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Hello!

May’s targeted Communities of Practice (CoP) theme is:  Workforce Development. The Workforce Development CoP emphasizes a community for managers looking to improve employee engagement and productivity and to understand how to improve their own career paths by doing so. Yes, I realize that there are many reasons why a person’s performance may not be at the level that we think it should be, but for the purpose of today’s post, I am going to focus on motivation and engagement.

Although there are multiple theories for addressing engagement/motivational issues, I struggle with the fact that it really isn’t that easy at times to motivate someone and wonder why that is. Go to any book store, website or social media resource and you will find tons of material on how to get people engaged and/or motivated including ourselves, but yet we still struggle to find that particular something that will give us and others that little nudge to move us forward.

Obviously as training professionals, we always want to believe that the support, tools and resources we provide will help improve performance. We spend countless hours doing analysis and trying to determine the best solution to realize the results we want to achieve. But as you all know, sometimes it just isn’t enough. So you may ask yourself, what exactly is the issue?

Well this past week, I had the opportunity to have my cousin stay with us whom I haven’t seen in about 20 years. She brought her daughter with her who is blind. Obviously, some support was needed, but overall it was amazing how much she was able to do on her own. She is about 28 years old, lives on her own, works and can take care of herself. She was constantly on her PC and was able to maneuver around my home with very little support. What was amazing about it all was not so much that she was able to be self -sufficient, but that her attitude in doing so with all her challenges was quite honestly very “amazing”.  She was engaged, talkative, opinionated, well informed, and just in general, happy.

Besides the fact that their visit made me realize how much we take for granted, it also made me realize that the attitude you have in wanting to learn or do something is really the precursor for achieving results. I am not saying that we as training professionals shouldn’t try and do what is needed to help someone succeed or that we shouldn’t continue to determine what makes a person tick, but the bottom line is is that the person you are trying to help must WANT to be able to improve their performance, be open to the help that others are willing to provide and do the work that is needed to get them to wherever it is they want and in some instances, need to be. Yes, I know this is not a new concept, but I think sometimes as someone who has seen tremendous results coaching others to improve results, both as a manager and as a training professional, knowing the best time to pull back and let that person determine their own direction can, to say the least, be a difficult decision for us to make. Sometimes we just have to realize and accept that the person themselves needs to be the driver in their quest to improve results and that our role may be better served providing support when, and if, they ask for it.

Suzanne Weaver

Chapter President

ASTD Eastern PA Chapter

astdepa.president@gmail.com

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Peggy

Peggy Salvatore, Chapter President

The cool fall chill is in the air this weekend, and yesterday I pulled out my favorite turtleneck and jeans to spend the afternoon outside at one of my favorite out-in-the-country retreats. What does this have to do with training, or with our chapter? Simply this - we all know we need to Sharpen The Saw to be able to successfully and energetically do everything we put on our plates, so do it!

Refreshed and focused, we can tackle the days ahead. Our chapter has a busy month, so a little sharpening was definitely in order.

October brings our Eastern PA ASTD chapter the regular menu of events from our ASTD Express to the Reading GIG. And we hope to see you at one or more of these free or very low cost events. For our September quarterly meeting, we experimented with holding it simultaneously with remote connection at two locations, Dale Carnegie and Kutztown University, to find out how it would work. The reaction was positive, and opens the door for the possibility to more widely experiment with this model to host remote sites from our furthest reaches, such as Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.

Meanwhile, our board is very busy as October is our month to attend the Annual Leadership Conference sponsored by the national organization in Alexandria, Virginia where we learn a lot about how to succeed and implement plans as chapter leaders. It is a terrific three-day event with lots of the top speakers, presenters and authors in our business, and a great way to prep for ongoing success as a chapter. Your board President next year, Suzanne Weaver, will be working with her new team to learn as much as they can to bring best practices to our local chapter in 2013 and beyond.

Finally - and foremost! - we will be celebrating our 50th Anniversary with a dinner on Thursday, November 8 at DeSales University Conference Center in Center Valley. The next day, November 9, we'll hold our annual Professional Development Day on metrics and measurement at the same location. Due to the economy, we will be keeping ticket prices at an absolute minimum to cover costs because we'd like as many people as possible to be able to join us. We will also be reaching out into the local corporate community to invite sponsors to be a presence and initiate ongoing involvement in our local chapter. Look for lots more info and registration information all month long, and talk to your employer about sponsoring you to attend, and sponsoring our chapter, as well.

Let’s celebrate our 50^th in November and give our second 50 years a great welcome!

We here at your Eastern PA Chapter are gearing up to bring the year home with a few special fall programs we want to announce.

First, we will hold a 50th Anniversary Dinner Celebration, chaired by our VP of Membership Jim Byrnes, on Thursday, November 8 at 5:30 p.m. at the DeSales University Conference Center. The dinner will be our lead-in event to our annual Professional Development Day which will also be held at the Conference Center the next day, Friday, November 9 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Our VP of Professional Development Dr. William Kleintop is chairing the conference and the theme of our Professional Development Day is metrics. It's a hot topic, and our employers and clients are all about metrics these days. So come out and learn more. Information will be coming your way soon about ticket prices and program details.

As if to say our VP of Programs and Events Martha Teel isn't busy enough putting together the big November event with Bill and Jim, she is also working with our eLearning SIG director Karen Lubrecht to present a live session on facilitating virtual web meetings using our chapter sponsor's software, GoToMeeting. We are trying something new for this quarterly September meeting and are offering both a main meeting site in the Lehigh Valley at the Dale Carnegie facility in Trexlertown and a remote location at Kutztown University for the convenience of our Reading members. Both sites will have onsite facilitators and a light dinner will be offered. Also, Karen has been hosting our elearning SIG virtually (of course!) but we thought it might be helpful for those of us who would like to improve our online meeting facilitation skills to have a chance to practice in person with Karen. So come out to network, learn some presentation tricks, and share some of your own expertise with your fellow chapter members.

Last, but certainly not least, we are excited to announce our new board for next year! You'll hear more about it soon as our President-Elect Suzanne Weaver gets ready to lead us into the next phase of our chapter's growth with the support of a wonderful team of volunteers. We want to thank Past President and current NAC advisor for the Northeast US region Rick Kerner for organizing the nominating committee and leading the elections.

We're looking forward to seeing all of you at one - or more! - of our meetings soon.

Last year at the national ASTD Annual Leadership Conference for ASTD chapter board members, one of our keynotes was one of the five authors of Change Anything, and I've been following the book's blog, Crucial Skills, since then. Today, David Maxwell answers a reader's question on an issue that is sensitive and nettlesome: What do you do when workers trash each other personally or professionally? What do you do when these behaviors are affecting morale, productivity and poisoning your workplace? How does this destructive behavior affect your company or organization? I offer his rather lengthy but very good response to that question here.

Dear Crucial Skills,

One of my main concerns at work is how we talk about each other - the staff lunchroom can be especially toxic. What feels most shocking to me is how our boss is often thrown under the bus.

I am having a hard time thinking of an appropriate comment to make as I feel that listening to these conversations implies my agreement. And I have to admit there have been times when I've piped up with a rude wise-crack or two, so I don't want to seem like I'm above it all. There are times I just avoid the lunchroom and I know others do, too.

What suggestions do you have for responding to wisecracks made behind coworkers' backs?

Staying In From the Lunch Room

Dear Staying In,

You've done a great job of describing a familiar problem. I bet many of us have been in the same situation. We're joking around in the lunchroom, one-upping each other's wisecracks, when somehow the topic turns to our boss or maybe to a colleague. We keep on with the jokes and banter, but at some point, it crosses the line from play to poison. As you said, we're throwing someone under the busundefinedall in the name of fun.

In these situations, silence isn't golden. It's agreement. When we don't speak up, we show our support for the people doing the badmouthing. We're helping to throw the person under the bus.

It's this kind of poisonous conversation that causes bad morale to spread across a team or organization. It begins with a seemingly innocuous joke, which is really the leading edge of an attack. Instead of saying something like, "I see it differently," others in the conversation remain silent or add to the wisecrack, amplifying the attack.

The group is creating a villain story at someone's expense, without stopping to question the story's truth or giving the person a chance to respond. As the story is repeated and grows unchallenged, it becomes full of what the comedian Stephen Colbert calls, "truthiness." It may be several steps away from the facts, but it feels true. And it poisons the workplace.

Why do we do this? Sometimes it's because we don't know the person's true motives and we assume the worst. Jamaicans have a saying, "If you don't know a man, you'll invent him." The implication is that we'll invent him as an ogre. Few of us know our managersundefinedespecially senior leadersundefinedreally well. We aren't privy to their information or motives. And as the saying suggests, we judge them harshly. We don't give them the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes these conversations are as simple as failing to give the benefit of the doubt, but often there is more going on. Sometimes your colleague is motivated by jealousy, revenge, fear, or dislike. Regardless of the cause, you need to speak up when you see this inappropriate behavior.

Use CPR to decide what to say. CPR stands for Content, Pattern, and Relationship. CPR can help you think about a problem and decide how to focus your conversation.

Suppose a person at your table says, "Sure, the boss says she's trying to improve staffing levels, but that's just to shut us up. What she really means is 'staphing' levelsundefinedyou know like a staph infection!"

A statement like this may contain issues related to Content, Pattern, and Relationship. As a problem-solver, you can decide which issues are most central to you. You can use CPR to focus on the issues that are closest to the heart of your concerns.

Content: Addressing the content means you focus on the facts in the person's statement. Focusing on content is usually the simplest and safest way to respond because you aren't drawing any conclusions beyond what the person has just said. An example of addressing the content would be, "I don't think she's trying to shut us up. Why do you think that?" Addressing the content frames the problem as a question of facts. It focuses the discussion toward what your manager said and why your colleague doesn't believe it.

Pattern: Suppose this comment is just one in a pattern of passive-aggressive comments this group uses to badmouth the boss. Then, you might address this pattern by saying, "I like the way we kid around with each other, but not when we start to throw people under the busundefinedpeople who aren't here to defend themselves." Addressing the pattern focuses on your colleagues' inappropriate behavior. It's a tougher discussion, but it may be closer to the heart of your concern.

Relationship: The long-term impact of these corrosive conversations is the undermining of trust and respect. The relationship with the boss is put at risk. If you feel that people's comments reveal a rupture in basic trust and respect for your boss, then you might address the relationship itself: "It sounds as if you're questioning whether you can trust and respect her. Is that right? If that's your concern, then I think you need to find a way to talk with her and hash it out." Note that you may decide to have this conversation in private, instead of putting the person on the spot in front of everyone. Again, it's a tough discussion, but it may be closer to the heart of your concern.

The mistake many problem-solvers make is to focus on content, the simple and safe route, when their true concern involves the pattern or relationship. They address a problem, but it's not the problem they really care about.

This CPR skill can be used in a wide variety of situations, not just in confronting gossip about your boss. The next time you have a concern, use CPR to decide which part of the concern to address. CPR can help you focus on the heart of your gossip problem.

David

Crucial Skills Newsletter,August 1, 2012, VitalSmarts, L.C.www.crucialskills.com. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

As most of you are acutely aware, the Universe converges…always.

One of my favorite times occurred about a year ago, we were out for a drive and I was talking about my favorite sports car – a 1972 Porsche 914 in yellow. About an hour later, we stopped for dinner at a pub in Hellertown and pulled up next to – yup, you guessed it – that exact car, in mint condition, exactly the way I remembered it. A wink and a nod from the universe.

On the first of each month, Andy Cook our VP of Communications, faithfully and predictably sends out our monthly Eastern PA ASTD Chapter news. This month, on July 1, I wrote a President’s message that started like this:

“Most of us have read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Like Beowulf, it was a book that was hard to avoid at a certain point in our lives. Unlike Beowulf, most of us enjoyed it and learned something from it!”

Last week, Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits, died at the age of 79. His impact on several generations of leaders and organizations is immeasurable. And it gave me pause to think about the fact that, while writing the president’s July message and searching my mental inventory for a book that is universally read and enjoyed in our field, Covey’s groundbreaking tome popped first to mind. Convergence and confirmation.

Perhaps it is our human hubris, but we hope to leave behind something other than just our carbon footprint. Be it our children, our students, a book we’ve written, a process we’ve developed – something that says, “I was here and mattered to someone or something beyond myself. Something positive came of my brief jaunt on God’s green earth.”

Most of us aren’t “Coveys”, but we can learn something about balance and values and True North from Covey that we can apply to the way we live our lives and relate to each other.

We are too soon gone, but we live on.  On this point, I quote from another one of my personal favorite books, Tunesmith by songwriter Jimmy Webb, who ended his book on the craft of songwriting with this paragraph on our legacy as humans and our propensity to live beyond our humanity:

“It is inevitable (sic), scientists say, that eventually a large asteroid or even a comet will impact the earth, possibly resulting in the extinction of our species and some would say no great loss, even cause for celebration among the elephants, rhinos and grizzly bears. (It is easy to imagine all the cockroaches and rats getting together for a not overly somber memorial service.) And then out there somewhere, someday, the spaceborne remains of our entire civilization will eventually be found sounding clear as a bell after its eternal journey and the equivalent of a giant intelligent butterfly will gawk in wonder and converse telepathically  with its friends as they watch the Honeymooners and attempt to decrypt the meaning of “to the moon,  Alice!” But what of our emotions, dreams, and heartaches, the stuff that really made us what we were? How would a thinking butterfly begin to suspect the existence of those? By listening to our songs, of course. And after all is said and done perhaps these are the most important works we could ever leave behind us as evidence that we were at times caring human beings in spite of our penchant for violence and unilateral destruction. The butterflies care not a whit for our buildings and television programs and nuclear bombs but they fall in love with our music (they are particularly fond of Joe Raposo’s “It’s Not Easy Being Green”) and are eventually known throughout the universe as a beautiful, iridescent singing race of winged songwriters.”

In truth, we all have songs in our hearts, and not all of them are necessarily set to music. Covey’s song did not need to be set to music, but it struck a chord in us that goes on and on.