Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Skills Improvement

We all need a little personal development mixed in with our professional and career development. Read blogs in this category for personal skills improvement.

  • Design Thinking as a Leadership Practice

    Design Thinking as a Leadership Practice

    In an ever-changing world, it’s more important than ever for leaders to have the tools to be able to navigate change and innovate. It’s also important for leaders to have opportunities to spur creative thinking in a world that is cluttered with a lot of noise and distractions. Most importantly, though, leaders need support in connecting with people and building empathy.   

    When frameworks are provided to help spur innovation and build valuable people skills, we find that leaders are better equipped to move forward.  It seems counterintuitive to use a process to try to break away from routine thinking and/or to build relationships, yet the design thinking process helps to spark creativity in order for organizations to adapt and grow. The process begins with building empathy and because of this, we believe it is a valuable tool for anyone wanting to create better workplaces.  

    There are multiple trainings, models, and tools out there if you want to apply design thinking in your organization.

     

    Our favorite Stanford’s d School’s tools.  In particular,  we like this resource because it has all the tools you need to conduct a design thinking boot camp for any type of organization or group:

    (archival resource) Design Thinking Bootcamp Bootleg — Stanford d.school

     

    Other good sources of training and resources can be found through Harvard and MIT: 

    Design Thinking Course | HBS Online

    MIT Sloan Design Thinking | Online Certificate Program

     

    A good (although dated) video to watch that captures the design thinking process can be found here: 

    ABC Nightline – IDEO Shopping Cart – YouTube

     

    How do you spur innovation and creativity in your workplace? 

  • Training and Developing Growth Mindset

    Training and Developing Growth Mindset

    Two weeks ago, Taylor kicked off our new series on Growth Mindset: what is it?! Today we’re exploring a growth mindset in training & development. 

    The Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) defines growth mindset as


    …the belief that your skills and abilities can be improved, and that ongoing development is the goal of the work you do. However, creating a growth mindset culture isn’t just about having optimistic employees, but creating a space where employees strive to learn, enjoy being challenged, and feel encouraged to develop new skills.

    Let’s look at a case study of NLI’s work with Microsoft. 

    A few years ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella started a revolution from a revelation: the success of the company was dependent upon a culture of continuous learning and a workforce of “learn-it-alls” instead of “know-it-alls”. 

    Training and development became the forefront of the Priorities, Habits, and Systems of the company. 

    NLI’s growth mindset work follows a structure of Priorities → Habits → Systems. In the case of Microsoft, executive leadership adopted a growth mindset as a major priority to be supported through habitual training and learning activities and embedded into organizational systems like performance management and pulse surveys.  

    Microsoft created “interactive online modules with rich storytelling and multimedia” for their employees to learn independently and on-demand about the why, what, and how of growth mindset. Managers were given conversation guides to help drive and facilitate meaningful discussion about growth mindset within departments and teams. When team members exhibited growth mindset habits, they were recognized and positively reinforced.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Graphic: NLI Growth Mindset Case Study Collection

    Training is often thought of as sitting in a room (physical or virtual), facing forward, listening to a facilitator read words from slides. Training doesn’t have to – and shouldn’t – look and feel like that. 

    Our team hosted an interactive workshop this week where participants sat around one large table with the facilitators, everyone facing inward and around at each other. Learning was facilitated through large group discussion, partner discussion, independent work, and even physical movement around the building and the block (we literally walked around the block during a break!). 

    Is your training stale? How can you shift the paradigm to a Growth Mindset in your training and development priorities, habits, and systems? 

     

  • How do you Navigate the Advancement Process?

    How do you Navigate the Advancement Process?

    I recently facilitated a workshop with a group of educators, some of whom are considering advancement in their field. We talked through several tips to help with navigating the process. Although I shared some information that was specific to their field, many of the tips are actually universal.

    Here are a few of my favorites:

    1.Give your resume a glow up! Check out more ideas here:

    How do you make your resume stand out among thousands received by employers?

    2. Consider these steps as you seek advancement:

      • Seek out leadership roles prior to advancement
      • Volunteer for presentations
      • Attend any professional development that’s offered 
      • Network/Make Connections 

    Up your networking game with more ideas from this blog post: Networking Authentically

    3. Be prepared for your interview: Read Interview Prep for Today’s Job Market, which talks about the benefits of using the S.T.A.R prep tool.

    Are you ready for the next step in your career? I recommend checking out Ken Coleman’s book, The Proximity Principle to lead you in the right direction. You can also check out my book review here: The Proximity Principle – A Book Review.

  • What Cultivates Gratitude? Or Better Yet, What Does Gratitude Cultivate?

    What Cultivates Gratitude? Or Better Yet, What Does Gratitude Cultivate?

    I was tasked with writing a blog post on gratitude for this week- Thanksgiving week. I love it when my team gets together without me while I’m on sabbatical and sends me an email telling me what to write 🙂  It’s a given- a post with a theme of thankfulness- even though as a culture we’ve seemed to skip right to Christmas once Halloween ends. 

    I’ve written about counting your blessings and even counting your first-world problems and being thankful when tasked with the same thing before. 

    But what keeps jumping back into my mind this year as I think about how to articulate some inspiration for gratitude is to cite Bryan Stephenson. I had the opportunity to hear Stephenson at a conference I attended this fall.  Bryan Stephenson is the author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.  

    He is obviously an in-demand speaker.  He apparently charged the group nothing for an almost hour-long talk.  He started the session by thanking the people in the audience for the work they do.  Mostly public servants in the audience who spend their days helping people on the margins, he made reference to how some of the services the group was involved in impacted him as a child. 

    He thanked and he thanked and he thanked before he moved into any form of argument or points. 

    But his points were powerful, and also speak to a heart of gratitude I believe that then leads to a heart of grace and mercy, and then one of action. 

    In speaking about the marginalized, or “least of these” Stephenson made four points: 

    1. Commit to getting proximate.  We can’t help if we aren’t close because then we don’t know what we don’t know.  We need to affirm people’s humanity to help them get to higher ground and realize that all our journeys are tied to one another.  
    2. We have to change our narratives.  This means we have to talk about things we haven’t talked about before.  He says we have to, “acknowledge, confess, and repent.”  My favorite quote of the night was, “Beautiful things happen when we tell the truth.  We close ourselves off to beauty when we don’t tell the truth.” 
    3. We have to believe in hope.  This means believing in things we haven’t yet seen and being confident that in getting proximate and changing narratives, they will become seen. 
    4. We have to do things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient.  Really, the first three things echo this point.  Getting proximate is uncomfortable and inconvenient.  Changing our narratives and telling the truth is uncomfortable. Staying hopeful is not only uncomfortable, it is also inconvenient to train our brains to be so.  But in the end, and in the journey itself, that is where the beauty lies. 

    I hope you’ll take this week to be thankful and it will lead you to grace and mercy, which will then inspire you to action.  

    During this holiday season, where do you need to get proximate, change a narrative, have hope, and/or be uncomfortable or inconvenienced? 

  • Three Steps to Effective Business Writing

    Three Steps to Effective Business Writing

    How many emails do you get each day? How many pieces of paper pass through your hands in a week? 

    Written communication is the #1 form of communication used in the workplace. Whether it’s communicating with supervisors, co-workers, clients, or vendors, we are constantly sending written communication back and forth. 

    The top issue I hear from clients is a lack of effective communication in their organizations. And usually, that includes inadequate written communication. Effective business writing can have a huge impact on an organization’s ability to grow. Look at any job description and you’re likely to find the requirement of “excellent communication skills, both written and oral”. But while it’s extremely important and in most cases required, there are few resources on how to be effective in business writing. 

    Industry in the US is becoming more remote and more global, which means that effective writing is even more critical now. So how can you be a more effective writer and how can you train your employees to draft effective written communication?

    There are three key steps to effective business writing: 

    1. Prewriting: Before you put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, think about why you’re writing, who your audience is, and what you need to convey. This is best done by creating an outline and there are three common outline formats. Just remember, there is no right or wrong way to create an outline. Use the method that works best for you. (I’m a classic outliner, cluster outlines stress me out!)
      1. Classic outline: uses roman numerals to outline sections and sub-sections (headings & sub-headings)
      2. Full-Sentence outline: Uses full sentences to outline each paragraph/topic (estimate total paragraphs/sections)
      3. Cluster outline: Similar to brainstorming, jot down ideas and cluster similar ideas together to create main topics and sub-topics. 
    2. Drafting: Once you’ve created an outline, now you’re ready to put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. Keep in mind, a first draft is a rough draft, it’s not meant to be perfect. A few rules to keep in mind as you sit down to write:
      1. Know yourself. Where do you do your best writing, what helps you to concentrate? Are you in the right mind to write or do you need to come back to it at a later time when you’re in a better mental state? 
      2. Once you start, don’t stop. Let your thoughts flow without hesitation. Don’t stop in the middle and take a break, you might break your train of thought or lose your stamina. And don’t try to edit as you go, just write. 
      3. Once you stop, walk away. Don’t immediately start editing your first draft. Take a break, whether that’s 15 minutes or two days. Give your mind time to settle back down and absorb what you put on paper. 
    3. Editing: Now that you gave yourself that break, come back to it. Read it and start analyzing it. Did you get your points across, is it in a logical order, does it speak to your audience? Once you think you’re done, have someone else take a peek. Ask them to read it both for understanding and for grammar. Here at Horizon Point, we always have someone proofread what we write, from blog posts to proposals, to reports for clients (and yes, sometimes even emails before we hit send). 

    Once you have the three keys to business writing down, start to consider how you can measure the effectiveness of your writing. This will vary depending on the type of communication and what your goal was. You may find that you need to measure quality, quantity, or both. 

    Could your organization benefit from more effective business writing?