… speaking of cross cultural communications, check out these eyebrows
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Diversity & culture
Did you catch my cross cultural communications contest – Do First Nations people look you in the eye? More cultural lessons for training & development? If you didn’t see it, check it out.
And if you want a look at the contest answer check out this post …… Do First Nations people look you in the eye?
Spoiler alert –> and speaking of eyebrows … how do you think this video would go over inter-culturally?!
Tags: crosscultural communications
3 steps to achieve lift off – training to be a great trainer
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
‘How do I get started as a trainer?’ is a question I’m often asked (that and, ‘how do I get a job doing training work with the U.N?’).
Training to be a great trainer involves three steps:
1. Be a SME (subject matter expert) – no matter if you’re training people in heart surgery, human resources or horror films you gotta, gotta, gotta be a SME. You have to know your stuff. Know it in your head – keep up with trade journals, conferences, books, websites and other forms of professional development. And know it in your heart – if you’re not passionate about your subject matter your participants will know in a nanosecond and their attention will desert you.
2. Completely apart from your SME you must, must, must know how to actually train. Know your pedagogy from your dodgy one size fits all approach. In other words know how people learn. It’s amazing to me how many people teach without knowing how people learn. How you can do the one without knowing the other is beyond me but sadly it’s very common.
Similarly know how to:
- make training sticky
- increase participation
- increase retention
- evaluate learning
- design and deliver learning that is inclusive and accessible
And similarly with being a SME, know it in your head (the technical, theoretical, information) and in your heart (if you’re not passionate about learning and helping people discover new information, ways of being and doing and ways of looking at the world training isn’t the field for you.
3. Do it! Just as you can’t teach someone to swim without them getting in the water, you can’t learn how to be a great trainer without actually doing it. Find every opportunity you can to get in front of people and teach. You’ll learn volumes. Volumes that you won’t find in any book.
So there you have it – get your SME on, know how to teach and do it – and you’ll achieve lift off as a great trainer.
P.S. stay tuned for an announcement on August 15th about my BIG lift-off.
Tags: subject matter experts, train the trainer
What does a hand dryer look like? Depends on your perspective
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Travel
I love things and people that make me shift or readjust my perspective. Like crossing the street and the hand dryer.
What does a hand dryer look like to you?
Like this?
Or like this and this?
Both of them get the job done, just differently.
How does your perspective frame how you see the world?
P.S. stay tuned for a BIG announcement on the 15th about how I’m radically shifting my perspective.
Tags: perspective
Are you in your training & development zone? The sponge lady sure is!
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
As a trainer it’s key to be in your zone. Tired? Bored? Don’t like your subject matter? Your participants will be able to tell in a nano-second.
Not only do you need to be in your zone but your participants too.
Vygotsky coined the term zone of proximal development and it’s key to keep in mind when training. Content too hard? Participants will shut down in frustration. Content too easy? Participants will tune out in boredom. Content just right? That’s the sweet spot.
Check out what being in the zone looks like for one instructor. While I don’t necessarily recommend this much enthusiasm (tongue in cheek!), it makes the point about the effect being enthusiastic. I dare you not to get a little bit enthused about watching her enthusiasm.
The zone. Gotta love it.
(And speaking of being in the zone, stay tuned for an exciting announcement!)
Tags: vygotsky, zone of proximal development
3 tips to Make Light Work from Kate Sutherland
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
Kate Sutherland kindly sent me a copy of her book Make Light Work – 10 Tools for Inner Knowing. It’s an easy read and even easier to apply. Here are three tips I took away for “tools that can help you live and work in ways that are more effective, more in harmony with your trust self, and more fun:”
1. Unpacking Flirts – yes, that’s flirts. The name caught my attention. It was coined by Arnold Mindell, founder of Process Oriented Psychology.
Kate says to pick up (pun intended) flirts simply notice what you notice. If you are open and attentive, answers and information can be right under your nose. In other words what we need to know and do can be apparent if we’re open. Period.
I like the sense of ease that accompanies flirts. No blood, sweat and tears, simply an openess, a receptivity, an awareness.
Specifically:
- have a question or intention in mind
- notice what catches your attention
- invite answers
- seek insight
How can you use a flirt within the training and development field? Look for flirts related to intriguing content matter, new ways to offer previous content and/or new places to teach.
2. Guiding Images – a trainer and facilitator herself, years ago Kate started to look for guiding images at the beginning of a new project.
She says the images are a way to orient yourself as you begin a new project and serve as a touchstone once you’re underway.
A guiding image is a symbol or picture that comes from our inner world. Because the image comes from within it is ‘worth a thousand words’, often encoding deep meaning and insight in a single flash.
How can you use guiding images in training and development?
- see what image comes up for each workshop you teach
- find a guiding image for your overall subject matter
- intuit a guiding image for your overall company
- and perhaps most interesting, find an image that describes you as a trainer and get your participants to do the same
3. Burning Your Wood – perhaps it’s because I’ve camped since I was in a baby but this tool caught my eye. You don’t even need any matches (or wood for that matter).
Kate describes Burning Your Wood as an inner work tool for dealing with challenging people and situations. It involves identifying what triggers us, and reflecting on whether the triggers are something we do or need to be doing. The final step is to act on the insights, so that the ‘wood’ (the part of us that got triggered) gets all burned up and there is none of it left to catch fire.
You don’t necessarily need to speak to the ‘triggeree.’ It’s not about changing them but rather changing how you’re framing the situation.
How can you use burning your wood in training and development?
- notice when you are triggered (e.g. by a challenging participant)
- get curious, dig deep and figure out what’s triggering you
- being aware will start to change things
- figure out if being aware is enough or if action is called for
- act on the insights. The wood is only truly burned when we take the new insights into new behaviour.
To find out more about Kate and her work, simply click on her website.
P.S. Stay tuned for a pretty darn exciting announcement from Lee-Anne!
Tags: kate sutherland, make light work
Training & development learning well July blog post round up
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Human resources, Training & development
Voila – here’s the Rock.Paper.Scissors’ monthly training & development round up. You’ll find all the blog posts for the month of July below.
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.
Tags: learning well, round up, training & development
Through the learning / looking glass – 7 things my reading glasses have taught me about learning
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
Reading glasses are a relatively new acquisition for me. They’re never far from my side these days. In fact I’m wearing them as I type this (that’s me above).
Given my focus on learning, I figure my specs have taught me a few things about learning:
Lesson number 1: don’t reinvent the wheel (or frame), get help from someone in the know.
When I found myself holding reading materials further and further away I knew I needed some help (either that or longer arms). A visit to my optometrist showed that it was time for reading glasses. No fancy prescription was necessary just some drugstore reading glasses.
Lesson number 2: how you frame (pun intended) learning has a lot to do with learners’ receptivity. Is it a problem, a challenge or a possibility?
Rather than bemoaning my fading 20/20 eyesight I was determined to accept this fact of aging gracefully. In fact I set out to find some glasses that were fun, funky, smart and sexy. That’s me above in my red pair.
Lesson number 3: talk to your friends and colleagues when you’re learning something new. In addition to experts they can give you valuable insight (pun again intended).
I told my good friend Tara Fenwick about buying my first pair. She said ‘What? You bought only one? You’ll need more than one. You’ll need one for your purse, one for beside your bed, one for your desk etc.’ I thought at the time she was exaggerating but being able to see is a priority and searching for glasses is no fun. I’ve lost track of how many pairs I’ve now bought.
Lesson number 4: learning isn’t a straight line. Learning a particular thing often uncovers many other things to learn.
Once I got comfortable wearing glasses, which was no mean feat, I discovered new issues. BEcause I don’t need my glasses all the time I frequently take them off. But where to put them? If I put them on my head they fall off when I bend over. If I take them right off I tend to loose them.
Lesson number 5: learning leaps ahead when there’s a strategy.
I live in a townhouse with several levels. Before I developed a strategy often several pairs of glasses would end up on one level which was inevitably not the level I was on. Now my glasses don’t leave ‘their’ level.
Lesson number 6: learning always requires resources (even if it’s ‘just’ time).
I travel a fair bit and realized I needed some way to carry my glasses so they wouldn’t break. Now I have a spiffy neoprene cover that’s light and coloruful.
Lesson number 7: learning happens best in community. Find your learning tribe.
Who knew reading glasses would be such a conversation topic. It’s something I now share with my in-laws when we commiserate about loosing a pair.
Tags: learning, reading glasses, Tara Fenwick
Witness the demise of prejudice
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Diversity & culture, Humor & comedy
Tags: children, homophobia, learning, ping pong, prejudice
What’s making that noise? Learning in a heartbeat
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
I was teaching a Workshops that Work workshop a while back, where I was training subject matter experts how to teach. It’s one of my favourite workshops because you just never know what kind of subject matter experts are going to show up and I always end up learning a little about a wide variety of subject matter.
Each time I teach the workshop I encourage participants to get up and practice teaching for 5-10 minutes. This workshop was no exception.
One guy, who I’ll call Michael, got up to teach. He was a nurse and he taught us several things that nurses do to quickly assess the health of a patient. It was interesting.
What was even more interesting was when he started talking about our hearts. Specifically about how the heart pumps blood throughout our body. Now everybody knows that our hearts are designed to pump blood, nothing new there.
But do you know what is making the sound of your heart beat? What exactly is making that noise? I’d never thought about it and if pressed, I likely would have said it’s the sound of the blood pumping in and around the chambers.
Not so.
The sound of your heart beat is the sound of your valves opening and closing.
Now I don’t know about you but that absolutely fascinated me. I was gobsmacked. The fact that I can hear the inner workings of my valves had my focus lasered in on him. I was captivated.
Funny thing was he tossed this fact out rather off-handedly. I’m sure he didn’t think it was a big deal.
That’s the thing about learning. You just never know what you can share about your perspective that will alter someone’s learning.
Here’s to illuminating learning, one heart beat at a time.
Tags: learning, workshops that work
Are you all hat & no cattle? asks John Rich
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
Ok. I freely (somewhat abashedly) admit. I’m a reality show junkie. During the recent run of Celebrity Apprentice county singer and contestant John Rich (who knew they made country singers so dang cute?) was overheard saying …
Are you all hat and no cattle?
Love it.
When it comes to training & development how’s your hat to cattle ratio?
- Do you walk your talk as a trainer?
- Do you know that taking breaks encourages retention, but you just want to squeeze in one (or five) more things?
- Do you know that participants learn best when they’re in their zone of proximal development, but find yourself taking it easy or pushing too hard?
- Do you know that humour is great for learning but find you’re scared to use it?
Training and development is tough. Invoking interest (let along learning) when attention is so scarce ain’t for the faint of heart.
Come on. Join me for a wild ride. Grab your hat and your cattle. Let’s go wrangle some learning.
Tags: humour, john rich, learning, zone, zone of proximal development