ASTD Goes Platinum

Posted on May 17, 2013 by HRDQ

A post from HRDQ President, Brad Glaser

Years before the majority of today’s training professionals were in grade school, 15 men from the petroleum industry gathered for the first meeting of the American Society of Training Directors. It was the beginning of the ASTD we know today. It was 1943 — a time when the world was in the midst of World War II. A time when training was emerging as a formal organizational function, corporate strategy, and necessity of a highly skilled workforce.

From chalkboards and whiteboards to smart boards, e-learning, and virtual classrooms, the face of training has experienced an amazing transformation since that first meeting 70 years ago. And ASTD has been a guiding influence every step of the way. Now the world’s largest association dedicated to the training and development field, ASTD represents every industry — and every sector — across 122 U.S. chapters, 100 countries, and 39,000 members. While its name has since changed to the American Society of Training & Development, its mission remains largely the same: to empower professionals to develop knowledge and skills successfully. ASTD’s goal is to raise the standards of the training profession and it accomplishes that through its publications, forums, education, research, resources, and conferences.

I attended my first ASTD conference when I joined HRDQ fresh out of college. I’ve been there nearly every year since, and I’ll attend the 2013 International Conference & Exposition next week when training professionals from around the world come together in Dallas, Texas. Frankly, there isn’t a better way to catch the latest trends, meet face-to-face with training colleagues, hear from industry leaders — and simply be inspired. Be sure to visit HRDQ in Booth #1053. We look forward to seeing you!

How has ASTD influenced your career? Post a comment and tell us.

HRDQ @ ASTD 2010

Team Emotional and Social Intelligence

Posted on May 15, 2013 by HRDQ

There are many measurable skills that contribute to individual high performance. Furthermore, there are essential soft skills that make possible the delivery of that performance to an organization.

A majority of these soft skills pertain to interpersonal relationships, and so are only visible in team settings. Working as part of a team is much more difficult than working on one’s own – it means having to rely on others, committing to a common set of objectives, and modifying one’s own behaviors to accommodate those of others and move everyone toward shared goals.

There are, however, simple choices that can improve overall team function, and allow individuals to contribute their individual best – unhindered by team discord. These choices amount to team emotional and social intelligence, which, in turn, enables sustainable productivity. Intelligence, here, s used in a non-traditional way – meaning something closer to awareness than ability. For everyone is able to choose “emotionally intelligent” behaviors, but we to be cognizant of their value and how to put them to use.

To develop this awareness, self-assessment couldn’t be more valuable in providing insight into current behaviors and tendencies as juxtaposed with statistically sound, effective behaviors. The Team Emotional and Social Intelligence (TESI) soft-skills training program is the perfect way to develop a practical picture of an entire team’s effectiveness.

Revealing a 360 degree evaluation of a team’s “Collaboration Skills,” the TESI shows common strengths and weaknesses in seven areas of teamwork. Stressing the idea that each member of a team needs a personal association with their team (a reason they have to continue working toward team goals), this program shows participants that it is possible for every team to possess excellent collaboration skills, achieve high performance, and feel emotionally and socially well while acting as part of their team.

An experiential learning program, the TESI will not only allow participants to learn from their self-assessments, but to participate in activities and action planning that will apply directly to their own experience – learning that can take effect immediately, and that will resonate with teams as they work together.

Try TESI today!

Free Webinar! How to Build Emotional Intelligence for Individuals and Teams: The Top 7 Skills

Posted on May 13, 2013 by HRDQ

FREE WEBINAR
Hosted by HRDQ
Presented by Marcia Hughes and James Bradford Terrell
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
2:00pm – 3:00pm eastern time

If your organization’s teams are lacking direction, control, or the desire to achieve, underdeveloped emotional intelligence could be the cause. A prerequisite for success, research shows that emotional intelligence is a key driver in team and interpersonal dynamics.

Join presenters Marcia Hughes and James Terrell for an informative free webinar that will help trainers, consultants, team leaders, and OD professionals navigate the road of emotional and social intelligence. They’ll explore the seven emotional competencies and discuss how each relates to team performance. Marcia and James will also present the Collaborative Growth Model, a practical framework that maps the route to emotional and social effectiveness at individual and team levels.

James Bradford Terrell and Marcia Hughes are co-authors of Team Emotional & Social Intelligence, which offers a unique set of tools for determining and developing a team’s emotional effectiveness in seven dimensions that are a prerequisite for high performance.

What You Will Learn

The biggest challenge to productive teamwork
How to identify and develop the seven core behaviors of emotional effectiveness
Techniques to spark candid team conversations about what does or doesn’t work
How to use emotional intelligence skills to integrate individual goals into team goals
Creating buy-in with team members

Who Should Attend

Trainers
Consultants
Team Leaders
Team Members
OD professionals

About the Presenters

The president of Collaborative Growth, LLC, Marcia Hughes serves as a strategic communications partner for teams and their leaders. She presents her expertise in emotional intelligence through her consulting, keynote sessions, and program facilitation. She is co-author of the Team Emotional & Social Intelligence, which includes the TESI® Short, A Coach’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence, The Emotionally Intelligent Team, and Emotional Intelligence in Action as well as the Team Emotional & Social Intelligence Survey™ (TESI®). Marcia is also the author of Life’s 2% Solution. She is a certified trainer in the Bar-On EQ-i ® and EQ 360® and provides train-the-trainer facilitation and coaching in powerful EQ delivery.

As the Vice President of Collaborative Growth, LLC, James Bradford Terrell applies his expertise in interpersonal communication to help a variety of public and private sector clients anticipate change and respond to it resiliently. He is co-author of the Team Emotional & Social Intelligence Facilitator Guide Package, which includes the TESI® Short, A Coach’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence, The Emotionally Intelligent Team, and Emotional Intelligence in Action. James also coaches leaders, teams in transition, and senior management using the Bar-On EQi®, EQ 360®, and other assessments. Terrell is co-creator of the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey™ (TESI®), and he provides train-the-trainer workshops on how to develop the insightful interpretation and application of EQ results.

Register Here!

Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

Posted on May 8, 2013 by HRDQ

Although you may not think of yourself as a negotiator (like, with a capital N), negotiating is something we all do all the time. It’s communication aimed at mutual need satisfaction.

But even though we do it all the time, there’s a lot to negotiating – and by building the right interpersonal skills and modeling our behavior on a sound methodology, we can all reach positive outcomes. The key is knowing which skills are in need of building, and how to put them into practice.

Self-assessment is the first step toward improved performance. In order to progress, we first have to take stock of available resources and make note of deficiencies. By looking closely at our natural tendencies and current behaviors, we can make a plan to move toward more appropriate behaviors that will facilitate more effective negotiations.

The Negotiating Style Profile will frame this picture for you, and set out a model of effective negotiation skills to measure against and work toward. The basis for the Negotiating Style Profile assessment is that, in negotiations, the involved parties should have high concern for two things: the outcome of the discussion, and their relationship with the others involved.

By measuring these levels of concern as expressed by behavioral choices, the Negotiating Style Profile reveals your relative tendencies toward five negotiating styles. A collaborating style is put forth as the most effective approach to produce positive outcomes for all parties involved, and to maintain healthy relationships between them.

Simply understanding negotiation as a collaborative form of communication can be a major shift for a lot of people. And this shift can affect more than just negotiations. The set of skills needed to negotiate collaboratively can be extended to all aspects of worklife – improving performance and employee well-being.

Get started today with the Negotiating Style Profile today!

Renaissance Training

Posted on May 1, 2013 by HRDQ

It’s May Day! A day to celebrate rebirth and embrace new beginnings. With a parting nod to the difficulties of winter, we can begin sowing the seeds of our next harvest. And, since we’re not in the farming business (not full time, anyway), we’re thinking about renaissance training. A new kind of training that moves with you – through any topic, and into the future.

The Reproducible Training Library is more than a comprehensive bank of renewable resources. It’s something that can grow and develop with you and your organization. Making a place for the RTL in your organization is a guarantee of improved performance and life-long learning for every member.

Available as a set of editable MS Word and PowerPoint files, each title in the library is a full soft-skills training program, developed by subject-matter experts and formatted to allow for customization. All RTL materials can be reimagined, combined, edited, and implemented to the trainer’s specifications – becoming an extension of the trainer – an aid and an advantage. Because RTL materials are a one-time purchase that can be printed as needed, the trainer becomes the centerpiece of learning in their organization.

When you’re training for soft skills, it makes a huge difference for your audience to have a human resource to help them learn and grow. You can make learning a conversation – something that happens within and between people – something that benefits everyone. The RTL is your foundation for that conversation. Each of the 75 programs, covering everything from time management and team building to leadership and communication, is a beginning for your organization – starting new, starting better, every time.

Celebrate a new season with better training from the Reproducible Training Library!

Open with a Joke

Posted on April 24, 2013 by HRDQ

A few weeks from now, HRDQ will be at the ASTD International Conference and Exhibition (ahem), so we’re brushing up on our presentation skills.

It’s not at all uncommon to worry over public presentations – they come with a lot of challenges:

Presentations require a set of communication skills that don’t get as much practice as your everyday skills do.
You only have one chance to impress and influence your audience.
Presenting can make you feel isolated – unsupported and disconnected, left to close a gap between you and your audience (who sit in judgment).
They’re all going to laugh at you.
Failing to influence your audience can have far-reaching consequences, beyond the particular setting of your presentation – it can affect your business relationships, discourage you from making other presentations, or have negative outcomes for the organization you represent.

But, presentations are very important, and most of us are called upon to deliver one at some point. Presentations are given to initiate or influence a course of action, and so they are an invaluable tool. Having the best presentations skills you can puts you in the position to incite change, to foster understanding, to promote learning, to divide, to unite – in short, to lead.

But how do you know if your presentation skills are up to par? Sometimes, the outcomes of a presentation are clear, but it’s hard to determine why things turned out the way they did.

The Presentation Skills Profile provides a model, made up of specific behaviors, to compare with your existing practices. Proven to produce successful results, the presentations skills training model is revealed through self-assessment. Made up of six questions, the Presentation Skills Model addresses all aspects of planning a successful presentation. The questions are:

What is Your Objective?
Who is Your Audience?
How Will You Structure Your Presentation?
How Will You Create Impact?
How Will You Design and Display Visual Aids?
How Will You Stage Your Presentation?

When completing the Presentation Skills Profile soft skills training program, you will be presented with examples of behavior that demonstrate your awareness of each of the six questions while planning and delivering a presentation. Measuring the similarity between your behavior and the “model” behavior will indicate which areas you can improve to heighten your chances of success.

With presentations as a resource, rather than a chore, you’ll have the power to shape your future. Readiness and awareness can bring about a change in your disposition to group communication, self-confidence, and the control you have of your own outcomes.

Let the Presentation Skills Profile be your guide to better performance, and a better work life!

Don’t miss us at ASTD! We’ll be at booth 1053 with the HRDQ prize wheel! Click here to claim your FREE expo passes.

What’s My Time Style?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by HRDQ

Personality Style affects all aspects of our work life – especially time management. Just as with social situations involving different groups of people, we approach time management differently depending on what we’re doing.

When thinking about time management, it’s important to consider not just the nature of the task, but the other people involved. Team members, managers, and other stakeholders may have very different methods of time management than we do. And while we cannot control the behaviors of others, and most often can’t choose who we work with, we can make our time-management style align more closely for a more harmonious group effort.

This is especially important when fitting our own tasks into a schedule developed by someone else. We need to choose an appropriate time-management style for the task at hand, but also make sure that our style is appropriate for the people we are working with.

So, how do we classify time-management style?

We all observe behaviors in ourselves and in others, and can sense when we are compatible (or not). There’s a simple and effective way to decipher these behaviors and understand why they result in compatible or incompatible relationships. It’s the HRDQ Style Model.

Classifying observable behaviors into four distinct personality styles (Direct, Spirited, Systematic, and Considerate), the HRDQ Style Model helps us create a plan for capitalizing on our own natural strengths, and relating to others more effectively. The HRDQ Style Series is comprised of eight style assessments that deal with specific aspects of work life and provide personal development training. What’s My Time Style? deals directly with time management.

Built on a foundation of behavioral tendencies, arrived at by self-assessment, What’s My Time Style reports an individual’s “style” and provides enough interpretive information and time managemet training to chart a course toward better performance, better relationships, and smoother sailing all around.

Learning about personality style can improve all aspects of our home and work lives, and help us build the skills and relationships we need to maintain high performance, feel fulfilled in our interactions, and help others succeed with us.

Let the HRDQ Style Series help you!

FREE Webinar! Breakthrough Creativity

Posted on April 15, 2013 by HRDQ

Breakthrough Creativity:

How to Use Your Talents to Gain a Competitive Advantage

Hosted by HRDQ

Presented by Lynne Levesque

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

2 – 3pm (Eastern Time)

Organizations that integrate creativity into their DNA achieve significant benefits, including better team performance, increased flexibility, greater retention rates, creative problem solving, and strategic decision making. Some say it’s the “secret sauce” that’s needed to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Lynne Levesque is the Author of the Breakthough Creativity Profile – a combination self-assessment and classroom workshop, that helps individuals and teams to leverage their creative strengths, improve their problem-solving skills, increase productivity, and achieve their creative best.

But creativity isn’t limited to artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The fact is everyone is creative. Just as there are multiple styles of intelligence, there are multiple styles of creativity that produce different yet equally valuable results. Variations in how individuals look at the world, gather information, and respond to challenges all have an impact on creative contributions. And the first step in realizing creative potential in individuals and teams is self-discovery.

Join creativity and leadership development expert Dr. Lynne Levesque for an hour-long exploration of creativity in the workplace. She’ll discuss how creative talents impact organizational performance, introduce eight creative talents, and offer a practical framework you can use to accelerate the growth of creative strengths in individuals, teams, and leaders.

What You Will Learn

What it means to be creative at work and why it’s critical to performance
Discover the different ways people can be creative
How to apply creativity to inventive problem solving, strategic decision making, and resilient change management
Understand the impact of different creative talents on teamwork
Identify steps for building creative competency in individuals, teams, and leaders

Who Should Attend

Trainers
Managers and Team Leaders
Human Resources Managers
OD Professionals
Consultants

About the Presenter

Lynne C. Levesque, Ed. D. is an expert in the field of creativity and leadership with over 20 years of experience consulting, training, and researching. She is the author of Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents (Davies-Black: June, 2001), as well as numerous articles and Harvard Business School cases for the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review. Lynne holds an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and an Ed.D. in Creativity from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Click here to register!

The Right Stuff

Posted on April 10, 2013 by HRDQ

Our planet has a specific set of resources. Independently, they’re just a group of things. But, under the right conditions, when they interact with one another and begin processes in which they are interdependent, they have the ability to synthesize into a thing that has greater capabilities. (Liquid water and biogenic elements come together and begin processes facilitated by energy from the sun. With adequate protection and stability, they become life.)

In the same way, a specific group of people can work together interdependently and communicate with each other to accomplish common goals. They can be a team. These conditions, however, do need to be met in order to create a synergistic team:

Interdependence

A group is not a team until its members’ actions depend on each other. Knowing that someone depends on you is a great motivator to regulate and maintain quality, time management, and interpersonal relationships. Everyone learns from everyone else and applies that new knowledge to their own tasks. And with acknowledgement of interdependence comes the open communication of needs – of and between individuals and of the team as a whole.

Communication/Information Flow

A team requires an accurate and constant flow of information – reinforcing goals, needs, and main points. This serves, also, to make transitions smooth, prevent individual departures down unexpected paths, and generate a continuous exchange of ideas – turning over new stones and polishing existing ones. It confirms and reminds of shared assets, shared processes, and shared goals.

Common Goals

Communication and Interdependence only make a team if, rather than maintaining the mindset of perfecting their own tasks, individuals are focused on how best to achieve team goals. Each member needs to understand why everyone is doing what they’re doing, and how they can help to move things forward. The acceptance of and alignment to common goals will structure and strengthen a group – determining the actions and methods of its members, and uniting them as a team.

Bring the concept of team-membership to life through experiential learning in a team building game. Mars Surface Rover will show the members of your organization how to recognize and capitalize on the benefits of being part of a team – highlighting the need for the three conditions above, and writing the formula for success. Illustrated by a fun and memorable activity, the model presented by Mars Surface Rover incorporates soft skills training beyond team building to communication, time management, problem solving, and more.

Get started with this HRDQ customer favorite today, and watch your teams flourish!

Marco…

Posted on April 3, 2013 by HRDQ

Managing employees is a true feat of soft skills. Communication, personality style, leadership, and project and performance management are all put to the test on a daily basis.

Sometimes, the employees you manage might seem like they’re on another planet, even when they’re sitting right in front of you. So, what if they’re in another building? Another city? Another country? Actually ON another planet? It happens.

When employees are discreetly distributed, the manager’s position becomes more important and requires a broader skill set. The manager may be the only link between employees – the one to set schedules, allocate resources, and synthesize production. But he also needs to be the one to ensure alignment – making sure his employees are all aware of and working toward organizational goals.

Although it’s such a basic thing, the loss of face-to-face communication can have a huge impact on how things get done. Written communication and phone skills become invaluable, and relationships need to be built more deliberately without the luxury of casual interactions. Managers who are great face-to-face may find themselves struggling in this new system of information transfer.

They need help filling in the gaps left by the demands of a discreet organizational system. So help them! Managing Offsite Employees is a new title from the Reproducible Training Library. A complete, half-day program, it assesses and builds skills in all areas needed by managers of remote teams.

You can even make your training session into an example of efficient communication and teamwork across distances. Have your managers print out their own participant materials and try an alternative means of meeting – like a webinar or phone or video conference.

Providing the appropriate supervision training is instrumental to a strong team – wherever they are. Settling for resources in a convenient location is a thing of the past. Build your team on a global scale – because you want the best; because it’s possible; because your supervisors know how to manage offsite employees.

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Tag Archives: HRDQ

ASTD Goes Platinum

Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

Renaissance Training

Open with a Joke

What’s My Time Style?