LEARNABILITY 23 February

Welcome to this month's newsletter.

It's turning out to be a hectic month - so let's get straight on with those Learnability nuggets...

?? HR

Why TEA Ceremonies are bad for you

I once attended an obligatory Health and Safety training session. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be about (Don’t put your hand in a meat grinder?) but we had to attend.

I turned up along with another 10 reluctant colleagues.

There we met the H&S expert. A rather thin and apologetic gentleman in his 40s armed with a PowerPoint presentation and a cardigan (I definitely remember the cardigan).

He then spent the next 2 hours going through the A-to-Z of office health and safety, raising our awareness of everything from types of fire extinguishers to first aid to warning sign rules and regulations.

He then thanked us for our attention and left.

We returned to our daily routines and forgot most of his content within a few hours.

I’ve never seen him since.

I call this kind of event a TEA Ceremony.

T is for Turn up. When you arrive you have little if any idea of what you will be doing.

E is for the Expert who knows a lot about the subject but has little idea of the experience or specific needs of each audience member.

A is for awareness. After the event, there is no testing, no practice, no follow-up. Two weeks afterwards, you struggle to remember what was covered. Two months afterwards and you’ve forgotten the event completely. The only reason I remember it is because it stood out as a phenomenally good example of bad training.

TEA ceremonies are bad. They are a waste of time, energy, resources, and money.

At best, they create the illusion of learning, at worst they are frustrating and demotivating for everyone involved.

If attendees don't know what is going to happen at one of these events, if there is no clear call to action or takeaway, if the expert doesn't know what challenges the attendees are facing, and if there is no follow-up, the event isn't about professional development, it's a TEA ceremony and as a responsible person you need to do something about it.

To rectify this, make sure the following happens:

1. Make sure attendees have a clear understanding of what they are expected to do afterwards with the information covered.
2. Make sure that the attendees are reminded, motivated, or coerced into doing it.
3. Make sure there is some sort of evaluation to see how well they got on and if there was anything they had problems with.

These 3 ingredients convert a TEA ceremony into a real learning experience that benefits everybody.

So what is the next TEA ceremony you'll be attending and how are you going to turn it into a positive learning experience?

?? Entrepreneurs

Open Entrepreneur Learning Club

For the past 6 months, I've been running free one-hour Learning Clubs open to everyone.

As of now, I’m splitting these into two groups, one aimed at career development (personal skills, changing jobs, etc), the other aimed at Entrepreneurs and small businesses (startups, marketing, business growth, etc).

The aim is to provide an opportunity to focus on challenges, priorities, and evaluations, to help people connect with others who face similar problems, and to help attendees create their own progress plan.

If you are running your own small business or if you are facing the huge challenge of starting one, join me on the 4th Monday of every month and share your thoughts.

My next one is next Monday, 26th February.

Here's the link to book your place now.

?? Personal Development

What Colour Is Your Personal Development Strategy?

How well are you doing with your development projects?

How can you tell?

Here’s a tool I’d like to share with you from my personal development accelerator groups.

It’s a simple but effective way of assessing how much you are stretching yourself.

This is done by categorising your actions - the things you do to get to where you want to be.

Whether you want to improve your leadership, productivity, or even waistline, you put each of your actions into one of four categories Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue.

This is useful because it makes you do a quick check on how well you are applying yourself towards reaching your goals and encourages you to make adjustments where necessary.

So, the four categories are the colours Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue.?

Red

Red is for danger and that’s what Red Activities are. They are a danger to your goals and directly hinder your progress. We are not talking about neutral activities that don’t support your plan. We are talking about counterproductive actions that make your progress more difficult.?

Let’s illustrate this with three examples: Getting a promotion, finding a life-partner, and writing a book.

• If you want to get promoted, then being rude, argumentative or antisocial are examples of Red activities (unless being unpleasant is a job requirement)
• If you want to find a new romantic partner, one Red activity would be engaging in negative self-talk, telling yourself you are undesirable
• If you want to get up early in the morning to write your book, then going to bed late is also Red.

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Red actions are not as obvious as you might think. Our actions are frequently so ingrained, we don’t even notice we are doing them. I’m sure you’ve seen other people creating problems for themselves without realising what they are doing. But when it comes to self-assessment, it’s not so obvious at all. Can you think of any of yours?

I’m sure we have all had the experience of occasionally choosing to do something that we know is not good for our plans. But too many, too often is simply self-sabotage. If you frequently get the feeling of exasperation, despair or even self-loathing, somewhere there are Red actions. Identify them and change them.

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Yellow

Yellow is a feel-good colour and yellow activities are those activities that make you feel that you are progressing towards your goal. The only problem with Yellow activities is that’s the only thing they do. Although they give you the impression of progress, in reality, after doing them, you’re no closer than when you started. For example:

• Taking enumerable courses, hoping this will lead to a promotion
• Browsing Tinder for an hour without making a move
• Reading someone else’s book on how to write in the belief that it will magically increase your word count?

It’s easy to spend far too much time on Yellow activities because they are usually within your comfort zone and don’t require you to stretch yourself. They also generate the hamster wheel effect - lots of busyness but not much progress. Too many Yellow activities create the feeling of frustration, anxiety or even emotional burnout.

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Green

Green is for Go and green actions are those that DIRECTLY open the doors and pave the way forward to Blue actions (which I’ll cover next). Green actions aren’t the main activity but they are prerequisites. For example:

• Learning how to be more assertive when expressing your interest in a promotion or improving your interview technique?
• Hiring a good dating coach
• Setting out your writing equipment and your early morning alarm.

These don’t get you the promotion, the date or the book, but they definitely increase the likelihood of you making real progress.

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Blue

Just as Blue Chip refers to something of the highest quality, Blue activities are your most productive actions. As Pareto's 80/20 principle says, they are the most important actions that create the biggest results. Ironically, they are the actions most likely to make you feel uncomfortable. They are out of your comfort zone and thus the actions you avoid, or substitute with Yellow ones, or justify postponing by convincing yourself that you’re not ready yet, or that now isn’t the right moment.

So regarding that new job, Blue activities are taking the initiative to talk to your boss, having a chat with your friend in HR or making a formal application.

Regarding your search for your life partner, building up the courage to walk up to that person you've been admiring from afar and ask them on a date is a Blue activity.

And when it comes to writing your book, obviously, sitting down and actually knocking out five hundred words every morning is your Blue activity.

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I hope you get the idea.

You have important things in your life that you want to achieve. The more Blue and Greens activities you have in your personal development strategy and the fewer Yellow and Red ones, the sooner your dream will be fulfilled.

Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple and it’s tempting to fool yourself into a false sense of security justifying too many Yellow actions while overlooking the Red ones.

So take a moment to identify your Reds, Yellows, Greens, and Blues.

How many did you do yesterday??

How many will you do tomorrow?

This article was written for Brianz magazine. To see similar personal development articles click here.

?? Learning Clubs

Visual Report Presentations

Here is a tip that I have found makes a big difference in clarifying personal challenges.

If you don't know already, a Learning Club session begins with each member giving a report to the group about what they have successfully achieved (or not) since the previous session.

Over the years, I've listened to hundreds of reports, some are profound and well-thought-out. Others give the impression they are improvised on the spare of the moment. This defeats the purpose of the activity.

By far, the best reports I have experienced are those supported visually. They are more concise, better thought out, better explained, and easier to follow.

I could write a whole article about the reflective power of presentations, but I won't. That's for another day. For the moment, it's enough for me to say that the next time you have to prepare a report, I strongly encourage you to prepare a visual presentation of your ideas.

PowerPoint, Canva, or even the back of a serviette are fine.

This will help you sort out your ideas better, improve your communication, and strengthen the way you remember, reflect, and learn.

?? Book Recommendation

Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?: Olympic-winning Strategies for Everyday Success

This is what I'm reading at the moment.

It tells the inspiring story of how Ben Hunt-Davis - an ordinary guy in an ordinary team – achieved something extraordinary: Olympic Gold.

Co-author Harriet Beveridge, Executive Coach, then gives a simple, engaging account of how we can apply these strategies to raise our own game… in sport, in business, and in life.?Building on the huge success of the original, this second edition includes two completely new chapters – on high-performance conversations and performance under pressure – as well as a general update, based on the successes readers and businesses have reaped from the first edition.

In the book’s signature, down-to-earth, and practical style, the new chapters unlock simple ways for readers to thrive in their own pressured environments, and to communicate in ways which consistently improve results.?

Whether you are a business leader looking to achieve a compelling vision, an individual with a dream, or a coach supporting others to unlock their potential…this book is jam-packed with tried and tested methods to help you achieve your own ‘gold medal’.

What I'm doing at the moment

• Next month, I'll be speaking about Learnability and Learning Clubs at the BPC Barcelona conference organised by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals which I'm looking forwards to immensely.
• Last week I was invited to the sell-out BISA Talk (Barcelona International Schools Association. It was a privilege to hear school directors talk about their school's trajectories. However, I was a little disappointed that not one of them are giving their students the opportunity to develop self-directed learning skills.
• PSA Spain: I have just started running Business Growth sessions for the Professional Speakers Association of Spain. I'm looking forwards to seeing how high these talented people can fly.
• New Learning Club: I'm pleased to be starting another Learning Club on Thursday afternoons. That takes me to a total of 4 groups at the moment. The waiting list has now started for my next one.
• Pitch Perfect Event: On Monday 4th March, I'll be hosting a Pitch Perfect event where 6 entrepreneurs will be presenting their sales pitches and getting valuable feedback. The winner will get... ?
• Duolingo: For those Duolingo users, I hope to reach my 800-day streak.
• Reading: Just in case you skipped the previous bit, I'm reading Will It Make The Boat Go Faster by Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge and thoroughly enjoying every page.

?? If you're interested in setting up a Learning Club accelerator in your organisation, contact me here on LinkedIn.

?? If you are organising an event and would like your attendees to triple the value they get from it, invite me to lead with my keynote on Learnability.

?? If you are interested in selling me your services on website design, marketing or lead generation, please don't. I already have people who are doing it and I'm very happy with them, so stop spamming me... pretty please.

In the meantime, have a great month, and keep learning ??