I see GREEN people

I had a wonderful conversation with a wonderful friend last week. At about the two hour mark, I got asked how it is that I assess people I meet. I have been asked that question before by others and myself. The process has evolved over the years.

New Book: Triathlete EQ

Heather Gollnick, 5-Time Ironman Champion and winner of over 200 multi-sport events, and Dr. Izzy Justice, a sports neuropsychologist, proudly announce the release of their new book: TRIATHLETE EQ – A GUIDE FOR EMOTIONAL ENDURANCE. The central premise of the book is that endurance sports are as much a test of an athlete’s emotional endurance skills as they are a test of their physical ability skills.

Chrissie Wellington, 4-Time World Champion, endorsed the book as “unique and much needed … for elite and novice athletes…” The book is rooted in neuroscience, has practical exercises and tips, and has a workbook format that allows readers to build their own customized mental strategies to incorporate into training and racing. USAT and Ironman Hall of Famer Bob Bobbitt has written the forward. To read other reviews, an excerpt of the book or to purchase it, please visit www.triathleteq.com. As Olympian and 70.3 World Champion, Andy Potts, noted, “…this book will help you perform better.”

Fear Not

 

If you have bought or sold a home in the past 5 years or so, then you are familiar the concept of virtual tours of homes. For example, your realtor might send you a link to a home that, from the convenience of wherever in the world you are, you can tour that actual home via a real video walk-through.  You can imagine the countless hours and weekend time this new method has saved all parties.

Great Mistakes

My six-year-old son was trying to put together an elaborate puzzle this past weekend. I watched carefully and noticed on several occasions the pieces he was looking for were right in front of him. I hesitated to help, observing him figuring it out for himself.

Learn to Unlearn

I’ve blogged about this topic before but events from last week prompted me to address it again. I had lunch with another CEO and he mentioned hiring a new COO. To give this some context, the CEO is a founder and has had terrible luck over the past few years hiring senior level executives. So why did he hire this guy? He said to me,”The guy said to me the only thing he had mastered in almost 30 years of experience was the art of learning.” He went on to explain to me how the COO walked him through how he learns, with a respectful disregard to what he had already learned or mastered.

Defining Growth

In a seemingly innocuous conversation last week, I was asked how to define and measure personal growth. How do you know you have grown from say a year ago, several years ago, or even from last week? The obvious answer was that you are doing something that you routinely do, but you are doing it better. Perhaps you are happier or you are meeting your goals or you have been promoted or are getting actual formal feedback from your boss, peers, or customers. But these are “outcomes” of a process where “you are doing things better.”

Continuous Learning – Old Paradigm

Continuous learning became a buzz word in the 90s for working professionals. And rightfully so. Who can argue with always learning and finding ways to be better at whatever it is that you do?  It gave birth to an explosion of professional development and learning services like mega conferences, coaching, eLearning, webinars, LMS systems, and the like. But things changed in the last decade that I’ve discussed in previous blogs.

The Value of Learning

Just saw the following in an alert from HBR:

Employer-provided training has the same effect on job satisfaction as a 17.7% net wage increase, according to a study of nearly 5,000 workers in Spain by Santiago Budría of the University of Madeira. Other studies showing low productivity gains from training are overlooking the subjective benefits of on-the-job learning, Budría suggests.

Learning Again

I received quite a response to last week’s blog. So I thought I’d add some more context. The topic is learning: continuous learning has been a widely heralded organizational and personal mantra. It is hard to argue against it. Why wouldn’t anyone not continuously look for ways to learn? We’re living in a flattened world with fewer barriers to knowledge, other people, other communities, and other experiences. It has been argued that those who learn best in a knowledge economy are modern-day gladiators who will withstand and profit from the fast-changing world.

Incomplete Learning

I had two lunch meetings last week and the topic of learning came up. I argued for the appreciation of the distinction between simply learning something and integrating that learning so that change is not only made, but it sticks.

What vs. How

This is a topic of discussion I have been having with colleagues, clients, and personal friends for many years now. I am troubled by my peers in the business of professional development and the general confusion around the differences between the “what” and the “how” of a solution to learning and growing.

Children are better learners – we can learn from how they learn

I, along with many others, have discussed before how imperative it is for working professionals to be continuous learners.  What got us here, as my friend Marshall Goldsmith argues, is not likely to get us there. Past success is becoming a poor indicator of future success. Better indicators of future success are networks (social and professional), adaptability, and creativity. 

Mobile Learning

The following statistics were generated by Future Workplace and IESE Business School.

1. By year end of 2011: nearly forty percent of executives plan to incorporate media tablets into learning and development initiatives and three-quarters of these learning executives plan to incorporate smartphones by the end of this year.
2. By 2015: Human Resource executives plan to leverage mobile devices not only for learning & performance support but also for coaching and mentoring employees (37%), micro-blogging (27%), augmented reality (14%), and mobile gaming (12%).

Higher Ups Lose Leadership Capacity

I had a wonderful conversation with a client and friend last week – Jane.  She attention a session in the Northeast with David Rock. He had shared the notion that as the higher-up working professional progress in their career, the lesser their leadership capacity becomes. This seems very counter-intuitive at first pass.

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