I was back behind the classroom desk this past week as part of an industry certification course.
I “survived” the 04 days, fortunately by the fact that the topic allowed the training to be very hands-on and participative and an enlightened trainer that decided to leverage on that. Versus just the atypical lecture and information dump so typical of many certification-type courses.
If you hadn’t already guessed by my profession and approach & methodology to facilitation and training, I am a very hands-on, participatory type of person. I seem to learn and assimilate best in those sorts of experiential training environments and I have observed that many working adults seem to be that way.
Many would be familiar with the Dunn & Dunn's VAK model, with it’s origins from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which asserts that for most circumstances and most people, their mental processing is dominated by three main sensory based modes:
visual (V- learning by seeing)
auditory (A - learning by hearing)
kinesthetic (K- learning by doing)
But I personally prefer Honey & Mumford’s (1982) typology of experiential learning styles.
Activitists (Do)
involve themselves fully in new experiences
enjoy the here and now
open minded, enthusiastic, flexible
act first, consider consequences later
seek to centre activity around themselves
==> Enjoy learning through games, competitive teamwork tasks and role plays.
Reflectors (Review)
prefer to step back and observe
cautious, take a back seat, can be perceived to be indecisive
likes to collect and analyze data about experience and events, slow to reach conclusions
use information from past, present and immediate observations to maintain a big picture perspective.
==> Prefer learning activities based on observation/investigation which gives leeway to ponder upon.
Theorists (Conclude)
Think through problems in a logical step-by-step manner, value rationality and objectivity
can assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories
disciplined, aiming to fit things into rational order
keen on basic assumptions, principles, theories, models and systems thinking
==> Prefers activities that explore the inter-relationship between ideas and principles.
Pragmatists (Plan)
Keen to put ideas, theories and techniques into practice
Search new ideas and experiment
Act quickly and confidently on ideas, gets straight to the point
Are impatient with endless discussion
==> Prefers learning activities that resembles direct work experience.
Knowing your learning style can accelerate your learning as you undertake activities that best fit your preferred style.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Future Now
My wife was invited to SIM’s 2008 Annual Management Lecture last August to hear the keynote address by their distinguished speaker Dr James Canton.
Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends. He has worked with Fortune 1000 firms like IBM, BP, Intel, Philips, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, FedEx, and Proctor & Gamble on trends in innovation, financial services, healthcare, population, life sciences, energy, security, workforce, climate change, and globalization.
I found his book The Extreme Future: The Top Trends that will Shape the World in the Next 20 Years, to be insightful, clear and relevant.
Points raised relating to the workforce for 2009, updated from this book, makes for good reading and I have reproduced it here for sharing:-
Top Ten Workforce Trends for 2009
1. A global war for Smart Talent will be the top driver of competitive advantage, as educated, skilled and experienced employees will be in demand.
2. The aging of the population in America and Europe will have dramatic effect on society and the economy impacting productivity, knowledge and growth.
3. An increase in women in the U.S. workforce will change the policies, power and positioning of organizations. Women will alter the strategies of boardrooms, industries and markets.
4. A diversity savvy workforce will be required to understand and align with the diversity in the global marketplace. Diversity will be a critical competency for leaders and employees.
5. Finding, training and retaining high-tech skilled employees from a global talent pool will be the greatest challenge for every organization.
6. Incorporating innovation into the organizational DNA will be a key driver of future competitive advantage.
7. Building a sustainable, healthy and green workplace will be an essential capability for retaining talent and attracting the future workforce
8. Preparing employees to meet the challenges of a complex and stressful future, where accelerated change and risks can be managed effectively with high performance agility, will be vitally important.
9. An organization that is committed to employee development, continual education and training, will return to the organization new skills and new competencies.
10. Attracting the next workforce, or preparing the current one, will require a new workforce culture to better understand trans-national teams, online collaboration, globalization and business process transformation.
Source: Institute for Global Futures
James Canton, Ph.D is a senior fellow at the Centre for Research in Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management and is also an advisor to our Economic Development Board (EDB).
He is also the author of Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century.
Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends. He has worked with Fortune 1000 firms like IBM, BP, Intel, Philips, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, FedEx, and Proctor & Gamble on trends in innovation, financial services, healthcare, population, life sciences, energy, security, workforce, climate change, and globalization.
I found his book The Extreme Future: The Top Trends that will Shape the World in the Next 20 Years, to be insightful, clear and relevant.
Points raised relating to the workforce for 2009, updated from this book, makes for good reading and I have reproduced it here for sharing:-
Top Ten Workforce Trends for 2009
1. A global war for Smart Talent will be the top driver of competitive advantage, as educated, skilled and experienced employees will be in demand.
2. The aging of the population in America and Europe will have dramatic effect on society and the economy impacting productivity, knowledge and growth.
3. An increase in women in the U.S. workforce will change the policies, power and positioning of organizations. Women will alter the strategies of boardrooms, industries and markets.
4. A diversity savvy workforce will be required to understand and align with the diversity in the global marketplace. Diversity will be a critical competency for leaders and employees.
5. Finding, training and retaining high-tech skilled employees from a global talent pool will be the greatest challenge for every organization.
6. Incorporating innovation into the organizational DNA will be a key driver of future competitive advantage.
7. Building a sustainable, healthy and green workplace will be an essential capability for retaining talent and attracting the future workforce
8. Preparing employees to meet the challenges of a complex and stressful future, where accelerated change and risks can be managed effectively with high performance agility, will be vitally important.
9. An organization that is committed to employee development, continual education and training, will return to the organization new skills and new competencies.
10. Attracting the next workforce, or preparing the current one, will require a new workforce culture to better understand trans-national teams, online collaboration, globalization and business process transformation.
Source: Institute for Global Futures
James Canton, Ph.D is a senior fellow at the Centre for Research in Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management and is also an advisor to our Economic Development Board (EDB).
He is also the author of Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Save Gaia
Today is Earth Day. Happy 39th Birthday!
Earth Day was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in way back in 1970. That nation-wide environmental protest movement in the US was first proposed by him to thrust the environment onto the national agenda.
April 22, 1970, the inaugural Earth Day marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. That event had approximately 20 million Americans participating, all with a goal of a healthy and sustainable environment.
Today millions all over the globe, observe Earth Day, this as the dire consequences of our continued industrialization and modernization has put the environment onto the global agenda.
What can organizations do?
Here are some simple ideas that'll work for the 2-pax to the 20,000-pax organization
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore
Reduce
- electricity usage in the office – make sure all electrical appliances are turned off at the device and also the mains at the end of the work day.
- or eliminate the use of plastic / sytrofoam cups in the office (including plastic bottled water) – everyone to use their own cups.
- the amount of paper used for non-essential printing eg printing out emails to read.
- non-essential air-travel, do a tele-conference instead
Reuse
- the other side of unwanted/unimportant (non-confidential) paper print outs
Recycle
- copier or printer cartridges
- have recycling bins for paper, plastics, aluminium
- organize a recycling drive eg newspaper collection in your community
Restore
- offset your carbon footprint by organizing a tree-planting event with your local community partner http://www.gardencityfund.com.sg/pat/How_to_take_part.htm
- organize a beach / park / mangrove clean-up to rid them of litter and refuse
- use public transport or car-pool or even cycle to work
As Nike succinctly puts it - "Just Do It!"
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Darwin200
We hear lots of buzz words today - in business, the economy and for the workforce.Words like re-inventing, paradigm shift, thinking out-of-the-box, re-skilling, change management, resilience, mind-set change, transformation, catalyze, innovate, revolutionize….the list is endless – but all eluding to the importance of change and adapting for the better.
Which leads me to one of my favourite quotations - from Charles Darwin, 1809-1882 :
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist and author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the book on the theory of evolution by natural selection that shook the scientific world.
Darwin200 is centered on his 200th birthday in February 2009 as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in November 1859.
It will be a platform for countries and scientific communities all over the world to celebrate how the impact of his ideas, about evolution and his approach to the understanding of the natural world as an outstanding scientist, continues to have on our lives today.
Ideas that continue to have relevance and resonance for us in this constantly changing and rapidly evolving world we live in.
Many organizations I have been asked to work with are often grappling with either coping with and/or sustaining change management.
If you have a similar dilemma and need a solution or intervention, let me know and I can share with you why so many change initiatives fail and how not to go down that same path.
Change is the only constant these days.
Question is are you or your organization ready to face up to it?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
HR Day
In celebration of Singapore's most important asset, this nation's first Human Resource (HR) Day and a centre dedicated to HR training (Human Capital Centre) was launched by the Minister of Manpower yesterday.
Singapore's HR Day will be held annually on March 1st.
Madam Ho Geok Choo, President of Singapore Human Resources Institute and also the new Chief Executive of the Human Capital Centre (HCC), was quoted by the media as saying "Singapore's success story is really all about human resources" and this "day formally recognises the significant contribution of HR and people managers."
In the many workshops/facilitated meetings that I have conducted relating to employee/staff motivation, one of the top factors that come up again and again, that really motivates employess at the workplace is recognition.
Employees who are regularly recognised/praised for their contributions ie positive feedback that their effort/work matters, will be more motivated and engaged at the workplace.
This leads to enhanced morale, reduced attrition and improved productivity & performance. All of which will go to boosting organisational effectiveness, performance and results.
Simple, novel and when done with sincerity, HR Day is a great way of letting employees know that people really are an organisations greatest asset.
What will you be doing come 1st March?
Singapore's HR Day will be held annually on March 1st.
Madam Ho Geok Choo, President of Singapore Human Resources Institute and also the new Chief Executive of the Human Capital Centre (HCC), was quoted by the media as saying "Singapore's success story is really all about human resources" and this "day formally recognises the significant contribution of HR and people managers."
In the many workshops/facilitated meetings that I have conducted relating to employee/staff motivation, one of the top factors that come up again and again, that really motivates employess at the workplace is recognition.
Employees who are regularly recognised/praised for their contributions ie positive feedback that their effort/work matters, will be more motivated and engaged at the workplace.
This leads to enhanced morale, reduced attrition and improved productivity & performance. All of which will go to boosting organisational effectiveness, performance and results.
Simple, novel and when done with sincerity, HR Day is a great way of letting employees know that people really are an organisations greatest asset.
What will you be doing come 1st March?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Servant-Leadership
In 1970, noted American organizational expert, Robert K Greenleaf, coined and defined the term ‘servant leadership’ in his essay The Servant as Leader.
This visionary approach to leadership development has since been advanced by such renowned authors such as Steven Covey, Ken Blanchard, Peter Senge and others.
In that essay, Greenleaf describes servant leadership in this manner:
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead……The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
In these trying business and economic times, amidst corporate management debacles about ethics and responsibility, the principles Greenleaf talks about are a timely reminder on what true leadership can be, be it in the community, politics or business.
In Western literature and tradition, Jesus Christ was truly the epitome of a servant leader where he made servitude a central principle of Christianity.
This visionary approach to leadership development has since been advanced by such renowned authors such as Steven Covey, Ken Blanchard, Peter Senge and others.
In that essay, Greenleaf describes servant leadership in this manner:
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead……The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
In these trying business and economic times, amidst corporate management debacles about ethics and responsibility, the principles Greenleaf talks about are a timely reminder on what true leadership can be, be it in the community, politics or business.
In Western literature and tradition, Jesus Christ was truly the epitome of a servant leader where he made servitude a central principle of Christianity.
Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Mark 10: 42-45 (NIV)
As Christians across the globe celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ today, I hope that His message will renew a sense of urgency and purpose for leaders to do what is right.
Mark 10: 42-45 (NIV)
As Christians across the globe celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ today, I hope that His message will renew a sense of urgency and purpose for leaders to do what is right.
Happy Easter!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Why Juggle?
Why not?
Juggling is a fun and very beneficial activity - for all ages.
It improves your rhythm, hand eye co-ordination, timing and it gives you a bit of exercise too. More importantly, it involves whole brain integration (see my earlier post regarding Left-Brain, Right-Brain).
When you are concentrating on the task of juggling, it is a great way to relax and forget about everything else for a moment, attaining what is called a "relaxed state of concentration". It is acknowledged that athletes perform best in this state, what is commonly referred to as being “in the zone”.
Still need convincing?
In edition 427 of Nature (311-312), dated 22 Jan 2004, researchers from the University of Regensberg in Germany found that learning to juggle causes certain areas of your brain to grow.
In the article Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training, researchers discovered that absolute beginners who learnt to juggle over a period of three months had increased their grey matter in areas associated with processing and storage of complex visual motion functions.
But they also discovered that brains returned to their original size when they stopped juggling ie this effect was transient. 'The brain is like a muscle, we need to exercise it," said Dr Arne May who led the research team. A case of use it or lose it.
So want your brain/brain power to get a boost? Learn to Juggle!
And then the next time you encounter a problem/issue - Take a time out, go juggle and when you have attained that relaxed state of concentration, see if a solution or at least some light at end of the tunnel presents itself.
You will be surprised at the results.
I have run many juggling workshops (from 8 to more than 120 pax) and participants often are skeptical at the beginning. But at the end, they not only had great fun, but they take away an important skill (which many secretly wished they knew how to) that gives them a fun way to achieve whole brain integration.
Juggling is a fun and very beneficial activity - for all ages.
It improves your rhythm, hand eye co-ordination, timing and it gives you a bit of exercise too. More importantly, it involves whole brain integration (see my earlier post regarding Left-Brain, Right-Brain).
When you are concentrating on the task of juggling, it is a great way to relax and forget about everything else for a moment, attaining what is called a "relaxed state of concentration". It is acknowledged that athletes perform best in this state, what is commonly referred to as being “in the zone”.
Still need convincing?
In edition 427 of Nature (311-312), dated 22 Jan 2004, researchers from the University of Regensberg in Germany found that learning to juggle causes certain areas of your brain to grow.
In the article Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training, researchers discovered that absolute beginners who learnt to juggle over a period of three months had increased their grey matter in areas associated with processing and storage of complex visual motion functions.
But they also discovered that brains returned to their original size when they stopped juggling ie this effect was transient. 'The brain is like a muscle, we need to exercise it," said Dr Arne May who led the research team. A case of use it or lose it.
So want your brain/brain power to get a boost? Learn to Juggle!
And then the next time you encounter a problem/issue - Take a time out, go juggle and when you have attained that relaxed state of concentration, see if a solution or at least some light at end of the tunnel presents itself.
You will be surprised at the results.
I have run many juggling workshops (from 8 to more than 120 pax) and participants often are skeptical at the beginning. But at the end, they not only had great fun, but they take away an important skill (which many secretly wished they knew how to) that gives them a fun way to achieve whole brain integration.
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