Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Personal Development

We all need a little personal development mixed in with our professional and career development. Read blogs in this category for stories and best practices for personal wellness and wellbeing, skills improvement, and  more.

  • 3 Ways to Create Insights for Learning Transfer

    3 Ways to Create Insights for Learning Transfer

    “Mom, I made a connection!” we hear our son say quite frequently now.

    We didn’t teach him about “connections” so someone at school must be talking about paying attention to be able to make connections between information and learning.

    For example, a couple of weeks ago they read a book about Rosie an Engineer and then “engineered” a plane to see if it would fly.  He loved it- the building the plane part, not the reading ☺

    This past weekend, he was playing in the front yard and came running in. “Mom, Mom! Come outside, I need to show you something.”

    I walked outside with him and he showed me how a nerf plane flew better if he threw it from one direction better than the other direction.  

    I asked him, “What do you think caused it to fly better that way instead of the other?”

    He said, “It’s like my Rosie plane, the wind direction affected it.”

    Lightbulb moment.  A connection.

    I love watching the lightbulb go off for him.  Really, I love watching the lightbulb go off for anyone. It is one of the joys of training people.

    What he calls a connection and what I call a lightbulb moment is what two speakers at the 2019 SHRM Talent Management conference call insight.

    Dan Heath talked about creating moments of insight is a key driver in creating moments.  

    David Rock, Founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, discussed how insights are a critical thing that has to happen in order to create habits that can help transform organizational culture.

    Insights change our world and our opinions and help us make sense of things in order to apply that learning to other things. It happens when your unconscious is solving the problem. The moment something comes together, it generates the motivation to change.

    In other words, because my son learned in one context, he turned to face the other direction in throwing his nerf plane. He changed his behavior.

    In a training example, it comes when a manager sits through two days of DiSC training to learn how to better understand himself and others. He goes back to the office and three days later is discussing a “problem” employee with the HR Manager. There he says, “You know, I’ve always thought Jim was just a jerk, but now I see it might just be that his personality is a C style. Let’s talk about how the DiSC model could be applied to me helping him.”

    Lightbulb.

    So how do you create insights in learning and in life?

    1. Identify one or two critical insights you want to transfer.   

    My son’s teacher may have identified that she wanted the students to understand that 1) a structure’s design and 2) the external environment affects a product’s ability to perform.   Based on that, she designed activities to help the students realize this for themselves.

    In training, I want people to have a lightbulb moment that we are all more similar than we think we are. I want to transfer that we are more the same than we are different, all with the goal to establish empathy.  I use a Tell Your Story activity to do this, and then I get all participants to share the 3-5 critical stories that have shaped their lives. Undoubtedly, this starts off as very difficult, but in the end, connections are formed that would haven’t ever been expected.  Which brings me to my next point…

    2. Blend storytelling and science.  

    We internalize stories more than we do facts, but we need facts to convince people. Especially logical business people. The most effective speakers and trainers blend both.  They use a story to support the science they are trying to get across. Case in point, I attempt to start most of my blog posts with a story to illustrate a point that is grounded in some research. (Sorry if I’m continually boring you with stories about my kids to make a point).

    If you want the science behind insights, read this. (You will have to join to access it.)

    3. Allow for Quiet

    Insights come from a quiet brain (see the research).  If you are training, ask a question, and then pause for three minutes before getting responses.  Give people time to create insights through a quiet brain.

    I think this also extends to simply allowing for margins in our life in order to create the quiet brain we need for insights to take place.  

    Maybe we all need some time to play in the front yard without pressure to be somewhere next or get something done.

    When have the greatest insights in your life occurred for you? How has your behavior changed as a result of it?

  • 5 Things To Consider in Pursuing Passion in Work

    5 Things To Consider in Pursuing Passion in Work

    I always seem to get the best insights into my children’s minds from the front seat of the car when they don’t think I’m listening.  It usually comes in the form of backseat dialogue between themselves and a friend.

    One particular day driving to baseball practice, a friend of my son’s was with us and he out of the blue stated, “I want to be a lawyer when I grow up.”

    My son responded, “Why?”

    “So I can make a bunch of money,” he said.

    I guess my son saw this as an invitation to declare what he wanted to be when he grew up as well.

    “Well, I want to be a Pokemon collector when I grow up,” he said.  “And, also, I’ll work at Target where I can help people find Pokemon cards they like.”

    I resisted the urge from the front seat to insert myself and say, “What?!?” Then, I realized, he’s eight.  No need to argue about his current passion being his career.  It will change (his passion and his career choice) I’m sure, no less than a dozen times before he is really old enough to be employed.

    But it does beg the question, should we pursue passion in our work? And should we encourage our kids and others to do so?

    Does our passion lead us to work or does work lead us to our passion? 

    Passion is one of our values at Horizon Point, so you might find me hard pressed to argue against pursuing passion at work, but some recent reading and listening have provided some context for these questions.

    The Passion Paradox and Adam Grant’s WorkLife Podcast: The Perils of Following Your Passion are both great things to check out on the subject.

    I think I can sum up  both the book and the podcast best with the thought Angela Duckworth shared on Adam’s podcast and that is this: We often use “follow” your passion when it should really be “develop” your passion if we want passion to guide us in a healthy way. It’s not the noun “passion” we get wrong, it is usually the verb we put with it.  Fleshing this out means:

    1. Following seems to convey that passion is already inside us and we know exactly what our passion is.  Most of us are unsure of our passions and how they can or should translate into work.
    2. Following also seems to convey something that we do with blind devotion. As The Passion Paradoxpoints out, this kind of myopic thinking can lead us to do really bad things.  There is a dark side to passion whether it is in work or in any aspect of our lives. 
    3. Developing your passion, instead leads us to seek out opportunities for exposure and learning where we can grow and discern what we like and don’t like.
    4. Developing leads to growth and expertise.  In order for passion to be something we can make a living at doing, we most likely have to be somewhat good at it.
    5. Developing emphasizes the journey, not the destination.  When we are only focused on the destination number two above, the dark side can kick in.

    As was pointed out on the WorkLife Podcast episode, it makes sense that passion is also a word used to relate to relationships.  

    Is passion a component of dating and marriage?  Yes, it usually is a spark that starts things and hopefully shows and sustains itself over the course of a lasting marriage.  But is it present all the time?  If you’ve been married for any length of time, my guess is you would easily answer, “No”.   And if a relationship is only about passion, my guess is your response would also be “No” if I asked you if that relationship is sustainable.

    Passion is the pursuit of that which fulfills and sustains in a way that is more often than not, bigger than ourselves.  It is unselfish at its core.

    So, although my son thinks that he can make a living working at Target selling Pokeman cards to others, at least he isn’t picking it for the money.   As his interests and passions develop, I hope doing something greater than helping himself stays core to what he wants to be when he grows up.

    Like this post?  You may also like:

    More from Adam Grant: Stop Asking Kids What They Want to Be When They Grow Up

    The Point Blog Posts on Passion

  • 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?

  • Creating a Teaching Culture

    Creating a Teaching Culture

    My twelve-year-old son had his first experience with interviewing this week. He is applying to a special program for high school and as part of the application process he had to participate in a panel interview with members of the program administration. Naturally, he was nervous. Luckily the interview was scheduled on very short notice so he didn’t have too much time to overthink it.

    As I sat in the waiting area with him and his best friend before their interviews, I put on my recruiter hat and gave them some basic interviewing advice. They were both very receptive to what I said and I think they both took my advice to heart during their interviews. (We find out if they both made it in to the program in a few weeks, so fingers crossed!)

    As I went over the basics with them (eye contact, open posture, speak clearly, don’t fidget), I heard another mother say to her child “you know how to interview.”

    My first thought was “how does a twelve-year-old know how to interview when so many adults struggle with it?” Then I started to think about the deeper impact of her statement.

    How often do we as leaders assume that those we lead already know what we want or need them to know? And how many of us get frustrated when we find out they don’t know it, often only after they tried on their own and made a mistake?

    By making that statement to her child, that mother was assuming he had the knowledge and didn’t help to ensure her child was set up for success. Same with leaders and their employees. If you set an expectation for your employee with the assumption that they know how to meet that expectation, you may be setting them up for failure or at a minimum, added stress when they struggle on their own to get it right.

    According to a study published in 2015 by Willis Towers-Watson, over 70% of high-retention-risk employee said they would leave their companies to advance their careers.

    I recently held a workshop for one of my clients in which I asked employees to tell me where they thought the company needed to make improvements. One of the top themes that I saw in their feedback was training and providing employees with the knowledge they need to be as successful as they can be.

    It’s human nature to want to succeed.  

    Providing employees with the opportunity to grow in their roles is a great way to ensure that they will want to stay with the organization. And it’s a great opportunity to strengthen your organization’s succession plan.

    Studies show that most on the job training happens in the form of informal learning. I have challenged the leaders at the client mentioned above to ask themselves each week to pinpoint one thing that they taught someone. I’ve also challenged them to think before they perform a task “is there someone who would benefit from knowing how to do this?” If the answer is yes, I encourage them to pull that person aside and show them when the opportunity presents itself (just like I did with my son and his friend).

    The interview skills I presented to the boys were very basic, but also very important skills to know for the future. My hope is that when they are old enough in a few years to start interviewing for their first job, those tips will pop into their heads and help them to have a successful interview.

    The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. -Harvey S. Firestone

    Are you living up to your calling as a leader?

  • 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