Why most training interventions fail

In today's business environment, efficiency is the ultimate goal to save resources and reach effective operational cycle. Training is used among other means to help reach that purpose.

American companies spend as much as 200 billion dollars on training interventions (Carnevale, Gainer, and Villet 1990). Most of that budget is considered a waste and most importantly it does not achieve the desired objectives. As a result, businesses have diverted their focus to measure training effectiveness, and its Return on Investment.
Although researchers have tried continuously to find the magical equation to calculate training effectiveness, yet it is still an area of continuous debate. There are two schools of thought in this regard: For example, Philips (1990) devised a methodology to quantify training results and called it Training ROI. At the other bank of the river, DeSimone, Werner, and Harris (2006) stated that training effectiveness is a "relative" matter. Given both schools of thoughts, the fact remains that the squandered resources on training remain an area of business concern.

Taking a closer look into such matter, it is valid to ask why most training interventions fail? Such question was legitimized by Cromwell & Colbs' (2004) finding that "not more than 15% of learning transfer to the job, after attending any training". Such finding is astonishing!
From my experience in training management, and as a trainer for 10 years now, the reasons for training failure are:

1. Training is not designed for specific purpose. Generic training has no specific objectives to accomplish.
2. Training not related to trainees' daily work. Concepts addressed in training are not paralleled to the trainees' daily work functions and not applicable to what they do and therefore irrelevant to their need.

to read the full blog go to http://www.ideasgrp.com/blog

Overcoming stage fright

Does your heart pounds, your hands shake, your forehead sweats, your mouth goes dry and your stomach feels like a blender on high speed every time you are about to speak or present to a group?

Well the good news is that you are in the majority, and that almost everybody shows the same symptoms when they are asked to speak or present to a large group. Even the most experienced speakers still feel stage fright at times.

The other good news is that with simple techniques you can use stage fright to your advantage.

Below are 5 tips extracted from our stage fright section of our “Public Speaking and Presentation Skills” workshop:

To read the full blog go to www.ideasgroupblog.com

More effort needed to make presentations in the Middle East inspiring

I was attending an inspiring conference in Dubai yesterday, where speakers were supposed to share stories and best practices to enlighten the participants.

The event’s organization was great; the whole conference was free of charge for its participants, everything was so generous (giveaways, food networking gadgets), the idea of the displays and signage was very creative, in brief it had an amazing feel.

The only thing that stroke me was the level of most presentations. Some speakers started with about 30 participants in their sessions to find that only a dozen has left at the middle of it, others confused their audiences with mixed messages that lacked clear objectives. On the other hand only a few elite speakers presented in an innovative way that pushed their audience of their seats.

As a professional speaker, I might be a bit biased in believing that every presentation should leave a WOW effect, otherwise people could just watch a live streaming of an industry expert or a DVD of Anthony Robbins.

You don’t have to be in the position of Steve Jobs to be able to leave your audience with a lasting impression, you can apply the little changes as per the points below:

to read the full blog go to www.ideasgroupblog.com

Almost half of UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer holidays

Dubai, UAE,  30^th August 2010 – New research from Regus reveals that UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer vacation due to lack of promotion and bosses that do not know, or do not communicate the company’s goals.

To read the full article visit www.ideasgroupblog.com

Five essential elements to conduct a one on one feedback session

Giving feedback to team members is not the most enjoyable thing that a manager likes to do, however as Kelvin Lord puts it, “You cannot improve what you cannot measure” and as a Leader or a manager your job is to look for constant and never ending improvements.

To make things easier for you, we have come up with five essential elements that will make the feedback session easier for the employee and the manager and most essentially link it to sustainable organizational performance.

Full blog on http://www.ideasgrp.com/blog

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

I have received a call last week from one of my clients, who for internal reasons had to cancel one of the  biggest contracts we have signed this year. To tell you that I wasn’t deceived would be lying; The news could have ruined my whole day, week or even month because of the magnitude of such contract. However as I am committed to have a high EIQ (emotional intelligence quotient), I had to analyze the choices I had, so I quickly drew the below mindmap (click to enlarge).

As you can see, by just changing my paradigm from deception to choices, a multitude of options started flowing  and I was suddenly enveloped with a warm feeling of happiness. It is strange and weird but in the nicest possible way.

So I continued my analysis and tried to come up with computer and IT analogies; when we delete files in our computers we are just making space for another file, the same goes in our lives; when we lose something we are just making space for something bigger.

A lost opportunity = more focus on a bigger one
A lost job = a chance for doing what you love
A lost family member = more love for other family members, or more focus on continuing what the lost one has started
A lost friendship = opportunities for a better one

And the list goes on...

A women in Lebanon has lost her son in a water sports accident, and after grieving him for a while she felt that her life had stopped; You just can imagine how hard it is to loose a child. But one day she woke up and asked herself the following question: What is the reason that my son was taken away from me at a young age? What is the message behind it? How can I use this incident to serve others?

A week later she has started a foundation with a purpose of making parents aware of the dangers of inattention when it comes to their children. So going back to her choices, she had two choices; either grieve her child for the rest of her life, or help thousands of other households save their children. With the latter choice she now feels that her son’s decease was a rebirth for a thousand more child.

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

So if you just think about a loss as a free space, you will not get stuck in the past and will start generating opportunities for the future. It is all about using your energy- any kind of energy; negative or positive - and turning it into choices that will get you closer to your goals.

To know more about increasing your efficiency and how to generate healthier choices, visit our website: www.ideasgrp.com

You can complain or you can....

 

The world that we live in presents enough challenges for de-motivating the most positive people on earth. On the other hand, people seek comfort when they start sharing their problems with others; and some take that comfort to the next level and will find a need for complaining. As one of my friends puts it: “As human beings, we love to be victimized. Being victimized is perhaps the best way to run away from our responsibilities.”

This implication of being victimized spreads across all aspects of life: Relationships, education, health and most importantly careers.

Looking at the career and professional aspect, it is really annoying to be around people that whine and moan every day at work; sometimes this excessive negativity will drag others into it and will have a slumping effect on performance.

So how do we stop those people from complaining and how do we lift our moods if we think that we are in an awful situation.

First of all, Start by auditing your life: List the good things that are happening in your life and the bad things that you are exposed to and ask yourself those two simple questions: 1) How can I increase the good things? 2) What can I do specifically to change each of the bad things on my list?

Second, Don’t be positive: Yes you are reading correctly. Being positive and wishing for good things to happen is like staying at home without contacting anyone and waiting for Microsoft to ask you to become one of their Vice Presidents. Instead of being merely positive, have a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) and draw plans, while acknowledging that you will face some negative challenges. So have a PMA and identify what might go wrong so you will be able to pro-act and not re-act.

That brings us to the third point which is Be Proactive. As Dr. Stephen Covey puts it in his habit 1: “Take responsibility for your life”. If you cannot see a change make the change, if things are not going the way you plan, you have two options: sit down and watch things go terribly wrong or take control of the situation and ask yourself how can you change the situation. The how questions open a lot of doors and will get you closer to your desired situation.

The choice is yours; take the driver’s seat and lead your life to your own victory or complain while watching other people climb the peaks of success.

To learn more about how to increase your Leadership Quotient and other workshops by ideas group visit our website on www.ideasgrp.com

Are we born Charismatic?

Some people are just trusted by their colleagues, clients and friends; others struggle to gain that trust. Looking at trust and rapport in more depth, we find that this is something that you can work on, and not only born with.

True, some people are charismatic by nature, however studies have shown that 87% of charismatic people have worked on their development to become appealing.

What did they do? They have mastered the art of professional etiquette in all its forms. Charisma can be established and nurtured if you simply look at the following etiquette tips:

1. Business attire: How many times have we judged people by the way they dress? Unfortunately this holds true to most people. If you want to look like a banker dress like one, if you go to a meeting unshaved or with a flashy makeup and casual clothing, your clients wont take you seriously. As Queen Elizabeth once said "Dress gives one the outward sign from which people can judge the inward state of mind. One they can see, the other they cannot."

2. Business communications: Do we differentiate between business and casual communications? At home or with our friends, there is a greater chance that people will understand what we mean by our sentences because those people know us very well, on the other hand, at work, we have to use very straight to the point sentences, words that everybody will understand. In addition to that, we have to be very careful with how do we greet people, how do we talk on the phone and what gestures to use.

3. Cross-cultural differences: When dealing with people from other cultures you have to keep it as simple as possible; your goal is to minimize misunderstanding and reach a common point. In order to do so, you have to be very patient and keep a steady voice (yelling at the other person, won’t make them understand better). When traveling ask someone who lived in or has been to the country you are visiting about acceptable behavior such as what jokes would be appropriate, what are the definite “not to do’s”.

4. Basic workplace etiquette: When in the office, some behaviors are not acceptable at all, and still; some people carry on with those actions. It is ok to share with a colleague or two some of your private issues, however what is not ok is to talk private issues on your cell phone in front of all your colleagues; this will disrupt them and make them feel uncomfortable. So keep your phone ring on very low and if you want to take a private call, its better to take it outside the office. Second, If you lost your pen, or ran out of posts it, do not take them from the desk of your colleague without asking them; some people are very organized and loosing stuff from their table will de-focus them when accomplishing a task. And last, show appreciation when people do stuff for you; thanking someone and being nice is very essential, especially for the janitor or the tea person.

5. Netiquette: Now that we are all present on Social Media, blogs and specialty websites, it’s extremely important to have a Netiquette (Internet Etiquette). Do we do a google search on our names from time to time? It’s extremely vital to periodically check what is being written about us and what images of us are available on the web. Do we also portray a good image of ourselves on the social networks? I have once decided not to hire a qualified candidate for a job because of their facebook profile, which broadcasted a totally different image than the one in the interview. We also tend to forget that emails are permanent so if we gossip or talk behind the back of someone over an email (even private email addresses), there is a big chance that this person will see what you have written; IT professionals can restore deleted data.

Business Etiquette while being broad can be improved by very simple measures and very little effort. Walk that extra step in order to build your own confident persona. Camil El Khoury

What are you giving this Christmas?

It’s here again…that magical time of the year is here again…oh yes it’s Christmas.

Usually every holiday, especially that time of the year, people start becoming forgiving, forgetting and all about giving, and making others happy.

This Christmas, have you thought about what you want to give? And by this I don’t mean gifts or any materials items, I meant what do you want to give people around you?

This might seem selfish; however, to end up the year with a great achievement, what about giving people at the office something that will help them end their year on a better tone.

In order to do that, you have to practice, in a simple yet a very powerful way, the art of coaching, and more specifically how to make people feel understood.

By coaching people, you will strengthen your relationships, people will feel that you are a source of trust and you will feel like you have made a difference in your workplace.

If you are ready, then you are 5 steps away of becoming a workplace catalyst of change :

1- What’s in it for them: Often in our conversations we end up talking about ourselves and fail to understand or learn what people are truly saying.

In order to do that we have to Actively Listen; doing that requires that you give the full attention to people when you ask them a question, yes it means leaving your computer keyboard or your phone to concentrate on what they are saying.

2- Ask open questions: And that relates to point one, the question will have to be about them, and you will have to resist introducing your personal stories in the conversation unless you are asked to. A sample open question is: “What motivates you?” and if they answer growth or achievement resist the temptation to say “me too” or “yes I also like….. because it makes me….” Remember you want to be helping others so try to learn about them.

3- Encourage them to come up with their own ideas: If you asked them what motivates them or what makes them happy, ask them how would they like to take things forward, and by this I mean what are possible ways for them to reach their goals. Again here, resist the temptation of giving personal advice; instead encourage them to come up with ideas and solutions.

4- Listening to their ideas. Listening is a big part of helping others. When someone is telling you about a certain idea, try to learn what this idea truly represents. Summarize what they have said to make sure you got it correctly, this will also show the speaker that you are truly listening to them,

5- Help them turn their ideas into actions Ideas are useless unless they are executed. In order to make an idea happen, one has to turn it into a plan of action. A good way that will make their ideas happen is to make them fill a table like the one below:

What is the action point that you will execute	By when will that point be achieved	What Support do you need and from whom	How will you track your progress measure your success

Make sure they are specific when they fill the table, and ask them to choose a mentor ( it could be you) to follow up on those action points.

Christmas is a time of giving, and the self satisfaction from giving others new ways to think is priceless. So Merry Christmas, and good luck.

Camil El Khoury is The Author of "Do What you Love, Love What you do" and the Chief Vision Officer of ideas group; the leading experiential learning firm in the AME region (Africa and the Middle East)