The final face of the cube of development is the most powerful – self-reflection and individual initiative. Understanding why self-reflection is so powerful can help you do better at creating a learning organization.
 
Self-reflection has the following advantages:

• The focus is on priority topics
• The learner is highly motivated
• It occurs at the right time
• It is aligned to the needs of the individual
• It requires few organizational resources

Colleagues,
 
I was listening to a podcast last year in which the guest, an organizational development guru, stated that leaders should focus 90% of their time on developing people!
 
If you have been a regular reader, you know that I continually advocate for the role of leadership in developing people. People over process/paper is one of the four components of strategic leadership.
 
Leaders develop people through multiple paths, including structuring the organization for learning, which is the main theme this week. However, leaders also have a huge impact on individuals through direct coaching.
 
Coaching has the following features:

1. Intentionality
2. Focused on specific outcomes
3. Structured coaching sessions
4. Consistent contact
5. Mutual accountability

 
Coaching has three general forms:

• Directive in which the leader leads the focus and discussions
• Collaborative in which the leader and coachee lead at different times
• Reflective in which the coachee leads

 
The form a leader chooses is based on the knowledge, skills, and reflective abilities of the coachee.
 
In addition to actual coaching, leaders can adopt coaching practices like asking reflective questions. These practices can be easily applied outside of a formal coaching arrangement. An example of this is 5-minute coaching in which a leader asks these three questions:

1. What’s going well?
2. What has surprised you?
3. What would you do differently?

 
Another great benefit of coaching is that it leads to the most powerful form of development, self-reflection. More on that tomorrow. 
 
I’m considering putting together a 1-2 week online workshop to build leaders’ coaching skills. There would be a modest cost. Please let me know if you are interested.

Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

 Colleagues,
 
Today we’ll look at mentoring and peer networks.
 
Mentoring occurs when someone with more knowledge/skill/experience intentionally helps another person grow in the area of the mentor’s expertise. Mentoring is most typically done by peers as the mentoring relationship requires high trust. A leader could mentor someone in a lower hierarchical position, but when the mentor also evaluates the mentee it probably won’t work well.
 
Too often mentoring is left to chance or is too informal and unstructured to provide adequate value. Asking Cynthia to help the new person isn’t mentoring. Good mentoring programs should:

1. Include formal acknowledgement and support from the organization
2. Use selection criteria to match mentors and mentees
3. Include specific outcomes
4. Reward the mentor in some way

Colleagues,
 
Today we continue looking at the five faces of the cube of development by focusing on internal training.
 
Internal Trainers and Workshops
This face includes multiple advantages, including cost effectiveness and responsiveness to organizational needs. The effectiveness of internal trainers and trainings is limited by two factors:

1. Expertise of the trainer
2. Appropriateness of the content

 The people who are doing the work should be the ones identifying what they need to get better. The role of leadership is to collect and share critical data that help people make good decisions. We’ll look more at this in the future, but when leaders help people make sense of data in order to improve performance, the organization is in an incredibly good position.
 
Reflect on these questions:

• How do you (and your organization) make decisions about the content of training/development? 
• Is it driven by the people who will participate in the training?
• If not, why not?
• If you encounter resistance to training, what is that telling you?

 
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to share your own thoughts and experiences by replying to this email!
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

​Colleagues,
 
Last week we looked at the five faces of the cube of development. This week, I’ll clarify how to best use and integrate each face into your organization for maximum impact.
 
External Trainers and Workshops
This face is the most expensive form of development. It may be the best option when one or a few people need to acquire specific knowledge or skills. It can be effective for a whole team to attend so they can support each other in the future.
 
External training has three weaknesses:

1. It happens away from the workplace.
2. It is generally not contextualized for your specific organization.
3. Nobody else in the organization receives the training.

 
Since this training occurs away from the organization, there is often little organizational support for the training attendee as they try and implement what they learned. Organizational practices that allow for both sharing of the knowledge and follow-up support for those implementing it are key to capturing the value of external training.
 
To share information, the attendee can:

• share the key training elements in a document
• provide a mini training at a meeting
• conduct a “lunch and learn” (interested people attend a presentation during lunch)
• Coach or mentor others in learning the knowledge/skills

 
To increase support for applying the new knowledge, the attendee should create a basic plan for implementing the new knowledge. This plan should include behaviors and outcomes and a leader should help support the plan by checking for implementation. This takes significant effort, but why would you invest thousands of dollars for training and not follow through with support?
 
Let me know if you have other ideas to add!
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick