December 2010

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Todays Learning Workplace podcast 26–It’s Time for Professional Development Resolutions

Todays article:

• 31 Days to Become a Better Leader (Great Leadership blog)

Other articles and things of interest from this week:

• 20 Simple Steps to the Perfect Persuasive Message (Psy Blog)
• During Boring Classes, Texting is the New Doodling (Committed Sardine blog)
• Stop Interrupting Employees and Let Them Work (Workplace Learning blog and TED’s Jason Fried presention on Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work)
• How Learning & Development Must Change: Three Challenges (Learning Solutions Magazine)
• Top 50 Leadership Blogs of 2010 (The Entrepreneur Blog)

Today’s topic

Creating inclusive work environments through diversity training programs

• How to Conduct a Diversity Training Workshop  Brief article on some training basics, including a few warnings and resources
• Does Diversity Training Work to Improve the Workplace? KPA blog that cites some of the research on the impact of diversity training
• Making Diversity Training Work  Management-Issues article on the Institute for Employment Studies research on the impact of racism awareness and cultural diversity training across the public sector)

What would you do?

This week:

• Dear TLW–
  We are a small learning and development department supporting a large employee population, with a lot of needs! We typically try to design, develop and facilitate our own training programs. As you well know, this takes time! Time we feel we are running short of! However, we are feeling as if there are topics where quality programs have already been developed by a third party that we could purchase and be well served. Would you have any suggestions as to where we could turn to review and possibly purchase “off the shelf” programs around time management, meeting management, conflict resolution, communication skills, etc.?

Next week:

• Dear TLW–
  I’m a sales manager within a hotel.  I work closely with the general manager regarding the goals for the hotel, sales projections, as well as work with the staff around fulfilling customers needs, etc.  Recently our customer service ratings have dropped…in particular in the area of our front desk.  We are thinking about doing some customer service training for the employees…however, as I think about the group and their 1-3 years in their roles, I’m wondering if training is really what they need.  They have been without a supervisor for a few months and we haven’t been able to give them any sort of raise for a year.  Your thoughts?

2-minute tips of the week

• Max: Create (and solicit from others!) online and off-line references related to the development topic
• Terri: Provide paper for doodling during class
• Robin: when working ing on development planning, skip the “Why,” “When,” and and “Who” questions and ask yourself the “What” and “How” questions. (from QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life by John Miller)

Other resources mentioned during the show

• HRDQ
• HRD Press 

(right-click to download the MP3 of this podcast to your computer)

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