Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Strategies for Engaging an In Person Audience

In my almost 15 years as a workshop speaker and facilitator, I’ve learned a lot. The most valuable lesson of all? Be interactive.

I’ve observed that you can be presenting the most intriguing topic of all time, but it’s only a matter of time before you audience tunes out the sound of you droning on and on. If you want to keep your participants’ attention and prevent them from checking their phones or falling asleep, I recommend sticking to no more than five minutes of instructional content at once, followed immediately by an interactive component that surprises the audience out of any stupors or daydreams.

The good news is, there are more choices for engagement than ever before. The following six techniques are my go-to standards. Depending on how long your next training is, mixing and matching them is likely to liven up the session, and hopefully, increase overall learning and results!

Technique #1: Storytelling

Funny or self-deprecating stories and anecdotes are always a hit, but early in most trainings, I like to share a specific story called The Hero’s Journey. Based on the famous narrative concept, the Hero’s Journey describes all the obstacles I faced while becoming an expert in the topic. Much of the time, the audience isn’t expecting to hear something like this, and participants are fascinated. I increase the engagement by asking for a show of hands if the audience has personally experienced something like what I’m relating (e.g. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a boss you thought really hated you”).

Technique #2: Surveying and Polling

The best type of survey takes place in advance, so you can ask participants about their experiences in detail, and customize your content to address what you learned. Given that this isn’t always possible, you might want to familiarize yourself with online polling technology that allows the audience to answer simple questions on their phones in real time – with answers appearing on your presentation screen. Both approaches pique the interest of audience members who are curious what their fellow participants answered.

For more techniques, have a look at the DeVry WORKS website.

Why You Probably Need More Training, Not Less

In my work as a business and workforce consultant, I’ve observed that in times of change and uncertainty, some organizations stop spending money – and especially money that goes to employee training and development. However, given the future work trends of cross-functional teaming, workforce-wide digital fluency, and an emphasis on uniquely human skills, this may be a short-sighted approach. Let’s look at these one by one.

Cross-Functional Teaming

I’ve noticed that employees are starting to move around organizations with greater speed, and so they may need to know more skills than were required in the past. Even if they received a solid university education, employees might well be moved to a role in which nothing they learned in their degree program applies. For instance, it’s not unusual for someone trained in finance to end up in marketing, and vice versa. And, even those schooled and working in marketing often find it beneficial to have cross-functional expertise in finance.

My hunch is that employer training might not be able to keep up with the reskilling and upskilling requirements of cross functional teams, and this is why there are gaps. And, in the Career Advisory Board’s 2018 survey, Talent Activation, the Employee Experience, and Skill Development, 77 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: In my organization as a whole, I am concerned about employee skills gaps.

In the study, the greatest skills gaps were observed in the areas of technology/digital fluency (cited by 62 percent of respondents), communication (56 percent), business acumen (48 percent), diversity and cultural awareness (46 percent), and customer service (42 percent), and skills gaps affect employees at all levels. And, when asked about barriers to closing skills gaps, our respondents cited a too-small training budget most frequently.

If anything, it’s my opinion that cross-functional teaming requires larger training budgets, not smaller ones.

Workforce-Wide Digital Fluency

In the Career Advisory Board’s 2017 Job Preparedness Indicator survey, we defined an applied technology skill as a skill that is needed by employees to leverage the right technology to do their jobs. It’s another way to talk about digital fluency, and the research indicated that a majority of employers is now looking for these skills in new and existing employees.

Training existing employees in applied technology skills is a major challenge, in part because current professionals did not receive this type of instruction via traditional education paths. In response, many survey respondents are ensuring that their workforces continuously train and retrain on applied technology skills through the development of internal courses (40 percent), internal trainings (38 percent), tuition reimbursement (35 percent), and external trainings (31 percent). Only one-fourth said their organizations are taking no actions to develop this skillset.

As discussed above, however, developing skillsets can be expensive – especially when one round of training isn’t enough. So, in my recommendation, employers should have a specific and ongoing budget set aside for applied technology skills alone – in addition to other training requirements.

For more where this came from, check out the DeVry WORKS website.

 

Designing the Right Physical Workspaces

In my work as a human resources and leadership consultant, I’ve observed that many organizations have dedicated spaces where employees come together to receive training. Most of the time, these locations are basic conference rooms, which led me to wonder: what if companies could build facilities uniquely equipped to meet the needs of the human learner?

Seeking to find out what such spaces might look like and what best practices organizations would be smart to integrate, I spoke with Jonathan Webb, VP of workplace strategy for KI, a designer of 21^st century interior furnishings.

Alexandra: Jonathan, how should companies go about designing the right physical space for corporate training?

Jonathan: In some ways, the key to creating corporate training spaces is the same as designing offices: flexibility. Just as employees have different work styles throughout their 9-to-5 day, new hires in corporate training have different learning styles. So recruiters have to design training spaces not only to enable the variety of tasks or lessons at hand, but to support the variety of learners they're training in a given session.

What physical design concepts best facilitate human learning and why?

Jonathan: I think it entirely depends on what the goals are within each learning session. That's why it's important to align a company's training goals with the physical learning environment. Designing a flexible training space is vital to facilitating human learning. For example, if one training task requires an individual assessment, new hires may need walled-in spaces or privacy screens to focus. But if another goal of the training program is to build relationships among teams that will soon work together, trainees may move to larger, shared work surfaces.

If an organization doesn't have a big budget for renovation, what tweaks can it make help improve its training spaces?

Jonathan: Training facilities are often overlooked within organizations, but an organization can make some effective changes without knocking down any walls. When space is at a premium, designing workspaces that can be reconfigured to accommodate various learning styles and types is paramount. Flexible furniture on casters can be reconfigured quickly. Mobile whiteboards can double as space dividers and learning surfaces to provide excellent teaming environments. A mix of high and low tables, along with several pieces of lounge furniture, can often be assembled to allow various types of group work.

For the rest of the interview, head over to the DeVry WORKS website.

Strategies for Excelling at Product Development

Product development is one of the most challenging aspects of running a business, because it’s a rare situation in which your offering is already so perfect you don’t need to improve or evolve with the market. You can vastly save a great deal of time and stress in your efforts to create new products and services, or expand on or enhance your existing ones, with five specific strategies.

Put Yourself in Your Customers’ Shoes

Product development is most successful when it is directly connected to an unmet customer need. “If you can create a smooth, flawless experience with no interference or frustrations, it’s likely that people will enjoy using your product. Solve a problem and make lives easier,” said Ali Mahvan, CEO of social shopping company Sharebert. “You're not starting a company to build a product for yourself. You're starting a company to build a product for your customers. Customer feedback has driven every major design and experience decision throughout the building of the Sharebert app and is our number one metric for design.”

 Iron Out a Process

Torrey Tayenaka, CEO of video production company Sparkhouse, wanted to create animated explainer videos to market customers’ businesses, products, and services. Explainer videos are useful because you can produce them without actors and cameras, and while a product is still in the concepting stage. However, the idea is a relatively new one, so Tayenaka needed to build a process that could be easily understood and followed by his team and customers alike. “We took our time in developing a 12-step animation process that we always strive to communicate clearly,” he said.

Take the Airplane Window View

To excel at product development, you must be willing to take a step back and look around you even as you have the urge to charge forward. “We are constantly looking at the big picture, asking ourselves: do we know what we are creating, who we are creating it for and why we are creating it?” said Tayenaka. “If we understand those key points, we can always make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. But on the other hand, if we get too excited about features and specifics, we can lose sight of what’s really important.”

For more where this came from, check out the full piece at the AMEX OpenForum.