Leadership Post : Management and Intergenerational Leadership Coaching, Employee Engagement, and Performance Management Training

Last week I participated in Jeanne Meister's webinar, Corporate Learning in 2010, hosted by Chief Learning Officer Magazine and I learned that there is an incredible innovation going on in the way companies are using social media for training and learning. These are just some of the innovations that I want to share with you.

Mobile Phones
The use of mobile phone is proliferating. 70% HR executives said they plan on using mobile phones for learning in the next 18 months. Merrill Lynch was one of the first to use mobile phones for compliance training and other financial services firms are now experimenting with the idea. Community bankers at Wachovia who spend most of their time traveling to meet clients use their  Blackberrys to have product knowledge at their fingertips in order to enhance sales. And, Watson Pharmaceuticals expects that within the next few years every sales person will use a smartphone with an app that says WatsonU.

Social Networks
According to DukeCE uppermost on the minds of most CEO’s is how to drive innovation. IBM successfully has addressed that issue by using technology called “innovation jams” to identify business problems and allow their 300,000 employees to easily connect to solve them. Computer Associates and Agilent Technologies also use internal social networks as a way for their employees to collaborate and share information.

Job Skills Accreditation
More job skills will be accredited. In addition to receiving accreditation from a university employees will be able to enhance their personal job skills portfolio. The focus will now be on what they learn not how they learn. In this day and age of job insecurity and cutbacks, this is appealing to employees who want portable skills that they can take to another organization.

As organizations become more complex and virtual, it is critical for them to use social media to be competitive. Whether you are trying to increase employee productivity, drive innovation or simply on-board new hires, social media is the tool to help you achieve this in an efficient way.

For more information on innovations in learning visit Jeanne Meister’s New Learning Playbook.

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Recently I attended a thought provoking presentation at The New York Human Resource Planning Society on Developing Resilience at Astra Zeneca. The presenters were Dr.Linda Hoopes, President of Resilience Alliance and Joseph Fletcher, Learning and Organizational Effectiveness Partner at Astra Zeneca.

I’m stating the obvious when I say we live in turbulent times where change is the norm. As we’ve all experienced, change can be disruptive especially in the workplace.

AstraZeneca one of the leading pharmaceutical companies has taken significant steps to help their employees adapt to an ongoing stream of change. In collaboration with Dr. Hoopes, they have developed and delivered programs to their employees on personal resilience to help alleviate the related debilitating stress that accompanies it. By taking a web-based questionnaire their employees gained insight into their resilience strengths and weaknesses, and received scores on the dimensions related to effective adaptation to disruptive change. 


What I liked about what I heard is that these programs go beyond the usual change management programs that teach people how to merely cope with disruption in the workplace and focuses more on learning the skills required to successfully

People who are able to successfully cope with disruptive change have these five characteristics:

1. They are Positive (about the world and self) and are able to frame the unknown into possibilities.
2. They remain Focused during times of ambiguity and confusion.
3. By being Flexible both internally in their thoughts and externally with others, they can create possibilities rather than see things in black or white.
4. They put order and structure to chaos by being Organized. They use their “energy by putting systems and discipline to good use.
5. In the face of adversity they take a risk by being Pro-active. They don’t wait – they make things happen.

How resilient are your employees? It may be time to find out.

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A few months ago I wrote an article for Diversity Executive Magazine titled Gen Y: How Millennials Are Changing the Workplace. The article refers to how the Millennials are presenting challenges for managers and how they are impacting diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Historically, diversity has been about race, gender, sexual orientation and physical disabilities. These groups are still important, but generational differences are emerging as a key area of focus in diversity.

Danielle Robinson, director of diversity, talent and organizational design for global premium drinks company Diageo, said she believes Gen Y's entrance into the workplace has added a layer of complexity to an already complex work environment.

The article shares how some of the Fortune 100 companies and their heads of diversity are addressing the top four challenges:

1. Unrealistic Career Aspirations
2. Work-Life Effectiveness
3. Capturing Knowledge
4. Communications

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I’m always fascinated to hear how leaders lead, how life’s experiences affected their style and what criteria are used to hire employees. The New York Times Sunday’s Corner Office column gives me insight into their thinking. 

Recently Meridee Moore founder of Watershed Asset Management shared her lessons learned.vI like the fact that for hiring she goes beyond school, grades and scores and looks at experiences people have had. The Center for Creative Leadership has documented the importance of learning from experience and Ms. Moore relies on that when she asks candidates to talk about rough patches in their past. The adage “it’s not what happens to you that’s important, but it’s what you do with what’s happened to you that’s more important” should be ingrained in all managers and leaders.

Learning from mistakes is the hallmark of a well-developed person and someone I believe will make a good employee.

It’s too bad that organizations don’t see the benefit of this. They talk out of both sides of their mouth when they say they want innovation and “out of the box thinking” and then severely reprimand employees for trying something new and getting it wrong.

Here’s my recommendation for leaders:

• Encourage open and honest discussions and then listen to what people have to say
• Take a risk and try something new and if it fails, conduct a lessons learned session
• Gather your team together and talk about what worked, what did not, why and what you could do differently in the future

Engage and motivate your employees by not stifling their creativity.

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Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal has written a management book titled the WSJ’s Essential Guide to Management full of sage advice from the best leadership minds of our time. Excerpts from the book have appeared in the Journal. I particularly liked the piece on What Makes a Great Leader in which he discusses the various leadership styles from the bombastic Patton to the soft-spoken Lincoln.

Murray refers to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great to do an analysis of styles. Here’s an excerpt

In the early stages of the project, Collins, who was inclined to believe that the importance of leadership was overstated, urged his team to "ignore the executives." But he says the team kept pushing back, saying there was something consistently unusual about the leaders of the good-to-great companies.

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars," Collins writes. "Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

Keep your eyes out for its release this August. From what I've read so far it has all the makings of an engaging and compelling management book for anyone interested in leadership.

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Many chief executives are looking to hire again, but cautiously according to Dana Mattioli's article in The Wall Street Journal titled, CEO's Hiring Again, But Cautiously. 

Defense conglomerate ITT Corp. is hiring workers for nine new plants in emerging markets, but is limiting hiring at home. General Mills Inc. is hiring, but more slowly than pre-recession. Accounting firm Plante & Moran is hiring more auditors and tax staffers, but fewer consultants.  Ninety-two percent of U.S. companies plan to hire in 2010, but half plan to do so more slowly than in pre-recession years, according to a January study by human resources consultancy Towers Watson. Friday's jobless report underlined that caution, as the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%.

It's saddens me that nowhere in Ms Manttioli's article was it mentioned that companies are beginning to rehire training and development professionals, one of the hardest hit professions of this recession. The downturn has caused many companies to ease their focus on developing their employees which is unfortunate because there will be negative long-term implications for failing to do so. Why?

The cutbacks have resulted in a large number of disengaged employees who are not being developed and are not as productive as they could be. Once the economy improves, these employees will jump ship for greener pastures. How companies treat people in down times will determine their success retaining these individuals when the recession is over. Now is the time to invest in what companies often refer to as "their most important resource" by bringing back development programs.

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