Development Programs

Professional Development for Busy People

Guidance on how to create robust and impactful self-directed personal development plans.

How do people manage their own professional development in the digital world? How do people design their own learning journeys to deepen their knowledge and skill around topics that are important to them?

Even though the digital age makes resources widely available, many people struggle with managing their own professional development. One of the perennial challenges is lack of time. It is also sometimes tricky to find resources and activities that are robust and relevant. In the current environment, where skills are rapidly advancing and role changes are frequent, the ability to develop yourself is critical.

Professional Development for Busy People will show you how savvy professionals create accelerated learning plans. You’ll be introduced to several approaches for self-development and the kinds of resources and activities associated with each, including research-based recommendations on the elements you should include on every self-directed learning plan. You’ll learn what distinguishes an effective, actionable self-development strategy and the skills you need to be a successful self-directed learner. Take away practices and tools that will help you ensure you invest your limited development time in activities that will make a difference.

In this session, we will explore

• The process and practices of effective self-directed learning, based on research
• Different approaches to self-directed learning, and strategies for each
• Key elements of a successful strategy for advancing your knowledge and skill
• Qualities and skills necessary to manage your own learning and development

FORMAT: An overview of the Charting Your Course process takes an hour to 90 minutes; a workshop to build skills on creating robust learning plans can be customized, anf that will take 90 minutes to three hours. This webinar is often paired with a license for on-demand resources on Charting Your Course.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

The Leader’s Guide to Developing People

A master class in how managers can promote and encourage knowledge and skill development among their direct reports.

How do we educate people leaders about the full range of options they have to actively develop employee knowledge or skill? How can people leaders ensure their team has the capabilities needed to achieve organizational goals?

Individual leaders can make a huge difference on the scope and depth of learning throughout the organization. Their ability to encourage and facilitate the development of their teams (individually and collectively) is a critical skill. Developing people effectively requires using a variety of tactics, and many managers still rely too heavily on formal organizational programs to support employee development.

The Leader’s Guide to Developing People provides an action-oriented framework for managers that synthesizes the many strategies they can use to develop employees. It describes six modes of engagement and the management actions and behaviors that comprise them. Based on research on learning culture, self-directed learning, and coaching, the session will dig into the details regarding what the most effective managers do to ensure that employees are continuously strengthening their current skill sets and building the capabilities needed for the future. In short, managers should clarify, coach, challenge, connect, curate, and customize.

Participants in this program will learn:

• A research-based framework that highlights six critical modes of engagement that managers can use to develop employees (clarify, coach, challenge, connect, curate, and customize)
• The detail-level actions that operationalize the critical modes of engagement (examples of what to do)
• A strategy for defining a development path (series of actions or moves) for achieving a specific development goal in a particular context, and the considerations for selecting development actions to be part of that path
• The characteristics and skills of an exemplary developmental manager

FORMAT:  The workshop is presented as a 3-hour interactive webinar (or classroom event) using discussion, case study, and application activities to underscore key points and practice employing the strategies. Shorter time frames can be customized to meet the needs of specific organizations. Participants will be given a curated list of resources (books, articles, videos) that further explore each of the modes of engagement and the role of the developmental manager, including a Quick Guide to Developing People – a one-page summary of the framework.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

Modern Blended Learning

A timely comprehensive workshop and development program to enable the L&D team to design cohernet blended learning strategies.

How do we create coherent learning strategies that incorporate a wide variety of formats, activities, and resources? How do we balance structure and learner choice and provide gentle guidance on the overall flow of activities?

One of the most exciting things about designing learning in this era is the varied portfolio of elements that can be pulled into a strategy. Yet that range of options also poses a long list of questions: What components should be included in a design? How will learners access all the pieces? How much freedom should people have in working their way through suggested materials and activities? Having so many options can make it more difficult to design, not easier. The opportunity to craft engaging, impactful strategies is there, if we can just put the pieces together in a coherent fashion.

The Modern Blended Learning program explores how to craft a comprehensive learning experience that combines elements in a variety of formats, whether for targeted learning goals or longer-term development efforts.

Rather than focus on one approach to structuring a blend, this workshop will explore the range of options for blended learning design and give designers advice on selecting the right strategy for a particular project. We’ll overview approaches and showcase examples. Through a robust case study, you’ll have the opportunity to craft a blended design in multiple frameworks so you can clearly see advantages and differences among approaches.

The workshop will also fill in details regarding the process of blended design and the criteria for assessing the quality of your resulting design. You’ll leave this workshop with a deeper grasp of the considerations, options, and decision points for modern blended learning.

You will learn:

• How to integrate non-instructional components and digital resources with live events (face-to-face or virtual) to craft a robust blended learning design
• Multiple frameworks for structuring a blended learning program as distinguished from traditional approaches
• Suggestions for adjusting the design process to accommodate the design activities needed for modern blended learning
• Principles and practices that define the quality and impact of modern blended learning strategies
• How to humanize and contextualize the online learning experience
• Guidance for transitioning to modern blended learning

FORMAT:  The program has these components:

• Preview materials to underscore importance of a modern blended learning strategy and lay groundwork for the program
• Two highly interactive 90-minute webinars / For a more robust customized workshop, the program can run in four 90-minute modules (scheduled over two days or a week apart) and include deep work on your designs and discussion of standardizing and marketing a particular approach to blending within your organization
• Comprehensive curated resources for further exploration and learning
• Follow up activities, including two action-oriented manager-led team activities, 4 “deep dive” follow-through bulletins (to send weekly), and customized social learning strategy recommendations
• Consultation on next steps
• This course can be customized to meet your particular needs.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

Cultivating a Learning Culture

An online workshop to give you tools to influence the development of a thriving learning culture on your own team or in your organization.

How can you build learning culture locally when the broader culture is less supportive? How do you make a plan to strengthen a learning culture when such a thing seems so nebulous?

In environments where learning is constantly necessary and happening “in the flow of work,” having a strong learning culture is crucial. An exceptional learning culture can fuel innovation, underpin employee engagement and retention, ensure future-ready capabilities, and enable achievement of the organization’s most ambitious goals.

Though we may agree that building a learning culture is important, it can be difficult to figure out how to cultivate such an environment – especially in the context of a crisis situation with a largely distributed workforce.

In Cultivating a Thriving Learning Culture, we’ll generate actions you can take to improve your learning culture—insights you can apply to working within your own team, with another group, or with your entire organization. These lively conversations and activities will give you tools to assess the specific culture you want to improve and to define an action plan you can begin implementing right away.

In this session, you will learn:

• Key foundations of learning culture drawn from leading organizations and research
• Ways to shape and foster a learning culture locally and organization-wide
• Strategies for overcoming inhibitors of a strong learning culture
• A learning culture planning framework (which you will complete so you have actionable take-aways)

FORMAT:  This workshop is designed to run online or in a classroom for two half-days (3.5 hours each). It can be customized for your situation.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

Charting Your Course for Self-Directed Learning

Personalized coaching for your individual development.

How can you take advantage of your unique current circumstances to accelerate your own professional development?

With this individualized coaching package, I’ll partner with you to pinpoint your developmental goals, identify learning resources and activities, make an executable rapid development plan, and provide feedback and coaching on your development journey. See Charting Your Course for additional details.

Invest time in strengthening your skill sets to position yourself for bold contributions in the future.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

Accelerated Development Package for the L&D Team

Professional development program for 5-15 people.

Includes:

• Deep dive live workshop: An active learning program that may be delivered in one full day, two half days, or 4-6 webinars (generally one week apart), customized for your needs
• Curated resources: Additional links, templates, and job aids for ongoing development, utilizing internet resources as well as the content your organization may have available (e.g. LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, Degreed)
• Social learning strategy: Customized recommendations for amplifying social learning for continued support and development (e.g. team communications, initiative champions, use of enterprise social network, social media connections)
• Follow up activities: Facilitation notes and materials for four 30-60 minute follow-up sessions to be facilitated by managers or senior individual contributors
• Concluding consultation: A discussion with the leadership team to assess progress and strategize next steps

I’ll conduct a focused exploration of your specific needs and challenges, and then build a customized blended program that enables the team to generate impact.

Representative Topics

• Cultivating a Learning Culture: Analyze your environment, explore learning culture characteristics, and make a plan for strengthening learning culture at every level of your organization, including within the L&D team itself.
• The Future of Talent Development: Explore a variety of frameworks for conceiving blended learning and development programs that take advantage of the tools and techniques of the digital age.
• Self Directed Learning: Learn the keys to successful self-directed learning, either to jump-start development planning on a team or to more effectively support self-directed learning in your organization.
• Honing Your Needs Analysis Superpowers: Plan and execute customized analyses – from narrowly targeted to comprehensive – that focus on the most critical facets; ask great questions; distill findings to useful insights; and enable innovative recommendations.
• Design Thinking: Integrate design thinking practices into your typical design process to make your recommendations more creative, innovative, and effective.
• Instructional Design Basics: Upskill subject matter experts or new team members in the art and process of instructional design.
• How People Learn: Discover and apply key principles defined by research in social learning, self-directed learning, experiential learning, and the science of retention.
• Creativity Boost: Build creative capacity with a variety of tools and techniques for unleashing creativity at the moment of need.

Schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your goals.

Upcoming Events

Learning 2023: The Learning Leaders Conference
A conference from the Learning Guild
December 5-7, Orlando, Florida
My session: Developing people who develop people
Conference registration and info here.