Brought to you by Business Training Library
The #1 Provider of Training Solutions for Growing Companies!

In this issue:

1. How to Improve the Learning Environment
2. Introducing Write for Business
3. Staff Course Review: People
4. Welcome Aboard!

1. How to Improve the Learning Environment
By: Kerry Patterson

Make It Relevant. At the heart of every effective learning environment lies a group of students who are excited about mastering the content. If you’ve ever taught a class of people who have come to the learning center kicking and screaming, then you know why I start any discussion of a learning environment with the importance of participant motivation.

So, what can you do to ensure participants are motivated to learn? Nothing helps motivate participants more than the realization they’re about to learn something to make their pressing problems disappear. Nothing. When you drag people away from the workplace where they’re up to their neck in alligators, the training had better provide alligator repellant of some type.

That’s why savvy training designers refuse to produce and deliver any material that isn’t immediately relevant to the participant’s pressing problems. So, start every training design with one question: “What do these people need to learn in order to be better prepared to solve their most immediate and important problem?” Design the training around those problems and your topic will always be relevant, and participants will always be motivated to learn.

Make It Helpful. Once you’ve identified a relevant topic, make sure the material you prepare offers genuine solutions. This recommendation seems obvious enough, but far too many training programs pretend to offer solutions when, in fact, they’re merely pointing to desired outcomes. This is particularly true when you teach interpersonal skills. When teaching people how to solve tough people problems, it is common for designers to swap outcome for tactics.

For instance, when teaching people how to begin a routine problem-solving discussion, a course I once attended suggested the trainees needed to “create a good relationship.” Who can argue with this? The only problem was this particular piece of advice was part of what they referred to as “skill building.” Unfortunately, it contained no skill whatsoever, merely an outcome – when you’re through, you should have a good relationship.

At some point, in order to be practical, you need to be tactical. That means when you‘re teaching interpersonal skills, you have to teach actual behaviors. If not, people are forced to invent the skills on their own, or worse still, they think they’ve learned what to do, exit the training, face a tough situation, and don’t have a clue what they’re actually supposed to do. So, don’t confuse outcomes with tactics.

Make It Real. In addition to masking outcomes as tactics, some designers build into every training session something I have come to call a “Red Sea Claus.” Here’s what it means. When Moses proposed to take the Children of Israel out of bondage, one of his followers asked him how he’d manage this monumental task. “It’ll be easy,” Moses explained. “We’ll put people in their wagons, gather their flocks, and head off into the wilderness. Eventually we’ll arrive at the Red Sea.” “And then what will you do?” the follower asked. “Easy,” Moses explained, “God will part the Red Sea.”

For years I’ve watched people deliver training that called for similar miracles. The training contained a detailed plan, but it wouldn’t work unless something magical happened. For example, in one course I attended the leaders rolled out a complicated production system employees were supposed to use. It took thousands of hours and tens of millions of dollars to develop the system. Then it took dozens of hours to teach it. Somewhere deep inside the training manual it contained the following phrase. “Of course, the system will only work if employees willingly and ably embrace it.” The truth was, nobody wanted it, everyone was fighting it, and it was doomed from the beginning. The course called for a miracle.

If you think this type of naïve thinking is unusual, think again. Yesterday I met with a personal trainer who said he had the perfect plan to help me in my quest to lose weight. He suggested I continue my rigorous workouts and then added the new “key to success.” “Here’s what you do,” he enthusiastically opined, “For dinner, load your plate up as normal.” “And then what?” I eagerly asked. “And then you put half of it back. That way you’ll cut your calories in half and lose the weight you need.” Duh. I know how to cut my calories in half, what I don’t know is how to motivate myself to do so when I finish the light meal and still crave more food.

Not more than a half hour after finishing this unhelpful conversation, I tuned into a TV talk show where a national guru was offering up his advice to weight loss. “It’s simple, he suggested. Fast food and other fatty offerings taste good. Our body craves fast food. That’s why the industry is growing despite all the press against the horrible health effects. So here’s what you have to do. You have to find a way to make healthy food more attractive.” “Yes,” I thought to myself, and then, “How do I do that?” But that was the end of the interview. He offered no advice whatsoever on how to make healthy food more tasty and desirable. Ah yes, still another miracle.

So, if you want to create a high-impact learning environment, start with genuine problems – pressing problems. End with real solutions. Avoid solutions that mask tactics as outcomes, call for miracles, or offer up no tactics whatsoever.

Contributed by Kerry Patterson. Patterson is author of New York Times bestsellers “Crucial Conversations” and “Crucial Confrontations,” an acclaimed keynote speaker, consultant and chief development officer of VitalSmarts – a consulting firm specializing in organizational performance and leadership training. Patterson has designed and implemented major corporate change initiatives for the past 25 years. www.vitalsmarts.com



Ninety-two percent of the top training organizations measure the impact that training has on business results, and nearly two-thirds measure their training ROI. Smaller organizations are just now beginning to track the ROI of their training programs. Download Business Training Library’s white paper to learn how one might start this task.



2. Introducing Write for Business

As a businessperson, you probably have suffered the frustration of receiving a letter full of grammatical errors. Maybe you’ve had to waste precious time trying to decipher a proposal or contract that is so poorly structured as to be practically unintelligible. Or maybe you have experienced the other side, struggling to construct a letter or memo that presents your thoughts smoothly and powerfully, grabbing the reader and clearly outlining your ideas.

Poor writing costs businesses more than just the time lost in revising or interpreting. It can undermine any business, causing lost contracts and expensive misunderstandings. But now you can prevent the embarrassment and expense of unclear writing with a little help from Business Training Library and UpWrite Press.

Business Training Library is excited to offer you Write for Business: A Compact Guide to Writing & Communicating in the Workplace (#062001). This easy-to-use guide and its accompanying CD will help you pump up your competitive muscle by showing you how to tighten your text, reshape your rhetoric, and slim your semantics. You’ll learn to quickly pinpoint and repair the trouble spots in your writing, whether they appear in your grammar, punctuation, mechanics, or sentence structure.

Write for Business can function in many ways for your employees. It can serve as the basis for a writing workshop, or as a dependable desk-side reference. In addition, Write for Business includes templates of various types of business communications for quick, foolproof correspondence.

Try Write for Business through the Business Training Library. After you discover its indispensable usefulness to your business, you can purchase your own copy.

Also, would you like to know more about writing e-mail? Do you need quick, desk-side references to help your employees write more effectively? Visit UpWritePress to learn more about their other fine products and materials designed to make writing work for you.



3. Staff Course Review: People

Course Number
025015

Course Group
Business Skills Lending Library

Course Overview
People is a visually engaging 4-minute launching point to any communication-based session. People beautifully illustrates the potential of the universal human traits of kindness, generosity, and respect in our workplaces. People gets to the heart of the one thing that unites all people on earth. This one thing is the key to success in all our relationships.

Target Audience
Front-line employees, managers, supervisors, and customer service agents

Media
DVD

Ryan's Rating
 5 Stars (out of 5)

Ryan's Review
Diversity is a topic that traditionally has negative connotations. In this course, it is portrayed the way it should be… as something to embrace.

This dynamic course has a very positive and upbeat feel, and really shows the potential benefit of having a diverse team working collaboratively toward a common goal.

The short duration makes it a great course for opening a meeting, or taking a short timeout to refresh the organization’s point of view on the topic. I would recommend it to anyone! I can really see why Will Marre, the former president and founder of the Covey Leadership Center said, "on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 25. If the UN hired the best agency in NYC to do a piece on what their mission is, it wouldn't have been this good."

Ryan Brooks is a Senior Training Consultant for Business Training Library's Lending Library team. He has been with Business Training Library since February 2004. He enjoys large bodies of water, watching and playing sports, and spending time with his family and two dogs.

4. Welcome Aboard

Business Training Library would like to welcome its newest clients! Your Business Training Library team stands ready to support you throughout this new endeavor.

• AMS, San Diego, CA
• Apache Honda, Phoenix, AZ
• Bonar Corporation, West Chicago, IL
• Carapace, Savage, MD
• Clarke College, Dubuque, IA
• Cottingham and Butler, Aubuque, IA
• De La Rue Cash Systems, Watertown, WI
• Durden Enterprises, Auburn, GA
• Executive Flight, East Wenatchee, WA
• Fiscal Credit Union, Glendale, CA
• Ingram Book, LaVergne, TN
• Itex Company, Lincolnwood, IL
• Kyosan Denso Manufacturing Kentucky, Mount Sterling, KY
• McGuireWoods, Richmond, VA
• MedImpact Healthcare Systems, San Diego, CA
• Miracosta Community College, Oceanside, CA
• National Jewish Medical & Research Center, Denver, CO
• New Hope Center, Dolton, IL
• Premier Solutions Group, Elkridge, MD
• Southern United Fire Insurance Company, Mobile, AL
• Texas Dow Employees Credit Union, Lake Jackson, TX
• Wynn's Extended Care, Brea, CA

Business Training Library
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Chesterfield, MO 63005
888.432.3077
636.534.1001 (fax)
www.bizlibrary.com

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