Turtle talk with crush at Disney

My very first ASTD pre-conference session was a session at Disney Institute. I immediately felt as though the little kid in my was reignited and I looked forward to that magical experience like a little girl waiting for a candy bar.

The experience at Disney Institute did not fail to disappoint. After the first half of the day was over, we were required to immense ourselves in a live show called Turtle talk with Crush. Now I knew all about that character Crush from Finding Nemo, but what surprised me was the thought and intelligence that had gone into this show.

Turtle Talk with Crush at Epcot theme park is a live show where kids of all ages can have a conversation with the totally tubular turtle from Disney·Pixar's Finding Nemo.

Located inside The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion in Future World, the innovative Turtle Talk with Crush takes place inside a theater featuring a large "window to the ocean world." After taking your seat, watch Crush swim to the window from his ocean home and begin taking questions and chatting with audience members. He'll also educate you on the importance of protecting the world's oceans.

How Turtle Talk with Crush Works

Turtle Talk with Crush uses state-of-the-art, 3D, voice-activated computer animation. Through this advanced technology, Crush can communicate directly—in real time—and hold unique, improvised conversations with audience members. Each and every show is different.

So how did our show pan out?

Well we had no special kid in the house with a birthday that day. It would have been interesting if there were. We heard that there are special code signs Disney staff would do to indicate to the voice behind Crush that there was a birthday kid in the house that day.

There was a part when Crush swung his cherry red bikini and asked us what we thought of it. Crush even winked at the audience and showed off his cherry red bikini. As it turns out, after the show, Epcot staff were seen asking a particular lady in the audience whether she caught the joke about Cherry. Turns out her name is cherry and she was wearing red that day. J

Adeline Mak

Is Powerpoint Upstaging You? Tips for Improving your presentation delivery.

Speaker: Barbara Roche

Date: Sunday, 22 May 2011-08-31

Having been in the public service for almost 7 years, powerpoint and good presentation skills seem critical as part of our delivery when we present at meetings. However, after sitting through so many presentations in my career, I often step out of meeting rooms wondering about the impact of powerpoint and how it oftens cripples us in our delivery rather than aiding us. There have been many a time I’ve seen presenters reading off the projector screen not knowing they bore their audience. Sometimes, there are too many words on each slide when the use of a picture (painting a thousand words) can seem to be more appropriate.

I was very engaged throughout Barbara’s session. She started off with some typical powerpoint slides and got the audience to name the common errors that even seasons presenters make. I was proud to say I could name almost every one of the errors. The audience were also awed that I pointed out that two rows of font had different types of spacing between them as seen in this table by table example. There was a mix of 1.5 lines spacing and the spacing between paragraphs were also not standardised. I guess I can only attributed it to being trained to see all the ‘tao-gehs’ (¶¶¶¶) in Microsoft word such that my naked eye can spot these errors.

Common errors in powerpoint presentations: 1)      Different fonts used. Decide whether you are using serif or non serif fonts and keep to the same standard throughout the presentation. 2)      Do not use too many contrasting colours in one slide. 3)      Keep is short and simple

Common errors in powerpoint presentations: 1)      Different fonts used. Decide whether you are using serif or non serif fonts and keep to the same standard throughout the presentation. 2)      Do not use too many contrasting colours in one slide. 3)      Keep it short and simple

Knowing your content inside and out is only the first step to a great training workshop. Preparation is second, and the third is effective use of audiovisual elements to enhance the learning. If you are guilty of cramming your slides with too much text, or you have a tendency toward "slide overload," this was the right workshop for many of us held guilty. J This was a workshop I found insightful as it made me aware of the pitfalls of a typical powerpoint presentation. For those who are interested, you can view Barbara’s slides here: http://www.astdconference.org/ice11/Custom/Handout/Speaker19709_Session6016_1.pdf

Recently, I also attended a South Asian Diaspora Conference where a speaker, Mr Siddarth Jain from Playware Studios, talked about www.prezi.com. It is heartening to note that the young ones are embarking on technology faster and better than the older generation. Mr Jain talked about how Playware studios have played an integral part in the Futureschools@Singapore project in Canberra Primary School. This software makes use of whiteboards and slides where multiple slides can also be combined onto one slide in a smart way to captivate your audience. I haven’t had a chance to try it as it is not so-easy compatible but I’ve been fiddling around with it on my Mac at home and hope to test a presentation of mine on Prezi in the near future. Stay tuned!  J

Adeline Mak

Nurturing Profitable Mentoring Relationships

Neil Steimann is the founder of People Dynamics, a business consultancy based in South Africa. During the weekends, he is a volunteer in one of the local projects to rehabilitate lions for release into the wild. Through the interaction between these seemingly unrelated worlds and work, Neil distils lessons on what makes for a profitable mentoring relationship.

In observing two prides of lions, Neil discovered that pride 'A' appeared to specialise in hunting, particularly buffaloes. However, the pride was unable to raise a single cub. This contrasted with pride 'B', which displayed average skills in hunting, but was always successful in raising cubs. Imagine these two prides as teams within an organisation, team 'A' and team 'B'. Just as pride 'A' focuses all its energies into hunting instead of raising cubs, team 'A' will also invest its energies into excelling in its work rather than developing future leaders. In contrast, just as the lioness in pride 'B' invests energies into hunting as well as preparing its cubs for the wild, team 'B' will also invest in both work as well as team development.

Neil suggests that most organisations make the mistake of treating mentoring as HR's responsibility or initiative. Organisations engage in a constant battle to sustain mentoring. "Formal" mentoring in which staff are assigned mentors often struggle because staff perceives that there is no "heart" in the arrangement. "Informal" mentoring is perceived to be natural and authentic, but is time-consuming and does not ensure that all staff receive the benefits of mentoring. Neil suggests that the key to successful and profitable mentoring relationships is a sense of ownership by managers involved in the relationships.

Neil also distilled some lessons on mentoring:
1. Intentionality of exposure will facilitate mentees' willingness to learn.

2. Ensure both mentor and mentee have a clear understanding of what the relationship is about.

3. The importance of crucial conversations in mentoring relationships.

4. Mentoring relationships can be enhanced by some structured maintenance sessions during which mentors and mentees take the time to review the relationship.

Sueann

Blended Learning: Part Two

As with any initiative, we can expect challenges in the implementation of blended learning.  Here are some people-related ones:

Managers

1. Not releasing staff for training

2. Do not participate in staff's learning process

3. Placing obstacles to transfer of learning, largely due to pressure to deliver

4. Not modeling appropriate behavior

5. Block staff's development out of desire to protect own position within the organization

6. Protect the status quo

7. Do not possess skills to develop others

8. Not incentivised to develop others

Learners

1. Do not see the need to be developed

2. Do not see the value of taking time out from work for training & development

3. No consequence for non-participation in training; no incentive for participation in training

4. Cultural differences

5. Programmes cannot satisfy all learners

Organisation / Culture

1. "We've always done it this way!"

2. Operate in silos

3. We want a learning culture, but we don't want to pay for it

4. Sense of entitlement amongst staff

5. Proactive vs. reactionary staff development

6. Check box mentality towards staff T&D

ASTD suggests 4 Cs to implementation success:

1. Communicate constantly to all stakeholder groups involved;

2. Support and nurture the development of a learning community, which is highly likely to mushroom in blended learning environments;

3. Sustain efforts to introduce and integrate blended learning into the organisational culture; and

4. Exercise control over the blended learning curriculum, from planning to implementation.

Here is the output from the class discussion about the blended learning life cycle:

Stage 1: Content Maintenance

Challenge: -

1. Lack of in-house technical expertise to develop / maintain content

2. Version control

3. Too much content

4. Keeping up with technology change

Advice: -

1. Build up an internal team to address issues

2. Invest in dummy-proof technology

3. Put in processes to ensure development and IT teams work closely together

Stage 2: Ongoing Ownership

Challenge: -

1. Some content lie in the "gray areas" with no obvious content owner. Need for cross-agency collaboration.

Advice: -

1. Engage content owners early and maintain constant communication. Do not depend on a single contact and establish relationships throughout the organization.

Stage 3: Ongoing Budget

Challenge: -

1. Annual projections are done very early on. Therefore, they are not entirely accurate, which pose some challenges when we try to deviate from them later on.

Advice: -

1. End the project!

Stage 4: Management of External Resources

Challenge: -

1, Teams work in silos, therefore the programs do not turn out the way they were designed / intended to be.

Advice: -

1. Bring IT in early

2. Unambiguous service level agreements

3. Backup external resources

Stage 5: ROI

Challenge: -

1. Difficult to collect ROI in public service.

Advice: -

1. Substitute with indicative-type questions (e.g. L3 evaluation) or focus on return on expectations instead.

2. Adapt to the business world

Sueann

Raising the Bar: The Modern Approach to Leadership Development

Ms Joan Busch, Director of Leadership Development in United Health Group shared her organisation's leadership development programme, with a special focus on the organisation's Emerging Leaders Programme for new managers and high potential staff.

Being such a vast area of development, United Health Group took the approach of "chunking" key content and messages into easy to pull information to facilitate the development of leadership competencies.  The organisation estimated that only 10% of leadership development can be acquired through formal education, 20% through exposure to "others", and the final 70% acquired through experience.  The organisation sought to weave the 70% and 20% into a semi-formal training programme - the Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP).

The Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP) is a 100% virtual programme.  However, because intact cohorts of new managers and high potential staff are enrolled in the programme, a strong learning and support community is developed at every level.  As additional support to staff, alumni of more senior-level development programmes serve as coach to ELP participants.  Other developmental aids include a comprehensive manager's handbook, as well as a community building programme.  For the community building effort to be effective, Joan suggested that organisations allow participants to take ownership of the programme, rather than having it controlled by HR.  Participants who view the community building effort as a central initiative are less likely to be fully committed to the programme.

To integrate learning, Joan shared that technology has an integral role in leadership development.  At the same time, she reminded the audience that leadership development must not focus only on senior management.  Front line and middle managers also need a lot of development, if not more.  This is because this group form the bulk of organisational leaders and touch the majority of the organisational work force.  Unfortunately, this same group also has the weakest leadership skill sets.

Ms Kim Lamoureux, Vice President of Research at Bersin & Associates was also on hand to share the outcome of Bersin & Associates' research findings on the Maturity Model of leadership development.  In essence, Bersin & Associates categorised 4 levels of organisational maturity in terms of leadership development.

Level 1 - Inconsistent Leadership Training (est. 25% of sample)
Content for training is available, but there are no additional development processes to benefit employees.

Level 2 - Structured Leadership Training (est. 38% of sample)
Training curriculum is well-defined and focused on developing core competencies within individuals.

Level 3 - Focused Leadership Development (est. 28% of sample)
Future-oriented and focus on developing culture and organisations.

Level 4 - Strategic Leadership Development (est. 10% of sample)
Programmes are championed by executive management and integrated with talent management.

Sueann

Make Training Stick: Easy and Effective Ways to Increase Training Transfer

22 May 2011, Sunday

Speaker: Barbara Carnes

Training Transfer Process

Before	During	After
Learner characteristics: Cognitive abilities Self-efficacy Pre-training motivation Absence of negative emotional state Openness to experience Extroverted Perceived usefulness Career planning Commitment  to the organization Organizational Environment & Support – BEFORE Strategic link Supervisory support Accountability Peer support	Training Design Learning goals Content relevance Practice & feedback Behaviour modeling Error-based examples Self-management strategies (Learning take place here)	Organizational Environment & Support – AFTER Opportunity to perform Strategic link Transfer climate Supervisory support Accountability Peer support Job performance & Skill maintenance

The speaker started by sharing the training transfer process.  According to her, for learning to take place, more emphasis needs to be placed at the BEFORE process and for learning to impact job performance, the AFTER process plays a critical role.  For learning to take place, both the participant and the organization that sponsors the participant to the training needs to play their part well.  For example, if the supervisor does not support the training, or the participant does not believe that the training will have a positive impact in his work, learning usually does not take place.  Similarly, if there was no opportunity to practice what was learned during training, then the training session could go to waste. 

At the workshop, many participants agreed that currently, most of the emphasis was placed at the DURING process whereby if learning did not happen, the blame usually goes to the trainer.  I am probably guilty of this too.  Most of the time, we evaluate a training session based on the trainer, the content and the way the programme was delivered.  We hardly look at the BEFORE and AFTER process closely.   Learning this new information, I think I will try and be more proactive in the future, to make sure I consider some of the factors in the BEFORE and AFTER process.  For example, I should consider the learner characteristics when I do the training roadmap and try and find opportunities for my staff to practice what they learnt after attending training.

Next, the speaker provides a long list of techniques that make training stick.  I chose the following because these make sense, are new and/or interesting J:

1.      Sticky Objectives – Objectives should be linked with performance, criteria for the job.

2.      Target Objectives – Find out what participants want to learn.

3.      Training Buddies – Having a training buddy provides a support system that can help make learning a smoother and faster process.

4.      Use Podcast – Use podcasts to deliver pre-training materials, to reinforce learning and follow-ups after training

5.      Use Board Games – People tend to learn better at play!

6.      Pre-training and post-training briefing by Boss – The supervisor should take time to explain the reasons for the training, and find out from the participant if he or she benefitted from the training.  By showing interest, the participant will be more motivated to learn.

7.      Success stories and Lessons learned – Stories tend to stick in the mind; the more the better.

8.      Training Transfer Certificate – To be given when the participant demonstrates that learning has been incorporated into the job.

Wai Cheng

      

Brilliance by Design: Creating Learning Experiences to Inspire and Engage

23 May 2011, Monday

Speaker: Victoria Halsey

I like this session because the speaker was engaging and by using models, I find it easier to remember the principles shared.

Lesson 1

Always have a goal in the mind.  The more specific, the better.  Both the trainer and the participants need to know what outcomes are expected at the end of the learning.  At the end of the day, the people need to know what they will be able to do when they walk out of the classroom.

I find this important.  At EA desk, we deliver similar programmes over and over again so much so I wouldn’t be surprised if at times, the programme manager forgets the goal of the lecture in the first place.  

The 70/30 Principles

According to the speaker,

Learners spent 70% talking and only 30% listening.  Hence, engaging the learners is important because their attention is always somewhere else!

Learners spent 70% of their time practicing and only 30% being taught.  Learners learn best by doing.  Hence, it is important to provide exercises for the participants to try.

Teachers spent 70% on how they will teach and only 30% on what they will teach.  How the teacher engage the students will make a difference on the learning outcome.

Lesson 2

The ENGAGE Model

E	Energize Learners – Fire them up, Get them primed for Learning!
N	Navigate Content – Use mind maps, stories, case studies to help make content interesting.
G	Generate Meaning – What did you learn?  What does it mean to you?
A	Apply to Real World – Transfer learning to actions.  How can you adapt what you learn to what you do?
G	Gauge and Celebrate – Celebrate every success small or big!
E	Extend Learning to Action – Set up a support group, form buddies, create a newsletter to keep the learning ongoing.

One of the things I noticed at the ASTD workshops is that the participants from the Western countries are highly enthusiastic and spontaneous.  They are always willing to participate in the games, be a volunteer, ask questions and join in a discussion with complete strangers without raising an eyebrow.  Hence, I noted it was so much easier for the speakers to engage the audience.  The ENGAGE model seems to work beautifully there.

Here in Singapore, I find speakers always having difficulties getting volunteers and most participants are shy to celebrate small successes.  I wonder how much we can adapt from the ENGAGE model to our Singapore audience or even to our foreign participants. 

I will find out when I go to Cambodia later this year ….. J

Wai Cheng