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Tracy Kingis the award-winning author of Competitive Advantage: Create Continuing Education That Is Profitable, Sustainable and Impactful, a workforce development consultant, and master learning designer. Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, Fox, Forbes, and US News. She is the CEO of InspirEd.

Tracy King

Tracy Sinclair has nearly two decades of experience in the field of leadership development. As a corporate executive, board-level coach, leadership development designer, and facilitator, Tracy has worked with executives and leaders around the globe to support and enhance their professional and personal development. She spends much of her time developing leaders’ own coaching capability as a core leadership competency. Tracy is also a coaching supervisor, mentor coach, and trainer of coaching and coaching supervision. She is a current member of the ICF global board of directors and served as president of ICF United Kingdom from 2013 to 2014.

Tracy Sinclair

Union Pacific Gets Back On Track With Customers

 Selling an innovative solution to your customer is powerful. New solutions differentiate you from your competitors and solve the customer’s core challenges—not just surface-level effects. But even after you’ve sold the solution, one large hurdle remains: getting organizational buy-in. Ultimately, the organization has to accept your changes, or the solution will be rejected. Here are some strategies that can help achieve by-in. Co-Develop the Solution If you’ve co-developed your solution with the customer, you’ve certainly shared the range of idea components throughout the process. There’s little room for surprise in something they’ve co-developed, so the chance of rejection drops considerably. In the absence of shock value, the customer can evaluate the idea on its own merits instead of being distracted by how different it may be.  Get Buy-In at the Highest Level Even if you’ve co-developed the solution, your customer probably has a boss. Depending on your industry and sales process, getting final approval can be tenuous and surprising. “If you don't get that kind of support and buy-in at the highest level, you’re not going to be successful,” says Tracy Tolbert, executive vice president of global sales at Xerox. “I’ve seen a handful of deals in my career that you think you have the support you need, but when your sponsor takes it up to the top for the final approval (the final signature of the CEO or even the board), it turns out you did not have the support there that you thought you had. And you’ve spent a lot of time and energy. I’ve seen a lot of naive salespeople who think they have the buy-in from the buyer, but the reality is the buyer didn't have permission to buy. That’s the challenge,” Tolbert explains. Account for Change Management Don’t underestimate the toll a potentially large change might have on the decision to implement the solution, advises Tolbert. “The solutions that we provide are typically big and they’re changing the internal workings of an organization. We can show great value, we can show great savings, we can show increased delivery, response times, and all of the things that we measure, and a client can still just say, ‘You know what, we can’t do it.’” Listen to the End User At this stage, it’s also important to do customer or end-user testing, to get their perspectives. As you commit to a solution, you have to make sure it will align with what the customer will need.

4 Strategies for Getting Customer Buy-In

 What do talent development professionals in human capital care about? Do you see any themes?Here are the top 10 blog articles from ATD's Human Capital Community:Signs of a Learning Culture by Stephen GillPositive Change Management Starts With Yourself by Elad LevinsonEmployee Motivation: The Neuroscience Connection by Ryann EllisDeveloping a Learning Culture: An Infographic by Stephen GillThe Purpose of Performance Management: Redefining Aspirations by Dr. Elaine D. Pulakos and Dr. Rose Mueller-HansonForget Work-Life Balance, Pursue Well-Being Instead by Beth CabreraEmployee Engagement Spectrum: Myths Versus Facts by Tracy MaylettA Path to Performance Management Reform by Dr. Elaine D. Pulakos and Dr. Rose Mueller-HansonHow Analytics Drives Talent Development by Ryann EllisIs Kindness the Missing Link to Employee Performance? by Dan SchwartzIn 2015 we learned that harvesting an organization with a strong learning culture to support high performance starts with its leaders. When a leader values learning, it becomes contagious for the people around to strive for more. Redefining and understanding a new path to performance management, as well as adopting a positive workplace and the neurological connection, also were top priorities for organizations in 2015.Look out for more articles and content on improving your work culture and managing talent next year. Leave a comment with other topics you'd like to see covered as well next year! If you haven't already or you're still thinking about how to start the 2016, take a look at the _ATD Talent Management Handbook_for an overview of these topics and more.

Top Human Capital Blogs in 2015

“What’s the difference between leadership and management?” "Ha,” you might think, “that’s easy”:You manage things but lead people.Anyone can learn to manage, but real leaders are born.Leadership is getting people to do what they don’t want to do. Each of these dances around the concepts, but don’t truly hit the mark. Let’s take them in reverse order. Leadership is getting people to do what they don’t want to do.This one is close—often, leaders must get their people to do undesired or unpleasant things. But this is just a piece of leadership—motivation, specifically. Anyone can learn to manage, but real leaders are born.This is the classic struggle between “trait theory” and “behavioral theory,” the question of whether people are born leaders or if leadership can be learned. Let’s cut through the noise, shall we? Leadership can be learned. After all, if leadership is based on the traits you’re born with, what’s the point of spending billions of dollars on leadership development programs every year? What’s with all that science and those books and magazine articles? Do the traits we’re born with determine our leadership potential? No, but they influence it. Sure, being intelligent, brave, and well-spoken are examples of traits that help you become a better leader. But they’re not mandatory. And how many leaders have you known who are too smart for their own good (“intelligent”), foolhardy (“brave”), and who are all talk and no action (“well-spoken”)? Traits, undisciplined by leadership behaviors, can hurt your leadership ability. You manage things but lead people.This one is a classic. And it is dead wrong! The implication here is that management is a way to control objects, processes, projects, and so forth. That part is right. But it’s also very true that people are managed. There is even a job title for people who do this: managers! Leadership—the interpersonal kind—is considered one of the functions of being a manager. However, it’s a limited way of looking at leadership and management, as if we happily chug along managing our responsibilities until we need to pull out some leadership in dealing with our people. No, it’s much more fluid than that, a lot more challenging, and a lot more fun.All right, so what is a good distinction between leadership and management? As things unfold in this article, you’ll see why this one works:Management is keeping things on track. Leadership is going someplace new.Let’s look at these two ideas and see how they’re different.Management is keeping things on track. Back in the day, railroad engines ran on steam. In the early days, they got that steam by burning wood in a furnace that, in turn, heated water, which created the steam that powered the engine. In the cabin was a conductor who drove the train, and a “fireman” responsible for keeping the furnace stoked with wood. He was also required to keep an eye on the pressure gauge, ensuring it didn’t get too high (and explode) or too low (the train would slow down or even stop). The fireman managed the furnace/boiler to ensure it ran correctly and knew what adjustments to make to keep it that way. Leadership is going someplace new. Let’s stay with trains for this one. Have you ever flown with Southern Pacific Airways? Or Baltimore-Ohio Air? Of course not. You can’t; they don’t exist. But trains used to be the fastest way for passengers to travel around the country. (Southern Pacific and Baltimore-Ohio were passenger train companies.) Not anymore, of course. And when passenger plane service was introduced, it was with new companies. Why not train companies? Why didn’t they introduce air travel so they could keep their valuable (and lucrative) passenger service? Because they saw themselves as train companies. But what if, instead, they had the foresight to imagine themselves in the people-moving business? It would have been natural for them to upgrade their technology (from trains to planes) to stay in the business of passenger travel. Instead, a lack of leadership—the ability to go someplace new—took them completely out of that business. (The passenger train business was completely wiped out, reduced to one publicly subsidized company—Amtrak—operating at a loss each year. And don’t even get me started on how the long-range bus companies suffered the same fate!) Leadership could have brought them into the future. Instead, a lack of leadership (and a key component of it: vision) took them out…for good.So, you manage people and lead them on an interpersonal level. Organizations require strategic leadership to guide them into the future. Which are you (and will you be)? Hopefully, both!

Classic Distinctions Between Leadership and Management—Why They’re Wrong

If you work at an organization with a large deskless workforce, you know just how difficult it can be to upskill and reskill employees. Deskless workers are often on the front lines or hard at work earning revenue for the business. They’re interacting with patients or customers, doing work out in the field, or on the road—delivering goods or offering services. Employers may be hesitant to take them “off the job” for training. Patty Gaul, senior writer and editor for the Association for Talent Development, explored this topic in a recent article.“An L&D leader may learn that a company doesn’t include training time as a bucket of employee time,” she writes. “The organization encourages their managers to hurry their direct reports to their stations or positions (such as the manufacturing line, cash register, or delivery route) rather than giving employees the time to learn how to do their immediate work well. This negatively affects workers’ knowledge and, in the end, motivation.” Research shows that poor training also puts staff in danger—instances of human error causing occupational accidents are more likely when workers are under-skilled.There’s an opportunity cost as well. Gaul writes: “Too often, leaders train these workers only when there’s a problem, not taking advantage of the opportunity that development affords.” Employers that do not invest in training may be leaving productivity gains and a competitive advantage on the table.With all the benefits L&D offers—and all the challenges it can help your organization avoid—how can you train your deskless workforce in the most effective way possible? Giving learners more options to complete their training can help. Employees don’t have to be chained to a desk or sitting in a classroom to learn and develop. A little bit of L&D creativity can go a long way. Read on to discover four strategies to motivate your deskless employees to fit training into their busy schedules.1. Give Learners the Flexibility to Learn Wherever They Happen to BeMost workers want to learn new skills and are intrinsically motivated to improve and develop. A recent survey shows that seven out of 10 workers feel more connected to their organization when they’re learning. A further eight out of 10 say learning gives them a sense of purpose at work.Giving deskless workers the opportunity to access this kind of purpose can drastically improve their job satisfaction—and extend their tenure too. Research shows that having a strong culture of learning can improve employee retention by up to 57 percent. Some employees may associate learning with taking notes in a lecture hall, or sitting in front of a computer—but “studying” shouldn’t have to equal “desk.” The solution to helping deskless employees learn and develop is already in their pockets. When staff can complete their training right from their mobiles, wherever they happen to be, a whole world of opportunity opens up to them.Did you know that Bridge LMS, an all-in-one solution for training and upskilling staff, comes with the intuitive, user-friendly Bridge Learning app as standard? The app, available for both iOS and Android, makes it simple and easy for employees to complete their learning, whenever, wherever.Learners can even access content without Wi-Fi. This makes the learning experience seamless. They can start their training in a break room, for example, and effortlessly keep their momentum going when traveling to a field site. They’ll have key insights on the topics that matter to them at their fingertips—even in the most remote locations. With Wi-Fi-less learning, a bus, a train, a factory floor, their kitchen, and even the most far-flung location can instantly become an inspiring classroom.2. Help Staff Keep Their Learning on TrackResearch shows that there’s a strong correlation between motivation and learning outcomes. Setting smaller goals and steadily working toward them can help people stay committed to their targets. Breaking a big learning target down into less intimidating, achievable goals can be tremendously helpful. This is particularly true for deskless workers who may work in isolation or don’t get much contact with leadership. Boston Consulting Group stated that: “[A] major issue is the limited access deskless workers have to corporate communication systems like email and intranets. These tools are often designed with desk-based employees in mind[...]This communication gap can lead to a sense of isolation, making these workers feel disconnected from the organization’s broader goals and culture.”Choosing an LMS that helps you keep every learner on track, wherever they happen to be, can make all the difference. With Bridge Mobile, push notifications remind learners when a course is due. This relieves them of the cognitive load of managing their own learning and development schedule.Admins can easily track enrollments, missed deadlines, and course completion rates. They can generate intuitive reports in a few clicks and share data-powered insights with the wider organization. This empowers managers to intervene with support at the right time. Regular contact from well-informed managers means reports feel less at sea and more empowered to meet the development goals that matter to them.3. Be Realistic About Learning Challenges and Prepare for HiccupsAs useful as remote training is, it does come with challenges. If it’s not properly managed, it can open the door to miscommunication or inefficient learning. Workers may encounter technical difficulties, for instance, and feel that these headaches are a significant burden after a long shift on their feet or on the go.Tech challenges can have a big impact on morale, even among younger generations. Research shows that just under 50 percent of young graduates surveyed across the globe feel their level of technical expertise has left them unprepared for the workforce. As many as one in five young workers say they feel “judged” when they don’t know how to solve a tech issue. Tech headaches can be exacerbated for deskless staff who work far from a central IT team and may not have admin time built into their schedule. The key is to accept that challenges may arise from time to time and prepare for them in advance. Your first line of defense will naturally be to choose a mobile LMS with a very simple, clean interface, and intuitive, user-friendly features. Bridge Mobile offers a straightforward experience with uncomplicated dashboards. Learners can easily navigate between their courses, learning libraries, and agendas. User-friendly design isn’t the only factor though. Choosing an LMS provider known for meticulous onboarding and responsive customer service can also help you stay ahead of tech challenges. The last thing you want is for a learner to lose their motivation for good because of a minor technical hiccup that could be solved with a few simple instructions. This is why Bridge offers comprehensive onboarding. Our expert teams work with your admins to make sure they fully understand our app’s capabilities. When admins know features inside out, implementation is easy—and they’re empowered to help their team as and when required. It’s thanks in part to our outstanding onboarding that we recently achieved a customer satisfaction score of 93 percent. We also offer tech support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This means deskless workers with unusual hours don’t need to fall behind on their learning just because they need a bit of extra support. We have an excellent service team—and we’re proud to share that our customers love us for it. A representative from US-based construction and engineering company Rudolph and Sletten said: “Bridge LMS is exceptionally user-friendly, featuring an intuitive and clean interface that simplifies navigation for both administrators and learners. The customer support is outstanding—easily accessible and remarkably patient in understanding and resolving even the most challenging scenarios.”4. Offer Accessible, Engaging, and Personalized Learning for AllWhen staff feel that instructions are passed down from some invisible authority, they may feel less motivated to learn. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation—wanting to complete a task because it is fun, interesting, or helpful—can be a crucial factor for successful learning. Employers can promote intrinsic motivation by making employees feel competent and autonomous.To achieve this, personalizing learning is key. Especially when you consider the type of tasks deskless workers tend to do. Deskless workers are the lifeblood of many organizations. Every hour away from their daily tasks is an hour away from crucial activity that drives their company’s revenue or underpins their organization’s ethos. When the stakes are this high, cookie-cutter learning content can feel like a waste of time.Bridge Mobile can help you steer clear of one-size-fits-all courses. It empowers you to deliver personalized learning journeys for every employee. Managers can assign courses that align with specific, individual targets—and employees always have a clear view of their progress over time. This means that they’ll have a little bit of motivation to keep learning, and easy access to that learning wherever they are.Because the app stores tasks, ideas, achievements, and due dates all in one place, employees have their own, personal space to work toward their goals. This can help them feel like your organization is invested in improving their experience at work, instead of just forcing standardized training en masse.Crucially, Bridge also makes content more accessible for every learner. The app supports 20 different languages, so you can keep your employees of all backgrounds engaged and inspired. It also complies with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) at AA-level. This means:It’s easy to use with assistive technologies, like screen readers.There’s good color contrast between any text and background.Content is organized under clear headings, in a logical order.Navigation buttons or elements are consistent across the app.

4 Ways to Effectively Train Your Deskless Workforce 

With modern technology, accurately measuring the impact of virtual training programs is a very real possibility. When used properly, this kind of measurement catalyzes change in industries like healthcare, financial services, consulting, manufacturing, and others that rely heavily on effective training programs. But the ability to measure doesn’t guarantee success. You also need to know what metrics to track, how to avoid bias, and how to get buy-in from stakeholders and instructors.Let’s examine how best to use data and automation to save instructors and administrators time and improve the learner experience.3 Top Challenges to Effective AnalysisWhile there are several things to consider when implementing the most effective measurement program for virtual training, let’s take a closer look at three top challenges that we recommend tackling first, as well as our tips for clearing these hurdles with ease.1. Difficulty quantifying engagement. Look for a virtual training measurement platform that collects and analyzes the data for you, assessing factors like tardiness, the number of minutes instructors speak versus learners, and the number of learners raising their hands and using customized reactions, to name a few. Once you start measuring, set benchmarks based on your historical data, setting ambitious yet realistic goals for improvement. 2. Unintentional bias using qualitative measurement.Those responsible for measuring the effectiveness of training programs shouldn’t completely ignore qualitative methods of judging engagement, but must also introduce data to reinforce the findings of qualitative measurement to ensure accuracy.3. Lack of instructor focus on measuring engagement. Put plainly, the onus should not be solely on instructors here. The introduction of technology and data can be a welcome solution. Teachers can focus on teaching while reliable tech measures the results in the background, helping tell a complete story.Use Results to Improve InstructionTo improve instruction, it’s critical to analyze various metrics like total class time, instructor speaking time, participant speaking time—including the total number of times participants spoke as well as the average speaking time from all participants—and the total number of times participants raised their hands or gave feedback through the platform. Technology solutions can help compile all these metrics into one easy-to-digest dashboard and allow you to view results for an entire session, as well as drill down into individual participant results. Use the insights from your results to inform the changes you make to your training programs, and continue to iterate as more results come in.Technology can also automate time-consuming tasks like attendance recording, time in, time out, and tardiness, which both increases the accuracy of this data and frees instructors up to focus on quality education, improving the learning experience overall.Demonstrating Program EffectivenessIf you’re trying to effect change in your training programs by determining what’s working and not working, having quantifiable results and trends can go a long way in showing stakeholders the impact. Remember to utilize automation in your reporting technology, which can help expand reporting efforts and demonstrate effectiveness at a larger scale. When you’re communicating the value of your reporting to stakeholders, it also helps to have a framework for your metrics that’s backed by research and proven success. The Kirkpatrick Model for evaluating learner engagement lends itself perfectly here. This model distills training evaluation down to four distinct levels: The reaction of learners, including their thoughts on the training experienceThe learners’ increase in knowledge after the training experienceThe learners’ behavioral change and performance after applying the skills learnedThe results the learners’ performance has on the business or organizationMake sure whatever metrics you’re tracking to measure effectiveness follow a similar model to the Kirkpatrick Model. The key is persistent tracking to evaluate success at several points in time, allowing you to present a complete picture with your results.Access to accurate data and smart automation is the backbone of a successful training program. A powerful virtual classroom platform that’s purpose-built for learning and development, like Class, ensures that you can always keep your finger on the pulse of how your programs are performing, allowing you to focus on innovating and providing the best possible education for your learners.

Measuring the Impact of Your Virtual Training Programs

What kind of year will 2019 be for your career? Will you make progress, mark time, or fall behind?
Do you feel stuck in a dead-end job with limited opportunities to advance? Are you waiting for your boss or HR to manage your career? Have you interviewed for a promotion a few times, but haven’t gotten selected? Do you love your job, but know it’s time to move on? Are you already on the high-potential track, but need to stand out in the pile?
Vivian Blade has seen many professionals get caught up in being so busy with their work that they don’t give much attention to their careers. Then, months pass, and they’re not making the progress they’d hoped and are frustrated by the lack of career opportunities.
You have more control than you think over the outcomes in your career. Don’t look back with disappointment. Make the most of 2019, starting now.
The right focus and a shift in mindset can give you the power to make change happen.
Join Vivian for this interactive webcast as she equips you to:

Apply five often overlooked, highly effective strategies to ensure career success.
Know the right questions to ask yourself to get on the right track.
Shift your mental power to hit the ground running and ensure 2019 is a banner year for you.


Hit the Ground Running: 5 Often Overlooked Strategies to Ensure Career Success in 2019

Learn how to use support coaching to improve training outcomes, even if you're on a tight budget.
The unfortunate truth is that many training and development programs don’t stick. Even if the classroom instruction is outstanding, what’s taught often doesn’t translate to improved performance on the job. For people to turn what they’ve learned into positive work habits, the brain has to rewire itself for the new skill. That means applying it repeatedly on the job.
Because of the pace and stress of a typical workplace, however, it’s hard to get this kind of reinforcement without support. Employees need tips, reminders, encouragement, feedback, and accountability—in other words, they need coaching to stay on track. Unfortunately, it’s not economically feasible for organizations to hire a coach for every person who participates in a learning program.
In this webcast, you will learn how to develop a cost-effective program to transform employees in your organization into support coaches. By offering encouragement, feedback, and accountability, your support coaches will help participants stay on track and apply what they have learned.
Attendees will get complimentary access to nine videos and an e-book on support coaching to share with others in their organization.

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