Tips on how to use Twitter before, during & after your training workshops
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Training & development
I had a blast recently, teaching a brand new course called Transforming Workplace Learning through Social Media. Of all the Social Media tools we talked about, Twitter was the one that caused the most perplexed brows. A couple of people requested more information on how to use Twitter in training.
Ask & yee shall receive…
Ideas for how to use Twitter to help you prepare for training
- Use a poll like PollEverywhere to do a needs assessment with your participants. Click here for an example.
- Ask participants to introduce themselves, for example with the name, location & 1 thing they want to learn from the workshop or what their biggest challenge is facing them that’s related to the workshop topic.
- Do some research on your subject matter using Twitter. Use a tool like Twellow to research folks on Twitter who are tweeting about your subject matter. Contact them ahead of time – ask for ideas and/or resources. Ask if they’d be willing to answer questions from your participants during the workshop.
Ideas for how to use Twitter during a training
- Have participants use Twitter to ask questions during the workshop – have a live tweet stream to show the Q&A’s as they come in. Note: To do this you’ll need to create a hashtag for your workshop. A hashtag is simply a term you create prefaced by # that helps users find tweets related specifically to your workshop. For the ‘Transforming Workplace Learning through Social Media’ course I recently taught, I used #JISocMedia. If you put that hashtag into the search box in twitter you’ll come up with all tweets related to the course.
- Tweet a link to a poll like GoPollGo to ask participants where they are currently at with the subject matter. Click here for an example.
- If you’ve been able to pre-arrange a Twitter chat with someone knowledgeable about your subject matter do it live during the workshop (see bullet above under the ‘prepare’ heading).
Ideas for how to use Twitter to anchor the learning (eg after the training)
- Note: remember to use your workshop hashtag so people can find your workshop content easily.
- Continue the conversation. Send out updates after the workshop via Twitter.
- Ask a question about your workshop subject matter &/or offer further resources.
- Ask folks how they’ve been applying their learning.
- Recommend people to follow on Twitter who are subject matter experts in your workshop content.
- If you use a follow-up resource package, send a link to it via Twitter (if you’re okay about making it public).
- Do some informal evaluation – ask participants questions via Twitter about their experience with the workshop, with the subject matter.
Want more ideas? See Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainer’s book; she has a specific chapter on Twitter.
Tags: jane bozarth, polleverywhere, social media, trainng & development, twellow, twitter
Communication skills 101 (or how to posture with a moose)
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
Communication skills 101 is about how we hold ourselves. What our bodies say about us.
Posturing = power dynamics + lack of awareness.
Posturing def’n = a particular way of behaving that is intended to convey a false impression. When someone is posturing they’re trying to hide how they feel inside.
Posture + power = how we hold our body, how much (or how little) space we take up. When we strike a pose with our posture we can convey a whole lot (or little) power.
Often when someone is posturing they’re acting out a perspective that doesn’t feel natural to them, a Life Lens™ that doesn’t fit so well. A Go Life Lens™ trying to act more reflective or a Stop Life Lens™ trying to be spontaneous.
Watch how even a moose reacts to posturing and power.
Communicate & strike a pose. Just don’t posture.
Tags: communication, posture, posturing
Training & development learning well November blog post round up
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Conflict resolution, Training & development
November has wrapped her winds around the last of the leaves, making way for December and all its celebrations. If you didn’t catch all the posts this month simply blow through the list below and click as you wish.
Learn well in the training & development learning well.
Dive deep into the learning well or take a small sip. Shower yourself in training & development or just get your big toe wet.
Refresh & refreshing.
As you wish.
- The Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is out:
Tags: brain based learning, change management, confict resolution, icebreaker, life lenses, perspective, social media, team building, technical requirements, workplace learning
The Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is out: funny resources related to John Medina’s Brain Rules book
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
This month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is a review of John Medina’s wonderful Brain Rules book, where he talks about what our world could be like if our businesses & boardrooms matched how our brains work (instead of going against the gray matter).
Check out the entire e-newsletter here and/or see below for some funny resources related to his 12 Brain Rules principles.
- Related to John’s Brain Rules exercise principle check out this phenomenally creative way to encourage folks to exercise. When was the last time you got this excited about working out?
- Related to John’s Brain Rules attention principle see this funny video clip about the dangers of not paying attention.
- Everyone needs to sleep. Related to John’s sleep principle watch yourself melt as you see this guy’s technique for inducing sleep.
- My favourite Brain Rules principle is exploration. If we don’t explore we can feel trapped. Watch this uber creative video trapped in an IPhone.
Ronen’s Adventure: Trapped in an iPhone (A Video Jigsaw Puzzle) from Ronen V on Vimeo.
Tags: brain based learning, brain rules, john medina
How mountains & cantaloupes go together when it comes to the high view
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
After laughing out loud at this one, and firmly pushing back memories of ugh-inducing highschool algebra classes that threatened to emerge, the cartoon made me think of the lessons that cantaloupes a.k.a. Mountain Life Lenses™ have to teach us.
On a bad day Carrot Life Lenses™ (Mountain’s polar opposite) can have their head buried in the sand. Carrots can be uber-focused on details that are neither important or strategic. Like not noticing that having 60 cantaloupes is a little odd.
It’s mountains who are likely to say ‘hang on a minute, what’s going on here?!’
Because they can see far ahead, Mountain Life Lenses™ can more easily see the big picture and notice when something is amiss.
Before Mountains get too cocky though, know that every Life Lens™ has its good and bad days. Mountains, on a bad day, can have their heads in the clouds and conversely, not notice the details.
C’est la vie.
Yin Yang.
Tags: carrot lens, communication, mountain lens, perspective, worldview
The Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is out: resources for matching how our brains work with how business & boardrooms could work
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Training & development
This month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is a review of John Medina’s wonderful Brain Rules book. John does a great job of inspiring us to rethink cubicles and classrooms.
Check out the entire e-newsletter here and/or see below for resources related to how to have our boardrooms and businesses working in sync with how our brains actually work (instead of working against how our brains work, which is how cubicles and classrooms are typically designed today).
John’s book outlines 12 principles for how the brains work. I’ve taken some of those principles and matched them with resources for you.
- Check out John’s book here: Brain Rules; 12 principles for Surviving & Thriving at Work, Home & School.
- Regarding John’s Brain Rules exercise principle, see this infographic for how sitting is killing us
- I’ve bookmarked a bunch of brain-based learning resources in my Delicious account; access them here.
- Regarding John’s Brain Rules stress principle, read a blog post I wrote about stress called Learning can be stressful; throwing learning to the dogs
- In terms of exploration, another Brain Rules principle, why not explore a variety of ways to soothe your brain & meditate via Deepak Chopra’s online meditation program?
Check these out, your brain will love you for it.
Tags: attention, brain based learning, brain rules, deepak chopra, exploration, john medina, stress
The Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is out: Rethinking cubicles & classrooms: matching how our brains work with how business & boardrooms could work
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Communication, Training & development
This month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors’ newsletter reviews John Medina’s Brain Rules book. See the entire newsletter here, including a bunch of related resources and/or read the book review below.
What is ‘easily the most sophisticated information transfer system on earth?’
Our brains says molecular biologist John Medina in his book Brain Rules; 12 principles for Surviving & Thriving at Work, Home & School.
Our brains were originally ‘designed to solve problems related to surviving in unstable outdoor environments and to do so in nearly constant motion,’ says John. If we were going to design environments that deliberately hobble our abilities and work against the brain, classrooms and cubicles would take the grand prize.
Most of us have no idea how our brain works … and that has strange consequences. This self-described nice guy[1] & grumpy scientist lays out 12 rules for how our brains work & the implications of those workings. The M.G.T. or Medina Grump Factor ensures he doesn’t quote any studies that haven’t passed his (very) rigorous standards.
Brain Rules book is peppered with humourous twists that peek inside the workings of your gray matter with glee. Here are highlights for 7 of John’s Brain Rules.
Brain rule 1: Exercise
What can decrease your risk for general dementia by 50% and decrease your chances of getting Alzheimer’s by a whopping 60%? Exercise. Physical activity is cognitive candy. Our ancestors were used to walking 12 miles … per day and before you think you have to measure up to those standards, exercising a mere 2 times per week can effect the changes he’s talking about.
Brain rule 2: Attention
Better attention always means better learning. If that’s not something to make your ears perk up, John says that, because we don’t pay attention to boring things, ‘if keeping someone’s attention in a lecture was a business, it would have an 80% failure rate’.
What grabs our attention?
- Memory: we use previous experiences to predict where to put our attention
- Interest: if we think something’s important we’ll pay attention
- Culture: turns out our culture affects our attention. Urban Asians for example pay more attention to the context of a visual scene, while urban Americans pay more attention to the details in the foreground. (Wonder what Canadians do?)
- Emotions: if something is emotionally arousing we’ll remember it better
- Meaning: we remember meaning before details
And being able to pay attention to several things at once? Turns out multitasking is a myth. It is biologically impossible for us to multitask. What we call multitasking is task switching or jumping from one thing to another and back again. Yet we persist in thinking we’re great multitaskers, even though interruptions make us take 50% longer to complete a task and with 50% more mistakes.
And the younger generation, what with their IPhones, IPads, Facebook, and Twitter universes? They’re simply faster at task switching.
Brain rule 3: Survival
When we came out of the trees it was with a sign on our backs saying ‘eat me, I’m prey.’ Historically we gave up stability (hanging out in trees all day) to adapt to variation. And so began our march towards to being ‘increasingly allergic to inflexibility & stupidity.’
Brain rule 4: Sleep
What management strategy will improve performance 34% in 26 minutes? Sleep. That’s why some progressive companies encourage napping on company time.
If we sleep well we think well.
Conversely, the nap zone (that sleepy time mid-afternoon that all trainers dread) is literally fatal. There is no other time of day when there are more traffic accidents. Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, memory, mood, reasoning and math.
Why do we sleep? To learn. Rats who learn a maze pattern by day, replay the same maze thousands of times in their sleep. And if they are interrupted & not allowed to do that replay in their sleep they don’t remember the maze the next day.
Brain rule 5: Stress
Why does stress cause some of us to go off the deep end while others maintain their equanimity? It comes down to control. The more loss of control we perceive the more severely we experience stress.
Historically our stressful survival issues were resolved in seconds (evade charging lion or be eaten) but now stressful incidents can continue for hours, days, months and even years. If sleep is like candy to a baby, then ongoing stress is like crack cocaine. Stress affects learning, language, memory & concentration. The Centres for Disease Control & Prevention say that 80% of medical expenditures are now stress related.
So what’s a stressed out person to do? The number one successful stress strategy is regaining control.
Brain rule 6: Sensory Integration
Stimulate more of the senses and you’ll have better learning. Learning is more effective in a multi-sensory environment … & the effect can be measured 20 years later.
Scent is particularly strong. In one experiment vending machines that gave off a smell of chocolate increased sales by 60%. Using the same principle, Starbucks employees are not allowed to wear perfume on the job because it interferes with the coffee olfactory experience.
Brain rule 7: Exploration
Perhaps it’s because I’ve moved to Africa for a year but this one particularly caught my interest. ‘We are natural explorers, even if the habit sometimes stings us. The tendency is so strong, it is capable of turning us into lifelong learners.’
‘When we came down from the trees to the savannah, we did not say to ourselves, “Good lord, give me a book & a lecture & a board of directors so I can spend 10 years learning how to survive in this place.” Our survival did not depend upon exposing ourselves to organized, pre-planned packets or information. Our survival depended upon chaotic, reactive information-gathering experiences. That’s why one of our best attributes is the ability to learn through a series of self-corrected ideas.’
Brain Rules is a great read if you’re in the training and development field and/or have responsibility for managing and working with people. I join John in urging you to:
- Explore. Go seek some adventure.
- Get plenty of sleep and exercise.
- Pay attention to attention, because it’s scarce and it’s valuable.
- Take back control and your stress will decrease.
Your brain will thank you for it.
Tags: attention, brain rules, exercise, john medina, sensory integration, sleep, stress, survival
Push or pull – stubborn, damn doors are an insight into our conflict resolution psyche
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Change management & wellness, Conflict resolution
Our own perspectives – how we see the world – seem natural, normal and RIGHT, especially when we are under stress. When in conflict we tend to do MORE of what ISN’T working.
How many times, in conflict resolution, have you said the same thing over and over and over and yet the person still didn’t get it?
How many times do we bang our heads against the door trying to get people to see things our way, when we’re stubbornly resistant to seeing things others’ way?
You can try pushing but maybe try pulling from time to time.
Note: I originally saw this photo in a presentation by the wonderful Brene Brown.
Tags: brene brown, Conflict resolution
10 things that go into picking a great teambuilding icebreaker
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Teambuilding
Recently I received an email from a Human Resources colleague who I have enormous respect for. She was looking for some ideas for teambuilding icebreakers for an upcoming event. I get this kind of request fairly frequently and have made it a practice to not suggest any specific activities.
Here’s why in my response below, where I outline 10 things to consider when you’re picking a great teambuilding icebreaker:
I make it a practice to not recommend icebreakers to folks without knowing more about the setting. When I’m planning activities for workshops I lead for example, these are some of the things that go into the selection:
- number of people
- how well (or not) they know each other
- are they from the same organization or different oganizations
- if they are from the same organization:
- do they work in close physical proximity or not
- are there any issues I should know about that are going on recently in the workplace (eg pending bargaining, conflict etc)
- what is the organizational culture like
- are there any access issues
- what is the range of ages
- what is the gender breakdown
- what’s happening before and after the activity
- what is the room like; the seating arrangements etc
(hmmm this has the makings of a blog post me thinks)
I love that you thought to ask me (really, I’m honoured as I hold you in very high esteem) and hope you understand my reasoning.
You may be interested in this online resource for learning activities: www.trainingmakescents.com. You can sign up for a free newsletter that includes teambuilding icebreakers; I’ve found the activities to vary in applicability to my audiences but there are some good ones.
Simply & sincerely
Lee-Anne
P.S. She responded very graciously and understood my reasoning.
What about you? What ideas do you have for picking a great teambuilding icebreaker?
A social media training treasure hunt
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Training & development
Today is the first day of a brand spanking new course I’m teaching called ‘Transforming Workplace Learning through Social Media’ and I thought I’d let you in on some of the treasures to be found when you incorporate Social Media into your training and development work.
(And yes, Social Media deserves to be capitalized ….. pun intended.)
New to Social Media? A little nervous about it? Haven’t a hot clue how to use it in training and development?
Have no fear, that’s where this treasure hunt comes in. Simply answer the questions below – and put your answers on this Google Doc I created. To do that, simply click on the link, add your name to the next column and type in your answers to the questions below. Here we go.
There are 10 questions that highlight 10 different Social Media tools. Have fun matey – as thar’s gold in the waves that Social Media is creating.
- LinkedIn – is a great way to share upcoming training events. For example, click on my LinkedIn profile page and, looking under my events, find out what my next workshop is. Write your answer on the Google doc.
- Facebook – isn’t just something that your teenage kid does to annoy you, it’s the source of all sorts of great things. Take a look at my Facebook page and write a comment below one of my posts. Then copy your comment to the Google doc page.
- Twitter – look at my Twitter profile and look at my lists. Lists are groups of people I follow, categorized into, well, lists. Find my Social Media Twitter list and click on one person from the list. Put their name in the Google doc and 1 interesting thing about them. Having trouble finding the list? You can access it directly here. OR if you are comfortable with Twitter, send me a tweet asking me a question (write your question in the Google doc as well). My Twitter handle (or name) is @LeeAnneRagan
- Blogs- are great for sharing vast amounts of resources and training material. Take a look at my Rock.Paper.Scissors Inc. blog, read one post (any post) and write down three words that the post makes you think of on the Google doc. (This is going to be fun – I’ll surprise you later with what I’m going to do with those three words.)
- Delicious – is a marvelous social bookmarking site. Once you have an account (which is free) you can ‘tag’ or put reminder words on websites and other resources that you come across on the web. It’s like having a full-time knowledge management person at your beck and call. Check out my Delicious account. Click on one link that I’ve bookmarked (any link) and write down which one you clicked on in the Google doc.
- Flickr – is a photo sharing site. Currently there are some 2 billion photos stored there. Check out my Flickr ‘stream’ (just a fancy word for my Flickr account) and look at some of the photos. Describe one of the photos in the Google doc (or if you know how, copy the photo into the Google doc).
- AStore – (or Amazon store) is a great way to list the books you recommend as a trainer. You can list books by categories to make it really easy for your training participants. See my AStore as an example. Look at the ‘Training Trainers: how to teach’ section. Browse the books. Which one is your favourite? List it on the Google doc.
- Newsletters – continue to be a good way of reaching groups that haven’t yet caught onto Social Media as much. My monthly newsletter are all listed here. Click on one of them and record your thoughts about it on the Google doc. (Make sure you include the name of the newsletter you’re commenting on.)
- Doodle – is a fun online tool that helps find out when is the best time for people to meet. I’ve created a mock Doodle which you can access here. Pretend that we are trying to find the best time to leave on a training & development study tour in Paris. Simply click on the link above, enter your mock (remember this is mock!) results, then also enter your #1 date on the Google do. Merci!
- Video is a great way to use Social Media – either ones other people have filmed or ones you yourself have recorded. Below is an example video I shot to describe the Social Media course. Take a look and see if you can guess where it was filmed (any and all creative responses are welcome). Write your response in the Google doc.
Tags: amazon, astore, blog, delicious, doodle, facebook, flickr, google doc, linkedin, social media, twitter, youtube