Blog

  Would you like to know one of the quickest ways to achieve greater success and satisfaction in your life?   Work on improving your emotional intelligence.

What is emotional intelligence?  It is a set of emotional and social skills we use every day, whether it’s on the job, at home, on the road, or talking to ourselves.  And, how well we use those skills is being proven to be more important to our success and happiness than our IQ’s.  In fact, as much as 40% of the success you’ll have on your job relies on your having good emotional intelligence skills.

The concept of emotional intelligence hit the public full force when Daniel Goleman released his groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence in the mid 1990’s.  Before that, IQ was considered by many (and still is by all too many) to be the determiner of success in life.

But, will IQ alone make you a good team member?  An A-rated boss?  A successful trainer?  A good spouse?  An effective parent?   Adept socially?  Will it make you happy?  No, that’s where EQ kicks in.

As you might expect, experts got busy studying emotional intelligence, identifying individual skills and then devising ways to measure them reliably.   On the EQ-I 2.0, a thoroughly validated assessment tool, 15 individual EQ skills have been identified.   Among these 15 skills are Self-Regard, Independence, Assertiveness, Interpersonal Relationships, Impulse Control, Reality Resting, Flexibility, Stress Tolerance, and Optimism. 

Now, I am betting you could take each one of these skills and point out someone who has either too much or too little of that skill, right?  Now, just imagine how life would change if that person simply corrected the imbalance.   And, did you see a skill that is a challenge for you?

I got into emotional intelligence while going through a life-altering transition.  And, I can tell you there is nothing that will wake you up faster than seeing your EQ scores objectively laid out on a chart.   Mine was a picture of my life as I had created it.  It was also a picture others were seeing daily!  One of my low scores was “optimism.”   I saw why my life had been, quite frankly, disappointing.  You can’t win when you’re thinking “losing.”  Odd that I could see it in others, but not in myself.  I was being “realistic.”

Now, as opposed to IQ, your EQ can be improved.  You simply decide what skills you want to improve, and you start tracking yourself, creating new, more resourceful habits.  In my case, I got busy identifying situations where I was really being pessimistic and change to something more resourceful.  And, it’s a good thing I did.  ShortIy thereafter, I found myself the subject of a public, “dressing down” by a well-known consultant I’d paid to hear.  As a result of my EQ self-work, I was able to realize he had huge ego problems -- and set everything aside and move forward.  Otherwise, his remarks might have destroyed me.  Now, that’s the benefit of having a good EQ. 

Diana Ferguson

Fundamentals for Success

Certified in Core Values Index™ and Emotional Intelligence

  Since ICE Dallas is right around the corner, and some of us are planning to go (disclaimer – I‘m not, but will be attending IAFNA in June), I thought a look at various “How to Get the Most Out of a Conference” posts might be useful. There’s standard advice: make checklists, network, determine your goals, etc. But I couldn’t find what I wanted to hear – take it easy.

For some of us, conferences are overwhelming. We’re navigating unfamiliar surroundings and unknown relationships, while inputting large amounts of new information. I feel tired just typing that sentence.

What’s a professional introvert to do? I say “take care of yourself”. Decide what tracks you want to cover, but don’t push. Take a pass on sessions that don’t excite you. (You know you’ll be sorry you went to those anyway.) Use the time to take a nap or be alone. Review your notes. Find a friend to chat with. If you take the time to refresh yourself, you’ll have the energy you need when you need it.

Let’s start a new phenomenon. Conference-life balance. Introverts, chime in! What's your advice?

  In my opinion, Brain Rules by John Medina is one of the best books we have reviewed in the Cliff Notes SIG. The review was so intriguing that I bought the book. I learned a lot from it – both for personal knowledge and for professional development. I think we are all aware that the brain is an amazing organ. This book highlights incredible insights and inspires the desire to treat our brains well.

Some of the most fascinating rules/principles covered in the book are:

• Exercise boosts brain power.  Did you know that your lifetime risk for dementia is cut in half if you participate in leisure-time exercise? How about this – exercisers out perform couch potatoes in long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving tasks, and fluid intelligence tasks! That should be enough evidence to get everyone enrolled in an exercise class!
• Every brain is wired differently.  The brain acts like a muscle in that the more activity you engage in, the larger and more complex it can become. Consider this: The world forces wild animals into learning mode. Brains in wild animals are 15 to 30 percent larger than brains in domesticated animals.
• People don’t pay attention to boring things. You’ve got a few seconds to grab someone’s attention. You’ve got 10 minutes to keep it. At 9 min. 59 seconds something must be done to regain attention and restart the clock –- something emotional and relevant. That’s one of the reasons I chunk online training into 10-minute segments. And get this – the brain remembers emotional components of an experience better than any other aspect. That sure makes me wonder why learning professionals so often ignore the affective domain. It is mighty important.
• Repeat to remember. OK, we don’t want to dwell on the drill-and-kill approach to learning, but there’s a lot to be said for repetition. People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in class within 30 days. That’s pretty depressing so as learning professionals, we’ve got to make sure our audience has an opportunity to put new knowledge and skills to use right away.
• Sleep well, think well. The brain appears to consolidate the day’s learning the night after learning occurs. An interruption of sleep disrupts the learning cycle.
• Vision trumps all other senses. As an artist and visual communicator, I love this one!  The more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized and recalled. A test performed years ago showed that people could remember more than 2,500 pictures with at least 90 percent accuracy several days post exposure, even though subjects saw each picture for about 10 seconds. Accuracy rates were about 63 percent a year later.

It is hard to write a short review of Brain Rules. The book is packed with terrific information and a lot of it can be used to make training more effective. I hope you'll read this book and get as much out of it as I did.

Linda Warren
Past President, Austin ASTD

  Sherry Lowry recommended a great little, yet inspiring book on the creative process. I’ve always been interested in the creative process and problem solving. There are academic approaches to studying the subject, but I really enjoy Steal Like an Artist because it is a fresh, spontaneous, and creative approach to inspiration. It also deals with the difference between plagiarism and influence – a slippery slope – especially in the digital era when there is the pervasive attitude of thinking it’s OK to take any resource online and reuse it.

The first time I read the book I marked lots of pages that I wanted to read repeatedly and today I’m enjoying a few of the excerpts.

-- From the cartoonist Lynda Barry, “In the digital age, don’t forget to use your digits!” Your hands are the original digital devices. Use them.

-- Art that only comes from the head isn’t any good. You don’t need a scientific study … to tell you that sitting in front of a computer all day is killing you, and killing your work. We need to move, to feel like we’re making something with our bodies, not just our heads.

-- “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” Jessica Hische

-- Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, when the world looks new, our brains work harder.

-- The right constraints can lead to your very best work. Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he wouldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.

I hope these excerpts have piqued your interest in inspiration and creativity. Steal Like an Artist is written by Austin Kleon, who by chance, lives in Austin, Texas.

Linda Warren

ASTD Austin, Past President

  Are you a front door only person? Are you ever intrigued by the side or back door? If you've got a curious nature, exploring the less obvious (and less traveled) ingresses can be the most interesting. And if you're adventurous enough to use social media like Twitter, the resources are nearly unlimited.

More and more conferences, speakers, and vendors are sharing valuable information online through Twitter, Slideshare, LinkedIn, YouTube and more.  Savvy learning and development experts are going so far as developing curated back channel resource pages; Karen Wade organized a Knowledge Pot Luck to develop a Knowledge /Inspiration /Tools & Tips "KIT" which she wrote about on Austin ASTD blog.  I hope we can see it expanded.

Another hero of curated back channel resources is David Kelly; he points out on his blog that like many of us, it's just not feasibly to attend every conference and seminar of interest. But that doesn't mean it's not possible to see the presentations, and connect with others.  Kelly has curated five back channel resources for conferences on his site davidkelly.me and he's gone so far to include the Twitter hashtags in the titles.

Hashtags, if you aren't familiar with them, are user generated categories to make it easier for people to find topic threads on social media.  Unique hashtags mean anyone attending a conference or just watching from afar can keep current on what people are talking about online.  Speakers link to their presentations on Slideshare and use the hashtags to make it easier for people to find them. And it means that you can see what people are talking about (good and bad).

Recent conferences you can search for on Twitter include #ASTDK13,  #TRG13, and the upcoming #SXSWedu.

If you want to learn more about using hashtags and following conferences you can see an online version of the handout I created at blog.jenn-brown.com; there's also an article on how to subscribe to Twitter lists there.  You can also directly subscribe to my twitter list for learning and development events (if you have a Twitter account).

The (free!) online resources for learning and development professionals is growing daily; why not take advantage of them? It's just like being there, only by using the back door.

Jenn Brown

Photo Credit:  Behind Which Door, (c) Marc Falardeau

  Like many adult learners I thrive in a visual and kinesthetic learning environment. A classroom where I can think out loud, hear others ideas and discuss the practical application of learning and development theories.

The Austin ASTD CPLP cohort has provided this platform for me and I look so forward to attending. It’s a challenge to find time to study for the exam so the cohort has been keeping me focused.

Anyone else have thoughts about the CPLP exam or the cohort?

Leah Carrubba

  Jane Hart issued a challenge recently…can you create useful learning content within the size limits of a tweet (140 characters)?? Depending on the topic, this can be easy or really really hard!!

My contributions:

·        Polish silver jewelry: 1-wet it, 2-rub in tiny bit of toothpaste (keep wet), 3-rub til paste=black, 4-wait 2 mins, 5-wash away! #140id

·        #140id Follow blog (Google #Reader): 1-Go 2 blog, 2-Select address, 3-Copy (Ctrl+C), 4-In GReader, clk SUBSCRIBE, 5-Paste (Ctrl+V), 6-Add

Join in on Twitter – it’s fun! – and don’t forget to add the hashtag #140id.

Holly Nellene
2013 Chapter President

  Do you suffer from having a job you only partially like?  Do you work with people who set your teeth on edge?   Are you ever “guilty” of wondering how another person could possibly think the way they do?  Or worse -- is that ever said that about you?

What if you could have a job that matched what you’re designed to do best?  What if you understood / felt understood by the people you work with?  What if you could live in greater harmony with those you’re closest to?

Would you think you’d landed in Never-Never Land?  Well, think again.  We’re on the cusp of doing things differently.  Lots of things are being learned that would help us live happier / more satisfying lives -- if we only knew about them.  One of my passions is learning about those things and then sharing them with others.

Change in the workplace is being championed by Taylor Protocols, which originally developed a series of assessment tools to help distressed companies get the right person into the right job so the company could be returned to profitability.  Today, their use has not only spread to companies that want to hire / place workers into jobs they can shine in, but right into the personal arena.

I happened across the signature Taylor tool – the Core Values Index (CVI) while looking for effective ways to make a transition period shorter and less “if-y.” I quickly saw no one had started me at the foundation level when I went into transition – that is, at my innermost, non-changing nature -- thus costing me time and money. 

For example, a costly lesson came from hiring into a firm that changed the job description on me, leaving me with what I now jokingly call “The Job from H---.”   Even though the job set my teeth on edge and numbed my mind, I kept it thinking I could “make” it work.  However, at the end of a year, I quit.  Both the firm and I lost.  If I’d known my CVI score, the hiring people might not have done what they did, or I’d have had the good sense to quit immediately.

If you’re curious and would like to find out your CVI score, go to TaylorProtocols, click on the green “Take Your Free CVI” and take the 10-minute, on-line assessment for free.  Like me, you may be glad you did.

Diana Ferguson

VP Membership

Licensed Representative for Taylor Protocols

  Here's an interesting article summarizing what 2012 versus 2013 looks like for the training and development industry.  There is also a whitepaper providing more details available.  

1. Less desktop and more mobile…but not that fast.

2. Fewer full-sized courses. More learning snacks, ePubs, videos, and reference tools.

3. Less focus on the LMS; More focus on Tin Can API.

4. Less Tell; More Games and Gamification.

5. Less PPT-only; More Cool Interactive Tools within Lectures.

6. Less Formal Training; More Informal Social Learning.

7. Less Trainers; More Community Managers and Curators.

#4 reminds me of a presentation in which I realized…our jobs are enhanced when we see what popular culture likes as games – such as the many Facebook games.  But good luck selling the boss on the need to spend hours playing Farmville or Gardens of Time on company time or computers.

Star Fisher
Senior Associate with Caveo Learning