Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • 4 Training Facilitation Tips Gleaned from a Five-Year-Old

    4 Training Facilitation Tips Gleaned from a Five-Year-Old

    “Mommy,” my five-year-old said from the backseat of the car on the way to school one morning, “What do you do for work (pronounced more like wurk)?”

    I wasn’t sure where her question was coming from, but in trying to think about how to describe what I do to so her Pre-K mind would understand, I quickly thought that “consulting” wasn’t going to make sense.

    So, I chose instead to describe what I do in the context of what I was scheduled to do that day.

    “Well, today, I’m going to train some people on their first day of work. I get to help my client get new people excited about where they work and what they are going to get to do.”

    “So, you’re a cunductor?” she said.  Her short u that always seems to replace her short o confused me.  

    “A what?” I asked.  

    “You know a cunductor,” she said with mild frustration.  “Like you help people on and off trains.”

    “Oh, a conductor you mean?” I asked.

    “Yes, she said.”

    I had to chuckle.  In trying to pick a word she would understand opting for training instead of consulting, she used the train to make a connection to actual trains.

    I tried again.

    “I’m like your teacher at school kind of, but I get to teach adults and help them learn at work.  There are no trains involved,” I laughed.

    To which she replied, “So who is your principal?”

    This is just one example of conversations we have as her inquisitive mind processes everything around her in a cute, but also thought provoking way.

    But her questioning helped me to think about some best practices for facilitating training that may help any of you who are “cunductors” aka training facilitators and leaders, helping adults learn at work:

    1. Word choice is important. Consider your audience- age, skill level, position, part of the country or globe, etc.  when deciding if the way your explaining things and your word choice makes sense.  I’m the world’s worst at this but try to avoid catch phrases and sayings.  For example, using “beating a dead horse,” may make sense to some as a way to say we’ve gone over this way too much, but if taken literally and/or being translated into another language, it could cause a lot of confusion.

    In addition, avoid using words that are vague and may cause confusion.  For example, “We will break in a few minutes.” As opposed to, “We will break at 10:15 am.”

    2. Explain things in more than one way and in more than one medium.  Not everyone learns the same way.   Analogies may help in describing something in a way that may make sense as long as it doesn’t violate recommendations in number one above.   In addition, engaging people in listening, writing, drawing, reading, small and large group discussion and individual reflection activities helps to ensure that content is internalized.  Once internalized, it can then be used to help shape and change behaviors on the job.

    3. Slow down when you talk. This may actually be what I’m the worst at in my southern way of talking, but this really hit home for me while facilitating a training this week where everything I said was being translated into another language for about half the participants.  Inserting pauses and breaks in your discussion is helpful.  In addition, inserting a variety of activities helps to break up the speed and prevalence of talking.

    4. Gauge your audience’s understanding.  Watching the facial expressions and body language of your participants, as well as questions they might ask, can help you know if they understand what you are saying.  If you are talking too fast, not explaining things in a way that makes sense or using words/phases that are confusing, facial expressions and body language will cue you to this.  I learned quickly in my training this week that the interpreters would look at me funny if I said something that wasn’t easily translatable or unclear.   

    In addition, participants would stop me to ask clarifying questions, and some were of the “So who is your principal?” nature which showed me I was off the mark in my analogy or explanation of a topic and needed to try again.

    How do you ensure that your “conducting” facilitates adult learning in a way that impacts job performance?

  • 4 Ways to State Your Intentions in Order to Drive the Best Outcomes

    4 Ways to State Your Intentions in Order to Drive the Best Outcomes

    I’m preparing to take my kids into Target, Lord help me. I just need to get some necessities.  I park the car, turn and look them in the eye and tell them, “We are not going to the toy section.  We are here to get milk, a card for someone, and some toilet paper. You will both walk beside me and the cart.  You will not run, and you will not ask if you can go look at toys, okay?”

    I get “yes ma’am”.  And then ask them to repeat back to me what I just said and what they are going to do.

    I silently hope for mostly compliance. 

    Shoot, I should have also added, “No asking for any gum, candy or any type of anything in the checkout aisle,” before going into the store.

    If I’m thinking clearly, I’ve learned to set our intention- both why we are going to into some place and the expectations for their behavior- before we walk into a place. I’ve learned this the hard way. In other words, I’ve had my fair share of public place visits that have involved running through the aisles (the kids, not me), spending 30 minutes in the toy section and breakdowns in the checkout line over “having to have” some strange egg thing that has both chocolate and a toy in it. Oh, how I wish I’d come up with these eggs.

    It’s funny how just telling them what we are going to do and why we are going to do it actually helps. 

    And it’s no different for us as individuals and for us working as groups at work. It’s simply intention setting to regulate behavior and therefore outcomes.

    As a research article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience states:

    ….Effective strategy to reduce this intention–behavior gap is the formation of implementation intentions that specify when, where, and how to act on a given goal in an if-then format (“If I encounter situation Y, then I will initiate action Z!”). It has been proposed that implementation intentions render the mental representation of the situation highly accessible and establish a strong associative link between the mental representations of the situation and the action. 

    Some intention-setting ideas to consider in your workplace include:

    1.    For the love, have a meeting agenda and send it out ahead of time.  In other words, before you get out of the car with your kids at Target, not once you get in the store.  This should specify, when, where, how and who.

    2.    The same thing is true for post-meeting intentions.  Debrief action items post meeting- the what, when, where, how and who- verbally and then send a written follow-up with these action items.

    3.    Have an intention pep talk with yourself before you go into a difficult discussion or situation.  For example, before I got out of the car (man, I’m in my car a lot setting intentions) before going into what I knew could be an uncomfortable situation last week, I asked myself, “What do I want to get out of this?”   The answer was an opportunity to build relationships instead of destroying them. In other words, we aren’t here to look at toys, we are here to get toilet paper.

    Setting this simple intention led to me keeping my mouth shut more than once when I really wanted to say something because I knew I was right. Opening my mouth would most likely have led to my intention being destroyed. This is like the adult version of going into Target and coming out with $100 of stuff you don’t need or can’t afford when you went in to only get said toilet paper.

    4.    If your intention is really just to get toilet paper, a card and some milk, eliminate the things that keep you from doing that.  I can’t totally eliminate my kids nor do I want to, but I can find a better time through more proactive planning to schedule a trip to the store without them.  Or, I could be smart and simply order drive-up pickup.  Oftentimes we have to regroup and set unnecessary intentions because we got so far down the rabbit hole of not setting intentions in the first place. 

    How good are you at setting intentions to regulate your behavior and outcomes?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    How Neuroscience Is and Will Revolutionize HR

    5 Questions to End the Slow Painful Death of Death by Meetings

    A Simple Goal Setting Method

  • The Office Design that Promotes Productivity, Collaboration, and Cost Savings

    The Office Design that Promotes Productivity, Collaboration, and Cost Savings

    Much has been said about the open office floor plan.  The concept arose out of Silicon Valley and became a popular way to supposedly create “collaborative” work environments where innovation happens.  Oh, and as an added bonus, companies saved a lot of money designing office spaces as open.  I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg- the realization that money could be saved this way, or that “collaboration” and therefore innovation would thrive in this type of design.  

    But in many studies, including this one: The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration, it was found that “Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx.70%)” in examining two different corporate headquarters transitioning to more open office spaces. The electronic interaction increased, leading to what would be contrary to what you would think would happen. People in this type of environment socially withdrew from co-workers instead of increasing their interaction.

    In addition, the lost productivity of open office spaces has been cited empirically to reduce productivity. “An Exeter University study showed they actually create a 32% drop in “workers well-being” and a 15% reduction in productivity.” The loss of productivity eliminates any financial gain that decreased square footage provides in an open office design.

    So, what do you do? Ditch the open office? And in favor of what? Back to the cubicle farm?  The answer would be “no”.  As a recent Inc. Magazine article suggests,  working from home is one good option.  It enhances the cost savings for companies even more. In addition, the article also cites how work from home arrangements make people more productive and happier.

    We have no office at Horizon Point. We work from home and at client sites and at the local coffee shop- on our own as well as in group meetings. As we grow, I’ve considered the need to rent or purchase office space. The last time I mentioned it to my team, one person looked at me like if you make me come into an office and do all my work from there and I will quit. And when I think about it, I might quit too. 

    The truth of the matter is asking, where does the best work gets done? And the answer isn’t any one type of office arrangement. Different environments breed different results depending on the work or task at hand.

    As cited in the February cover story of FastCompany, “’People have different needs throughout their day and throughout their life. They might need to focus at a certain point and talk to someone at another point.’”

    With this reality at hand, it makes sense that the best office space is not one at all, but many. And the key is for leaders to manage in a way that gives employees the empowerment to match the type of work they need to accomplish with the environment that best suits it.

    Tomorrow my office will be at the gym where I will read a business book while I’m running on the treadmill. The one I’m currently reading relates to a new presentation I’m working on about how to implement a values-based culture. Next, it will be in my car as I return a few calls after dropping my kids off at school. Then, on to the local coffee shop where I can have some background noise but a limited distraction to revise training content for a client and create verbiage for collateral pieces for our new business. Then, I’m on to a client site for lunch and a meeting in order to finalize some training content we will use with their team in the next week or two.

    Obviously, there is some work that doesn’t allow us to choose where we do it. If you are running a multi-million-dollar press making parts for a car, let’s say, it’s not likely you can do that from your own car or the café (yet).  

    However, when we don’t assume one trend or style fits all, we begin to mold a better office environment and work culture where people can do their best work.

    Where will you be getting your best work done today?

  • When striving for a culture of “collaboration” kills your business

    When striving for a culture of “collaboration” kills your business

    We conducted a focus group about a year ago with a group of business leaders around the idea of organizational values and culture.   In this focus group, we presented seven key values, based on research that defined organizational culture.   The goal was to see what these professionals thought about these seven values in the context of a broader assessment product.  And whether this values set could predict a company’s culture in order to match candidates to cultures that align with individual the candidates’ values.

    Often things like this come down to semantics, but one piece of feedback where there was agreement was that the value of “collaboration” is something all companies want. Is this really what we meant or did we need to change the name of this value to reflect more of something that could be seen on a continuum?  Many of the others values we presented were viewed as a continuum that didn’t lend the value to be seen as right or wrong, just different in different work environments.

    We haven’t changed the name of this value yet and maybe we will, but in reflecting on the feedback and on experience working with a variety of companies that try to promote a collaborative culture, I have seen the dark side of it.

    The dark side of a focus on collaboration comes in the form of it sabotaging organizational health.  It flows something like this from a behavioral perspective:

    1. In the name of collaboration, we have to have “everyone” involved in order to make a decision big or small.
    2. Because “everyone” has to be involved to make any decision, it takes forever.  Never mind that we already passed a budget that has built in decisions in it or adopted a strategy that everyone agreed upon, we still need to meet on the minutia of those efforts.  And, oh by the way, if you want to get everyone together in a meeting to decide on this minor detail, it will have to be in a month because everyone’s calendar is full from the other small decisions that it was decided needed everyone’s involvement that came up two months ago.
    3. People get frustrated because everything takes so long and they begin to feel like they have no control over what they were hired to do.  They don’t have any decision-making authority even if their job title warrants it.
    4. It looks like everyone needs to be involved in the decision-making process in the name of collaboration, but everyone still knows who makes the final decision or whose voice is heard the most.  So, a lot of political posturing takes place in preparation for those meetings that have to be scheduled for months out.

    In the end, what is couched as “collaboration” is actually the complete opposite of it.  And the results that the “collaboration” is designed to lead to ends up being missed opportunities and high turnover because of frustration and stalled decision making.

    When have you seen “collaboration” go bad?

  • Do Meetings Negatively Impact Productivity?

    Do Meetings Negatively Impact Productivity?

    Last week, during a meeting with a client’s leadership team, we got on the topic of just how much time they spend each week in meetings. One of the managers told me that meetings take up about five to six hours of his day, every day! That only leaves him two hours to get his work accomplished. When I asked him to tell me about his meetings, his list went something like this:

    8 AM- Meeting with team 1 to discuss issues

    9 AMM- Meeting with team 2 to determine what issues from 8 AM meeting are critical

    10 AM- Meeting with team 3 to determine how to manage/resolve critical issues determined in 9AM meeting

    And this is EVERY day! Three hours of his day are spent discussing the same topics with different groups.

    How often have you attended a meeting and walked out thinking “that was a waste of my time” or “that could have been said in an email.” Have you ever gone to a regularly scheduled meeting for months and then have someone in that meeting tell you that there probably isn’t a need for you to attend?

    Studies show that high level executives spend on average over twenty hours per week in meetings. That’s half of their workweek! Lower level managers spend between about ten and fifteen hours per week in meetings. They are such a part of our lives that companies like MeetingKing.com  and Meeting Stats  help to quantify time and money spent on meetings as well as help to organize and track meeting information.

    While we can’t eliminate meetings from our workday, there are strategies that we can use to make sure those meetings are successful and lead to an increase in productivity instead of a decrease.

    1. Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself if it’s really necessary. Can you accomplish your goal by sending an email, or picking up the phone for a quick call? Are you duplicating information that is covered in another meeting?
    2. Invite the right people. As you add others to the meeting invite, ask yourself if they really need to attend, or if the information presented during the meeting can be passed along to them afterwards. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, has the “two pizza rule”.  Never invite more people than what two pizzas would comfortably feed.
    3. Prepare in advance. In order to maximize your time, plan the meeting out in advance and send a copy of the meeting agenda out to the attendees at least 24 hours prior if possible. Then stick to it (both the agenda and the allotted time). According to Meeting King, research shows that 39% of employees admit to dozing off during meetings. Don’t let your meeting drag on so long that you’re putting them to sleep!
    4. Designate a scribe or secretary. Have someone take meeting minutes that can be distributed afterwards to those employees who were not invited (or couldn’t attend), but need to know what was discussed or decided during the meeting.  
    5. Reassess the need. If you have standing meetings, reassess them occasionally to determine if they’re still necessary. Is the content still relevant, do they overlap with other meetings that could be combined, are those in attendance still required, and are they effective?

    If you tallied up the time you sent in meetings in the last month, how much of that time would you consider productive versus unproductive?