Training

presenting like a rock star

Rock and roll2Does anyone else go to concerts and try to figure out how to do your job better? No? A side effect of being a presenter and facilitator is that I cannot attend any training, speech, or event without noticing what is done well, what could be better, and what I can learn from it.

Eighteen months ago I wrote a post called “Rock and Roll Presentation Skills” after seeing one of my favorite European bands perform. As a presenter, this band inspires me more than any other with their stage presence, energy, and connection to the crowd. By sheer coincidence the same band was performing in Dallas the same weekend I was there to attend HRevolution and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them again.

Reflecting on what I took from this performance, the presentation lessons hold true with what I learned from their last performance.

1. There is a huge, gaping chasm between “pretty good” and “great”. Three local bands opened up and they were pretty good. But there was a big contrast between the opening and main performances and, oddly, it had little to do with musical skills. Some of the local bands had outstanding musicians, but it wasn’t enough to close the gap. They did a “good” job, but not one that made me want to hear more from them.

That has me wondering what I need to do to leap to the next level. Obviously, a presentation has to be well written and delivered with reasonable skill. But, content and technical skills only get you to good. What are the components that move it to great?

2. ALL presentations matter.Although largely unknown in the States, the main band headlines festivals in Europe, playing to tens of thousands of people. In stark contrast, the show in Dallas was in a bar that held maybe a couple hundred people. They could have viewed Dallas an unimportant show and just gone through the motions.

Instead, they played as though it were the most important show on the tour. Full out, completely committed, pouring sweat, not an ounce of energy held back. Even with their relentless schedule of touring around the world they showed no signs of boredom, exhaustion, or the sense that it was just one more gig. Instead, they radiated joy and enthusiasm.

For me the big question is: How do I structure my life and mindset so I have the energy and focus to be at 100% for every presentation? How do I ensure I’m always treating every presentation as though it will define my career?

3. Engage the crowd. Rather than being the untouchable rockstars up on a pedestal, they interacted with the audience at every opportunity. The headlining singer continually and sincerely referred to the crowd as “friends”, showed off signs held by audience members, offered choices of what songs they’d play next, celebrated the energy of the crowd, and thanked the audience for coming out to see them. Sounds obvious, but the local bands did little of this.

What are the obvious things to connect with my audiences and classes that I’m not doing enough or at all? How can I better create a feeling where I’m speaking with the audience rather than at them? How can I connect with as many people as possible on as individual of level as possible.

4. Make it about the audience, not the presenter.The local bands kept mentioning the CDs they had for sale in the back, reasons they weren’t at their best, where they were playing next, blah, blah, blah. Any words between songs were few and focused on the band. In contrast, it would have been easy – almost expected – for the headliners to show up with rock and roll egos completely unchecked and gripe about the venue or small crowd. They could have bragged about the shows they normally do or made it clear a bar gig was beneath them. Yet, everything the headliners said – every single word– was focused on audience and how fun and great they were. It was clear the band was thrilled and grateful that everyone had showed up to see them.

Our words reveal our focus – as a speaker, is the concern for the audience and participants or for ourselves? This is a subtle, but really powerful difference. The audience knows and responds accordingly.

5. Keep it simple. One would think that less experience performers would keep it simple and focus on walking before they run, but it was the opposite. The local bands had five and six string basses and seven and eight (!) string guitars, using sophisticated techniques to play complex lines. The headlining musicians used a traditional instruments, straightforward techniques, and played comparatively simple songs.

As a presenter it’s tempting to show off with technology, complicated materials, fancy language, credentials, etc. But that’s all about the presenter. Complex is the lazy route. Simple is difficult, it takes more time to do, and it often feels unprofessional to the novice. What beginning presenters often miss is simple requires expert level judgment, effort, and refinement. Simple keeps it about the message connecting with the audience.

6. Have fun. It’s hard to travel day after day, connect with the audience, be grateful for any opportunity to get your message out there, and have a blast while doing it. Despite near continual touring schedule and the small venue the headliners were smiling, playing, joking around, and giving full effort like there’s nothing else they’d rather be doing. The headliners seemed to be doing their dream job, the local bands seemed to be showing up for work.

The differences between good and great are small, but significant.

It’s funny how the things that set us apart are often not all that big on the surface. Notice how none of this is about their musical ability. The gap between the opening bands and the headliner was much more about approach, attitude, and connection. Could the local bands have done all this? Yes. Did they? Not really. They were more than skilled enough, but in the end were no more memorable than the background music the club played over the PA between the sets.

It’s a nice reminder to continually step up my intention, focus, and connection. I need to make sure I’m creating a great user experience and not getting between my message and my audience.

For you, what’s the difference between a great presentation and one that’s merely good?

whose policy is it, anyway?

Had a great conversation the other night with a friend about making organizations flatter and removing the barriers to people doing great work. It’s easy for me to get pretty excited and idealistic about the shift I see happening in companies and the future of work. I was brought down to earth with the memory of a silly process that stayed in place because it existed but no one knew who was responsible for it.

Several years ago a CFO complained about a form used by his accounting department to track training expenses. It was intended to make sure that employees weren’t going on some sort of training spending spree (does that happen?) by requiring several levels of approval before they were able to attend the training.

The reality was NO ONE filled it out in advance. They only completed it when accounting started calling well after the fact and insisting on it to justify the expenses. Plus, it applied equally to all “training” from attending a lunch at a professional organization to a multiple day program across the country. And, many of the people who had to fill it out had company credit cards and discretionary funds – I suspect they simply got around completing the form by not calling it “training”.

So here was the CFO griping that he had to complete a form that he thought was ridiculous and stupid. Although it was a training form, it never passed through anyone responsible for training so it was a form that only his department used. Think about that again. His department’s form. He thinks it’s stupid. He could kill it on the spot. But rather than risk eliminating it (who would protest?), he complained and let it continue. I’ve no doubt he is still complaining about it today.

Stories like that make me think the organization of the future is just a little bit further away than I want to imagine.

What thinks you?

IBM’s co-investment in training cuts salaries by 10%

Just saw that IBM is cutting salaries 10% for employees in the Global Technology Services strategic outsourcing group who have been identified as not keeping their skills current. For the next six months, identified employees will spend a day a week getting current on their skills. IBM is calling this program a “co-investment” in training. (See the full article at Computerworld.)

So, it’s pitched as a way to help employees who are falling behind. Employees spend 20% of their week in training and their salary is reduced by 10% (assuming they are working five day weeks for eight hours a day). Critics and cynics suggest it’s a way to weed out certain employees without having to pay severance. Or maybe it’s just a new way to reduce the salary budget for six months?

So many questions:

  • Was this a long time coming or just dropped on employees one day? How was well was it communicated?
  • How did IBM determine who was lacking current skills and which skills were lacking? Are those skills needing to be brought current actually required in the daily work of those who haven’t kept up?
  • Have training budgets or programs been cut in the past five years? Did everyone have equal opportunity for development?
  • What have those who are deemed current done differently than those who aren’t? How did they stay current? Was it through seeking training on their own time or was it on-the-job training from working on new projects?
  • Were those skills and the level of mastery needed made explicit before / after the pay cut?
  • Who is providing the training? How is it being paid for?
  • Why is the program six months long for everyone? Is everyone lacking the exact same amount of skills?
  • Has the workload of participating employees also been reduced to allow for the day of training?
  • How will the skills and mastery be assessed before reinstating pay?
  • What happens if a person doesn’t reach those levels? Are they fired, do they continue training, etc.?
  • Has IBM just handed everyone an excuse for not working more than 40 hour weeks: “I’d love to stay and work longer, but I need to keep current.”
  • What will be the impact on the morale of all employees?
  • Is this – as some commented – an subterfuge to “encourage” certain employees to quit or a clever way to help trailing employees get back up to speed?
  • What will be the next company to do this?

What thinks you?

What a 9 Year Old Can Teach Us About L&D

“SWEET! I wiped out! They should make pads for your butt!”

Five minutes into his first ride on his first skateboard and my son was bouncing up off the ground, getting his board out of the shrubbery, and jumping right back on.Skating There were no tentative “baby steps”, no hesitation. It was full force, hop on and go enthusiasm. That brief moment contained the most important aspect of successful training.

 

What is the most important aspect of successful training? Today, I’m guest blogging over at Performance I Create. Read the rest of this post here .

lessons from experimenting with innovation

I get sick of hearing about innovation. It’s too buzzwordy; there’s too much noise around it and far too many misconceptions. Yet, wherever an old idea isn’t working, wherever a new idea would work better, we need more innovation. We really need less talk and more action, but telling people to “go be innovative” doesn’t work.

I recently wrote about a class I put together around the soon-to-be-published The Innovation Book from Max Mckeown (@maxmckeown). Not only did the class help people in my organization better understand how to bring innovation and creativity into their own jobs, but by playing with class format and location it served as an experiment for me about learning and development.

Over the six session class we held sessions in two common conference rooms and one out-of-the-way board room, hosted a session on WebEx, had a Twitter chat, and met up in a city park. There were pros and cons to each format but board rooms have an oppressive/stuffy/stifling feel, technical difficulties devolved the WebEx session into a slightly more painful than normal conference call, user inexperience with Twitter kept two from participating in the chat, and I didn’t give good directions so two people got lost on the way to the park. Failure, right?

Not a bit, because I learned some important things along the way:

  • People want to experiment. They want to play and try new things. Not everyone, but more than we generally think. They are looking for permission; signs that it’s ok to tinker and tweak.
  • People want to be successful. No one wants to fail and a lot of the fear around change and trying new things is simply fear of failure. So, it’s important to let people know that it’s an experiment and you know that some of it won’t work the first (or second or third) time out. Keep a sense of humor about it and be transparent when it doesn’t work. Then use that to fuel better discussions.
  • People can deal with ambiguity if they aren’t concerned about 100% success right from the start. Remove blame and turn it into a journey where everyone’s in it together and they are more than happy to join in.
  • People confuse innovation with computer magic worked by geniuses with big budgets. No surprise then that they don’t know how to bring innovation into their jobs. But, they are pretty comfortable with figuring out how to make new ideas practical (The Innovation Book’s definition of innovation) or finding new uses for existing ideas.
  • Location matters. A lot. There isn’t a single perfect location and each has its own distinctive feel. I can’t help be wonder what would happen if teams experimented with meeting locations. How might that affect participation, creativity, idea development, information flow, etc.?

It turns out that just talking about innovation isn’t the same as experiencing experimentation. I’d do this class again in a heartbeat and I’d push and twist the formats and locations even further to help participants get even more comfortable with play, change, stretching comfort zones, and stuff just not working out as planned. Innovation is a creative process so it’s not static, it’s not linear, and it’s not formulaic.

So why do we try so hard to pretend otherwise?

(Note: this was originally posted on brocedwards.com)

is learning about performance?

Sukh Pabial (@sukhpabial) over at Thinking About Learning (he writes good stuff – check him out) raised an important question the other day: Is learning about performance? As one who continually states that increasing performance is the only purpose of training, learning and development, etc. I liked his question. I say it so often and am so convinced of it that his question made me stop and think a bit about my own beliefs.

I do believe the immediate purpose of training is to either create additional skills or knowledge OR to help a person better use the skills and knowledge they already have. Why? Why take time away from the job to learn? Why spend the money, time, and energy? Why pour resources into learning? Because we expect the additional skills and knowledge will help people do a better job and get better results. Technical skills improve performance with tasks and soft skills improve performance with other humans (highly relevant for everyone who’s not a hermit). Even compliance training – safety, anti-harassment, regulations, etc. – aims to improve performance or at least prevent performance from dropping (death, dismemberment, lawsuits, or imprisonment all tend to have a negative effect on individual and company performance).

Put another way: if learning and development doesn’t increase performance through increased or better use of knowledge and skills, then what is the purpose?

When we develop learning events or provide learning resources we work hard to make the information as understandable, relevant, and real-world as possible. We design in the best ways for participants retain and integrate the ideas into their lives and jobs. Why? The more they retain and use, the more they can use on the job, and the better their performance. If knowledge retention and use didn’t lead to better on the job performance why would we spend time worrying about it? Deeper knowledge for the sake of deeper knowledge is nice but doesn’t help the individual excel in their job and doesn’t drive the company forward. I, like many, simply love to learn new things. Learning is a huge value for me and I could happily drain many a day on google, Wikipedia, and in the library. As an employee, my company cares most about the learning that might help me in my job (versus, say, mountain biking), BUT it has a huge interest in me being knowledgeable, competent, and continually improving in my role.

The good news is that I can help others improve their performance across a wide variety of jobs and even industries. I don’t know much about most jobs or industries, but unless I’m training technical skills, I don’t have to. I just have to know enough to be able to apply real world context. For example, with only slight changes, a class on conflict resolution could apply to a manager, customer services representative, sales person, negotiator, line worker, etc. It’s really hard to imagine a job where conflict resolution (or any important soft skill) wouldn’t improve performance – even if that person isn’t directly evaluated on conflict resolution.

It is the manager’s (and employee’s) job to evaluate performance – I can’t do that for them. But when they identify areas that need to be improved either because of low performance or to increase performance as a part of their career path I can help provide the resources and learning experiences that help them develop and use the necessary skills and knowledge. Just as I’m not involved in evaluating their on the job performance, I also can learn and implement it for them. The sole purpose of training and development is to increase performance but the employee and manager play a massive role in it.

I’ll take the discussion a step further. Not only do I deeply believe that the purpose of development is to improve performance (however that’s defined), but I believe development is a source of ongoing competitive advantage.

  • A company must have talent. It can choose to buy talent or develop talent or both. But it does need talent.
  • High performing people are required to create a high performing company. It’s hard to imagine any situation where we could create exceptional results far and above the competition using indifferent, unskilled people who lack the necessary knowledge.
  • We cannot improve a company’s performance without first improving individual performance. Sure, we can slash costs, buy new technology, acquire other companies, but those tend to be short term gains (measured very narrowly) or impossible to do without dealing with the messy human side of it (bringing us back to development).
  • We often struggle to measure the dollar benefit of development and spend much time discussing the ROI of training. Training is an easy cost to cut and is often the first to go when times get tough. Which is funny because I doubt any professional sports teams spend much time discussing the ROI of practice, training, and developing their players. Would a low performing team ever decide that the best way to improve their performance is to STOP coaching and improving their players? Put another way, we can easily measure the cost of training and tend to focus on that because it is difficult to measure the total benefits of development. The problem is we can’t measure the costs of NOT training. (Hat tip to Zig Ziglar for that thought.) And as the old saying goes: The only thing worse than training someone and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.

Is learning about performance? In my mind, absolutely. There are many, many side benefits to learning and development, but if we’re not helping people create the knowledge and skills they need to do better at their jobs and if we’re not helping the company perform better by helping individuals and teams perform better, what are we doing?

What thinks you?

comfort zones are so… comfortable

Us humans can talk about pushing boundaries, thinking outside the box, or getting outside of comfort zones all we want. Deep down we know that there is no growth, development, change, or improvement without discomfort. But we hate that. We really do. We want to believe the marketing hype that says change and improvement is easy and effortless and fun.

Picture a cold, wet, stormy winter night and you’re snuggled in a soft, plush, fleecy blanket by the fire while drinking hot chocolate and watching your favorite movie. That’s your comfort zone – it’s all warm, cozy, and oh so gloriously relaxing.

Now, picture that same winter night and your spouse comes into the room and inexplicably yanks the blanket off, turns on all the fans and A/C, and changes the channel. THAT’S what stretching your comfort zone feels like. Not life threatening, just really, really irritating. And we want to fix it immediately and return to our blissful cocoon.

Deep down inside the lizard brain we’re wired to avoid discomfort. It’s a survival trait that goes to the roots of our existence. Hypothermia, starvation, and injury are kind of a big deal when you’re 75,000 years from the nearest heated house, stocked fridge, and health clinic. Pain is a fabulous instructor because it teaches us to not do things that might result in injury, dismemberment, or death.

The problem is, we’re also wired to survive one more day. Our lizard brain only worries about right now, not 20 years out. The mechanisms that keep us from freezing or starving to death don’t work well to protect us from the long term dangers brought about by sloth, overconsumption, or NOT changing with the world. Our bodies are great at telling us to eat, but not so good at telling us to back off; great at teaching us not to stick our hands in the fire, but lousy at encouraging us to seek out new skills, knowledge, and people.

Related to all this, us humans also hate, hate, hate to be denied something we want. It becomes a tickle in the brain that we’re soon obsessing over until we HAVE TO HAVE IT!!!! Again, it’s a great survival trait when our bodies are trying to get us to go hunt something so we can eat for another day, but counterproductive when we’re trying to create long term behavioral change like eating less, saving more, getting up earlier, learning new skills, etc.

The longer we stay in our comfort zone, the more it starts to shrink. We step back from the edge to provide a cushion of comfort and the edge moves inward. So we step back again. Pretty soon we find we’ve trapped ourselves in a very small, very tiny, very restrictive place. And we wonder why our lives and careers aren’t where we want them.

Worse, yet. When faced with danger – physical, emotional, mental – we retreat to what we know. The more uncertain the situation, the more dogmatically and desperately we cling to the things we are certain about. Ironically, the moments we need to change the most are the moments we are most resistant to change.

All of this has huge implications for leading change, training and development, and personal and professional growth. It’s not that we can’t or won’t push on those self-imposed boundaries, it’s just that we’re highly resistant to discomfort.

How often do we put off the diet or fitness or savings plans until “tomorrow”? How often do we delay going back to school or seeking out new training until “the time is right”? How often do we dangerously delay important decisions until we “have more information”? How often do we dismiss new approaches out of hand, preferring to stick to “tried and true” and “best practices”?

What thinks you?

 

rock and roll presentation skills, pt 2

I see many, many parallels between musicians and presenters. Both groups are faced with the challenges of building connection with large groups, of creating interaction, of sharing messages, of standing apart from their competition and creating their own unique identity. Both are in the spotlight and build and create energy from the crowd, and both can be very uncomfortable if the crowd isn’t on their side. So, as I try to sharpen my presentation skills I look to live music performances for inspiration and ideas. A few months back I wrote Rock and Roll Presentation Skills after attending a live show. Today I want to learn from two specific video clips that really resonate for me as a presenter.

The first is from AC/DC playing on a British music show in about 1977. This is before they were global stars and they are on a musical variety show so it’s unlikely that more than a few in the audience had heard of them or were excited to see them play. This is very clear in the expressions of the crowd. Some look horrified, some bored, some confused, and only a few look interested, let alone enthused.

So, it’s a semi-interested crowd at best. You’ve got a sound (message) that won’t connect or resonate with many in the audience. In fact, you’ve got a sound (message) that’s different than everything else that’s popular at the time. You have a small time slot and then you’re done. What do you do?

The “safe” way would be to play it safe, tone down the sound (message), do a song that most would be familiar with, and try not to turn anyone off. OR… you can turn the amps up to 11 and play like you’re trying to blow the roof off of the place. Unapologetic full force rock and roll. Do the unexpected. Send the strong message that this is who you are, take it or leave it. Don’t let the crowd bring you down, just play bigger than ever and leave everything on the stage. Don’t even acknowledge the doubters and haters, just build love with those who are interested. This has been Seth Godin’s message for years – ignore the masses, build your tribe.

 

The second video is Arch Enemy playing at the Download Festival a few years back. A warning: they are not for everyone. The vocalist has a style practically all her own and is one of the very few women to bring that sound. And, no apologies, she doesn’t care if you don’t like it. The band has a style full of paradox that brings out the haters, even among those who like heavy metal, but they aren’t trying to please everyone. Again, this is playing to the tribe, not to the masses. But what really stands out for me as a presenter is her stage presence. Turn the sound off and watch her body language. Her presence is huge and she owns the stage like few others. Yet, she also clearly has a connection with the audience which is tens of thousands of people strong. That is a deep certainty about who she is and what she’s doing. There is no hesitation, no “I hope you like me”, just full ownership of the message and performance.

(Second warning: there is one brief bit of swearing at the end, but if you make it that far, I doubt it’s an issue for you.)

What’s my lesson as a presenter? Learn from the best but be myself. Play to my strengths. Trying to please everyone is counterproductive and actually pleases no one. Bring myself 100% and don’t hold back – never finish a presentation thinking I could have done more. No matter the size or interest of the audience, present like it’s the most important presentation of my career. Push myself and the presentation to 11. Preparation matters. It’s impossible to give my full self without knowing the presentation at the sub-conscious level because thinking about it builds barriers between me and the audience. Oh, and go where the moment takes you.

What have I missed? What other lessons are there for us presenters?

 

what do you mean it was a great meeting?

Compelling. Rejuvenating. Energizing. How often do people use those words to describe a daylong meeting focused on updating annual goals? How often do participants come away saying it was their best meeting all their years at the company? How often do they send thank you notes and stop the organizers in the hallway to say how fantastic it was?

Never? Exactly. A snowball’s chance as they say.

This week there was apparently a cold front blowing over the river Styx. Snowmen and downhill skiing in Hades and all that.

The company I work for is very big on goal setting and every June there is a meeting of roughly the top 20% leaders to look at internal and external factors that might require one’s goals to be updated/revised/changed. It’s an important event because it recognizes that the world is changing quickly and we need to adjust as needed. This year, the organizers took a big chance and shook things up.

Rather than talking about goals, goal setting, etc. the event happened like this: After a 30 minute kickoff, 15 teams of five people were given sealed envelopes with instructions for 8-10 out of 12 or so possible activities and turned loose. They got back together five hours later to debrief their insights from the activities and wrap things up. The activities ranged from looking at how competitors were using social media (in an industry that is very shy about such things), checking out internal learning resources available, going to the mall and seeing how a certain retailer is trying to rebrand itself, considering rapidly changing industries such as music and DVDs and how it might relate to our own, etc. They even decorated their own coffee mugs using markers (ala Pinterest) with how they were feeling about the near future. It all sounds campy and probably shouldn’t have worked. Amazingly (and thankfully) it did.

Why? I’m still not sure, but I have a few thoughts:

1. It was different and unexpected. People were planning on a long, dull day so the novelty was energizing and people appreciated the organizers taking chances with the meeting.

2. The teams were very cross functional across department, location, and level so participants got to know people they rarely work with or even speak to. There’s a lot of power and benefit in kicking at the silos.

3. People, even conservative people in conservative companies in conservative industries, want permission to play, explore, think, and discuss. They really don’t get a chance to do that.

4. The day was framed as being all about questions and possibilities. Participants were told up front that there were no answers to be given only exploration and discussion.

5. There was no right or wrong, just open ended questions. There was no looking at what the company needed to do better, no leading questions or judgment, just a lot of thinking about what was going on in a lot of different fields. The company has smart leaders and they were left to draw their own conclusions for moving forward.

6. When things didn’t work like the organizers had planned, they were very up front and shared it as a learning point for all the participants to benefit from.

7. The organizers didn’t apologize, hesitate, or doubt. Their words and attitudes conveyed that it was going to be a different, provocative, and fun day and the participants followed that lead.

 

In there is my own personal biggest takeaway: people want permission to think and play. Daily work, organizational politics and personalities, self-inflicted expectations, and fear of being different conspire to get in the way. Events that remove those constraints and create a safe zone for playing with ideas enable something pretty special to emerge.