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Don Brown dedicates his career to leadership, sales and service effectiveness – period. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and pharmaceuticals.   With over thirty years working in the industry, Mr. Brown is heavily experienced in all phases of major performance systems implementation, from research and design to facilitation and coaching. Working with customers such as Anheuser-Busch, Dell Computers, Ford Motor Company, US Airways and United Airlines, Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Jaguar Cars, Compuware Corporation, SYKES, and Hilton Hotels, Don is accustomed to working domestically and internationally across all functional disciplines.   Mr. Brown is now releasing new Multi-Touch™ performance products and services.  Based upon his in-depth customer research and the premise that it takes several touches to learn, to teach, to sell and to lead – Don integrates the best of the best into a powerful sequence to help people with people around the world.   Don cherishes his work and mentorship under Paul Hersey and Marshall Goldsmith as the solid foundation of his success. Affiliated with Dr. Hersey for over 25 years, Don co-authored “Situational Service® – Customer Care for the Practitioner” with Paul, and has worked hand in hand with him to create several highly successful training programs, including; Situational Service®, From Vision to Results™, Situational Leadership® In A Team Environment, Situational Selling® – Creating Readiness to Buy, and Performance Readiness®.   Mr. Brown authored “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – in Sales!” with Marshall Goldsmith (McGraw-Hill, October 2011) and has just finished “Bring Out The Best in Every Employee – How to Engage Your Whole Team By Making Every Leadership Moment Count!” (McGraw-Hill, November 2012).   Don takes great pride in his long-standing customer relationships, some running over twenty years. Don earned an Honors Degree from Michigan State University in foreign languages, and a Masters in Management with Dr. Hersey at California American University. Having lived and studied at the University of Seville in Spain, Don works regularly in English and Spanish in Europe and Latin America. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Don Brown

Chris Browning explains that to take advantage of social learning, we need to do more than enable employees to share information, we need to push for collaboration.

Don’t Be Lazy With Social Learning

Winter 2018 - CTDO Magazine

Mentoring relationships don’t only help and benefit mentees.

Reaping Rewards as a Mentor

When it comes to leadership, vulnerability is often mistaken for weakness. However, research and practical experience show that demonstrating vulnerability to your team as a leader can actually be a strength. Embracing vulnerability is required to build trust, encourage open communication, and build a stronger, more cohesive team. Today, we’re going to discuss the transformative power of vulnerability in leadership and some practical tips for starting to be more vulnerable with your team today. The Power of Vulnerability in LeadershipBrené Brown, a renowned researcher on vulnerability, defines it as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” For leaders, this means admitting when you don’t have all the answers. It also includes sharing your challenges and being open to feedback. Vulnerability fosters trust, encourages open communication, and builds stronger relationships within teams. Long story short, it makes you seem more human and much more relatable. Building Trust and ConnectionWhen leaders show vulnerability, they create an environment where employees feel safe to express their honest thoughts and ideas. This openness leads to stronger connections and trust. Teams that trust their leaders are more engaged, more innovative, and more willing to go the extra mile. The flip side of is that when teams don’t trust their leader or organization, you’ll see higher levels of stress, more burnout, and lower retention rates. Encouraging Authenticity and EngagementVulnerable leaders are authentic leaders. Authenticity in leadership means being true to yourself and aligning your actions with team or organizational values. When leaders are authentic, they inspire their teams to be genuine and committed to their work. This authenticity boosts employee engagement and morale. It also creates a culture where employees feel valued and motivated to do their best work. Enhancing Learning and GrowthAdmitting mistakes and uncertainties is a key aspect of vulnerability. This openness to imperfection encourages a culture of continuous learning and growth. When leaders acknowledge their mistakes, they set an example for their teams to embrace failure as a learning opportunity. A growth mindset is necessary for success. Vulnerable leaders show that it’s OK to make mistakes and demonstrate how to learn from them. This not only creates an opportunity for personal growth but also drives innovation and resilience throughout the organization as a whole. Improving Decision MakingVulnerable leaders seek input and feedback from their teams, leading to better decision making. By considering diverse perspectives, leaders can make more informed and effective decisions. This collaborative approach not only improves outcomes and helps you hit those TKRs but also allows employees to take ownership of their work. This is one of the most effective ways to be sure your decisions align with the organization’s goals and values while simultaneously improving your team’s cooperation and performance.Practical Steps to Embrace VulnerabilityLet’s go over a few simple ways you can start to embrace vulnerability with your team:Admit When You Don’t Know: It’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” You’re only human; not knowing is part of that experience. Being honest about the unknown opens the door for collaboration and problem-solving.Share Personal Stories: Share experiences of challenges and failures. This helps humanize you and makes you more relatable to your team.Ask for Feedback: Regularly seek feedback from your team and act on it. This shows that you value their opinions and are committed to improvement.Encourage Open Communication: Create a safe space for employees to share their thoughts and ideas without fear of judgment.Lead by Example: Demonstrate vulnerability through your actions. Be transparent about your goals, challenges, and decisions.Vulnerability is a cornerstone of effective leadership. By embracing vulnerability, leaders can build trust, encourage authenticity, foster growth, and improve decision making. It’s time to shift the narrative and recognize that showing vulnerability is not a weakness but a powerful strength. Embrace vulnerability and watch how it transforms your leadership and your organization.

How Showing Vulnerability Can Strengthen Your Leadership

The worldwide talent development community is diverse. Our members bring a wealth of experience and insight to their work. We're spotlighting their stories.Hans de Graaf has been a member of ATD since 2015 from The Netherlands. Here's his story in his own words.Tell us a little bit about yourself.I am a father of two sons and a daughter, and a grandfather of four beautiful girls and a boy. My wife, Janita, and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage in July.I live in Assen (the Netherlands). My office is just a five-minute bike ride away. From there, I serve customers around the world via online media.I was born in 1966 in a little town in the middle of the Netherlands. I studied analytical chemistry at Utrecht University.My first jobs were in the pharmaceutical industry. I started as a sales rep. After a few years, I was promoted to head of the purchasing department.In 1995, I started my first official company. Since then, I have started, sold, and closed several companies. See my LinkedIn profile for a complete list of my work journey.As an entrepreneur, I fell into the trap that when you become successful and get people working for you, you become a manager. For me, that meant that my day was filled with things I didn't like and things I wasn't good at. Unfortunately, this also influenced the atmosphere within my family.2015 was a significant turning point. After almost burning out, I decided to sell all my companies and start from scratch. The result is the project I am working on right now: the Brainfulness Institute.What are your personal and professional goals?My goal in life is to empower brilliant brains to bloom.Your brain does not come with a user manual, so how can you live with and use your brain in the best possible way?My answer to that is brainfulness. Brainfulness is the rational counterpart to mindfulness. It teaches you how to use all your brain's features and not only the ones that are triggered by the environment your brain is in.Because brainfulness is so rational, it is specifically targeted to people who are not attracted to mindfulness and other forms of meditation.What challenges have you overcome throughout your career?Sometimes I introduce myself as a former VIP—very indecisive person. I am a typical maximizer. Maximizers take long to decide. And even after the decision, they are not satisfied. They keep researching to find proof that they've made the best decision possible.Research shows that maximizers make better decisions but at two high costs: time and happiness.Because of this mental handicap, I started to study decision making and the role of the human brain.This quest helped me to find practical ways to mitigate my natural tendency to maximize.One example: I minimized the number of my decisions to make some decisions for the rest of my life. On stage, you will always find me wearing the same brand of shoes (brown or black), size 43, width H. Instead of spending one or two days buying shoes, it has now become a no-brainer.What’s the most valuable thing you’ve gained or experienced during your membership with ATD?I've learned never to overestimate people's knowledge. The solution that I've found to work for me is never to assume but always ask relevant questions.Learning how to ask good questions is still a work in progress for me. I believe that the master will always be a student. I'll always be a student in questioning, that's for sure.Can you share any professional tips, specific to talent development, that you have picked up along the way?Don't expect people to remember what you say or try to teach them in an e-learning course. There are many things you can do to improve retention. The one thing that people forget too often is to repeat the message. If you don't repeat several times, people will forget most of it. This phenomenon is known by the name “The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.”At ATD’s International Conference & EXPO in 2016, I spoke about this topic. As an ATD member, you can watch the video of my presentation here.What’s a common misconception you see when it comes to talent development?I see that many brain myths are still educated and used.For example, the myth that humans have an attention span less than a goldfish. Please search in Google for “attention span goldfish myth.”Human brains like simple stories, and they like the accompanying conclusions. But simple is not the same as truthful.Suggestion: Order a book about learning myths—for example, Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions. You can order it on the ATD website.Do you have any advice for people looking to further their careers?Never see your career separate (or even opposite) of your purpose. Having a purpose in life gives you not only a direction in the long-term helps you to make purposeful decisions on a day-to-day basis.Do you want to have a purposeful career and be happy too? Then you'll need a purpose where you serve people. A people-serving purpose will give you meaning. And making progress on your purpose will give you moments of happiness.What is your personal definition of talent development?Talent development = brain development.Every brain is wired differently. That is why a one-size-fits-all approach is rarely successful. The challenge in talent development is to develop every brain within your organization.How do you stay motivated?I evaluate my behaviors in relation to my most valuable values every day. Where did I trust my autopilot too much and showed behaviors that are not in line with my values or purpose?For me, it turned out to be a practical solution to have my priorities almost always top of mind. They guide me in personal and business decision making. Besides, I track progress on my purpose regularly. Seeing progress on my purpose is the best motivator for me to keep going.How do you find meaning in your work?By serving people. I think that I have an important message to share that can help many people around the world. That fuels my battery and gives me the energy to not only work hard but also to be resilient when things don't go as planned.I strongly feel that brainfulness is my legacy, my gift to the world. It is my wish that even after my time on this earth has ended, people will perform better and be happier because of the simple brainfulness principles and practices.Have your own story to tell? Share it with us.

"Empower Brilliant Brains to Bloom"

Don’t ask how to measure training investments, ask how relevant is training to the participants, their bosses, and the business as a whole.

How Can You Ensure Transfer of Training—to Get the Results Business Leaders Want

Sally is the chief learning officer for a large well-known bank. She was recently brought in by her CEO to “professionalize” the Learning and Performance function within the company. Sally inherited a very extensive learning measurement system that rigorously cataloged the results of each training course using Likert-Like questions and numerical averaging.As Sally sifts through the data, she notices something curious. Instructors whose smile sheet ratings were consistently low were still teaching, even after several years of poor results. Sally, of course, is thrilled! She’s been mandated to professionalize the learning function and already she’s found a problem she can fix. She makes a plan. She’ll bring her team together to improve—or fire—the low-performing trainers.Brilliant, right? Maybe! It depends on whether Sally’s assumptions are accurate:Instructors who get the best smile sheet ratings will help their learners achieve the best learning results and the best on-the-job performance. Instructors who get the worst smile sheet ratings will produce learners who achieve the worst learning results and the worst on-the-job performance.Interestingly, Sally’s predecessors never thought to correlate their smile sheet ratings with learning results or on-the-job performance. Sally, like most L&D professionals, doesn’t think of doing this either. She just assumes that smile sheet results are related to learning outcomes. Indeed, as an industry, we tend to assume that smile sheets are telling us something important about the successes and failures of our training efforts. Are we right? Is Sally right? And does it really matter, anyway?In 2013, ATD and i4cp teamed up to examine how organizations measure the effectiveness of the learning programs. The research, reported in The Value of Learning: Gauging the Business Impact of Organizational Learning Programs, found that Level 1 smile sheets were by far the most common method of measuring our learning solutions. One implication from these findings is that we, as workplace learning professionals, get most of our feedback from smile sheet data.Consequently, because feedback enables improvement, the validity of smile sheet data is critical. In other words, if we’re not getting good data from our smile sheets, we’re not going to be able to create maximally effective learning.Research on Smile SheetsSo, what does the research say? Are smile sheets effective in giving good feedback? The short answer is No. Two meta-analyses in the scientific literature covering more than 150 research studies found that smile sheets are virtually uncorrelated with learning results (see Further Reading below). Specifically, both meta-analyses found that smile sheets were correlated with learning results with a correlation of r = .09.Statisticians tell us that correlations below r = .30 should be considered weak correlations. Therefore, a correlation of r = .09 is practically no correlation at all! It would be like correlating smartphone usage with hair color.Bottom line: Sally’s assumptions were faulty. Our assumptions, as an industry, have been faulty for decades. We’re all caught in the delusion that smile sheets tell us something important, when in fact they may regularly mislead us.A Smarter Smile SheetWow! What should we do then? Should we throw out our smile sheets? Should we collect data to be polite and then ignore the data? I don’t think so. After thinking about the smile sheet problem for a decade or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that if L&D professionals redesign smile sheets from the ground up—based on the science of learning and guidelines from the measurement field—we can build effective smile sheets.In Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form, (more info available at www.SmileSheets.com), I describe how to build a much more effective smile sheet. There are two critical aspects.First, questions should be based on the science of learning. Because we’re asking that our smile sheets tell us about learning, it makes sense to base our smile sheet designs on learning science. Second, we have to do a better job of designing our smile sheet questions. Most of us use Likert-like scales or numerical items, both of which are fundamentally inappropriate for smile sheet use. We also have to help our learners make good smile sheet decisions. According to research from Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014), as well as Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013), learners don’t always know their own learning. Because of this, asking them questions about their learning may give us faulty information—unless we design our questions to support their smile-sheet decision making. Too many of our questions ask learners to answer questions they are not prepared to answer.Here are some of the major areas that smile sheet questions should target:ability of learners to successfully apply what they learned to their work learners’ full comprehension of what was presented to them learners’ capability to remember what they’ve learned level of motivation that learners will bring to implement what they’ve learned post-training resource that will guide and enable learners to persevere in putting their learning into practice.Most smile sheets do a poor job of targeting these issues, which is unfortunate because it is through these types of research-inspired factors that learning effectiveness can be discerned.Bottom LineMost of our smile sheets are ineffective and provide poor feedback. Fortunately, we can build better ones. Of course, smile sheets will never give us all the information we need. It’s critical that we also measure learning by focusing on learner comprehension, decision making, and memory, as well as measure application by examining the factors and results produced in the way of on-the-job performance.While smile sheets are never enough, most organizations will continue to use them, so we ought to make them as effective as possible. Scientific research makes it clear that our current smile sheet efforts are ineffective. Fortunately, the science of learning and wisdom from the measurement field give us hope for better smile sheets.Like what you read? Join us at the ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition in Denver, CO, May 22-25 to hear Will Thalheimer speak.Further ReadingAlliger, G. M., Tannenbaum, S. I., Bennett, W., Jr., Traver, H., & Shotland, A. (1997). A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 341-358.Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Kirschner, P. A., & van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48(3), 169-183.Sitzmann, T., Brown, K. G., Casper, W. J., Ely, K., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2008). A review and meta-analysis of the nomological network of trainee reactions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 280-295.

Are Smile Sheets Supported by Research?

When Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, it turned the mobile world on its head. It eliminated the physical keyboard, untethered the internet, democratized photography, and let you pick the apps. Why was this so genius? Because they didn’t just iterate on the mobile device concept; they gave you an “everything machine.” They weren’t selling functions; they were providing possibilities. The iPhone wasn’t a contented improvement over existing technology; it was a reimagining of what’s possible. Before the iPhone hit the market, the device-du-jour was arguably the Motorola Razr. Its slim, dark lines screamed coolness when opened one-handed. But you simply had a Razr. Just like everyone else. And 4-4-3-3-5-5-5-5-5-5-6-6-6 just spelled "hello." The iPhone destroyed that overnight. You made the iPhone what you wanted it to be. You took your own photos and made them backgrounds. You installed and used the apps of your choice. You defined the device instead of it defining you. So, why this trip into digital nostalgia? Because we are again at a time when the scales are about to tip and the world shifts. Artificial intelligence (AI)—call them bots, enhancements, or features—is showing up in nearly every piece of software. Even my browser now tries to predict and write for me. (Don’t fret; a real-breathing human wrote this piece.) Likewise, the learning and development space is seeing a rising tide of features like content generation, tone analysis, writing improvements, question creation, and more. While these remarkable functions make designers’ work easier and more efficient, I would argue they are the “default apps” of our day. Put another way, they are akin to the “Snake” game on my original Razr. Before your hackles flare, let me clarify. I loved that Snake game. I spent more hours chasing apples than I care to confess because the app was simple and fun and provided exactly what it was designed to do—just like the AI features showing up in our software. There is unquestionably a desire and necessity for features and functions like these. Sometimes you just need an easy button; sometimes generating 10 questions is the perfect starting place. But what happens when information technology approves a different LLM than the one leveraged in your software? What happens when the generated content is only marginally helpful? What happens when your security team questions the data privacy behind the provided features? These questions drive me to beg for possibilities instead of just features. Because we deal in proprietary content in the corporate learning space, and the need for security, governance, and accountability are paramount, we cannot be satisfied with only single-function, pre-defined solutions. Nor can we continue with right-conscious to secretly copy/paste into the LLM of our preference before the cobra-like questions above rear their heads. So, what is the solution? A rethinking. A reimagining. By no means am I calling for a replacement of single-function solutions. I love the default apps on my phone. What I’m asking for is that software companies also start thinking about possibilities. I appreciate easy buttons, but as an organization, I want to be able to choose and define which AI features show up. I want to bring the services most useful to my team into their workflow. I want to fine tune the results from these tools for a better fit. And I want to choose the LLM that empowers these features. Essentially, I want to determine the best solutions instead of having the software determine them for me. For an example of this type of forward-thinking, look at Xyleme’s Sidekick implementation. It is all about empowering organizations through possibilities. L&D recognizes the value behind personalized learning, and that the best way for someone to improve is to meet their learning needs. That’s all I’m asking for in how we continue the rush of AI implementation. Don’t let your vision be clouded by where we’ve been. Be brave enough to offer possibilities—because the software solution that allows me to choose the AI, determine and meet the needs of my employees, and leverage the services we need, just iterated on the same type of magic that made the iPhone so revolutionary.Now, please excuse me. I must go beat my high score on Snake.

From Features to Possibilities: Why AI in Learning & Development Needs an iPhone Moment

December 2022 - TD Magazine

Reduce the friction that is preventing learners from engaging with your learning.Businesses spend billions of dollars trying to understand consumer behavior, resulting in marketing strategies that aim to get consumers to buy their products. However, in those companies, many L&D functions are not leveraging the same insights and strategies to reach their learners. Treat your learning solutions like products, and minimize the friction between the solutions and learners. One way to do so is using BJ Fogg's behavior model to evaluate your learning initiatives.Identify the frictionThe Fogg behavior model looks at three conditions that must be present for someone to engage in a behavior: motivation, ability, and a prompt. When one of them is absent or diminished, so is the likelihood that the desired behavior will occur.For example, let's say you have a missed call on your cell phone. Why didn't you answer the phone? Maybe you heard it ring, looked down and saw who was calling, and decided you didn't want to talk to that person right now. You heard the ring—that was the prompt. Nothing was keeping your from answering the call (that is to say, you had the ability). You just didn't want to—you didn't have the motivation to engage in the behavior.Now let's say the phone rings, and you're expecting the call and want to take it. But you can't find your phone, or it's in another room and you can't get there in time. Again, you heard the ring (the prompt), and this time you wanted to take the call (motivation), but you weren't able to get to the phone in time (ability).Finally, let's say you're expecting the call, and your phone is right next to you. However, the ringer is set to silent. The phone rings, you want to answer and are able to do so, but you never hear the ring—you received no prompt to answer it.That's how Fogg's behavior model works. The presence or absence of any of the variables can contribute directly to the likelihood that you'll engage in a given behavior.What if we look at learner behavior through that lens? You've created a great learning initiative and spent a lot of time and money on the learning ecosystem. However, you don't seem to be getting the traction you're hoping for. Here are some questions to consider:Are learners aware of the learning solution? Are there prompts that alert learners to its availability?Are learners motivated? Do they want to engage in learning?Are they able to engage with the learning solution?Is there anything preventing them or making it more difficult for them to access it?If you have opportunities in any of those areas, then you have friction between learners and the learning solution. Friction, in this context, is the absence of prompts or is anything that impedes motivation or ability when it comes to a learning initiative.PromptsIf learners don't know about your learning initiative, it may as well not exist. These days, people are inundated with prompts—pop-ups on smartphones, ads on social media, digital billboards, and the like. How can we ensure that learners are prompted to our initiatives? The traditional methods are static and push prompts.A static prompt is one that is in a fixed physical location, such as a poster in a breakroom. It works fine when your audience tends to be isolated in one particular location. But if someone is not in that exact location, they won't see it.A push prompt is much more targeted. It entails identifying your audience members and sending a prompt to them, such as an email reminder that a course is available. However, you often can't customize that prompt by audience member—everyone gets the same message. And you can't time the prompt so that it reaches an individual right when they need it most. Thus, there are some limitations to what we have traditionally used as prompts in our learning ecosystems.This is an area we should pay close attention to because it has the potential to change rapidly. Imagine if we could activate a prompt for a specific learner at a specific time and in a specific location with a learning solution that is designed precisely for the activity that they are engaging in in that moment? It would be similar to finding an exclusive offer from Starbucks popping up on your phone whenever you're within 50 yards of a store.MotivationMotivation should be the easiest variable in this equation. If your initiative meets a learning need, learners should be inherently motivated to engage with it. However, that isn't always the case. In my experience, there are two major reasons. The first is that the solution does not meet a learning need (which is a subject for another article). The second, and more egregious, reason is that learning solutions get bogged down with demotivators that dilute learners' eagerness.Given the massive increase in video use for learning, there are some lessons to be learned from how people engage with YouTube and how we think about the videos and other learning initiatives we create.I often use the example of having a hole in my drywall and turning to YouTube to see how to fix it. Not surprisingly, there are numerous options from which to choose. We've all become accustomed to using filters to narrow down internet search results, although we often do our own visual filtering first. For example, I can take a quick look at a results list on YouTube for drywall repair and immediately rule out, or at least deprioritize, some of the videos. The first thing I'll look at is time. I expect that this should be a relatively simple task, so I'm not looking for a long video. The shorter the better.Likewise, learners have an expectation of how simple or complex a task is and at least some sense of how long it should take to learn. If they see that a video is 30 minutes long, and their perception of the task doesn't line up with that amount of time, you may lose them right away.I start playing a six-minute video from the list. After a lengthy introduction, a bio of the host, and several examples that don't apply to what I'm looking for, the host eventually starts the process of explaining how to execute the repair. It took over one minute to get there. That is an informal measurement I call "time to learning"—or how long it takes before I get to the actual learning. Time to learning is especially important when considering whether our goal is knowledge retention or knowledge acquisition. In other words, are learners in this for the long haul, or do they just need a quick one-off fix that they will rarely if ever need again?When looking at learning from a knowledge retention standpoint, time to learning is slightly less important. We know we're going to get deep, and participants learning about the instructor's credibility can be helpful to set the tone. But if we seek knowledge acquisition, or disposable knowledge, time to learning matters a lot—especially if there are several options from which to choose.For example, imagine I need to generate a report for my manager, who is out sick. I've never done the task before, and it's highly unlikely that I'll ever have to do it again. After some digging, I find a few videos that will help me figure out what to do. However, the videos don't cover only the report I need to generate; they cover all the reports in the entire program and explain where the data from those reports comes from and why they're important to the business.Are those bad things for me to know? Of course not. But they're not relevant to what I need to do right now. Getting what I need is like searching for that how-to needle in a haystack of video instruction. I may resort to other options, such as trial and error (risky) or asking a colleague (now two of us are wasting time trying to figure this out).Going back to the drywall video: I stuck with it for more than a minute only to see how long it would take for the purposes of this example. If I had a real need, I doubt I would have held out for more than 10–15 seconds.We can and should apply the same lessons to our video content libraries and consider where we are adding friction that we should remove. In most cases, those are demotivators that don't reflect the quality of our instructional design yet may deter learners from ever finding that out.AbilityAnother go-to source for information in people's nonwork lives is Google. Here's what happens if I search for "how to repair drywall"—let's count the clicks: I open the browser to Google and type the search term, then click Search. One click. What I see first are a few links to associated terms like "water damage" and "peeling" that enable me to refine my search. Below that is a frame from a video already queued to a specific timecode that is likely to address my need. Below that are links to a few more videos, all with descriptions and timecodes of key moments in the videos. Next up is the "People also ask" section, which displays several ways that others have posed their question that may be more in alignment with my need. And finally, I get a list of results that I would normally expect to see on Google. All from one click.Now think about your learners and, more importantly, your learning ecosystem. Most likely your version of Google is some sort of learning management system or learning experience platform. How many clicks does it take learners to get there? Once someone arrives at your version of Google, how many of the features described above does it have? How easy is it for learners to find what they need?Many of us are presumably still in a situation where learners must go through six, eight, or even 10-plus clicks to find what they need. Number of clicks and speed to solution are ways we can assess learners' ability to engage in the desired behavior.Nobody wants to click through a never-ending menu. Individuals have been conditioned that they shouldn't have to, and they are far more likely to give up somewhere along the way than they are to reach the end.Other ability barriers include bandwidth and hardware. Sometimes our instructional design comes with ability barriers. If you have motivated learners who know about your initiatives, make it as easy as possible for them to access and engage with learning.Enhance learning's impactThis article has numerous questions you can ask about any given learning solution. It's going to be difficult to get satisfactory answers to all of them. But what you can do is identify an area that you believe may be causing friction for your learners and is something that you can influence.In other words, we all want better bandwidth, but you probably have an extremely limited ability to influence that yourself. You may have a better chance implementing some prompts for learners that can move the needle. Or you may be able to reduce the number of clicks required to access content with some adjustments to your internal websites or portals. Start small by looking for areas to reduce friction with existing learning solutions, and then incorporate the ideas into the design phase of future ones.If you treat your learning program like a product and view your learning ecosystem as a mechanism for reaching your audience and providing that product, it may change your perspective.

Are You Driving Learners Away!

Influence is now an impossible-to-ignore skill set that must be mastered to succeed to any great extent. With everyone running so fast, time is at a premium. Opportunities to get people to support you need to be optimized.
With some stakeholders, this is easy. You have a natural affinity with them. Rapport is good and you can get down to business straight away. Providing you know what you want and can articulate the benefits, influence is usually straightforward.
Other stakeholders are a different matter altogether. You don’t click. Something seems to be amiss. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’re not getting through to them, and it is hard work to influence them. One likely contributor to this problem is that you are different in terms of personality and behavior, which is where this webcast can come to your aid.
Influencing styles is a framework of behaviors that people use when trying to influence. Any mismatch between styles is likely to cause problems. Once you know the styles, you can make intelligent decisions about how you adapt to suit the situation, and the individual you need to influence. Studies have shown that applying this framework creates a significant improvement in stakeholder relations and influence.
This webcast will explore the framework and the advanced concepts that will enable you to transform the way you build relationships and maximize your influence.
You will gain more from the webcast if you complete the Gautrey Influence Profile before the session.  You can access that tool by copying and pasting the following link into your browser: https://www.learntoinfluence.com/atd-influencing-styles/  

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