JDA

Teams Need Skills as well as Process

by Joan Cook

Jeff and I are working with a number of different teams in organizations around the country.  After each teambuilding experience we debrief, usually on the plane home, and we've lately had one of those "duh" moments:  although we're working for the most part in sophisticated organizations (one of them a Fortune 50 company), their people lack some of the most basic Management 101 communication skills--which of course, holds back progress toward becoming a highly effective team.  If being able to give (and receive) feedback effectively, hold fellow team members accountable, handle difficult conversations and use effective listening skills are key, our experience is that most team members shy away from using these critical skills simply because they feel they aren't very good at them--or they've never learned them in the first place.  Understandable, since a.  they aren't taught in b-school and b. most people learn them--if they learn them at all--on the fly, by imitating what they see others do.  If they're lucky, they have good models.  If they're not, they perpetuate a culture that is likely weak in supporting the use of the very tools that enable effective working relationships, and effective teaming.

So in addition to team process skills and experiential team events, we're discovering that there's a third leg to this stool:  management communication skills that enable team members to engage in effective team processes in the first place.  We're now looking at how we structure the teambuilding experience and what we may need to include, in addition to team processes, in order to equip teams to be able to make good use of those processes.

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L&D at the crossroads of today and tomorrow...

by Joan Cook

Big Question: What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

This month's Big Question at the Learning Circuits blog asks, "What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?"

At the intersection of the classroom, with all its traditional tools, and the web, with its new ones, stands the learning & development professional.  In a world seemingly gone mad for social media and new brain science research, how do we know what embrace and what to let go of, or indeed, what to develop and implement in terms of tools and skills? 

I've come to admire Clive Shepherd's blog, Clive on Learning, and his take on the question is that while we still have the same overarching goal (to enhance organizational performance through employee learning and development), those who have sidestepped new media in the hope that it will all blow over have done themselves a disservice.  Too many L&D professionals, in his opinion, have fallen behind in their development in regards to the contemporary tools of their profession in ways that would have been unimagineable back in the day.  I would also suggest that from what we've seen here at JDA, a great many L&D professionals aren't proficient at presenting, either, regardless of the tools they're using.  Lots of us fell into the profession and learned on the go, and the demands being created by new media and new tools are throwing those whose training skills are lacking into sharp relief. If you've never been trained as a trainer, you need to add that to your list of things to accomplish in this brave new world as well.

We're sufficiently interested in this question here that we're exploring the idea of adding social media training to our offerings.  More later.

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On “Why Teams DON’T Work” from the May 2009 HBR

by Joan Cook

Interesting article in HBR—an interview by Diane Coutu with J. Richard Hackman, a professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard and a “leading expert on teams.” The title is somewhat misleading; turns out teams DO work, as long as they adhere to a set of 5 conditions Dr. Hackman’s research revealed, most of which anyone who’s ever been on a team will recognize from experience:
1.  Teams must be real – people have to know who’s on the team and who isn’t.
2.  Teams need a compelling direction – members need to know, and agree on, what it is they’re doing together.
3.  Teams need enabling structures – the right tasks, members, norms.
4.  Teams need a supportive organization – they can’t be effective or successful if the organizational context (reward system, HR system, info systems) is organized around individuals rather than teams.
5.  Teams need expert coaching – as a group, in team processes.

The Susan Boyles of the world are why I coach

By Joan T. Cook

Susan Boyle, for those who may have recently returned from another planet, became an overnight YouTube sensation singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables for Simon Cowell on the TV show “Britain’s Got Talent” just recently. 

A forty-something “spinster” (as she was described by The New York Times) who lives alone with her cat in a London suburb, Ms. Boyle certainly doesn’t look like a potential pop star.  She could be described as homely, and until recently, unheralded. 

But what a talent.

Why is empowering managers a great place to start in helping an organization perform more effectively?

By Jeff Dorman

I thought I’d take a slightly different tack than my colleagues by posting and answering a couple of key questions:

Q. 1:  Why is empowering managers a great place to start in helping an organization perform more effectively?

I get questioned all the time about improving organizational effectiveness, and my answer is often that empowering managers is key for organizational success.  Why?  Because the #1 reason people feel demotivated or voluntarily leave an organization is their manager – not lack of opportunity, not compensation, not any of the reasons we might ordinarily default to when we ask ourselves why we lose people.

A question for 2009 (... OK, so a little late)

By Joan T. Cook

“What are your Challenges, Plans and Predictions for 2009?” was a question posted at Learning Circuits earlier this year.In response, Bill Brantley from Design of Knowledge posted this: “My answer is both a challenge, plan, and prediction: To help make training an evidence-based profession so that there is no question about its value in making a difference to people and organizations.”

Funny how all these years into “corporate training” we still don’t have a lot of solid, empirical evidence that proves its effectiveness.  Anecdotal evidence, yes; “smile sheet” evidence, yes.  But what evidence do we have that points unequivocally to training as a contributor to positive organizational change, better productivity, increased bottom line results, whatever measure floats your boat (and certainly that last is one that we as training professionals would love to be able to draw a direct line to)?  Precious little, if any.  I sometimes wonder if: