Over the last decade the word “engagement” has been re-packaged, resold an remarketed so that it’s become a buzzword linked with organizational success (we must have engaged employees), customer relationships and social networking (we must be engaged with the customers”, and even, perhaps more sadly, in education. I say sadly because the meaning is unclear, and it’s become the latest fad in many of these fields.
That doesn’t mean it has no value, however, even if it is oversold.
Today, a TRDEV-L group member posted an interesting message asking what’s wrong with training? I sent a reply to him via the list, but thought I’d share it here as a think piece and stimulus for comment.
Why is it so? Do people have so many bad experience in training that they don’t believe training is any good? Have they been exposed to so many bad trainers that they don’t believe there are any good ones? (Phil Connell)
I’ve had something like 10+ books published and had a long career as a trainer and management consultant, and I’d say that, at the core of all my books lies the issue of communication. I’d also say that almost all the training and consulting I’ve done has had to do, at least in part with communication.
That’s one reason why it drives me crazy when people who otherwise act and speak like they have expertise and understanding put forth broad generalizations as prescriptions for how others should communicate. I understand why they do it. It’s because, in almost every case, they have been indoctrinated into the field of interpersonal communication within a humanistic model of communication is more idealogical than real. It’s simple. That ideology says, “Always play nice, take nice to everyone”. Extensions of this involve prescriptions like: Continue reading
We know from psychological research that human beings tend to discount information, data, or viewpoints that conflict with their pre-existing positions on any issue. We all do that to some degree. What is jarring is seeing learning professionals, trainers and teachers deliberately avoiding interacting with those who have views different from their’s.
I’ve seen this among the leading proponents of social networking as it is used to promote learning, i.e., social learning people. For example, Elliott Mazie, an elearning guru refused public discussion on an article he posted that clearly mis-stated some research numbers. Others have done similar things on Twitter. In fact, when challenged on the basic tenets of social learning dogma, the majority shut down. Avoid & deny.
In Part I of this series we looked at the first part of Tony Bingham’s post on “Learning Socially” and pointed out that so far in the article, nothing the President of ASTD mentioned is relevant or telling regarding the need or movement towards “social learning. Let’s look further at Bingham’s article to see if there is any substance or valid data in it. We’ll continue with an attempt to deal with what has to be one of the silliest fad terms to hit the training world — informal learning.
Bingham says: Continue reading
One thing that happens as you age, and provided you’ve been paying attention, is that patterns seem to emerge. You hear some people talking, and you can quickly determine what is going on, hostile, friendly, business, personal, whatever, from the patterns exhibited. Many things start to look familiar.
And you get the feeling you’ve seen most things before. Because you have.
For many it will come as no surprise that the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) continues to come up with some downright stupid things. It’s a long standing issue within the training profession, and there are those that hate ASTD and question its function and actions, and those that appreciate ASTD. Mostly I’m neither. I used to be a member, but I’m not now, but for no particular reason.
Still I was surprised at the August, 2009 article posted by Bingham, current President of ASTD, about social learning. The surprise wasn’t so much with the content. After all, ASTD has jumped pretty heavily into the e-learning/informal learning/social learning marketplace, with several of its $695 a piece downloadable guides. What did surprise me was the intellectual weaknesses, and lack of substance in the Bingham article. We’d expect more from a leader of the leading training organization in the world. We’d expect at least some glimmer of intelligence and a little less rah rah cheerleading.
You’d expect more. These are educated, intelligent people who, in general, have achieve some level of success in their careers. No failures here. Yet, you’d expect more of an awareness of what they are doing and how they are treating people who don’t agree with their positions. You’d expect more critical thinking. You’d expect more of a desire to debate and discuss with peple who disagree, if only to learn. After all, these ARE learning professionals.
These are the people who are promoting social media and social learning as solutions to a wide variety of problems, although often they don’t specifically state what business problems would be amenable to social media. It’s understandable that there will be zealots. There were television zealots who told us that TV would revolutionize how people learn, and computer based instruction zealots who told us the same for computers and instruction. Continue reading
Can it get any worse? Probably not. Mainstream news outlets are often reporting on research about the workplace — about what works, what doesn’t work. This year twitter and social media research is in the limelight. Last year employee engagement was widely reported on. Plus, of course, the general garden variety research having something to do with behavior and productivity in the workplace.
The problem is that the articles are often misleading, or directly and/or indirectly suggest conclusions to readers that are simply unwarranted. Misleading material includes complete direct conclusions not supported by the study (ie. stating completely wrong things), restatement of myths that were never true but have become urban myths (there are several about learning and training), to the most benign practice of providing inadequate guidance to readers about the meaning of the researc. Here’s an example. Continue reading
Are You Good Enough To Let Your Quality Speak?
Here’s a choice. Continue reading