kinds of things are you doing to pass along your expertise?

What is some of the best career advice you’ve received? Why? How have you put it into practice?

What makes a conversation comfortable and candid?  The formula is simple and the results can be extraordinary.  A great conversation simply takes curiosity and a willingness to be changed or stretched by another person’s experience.

For more information about mentoring as a talent development strategy, and leveraging the generations in your workplace for exceptional business results, contact Devon Scheef at The Learning Café. DevonS@thelearningcafe.net or (805) 494-0124.

Using Championship Memory Techniques to Make Learning Stick

What is the connection between training in your organization and the following list of items?

• A randomly shuffled deck of cards
• A collection of names and faces
• An unpublished 50-line poem

While these are just some of the memorization requirements at the annual USA National Memory Championship, the techniques used to memorize them may be the answer you’re looking for to increase learning retention in your organization.
If you’ve ever watched a memory competition and marveled at the ability of the competitors to memorize any of the items mentioned in the list above, you were probably thinking, “I could never do that.” You may have seen memory experts rhyme off the names of everyone in a 250-person audience, and wondered, “How did he do that?”

Winners of memory championships around the world and Guinness record holders for Greatest Memory all claim they have average memories. They are not savants, nor do they have photographic memories. Some even suffer the additional burden of having been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. One thing they all agree on is that anyone can do what they do – memorize huge amounts of information.

It’s all about technique and understanding how the memory works.

Why Don’t We Remember Things?
You've often heard it said, and you may even have said it yourself, that you can't remember what you had for breakfast this morning. Why not? Well, here are some reasons people forget things.

• The information/situation didn’t even register on their “awareness meter”
• They weren’t fully focusing or concentrating on the situation
• It wasn’t particularly memorable
• They were trying to multi-task
• They didn't have an organized system for mentally filing and retrieving the information they wanted to remember

If you survey a group of people, most will admit to having a bad memory. They would probably be surprised to know that remembering isn’t a random act. It can have structure, and as a result, having a good memory is a learnable skill.

What Does This Have to Do With Training in Your Organization?
Learning doesn’t always stick. You already know that. You also know that the source of the problem could be in the training design, in its delivery, or in the follow-up on the job.

When it comes to training design and delivery, some presentation techniques such as lecture-style data dump or learning through reading leave the responsibility for remembering on the learners’ shoulders: Here is the information; now remember it.

If you’re a good designer, chances are you’re already including interactive hands-on processing and reinforcement activities to help your participants learn. However, reviews take up a lot of time. A common weakness in the review process is that there is no structure, no filing cabinet, if you will – it’s just repetition. How many repetitions will your learners need for the learning to truly stick? Two? Five? Seven?

What if you could speed the process along? What if you could:

• Help your learners commit content to memory faster and shorten the learning curve?
• Save time and money during the learning process by eliminating most of the necessary repetition or re-training?
• Help learners move information from the awareness stage directly into long-term memory?
• Multiply the likelihood of training transfer to the job?

How Do We Make Remembering Easier?
Information is just words – many just abstract concepts. The key is to encode things that are abstract in a way that makes it easier for the brain to remember. There are 3 elements that boost memory:

• Rarity
• Visualization
• Association

First, there is the concept of rarity.

Imagine yourself driving to work. On most days, there is nothing unusual about your commute. It's the same traffic day in and day out.
Today is different. Suddenly you see an enormous elephant on the freeway. Since here in North America elephants are usually found only in zoos or at the circus, seeing one on the road is an unusual and rare occurrence. When you get to work, you excitedly describe your experience to the first person you see. “You wouldn't believe what I saw on my way in to work this morning! There was an elephant on the 405 near the exit to the Santa Monica freeway!”

The next time you drive past that very same spot, there is a good chance that you’ll remember the elephant. You may remember it for weeks, months, or even years to come.

The second element that makes things easier to remember is visualization. When you recounted the experience to a colleague, did you think of the word “elephant” or did you picture it? Most people think in images. They are easier to remember than words or abstract concepts. When describing the elephant experience to others or driving past that same location on the 405 you would be able to recall the elephant’s size, color, and movement from the image in your mind.

Thirdly, there's association -- or what I like to refer to as Velcro® learning -- stuck or attached to something else.  That elephant is now stuck to the 405 in your memory so that the next time you drive past the same location, the incident springs to mind.

What Does This Mean to You?
Memory athletes (competitors in memory competitions) learn huge amounts of information by utilizing systems and creating mental filing cabinets that incorporate rarity, visualization, and association into structures that multiply the ease and speed with which they can remember information. Different types of information warrant different systems – some considerably more complex and time-consuming to learn than others.

You may have heard of some of them – with names such as the link method, the journey method, the Roman room or memory palace, the peg system, the major system, the Dominic system, the phonetic method, the number/rhyme or number/shape method, and so on.

If memory systems work for others, why not borrow from their success? Why not use these memory techniques to enhance and speed up learning?

I can already hear your objection. “Learning is more than just memorizing a bunch of content.” I agree. Employees and managers need to be able to apply the content by troubleshooting, problem-solving, innovating, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.
Consider this. If they learn the content faster up front, you can re-focus the training time and get on to the important task of helping them learn to apply the information that much sooner.

What do your participants need to remember?

• Features and benefits of products and services
• Steps of a procedure
• Equipment needed for a particular task
• Key points contained in company policies
• Customer information
• A presentation

When deciding on a particular memory technique to use in your training, you’ll want to take a few things into consideration.

• The time constraints of training programs in many organizations necessitate squeezing as much information as possible into as short a period of time as possible.
• Your participants are not training for the USA National Memory Championship, so the easier the technique is to learn the better.
• The system should be usable over and over again.

Your organization may best be served by providing the staff and management with memory training in a multi-step process – first as a generic skill, and then by incorporating the techniques into every training program to ensure retention of course-specific content.

If left up to the individual, allocating time to learn memory techniques is likely to be relegated to the bottom of the to-do list (if it even makes it onto the list at all). It is well worthwhile including them in every training initiative. Your organization will reap the rewards – savings in time and retraining, and increases in retention and transfer of learning.

Memory improvement happens quickly when structured techniques are used. You will be amazed at what you and others remember!

Ida Shessel, B.Sc., M.Ed., has been a professional speaker, author, and facilitator for over 30 years. For 15 of those years, she was a senior consultant with an award-winning train-the-trainer organization, facilitating their workshops at meetings and conferences across North America and beyond. She is the author of several books including Communicate Like a Top Leader.

Ida can triple your memory in under 30 minutes!

For the free special report, Secrets of a Top Communicator, go to http://www.idashessel.com. For more memory tips, visit Ida’s blog at www.ImprovingYourMemoryTechniques.com,

How to Master Your Habits

First we make our habits, then they make us.  John Dryden

Habits are the behaviors that are wired so deeply in the brain that we perform them automatically. How much of your day do you spend acting out of habit? Getting ready in the morning, going to work, interacting with others, reacting to stress. etc. Much of what you do is habitual, and should be! It would be a terrible waste of energy to have to pay attention to everything all the time. Habits free our minds to focus on tasks that are more important.

The problem arises when we want to eliminate an old, deeply ingrained, negative habit (e.g., eating unhealthy snacks, interrupting others, reacting emotionally, etc.) and create a new, positive one (e.g., snacking on fruit, asking more questions, responding appropriately, etc.). It is not easy to rewire our brains. Experience teaches us that knowing is not doing. In fact, the inability to develop new habits is why many of our New Year resolutions fail and is often the reason we don't apply what we learn from others.

So, how do you update your brain's subconscious software routines so that what you want to do becomes what you routinely do? How can you transform a desired behavior into a new habit? There are many ways to accomplish this difficult task. Leaders that I have coached tell me that the most effective technique they have learned is linking an old habit to the desired behavior. Let me explain...

The idea is to take an existing habit and use it to remind yourself to practice the new behavior routinely, so the new behavior becomes your new habit. In other words, you link what is already wired into your brain (the old habit) to what is not (the new behavior) to create the new habit. The equation below expresses this powerful concept in a simple equation.

Old Habit + New Behavior = New Habit

This idea is as old as tying a string around your finger. The only question is, how will you use the principle to help you create the habits that make you? Listed below are several examples of how highly successful leaders combined their old habits with new behaviors. Adapt them to your situation and preferences.

1. Index cards. Write a behavior on a 3 x 5 index card. Put the card in your pocket. Whenever you put your hand in your pocket, read the card. Put a check mark on the card every time you practice the behavior.
2. Pocket change. Put seven coins in the right pocket of your slacks. Every time you put your hand in your right pocket, move one coin from the right pocket to the left pocket and remind yourself to practice your new behavior. Let the coins be a metaphor about the importance of making small change over time. (Thanks to my friend Bonnie Dean for this suggestion.)
3. Watch. Program your watch to beep on the hour. Use the beep to remind yourself to practice the new behavior.
4. Mirror. Slightly tilt the rearview mirror in your car. Every time you look in the mirror, tell yourself aloud how you are applying your behavior today.
5. Notepad. Write a “reminder word” at the top of the notepad you use during your calls. Every time you looked down to scratch a note, you will be prompted to use your new behavior.
6. Calendar. One leader told me recently that he programmed Outlook to remind him to practice his listening skills. He's using computer software to rewire his brain's hardware.
7. Phone. Since you probably use your phone a lot, write a post-it-note to prod yourself to practice the new behavior whenever you're on the phone.
8. Computer. Can you change your screensaver to remind you to practice a behavior?
9. Wristband. One leader has a bracelet that she pulls to inspire her to apply recently learned emotional intelligence behaviors.
10. Team member. Who can you count on to regularly encourage and remind you to take daily action?

Sow a thought, reap an action,
Sow an action, reap a habit,
Sow a habit, reap a character,
Sow a character, reap a destiny.  Charles Reade

Keep stretching when you're pulled, Dave.

P.S. Dave Jensen and his team transform proven leadership tools into your success stories. Dave is also a popular speaker at conferences, meetings, and workshops. He can be reached in Los Angeles, CA at (310) 397-6686 and http://davejensenonleadership.com/index.html

The Value of a Dollar

We're between friends -- have you ever blown a dollar of your employer's money? Come on, be honest! Of course we all have. You know the personal phone call we made on the work phone; the personal mail we ran through the company mail; the faxes, the pens, the expense claim that was kind of work related and we rationalized it with, "Hey, you know I was traveling …"

Well, those pennies add up to become dollars, and the dollars end up becoming hundreds, thousands, and potentially millions in some large organizations.

I hear you say, "Okay, but what's the big deal? My company can afford it!" Well, can they? That is the question.

What's the average net income a business makes as a percentage of its sales? Answer: about 8%. That means for every $10.00 in sales it makes 80 cents profit.

So imagine what happens if you waste $1 in expenses: $1 divided by 0.08 (which is 8% expressed as a decimal) multiplied by 1 (which is 100% expressed as a decimal) equals $12.50. That means your employer has to make $12.50 extra in sales to make up for that $1 to still get an 8% profit margin and maintain an 8% money-making model.

What that means in this example is that the sales and marketing folks have to sell 25% more ($12.50-10.00) to still get 80 cents profit.

What happens if we add a few zeros? Well, imagine a company that wastes $100,000 on a project and they only make 8% profit. The numbers work the same -- this company now has to sell 25% more to still make $8,000 profit!

Now, any metaphor if analyzed enough eventually breaks down, but do you get the point? It's important to be conscious of every dollar you spend of your company's money. You can relate this principle to your personal finances -- what's that old phrase, "a dollar saved is a dollar earned"? If you think about it, it's actually more than a dollar because every dollar is taxed about 20%; so $1 saved is really like not having to earn $1.20!

More than ever before it's vitally important, especially in tough economic climates, to understand your company's money-making model. Treating your employer's money as if it were your own (and even better perhaps!) makes you an invaluable asset (forgive the pun!)

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"Someone who is penny wise, dollar foolish can be very careful or mean with small amounts of money, yet wasteful and extravagant with large sums."-- Anon.

"Wealth is treacherous and the arrogant are never at rest." -- Habakkuk 2:5 

By Paul Butler, Client Partner – Newleaf Training and Development
Newleaf Training and Development deliver seminars, keynotes, and coaching to help people and organizations better manage themselves, lead others, and build business financial intelligence.  Based in Valencia, CA, Newleaf Training and Development has served clients in 28 States, China, India, and Western Europe since 2006.  Visit www.newleaf-ca.com for more details.

Reverse Mentoring: Why and How to “Do it Yourself” with a Cross-Generational Mentoring Program

Show me the mentors! Even though mentoring is one of the most effective career development paths for young employees, only one in five organizations offers a formal mentoring program. This is in spite of the need for fast, point-of-need learning partnerships to help organizations share critical knowledge, onboard a new hire, develop talent, and grow future leaders.

This makes it very likely that you and your organization’s managers are left high and dry when it comes to mentoring newer or younger employeesundefinedbut it doesn’t mean you can’t set up an effective program yourself! Managers and supervisors at all levels have a simple, viable strategy available for providing mentoring to their teams without waiting for HR or senior management to set up a formal program. This do-it-yourself (DIY) option is called “reverse mentoring” because it turns around mentoring as we know it.

What Is Reverse Mentoring?
Traditionally, a person with more experience will mentor a colleague with less experience; this method has been proven through master/apprentice relationships that have allowed knowledge to be handed down over hundreds of years. In reverse mentoring, a more experienced employee, or even a manager, actively seeks the council of an employee with less overall experience. This modern twist has more tenured employees depending on younger staff for fresh perspectives, trend spotting, and technology guidance. 

As Alan Webber, cofounder of Fast Company put it, “Reverse mentoring is when the old fogies in the organization realize that by the time you’re in your forties and fifties, you’re not in touch with the future in the same way as the young twenty-somethings. They come with fresh eyes, open minds, and instant links to the technology of our future.”

Reverse mentoring refreshes learning for veteran employees and managers, while helping to build leadership skills and experience of your newer employeesundefinedwho are, of course, also learning new insights during the relationship. And when you pair an experienced manager or employee with a newer, less tenured employee, the mentor gets a glimpse into the world of leadership and top-level leadersundefinedsomething the younger generations particularly value.

Why Reverse Your Mentoring?
Reverse mentoring has some unique benefits that should be of special interest to most industries; many of those benefits have to do with attracting and keeping employees in the Millennial generation (those born between 1977 and 1998)undefinedan essential demographic for any forward-thinking organization.

These six benefits specific to reverse mentoring are just the tip of the iceberg:

• Helps to engage, retain, and promote younger talent; it creates a two-way conversation, allowing supervisors to learn what workplace conditions younger employees seek in order to advance themselves along with the interests of the company
  
• Engages younger and newer employees, promoting their loyalty and generating trust
  
• Empowers emerging and established leaders
  
• Shrinks big organizations; it crosses boundaries that employees wouldn’t normally cross
  
• Begins to close the knowledge gap between long-time employees and newer hires
  
• Offers different, fresh and/or younger perspectives

Reverse mentoring is ideal in situations when you want established employees and managers to gain technical expertise, whether it is in business applications or smart phone apps. The same is true of learning about new and emerging trends in marketing or areas of work and society that might impact your business.

It can also strengthen the team even as it grows the skills and strengths of individuals involved. For example, when you pair a people-savvy associate with a manager working on winning over a prospective client, everyone can benefit.

Success Story
At Werner Electric in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, President Ben Granley has tapped into reverse mentoring in an effective if informal way. Their Millennial delivery driver Dustin Ranem regularly visits the company’s marketing department to provide his perspective on the company’s social media presenceundefinedand to give specific recommendations. When Granley was promoted to president, he asked the same employee to review his LinkedIn page and his social media presence and give Granley a list of recommended improvements.

“He has educated our entire organization about the power of social media, and corrected some of our mistakes,” says Granley. “He has helped me out personally with Twitter chats and more.”

Best Practices for Reverse Mentoring
Before you send a seasoned executive and an intern into a conference room and say “Go,” there are a few high-level guidelines that you may want to consider. No matter how simple you intend the structure of your mentoring program to be, take time to make a plan.

Reverse mentoring can take place as informally as you likeundefinedor even within your existing company mentoring programs. It simply calls for matching up pairs of employees of different generations and then encouraging them to meet regularly to exchange ideas and challenge each other. Note that these relationships shouldn’t be restricted to people of the same gender or who have similar backgroundsundefinedbecause we can learn so much more from people who are different from ourselves. 

Take some time to consider what we call the “hard glue and soft glue” that can hold a successful program together:

Hard Glue:

1. Define expectations. Both partners need to be very clear on what they want to accomplish.
   
2. Agree on the rules. Each partner must be fully committed to the mentoring relationship with regular meetings and activities, and to getting together at least monthly.  And partners should agree to be cooperative and respectful.

Soft Glue:

1. Willing to learn. In a reverse mentoring relationship, both parties must genuinely want to learn from and share with the other.
   
2. Mutual trust. The goal is to push one another outside of their comfort zones and try new ways of thinking, working and being.  Ideally, the pair will create a safe, risk-taking environment and maintain confidentiality.
   
3. Transparency. Both partners must be open with their feelings and with what they are thinking.  They must be able to overcome differences in communication style and be open to seeing situations from different angles.

Our research shows that the biggest dangers to any successful mentoring relationship are neglect (a lack of commitment, time, and energy), breaches of confidence, and the failure to understand culture and generational differences. As you implement your reverse mentoring program, be on the lookout for these pitfalls.

In the second article in this series, you can review a basic action plan for your reverse mentoring program. Check back next month for part 2.

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For more information about mentoring as a talent development strategy, and leveraging the generations in your workplace for exceptional business results, contact Devon Scheef at The Learning Café. DevonS@thelearningcafe.net or (805) 494-0124.

Improving Training Skill Transfer

Learning professionals realize that training is only effective when participants apply their new skills on the job.  With so much focus nowadays on training and retraining the American workforce for the jobs of the future, we are seeing increased attention to this area of evaluation.  In my work with companies across America, I have found that skill transfer is the number one training evaluation concern today.

What exactly is “skill transfer?”  The concept originated with the seminal work of Donald Kirkpatrick, who called it “behavior change,” the third of the four levels of his evaluation model.  To fully understand why level three is such a critical link in training evaluation, consider the contextual model of evaluation, based on Kirkpatrick’s four levels, that appears below.

Level three evaluation occurs at a crucial juncture when learners return to their work environment.  If they successfully apply their new skills, their own performance will improve.  If individual performance improves for enough workers, the organization’s overall performance should also improve.  Performance improvement then leads to better organizational results, measured at level four, in terms of the organization’s financial performance.

Conversely, if skills learned in training are never applied on the job, then the training investment that produced those skills is useless to the organization that paid for it.  Even the individual trainees who have acquired new knowledge and skill through formal learning will ultimately not benefit if the skills are untransferred.  We know that new knowledge that is never put to use eventually atrophies and disappears into the hidden recesses of our minds.  A study of skill transfer conducted in the 1990s by Mary Broad and John Newstrom found that about half of all newly-learned skills are never transferred in a productive way to the workplace.  This means that as much as half of the nation’s investment in training is not producing meaningful results.  As one of my former bosses used to say, “It’s like shoving money down a shredder.”

Given the importance of boosting skill transfer after training, let us examine the key factors that promote transfer.  Researchers have identified four key requirements for successful skill transfer, as listed below:

• Acquiring the necessary skills
• Learners’ desire to change
• Conducive job environment and support
• Rewards for behavior change

Each of these requirements is important and not always easy to accomplish.  Taken together, they maximize the transfer of training and the impact of training outcomes in the workplace.

Acquiring Necessary Skills
This factor is so obvious that its implications are often overlooked.  Put simply, new skills cannot be transferred if they are irrelevant to the job.  To ensure that the right skills are taught to the right people who actually need them, it is imperative to conduct a thorough needs analysis before designing and delivering training.  This analysis must include job task analysis to determine the needed job skills and learner analysis to determine the extent and nature of the skills gap.

While most training professionals know this is important, in far too many cases, we are pressured by clients and decision makers to short circuit needs analysis and just get on with delivering the training.  This inevitably leads to a poor match between the objectives and content of the training and the needs of the learners and the organization that sponsors and pays for the training.  We can certainly learn to perform analysis more efficiently, but we also need to resist the temptation to skip this step altogether and simply accept our clients’ opinions as the truth.

Learners’ Desire to Change
The desire to change is a second key ingredient of skill transfer, since we know that motivation drives behavior.  The motivation to change one’s behavior through learning requires two fundamental factors:

1. Belief in the need to change
2. Exerting effort to change

These two factors are related, since our level of effort in any work is directly correlated with our beliefs about the value and efficacy of that work.  If we believe that something is both valuable and possible, we are much more likely to exert the effort required to achieve it.

Trainers cannot directly control learner’s desires, but we can certainly help them see the need to change and can help them calibrate their efforts so that they are working hard and smart enough to affect the desired change.  We often reduce this to WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) statements about the value of training.  While these are important in instilling learning motivation, they are often insufficient to carry people through the difficulties of learning.  I may be convinced that a new skill would be beneficial to me, but if I encounter too much difficulty in learning it, I may become discouraged and give up.  Trainers need to candidly reveal the difficulties of their subject matter and design learning events that lessen those difficulties through chunking of content, relevant practice and preparation for application on the job.  We also need to do better at meeting the individual learning needs of those we serve rather than adopting one-size-fits-all approaches to training.

Conducive job environment and support
The third factor is one that has received greater attention as organizations struggle to make better use of their training investments.  No matter how well we design and deliver new skills, the organization cannot reap the full benefits unless it creates a supportive work environment.  Researchers have identified several key factors that create a work environment where skill transfer thrives:

• Supportive supervisor
• Supportive co-workers
• Conducive organizational culture
• Conducive policies and practices

Of these, the supervisor occupies the most important role.  Supervisors who take an active interest in the development of their staff and who encourage both the intrinsic desire to change and provide extrinsic rewards for doing so are far more likely to see improved job behavior after training than those who take a passive or indifferent attitude towards employee development.

Supervisors can take a number of concrete actions to improve skill transfer after training, including:

• Model skills and behaviors for employees
• Coach employees to apply new skills
• Provide feedback on how well employees are performing
• Take corrective action when employees fail to apply new skills
• Provide rewards and recognition when employees successfully apply new skills

The second critical factor is supportive co-workers.  If one’s co-workers are also actively applying new skills and offering peer coaching to their fellow workers, this can significantly aid and abet the efforts of supervisors.  Pairing new employees with experienced ones is a common method for accelerating skill transfer.  Formal mentoring and coaching programs are also very important elements of a supportive organizational culture that promotes skill transfer.

Rewards for behavior change
 At the end of the day, we all work for the money.  Unless learners see tangible rewards for their efforts to learn new skills and boost their job performance, they will not sustain the effort required to change.  In today’s difficult economy, few employees can expect a pay raise as a result of training, but employers can do many things to reward employees that don’t cost a whole lot of money.

One area that has drawn increased interest is recognition programs.  We all like to be recognized for our good work, and some of us need this more than others.  Recognition may come in the form of certificates, awards, public acknowledgment, perks or more desirable work assignments.  Many of these things cost little or nothing to provide. 

Low cost rewards like gift cards, tickets to entertainment events, paid time off and company-sponsored trips often provide a great return on investment in terms of increased employee engagement, reduced absenteeism and increased productivity.
The next time a client requests training, remember that our job as learning professionals does not end when learners complete their training.  Indeed, our job is only half-way finished at that point.  The other half is to ensure that the new skills we have worked so hard to instill are actually being put to productive use in support of the organization’s mission and objectives.

Donald J. Ford, Ph.D., C.P.T.
President
Training Education Management LLC
Redondo Beach, CA 90277