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Pete Hall is a capacity builder. Driven to impact others’ lives in a profoundly positive way, he channels his experiences as a school principal, life coach, and small-business owner into manageable lessons for continuous growth, personal improvement, and positive mindset. His written works include authoring more than 20 articles on leadership and publishing 12 books, including his most recent release, Always Strive to Be a Better You: How Ordinary People Can Live Extraordinary Lives.With numerous honors and accolades for his leadership on the local, national, and international stage, Hall has worked as a personal coach and mentor for business executives, professional athletes, weekend golfers, stand-up comedians, firefighters, school administrators, custodians, and more. He and his wife, Mindy, own and operate Strive Success Solutions, an international speaking and consulting firm.

Pete Hall

December 2023 - TD Magazine

Adopting a proactive, rather than a reactive, approach to coaching can transform organizations.

Peer Coaching for Systemic Reflective Growth

ATD Links Archive - ATD Links

Interview with Peter M. Senge and Otto Scharmer

Learn and practice the skills of an exceptional facilitator in this proven train-the-trainer certificate program from industry leader ATD. Find out more!

Training & Facilitation Certificate

The talent leader role has evolved from a reactive role to a proactive, strategic partnership with business leaders.

Are We There Yet?

As learning professionals enabling employees to reskill and upskill to meet the challenges of constantly changing performance requirements, helping to make employees “sticky” should be a priority.

Get Stickier: Hacking Your Brain to Become a Better Learner

Performance Evaluations. Very few scheduled events can conjure up such negative emotions for both the manager and employee alike. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.
An effective feedback session involves three key parts: planning, delivery and follow-up. Adequate preparation in each phase will generate the most positive outcomes. Conversely, failure to do so can be catastrophic and mortifying for everyone involved. This presentation will ensure you are prepared to deliver your feedback in the most receptive, and effective, manner.
Feedback is largely based on two key elements: interpretation and expectations. By identifying the various components of stories, as well as being aware of what we expect of others, we can recognize the possibility of multiple perspectives (even competing perspectives), as well as assessing the validity of our expectations of others. We’ll also uncover some of the major influences of the outcome, before any feedback is ever offered, and identify the importance of becoming accountable for our personal performance.
I will provide a quick overview of why the recipients often resist the feedback being delivered, and it has little to do with the person providing the feedback, and I’ll uncover one of the most effective approaches to a feedback session from both the manager and employee perspectives. We’ll also identify the most effective approach in guiding the conversation so as to create the greatest chance for receptivity. This includes not just the format of the session, but also the importance of wording.
Occasionally, those receiving feedback can become defensive. We’ll explore various defensive statements and how to best respond to them. I’ll also provide a few examples of when providing feedback becomes more damaging than beneficial.
Providing feedback effectively is one half of generating the desired results. What takes place AFTER the session is a huge key, and one that is often overlooked. This closing portion of the training will address how frequently to provide feedback and how to create sustainable shifts in people’s behavior moving forward.

Feedback for Impact: Intentional Conversations. Desired Results.

In 1996, Abraham Maslow (best known for his theorem of the hierarchy of needs in psychology) quipped that “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Two years earlier, the American philosopher Abraham Kaplan made a similar observation: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”This adage came to life in my own family recently, when we learned that our future daughter-in-law found her new car covered with a half inch of ice after an overnight storm. Not sure what to do, she found a hammer in the trunk and proceeded to use it to smash the ice loose from bumper to bumper. Predictably, it was difficult to convince her insurance carrier to reimburse her for the multiple broken windows and sheet metal dents. (I’m sorry to confess that she will fit in nicely with our family!)What does this have to do with business and training? A great deal. Let me explain: Recently, I have become concerned that the “hammer du jour” in our metaphoric trunk is high technology.First, let me say that this article is not a Luddite rant against technology per se. This new millennium has brought to our training tool boxes a host of promising, wonderful technologies like web-based training, virtual instructor-led classrooms, simulations, gaming, and social media, to name a few. These tools make it easier to deliver training to more learners, less expensively, more consistently, and across broader geographies and time zones. In short, we can get more done with less as a result of the technology advances that have emerged.However, there is a tendency for people to use these technologies like the proverbial hammer. Some organizations have pushed forms of e-learning into cultures with little online learning interest and/or infrastructure. Others have insisted on taking an exclusively “high-tech” approach to teaching “high-touch” skills such as coaching and conflict resolution.More recently, the universal technology panacea in some quarters seems to be the application of new social media technologies to learning (a.k.a. “Learning 2.0”). The notion that most people learn better and enjoy it more in a social environment is inarguable. For that matter, the traditional classroom (when led by an interactive teacher or facilitator) can be a very social milieu within which to learn, particularly if the learning objectives are focused on human skills, such as leadership.The DownsideThe social media buzz, meanwhile, is about technology-based interactive experiences including blogs, chat rooms, and discussion forums, not to mention the wildly successful commercial social platforms—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yammer. Clearly, these tools can be harnessed within our organizations to make learning more interactive, involving, and spontaneous, while also spanning geography and generation, and capitalizing on the collective wisdom of groups.However, some of these platforms can be risky for organizations in terms of security and legal liability. Technology can sometimes be surprisingly difficult and inconsistent. Corporate firewalls can be fussy about what they let through. And technology is always changing, which is good for progress but frustrating for infrastructure investments.In addition, corporate cultures differ, just like people do, and what is easily adopted in one organization may be ineffective in another. And finally, there are regional and international variances in uptake, technology, and governing laws and institutions. Thus, the promise of social media is tempered by the complexities and uncertainties experienced by organizations to varying degrees.Force-Fitting Doesn’t WorkUnfortunately, some learning and development professionals have tried to force-fit social learning tools and platforms into topics and cultures, whether or not they are necessarily well-suited. And regardless of the tools in our tool box, a few maxims about effective learning systems haven’t changed. Next week, I’ll post these tenets of learning systems design that are key, despite mode or technology. I’ll also list a few guiding principles for using social technologies.

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