There are many ways to get ahead in business, from employing effective leadership skills to honing PowerPoint presentation methods. According to some of the greatest minds in business, what everyone needs to be more effective in their chosen field is management training. Here are some of the hottest tips to ensure that you get the most out of a management training course.

Go with an open mind. Half the problem when trying to improve efficiency in working practices in=s being stuck in a rut. Habits are hard to break, and for many people, they believe their current working practices are honed to perfection. They do say that you can’t each an old dog new tricks, but it has been proven that a manager that can open his or her mind to new concepts and adapt skills can end up being an effective leader within a company.

Speak your mind. As much as it is essential to be open to new ideas, don’t be afraid to put your point of view across during management training. If you have has an experience that you feel is relevant to the topic, and you think that either others can learn from it, or the topic could be modified, let the course leader know. Many good mangers take action based on past experience, so if you have something to offer that may help someone else, have the courage to speak up.

Don’t be scared of criticism. Adding to ideas posed during management training leaves room for discussion. If you feel that your point of view is being criticised, look at it in a different light. Viewing feedback objectively will allow you to look at the points mentioned constructively, which in turn will help you develop your ideas and become a better manager as a result.

Take the course seriously. All aspects of a management training course are designed to enhance your perception, cooperation and communication skills to become a more effective manager. What you learn on the course isn’t just about what is being taught; it is about developing the correct attitude. Managers are leaders and they need to demonstrate to others the correct way to behave.

At the same time and effective manger needs to be able to understand the needs of the individual as well as the company. Through using the skills learned in management training a person can adapt their previous way of dealing with situations and deliver a working atmosphere that benefits all.

Dom Donaldson is a training expert.
Find out more about Management Training and other courses available to help develop business potential at Righttrack.

[tags]Management Training, leadership training, personal development, business training[/tags]

I had a teacher when I was in high school who maintained that we had really learned something only when we could transfer that learning to other parts of the school curriculum and to other situations beyond the formal school setting.

As a training professional, I feel there is some real merit in her assertion. In fact, I often evaluate the success of a training I’m conducting based on how much transfer happens. Any mentoring, coaching, or training we provide we need to listen very carefully to observe participants making or trying to make applications of what we are teaching. This will help us more accurately access their grasp of the concepts or information we have been sharing.

Helping participants transfer what they are learning to life beyond the training to life beyond the training room involves several tasks:

1. Making connections among the concepts and ideas within a give training situation.

Example: If you’re doing a training on the accounting process, you’d help participants see how the definition of terms which you taught in an earlier part of the training now fits in with learning how to do double entry bookkeeping.

2. Making connections between one training and its information and other training they have that has been part of their professional development in their business

Example: Continuing with our hypothetical accounting training example, here you might help them see how the accounting process is related to the marketing and sales training they received a couple of weeks ago.

3. Connecting current learning with other classes, workshops, and seminars of which they have been a part beyond the their specific business.

Example: Here you would help participants understand how the accounting process you’re teaching is the same process they learned about in a class on managing their finances and their bank account.

4. Making connections with their personal life, family, and various community involvements.

Example: Help participants understand how they can use what you’ve been teaching to enhance the financial operations of a community project in which they’re involved or to help their kids learn about money.

In some instances, the transfer of what you’ve been teaching in a mentoring, coaching, or training session is obvious because it is close to the actual situation in which the information is used, for example, teaching people involved in marketing the difference between promoting the features and benefits of a product. The transfer here is fairly simple because the learning “hugs’ the real situation in which they work on a daily basis. The transfer is clear.

In other instances, however, what you are teaching may seem far removed or remote to the participants’ work situation and their life beyond the workplace, for example, teaching people about creativity, brain enhancement techniques, or even training them in using multiple intelligences.

Many participants would wonder how learning about these very interesting topics is useful in their daily lives. In these cases the transfer is more complex. The transfer here is remote or obscure. Participants need explicit instruction in making connections to their jobs and to their lives beyond the workplace. In these situations you need to help them make relevant transfer by employing a variety of “bridging strategies”.

The model which follows (based on the research of Dr. Robin Fogarty presented in her book Teaching for Thinking, Teaching for Transfer) provides you with a set of “getting started” bridging strategies for five different levels of transfer. Your goal as a mentor, coach, or trainer should be to help people increase their transfer of learning by just one level.

THE SLEEPER: Misses the point of what is being presented. Sees no connections or possible uses of the information.

Transfer Strategies:

* Make connections for them by telling them ways the information can help.
* Help them see ways they can use the information beyond the training.
* Have them discuss the importance of what is being taught with peers.

THE DUPLICATOR: Wants to tell others about what they learned in exactly the same way that it was originally presented.

Transfer Strategies:

* Question their understanding of the training and have them explain it in their own words
* Role-play sharing the information with people who were not in the training.

THE REPLICATOR: Understands how to apply what was taught as long as the context is the same as the original learning.

Transfer Strategies:

* Help them discover appropriate applications beyond the content and context of the initial learning.
* Work to help them make creative or “tangential” applications of something learned in a training session or presentation.

THE STRATEGIST: Uses information learned in a training session in a variety of different settings and situations.

Transfer Strategies:

* Expand their lists of new application ideas.
* Help them discover more connections.
* Help them evaluate appropriate applications of the information learned.

THE CREATOR: Uses information as a springboard to creative & original thinking; sees unusual connections.

Transfer Strategies:

* Encourage them to find unusual connections between their learning and other things.
* Encourage them to look for subtle patterns in their thinking.
* Ask them to experiment with communicating their learning to other people.

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]transfer of learning,stages of learning transfer,mentor,coach,trainer[/tags]

Have you ever felt that you were a really good learner but not necessarily in the way learning took place when you were in school? Did school sometimes make you feel stupid? Many of us feel this way, and because of this, many of us also feel that we must not be very smart.

In formal education you basically learned to learn in two or three ways — the famous “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic” that are at the heart of most of the learning we did in school.

Take yourself through a quick inventory of some learning strategies in the table which follows. See what you can learn about your own learning!

When you have something that you really want to learn or something you need to teach to others, what do you do?

Check off everything on the list below which applies. Trust your intuition. Don’t over-analyze this!You may add some of your own ideas at the bottom of the list as well.

___ Talk with other people to get their advice

___ Read books or articles on the topic

___ Listen to informational tapes or CDs

___ Attend a workshop, seminar, or special training session

___ Watch a video, DVD, or go to a movie

___ Search for information on the internet

___ Just figure it out for yourself

___ Make diagrams, pictures, flowcharts, graphs of the information

___ Memorize facts, figures, concepts, or statistics related to the topic

___ Interview an expert or some other knowledgeable person

___ Do library research or purchase books on the topic

___ Spend time alone thinking about it

___ Subscribe to magazines, journals, or periodicals

___ Observe & copy a master

___ Watch educational TV programs

___ Seek out some kind of spiritual guidance or insight

___ Go for walk to mull things over

___ Meditate on it

___ Make up a song, jingle, or rhyme to help remember

___ Get out into nature

___ Find a coach or mentor to consult with

How many of the items you checked did you get to use when you were in school? In order to learn smarter, we’ve got to find ways to tap our true genius for learning.

I want to tell you two stories to illustrate what I’ve been talking about so far. Both are stories about my daughters. Neither of them learned the traditional way. They struggled all through their formal education and exasperated their teachers in the process!

DAUGHTER STORY #1

My eldest is very much a BodySmart learner. When she was in school she was always wiggling in her seat. Her teachers frequently had to tell her to sit down because she would be at someone else’s desk wondering what they were doing.

At home, when she was doing her homework, she used the “wandering nomad” approach to learning — she would be all over the house, first lying on the floor with feet propped up on a coffee table, then a few minutes later, going to the kitchen for a snack with a book in hand, reading. Next she’d be sitting on the back of a sofa. I would often say to her, “Esther, will you please get started with your homework!”

She would say to me, “Dad, I am doing it. I’m almost finished!” Her teachers often thought she was trying to disrupt the class, but at home she would always say, “If I’m going to learn this, I’ve got to be moving around.” And she was right. If I’d made her study my way she would never have gotten it. When she did it her way, she learned the required material quickly and easily.

I also discovered that whenever I could incorporate physical movement into the learning itself, using role playing, dance, physical exercise, and gestures, she would learn the required information more quickly, she’d remember it longer, and, more importantly, she’d have a much deeper understanding of what she was studying.

DAUGHTER STORY #2

My younger daughter, Naomi, is very strong in ImageSmart. In school she drove her teachers crazy with her endless doodling during lectures. Every margin of every worksheet or paper was filled with little pictures, images, squiggles, and doodles. She carried a secret supply of colored markers in her purse. When the teacher’s back was turned, out came the markers so she could add color to her drawings.

Many a teacher would say to her, “Naomi, put those markers away and pay attention!” She would put the markers away, but, interestingly enough, as soon as the markers were put away, she was no longer paying attention. There was something about the activity of her doodles, pictures, images, colors, designs, and squiggles that kept her involved in a lesson.

For Naomi to learn something she had to be able to visually represent it in some fashion through drawing, painting, sculpting or creating pictures inside her head.

“MULTI-MODAL” TEACHING AND LEARNING

I am suggesting that if you want to reach everyone, everytime in the mentoring, coaching, and training you provide you’ve got teach whatever you’re teaching “multi-modally”. What is multi-modal teaching and learning? In a nutshell . . .

– The more different ways you learn something, the more you really learn it.

– The more different ways you learn something, the more you will remember it.

– The more different ways you learn something, the more you will genuinely understand and assimilate it.

I want you to see how easy and fun it is to reteach yourself and your participants to learn in this way. You used to know how to do this when you were a kid, so really all I’m suggesting is reawakening how you once learned!

The 8 Kinds of Smart (a.k.a. multiple intelligences), which are already inside of each of us, provides you and your participants with an easy and practical way to learn and teach multi-modally. For real learning to occur it must happen throughout your entire brain-mind-body system!

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]multiple intelligences,multiple learning styles,multiple intelligences in business,multi-modal[/tags]

The findings of contemporary brain-mind research have given us a shocking new picture of our potentials and capacities as human beings. Part of this area of research is the research into human intelligence: Just what it intelligence? How do we learn? What makes us smart?

As professional trainers, mentors, coaches, and consultants it is critical that you make sure your training has made the transition to embody the latest research findings on learning.

At some point in our lives, often in the early years of our schooling, most of us were given what was basically a paper-and-pencil test, where were asked to perform a variety of activities (most of which we would rarely encounter again the rest of our lives!).

Based on how we performed those activities we were assigned a number which was supposedly an indicator or our intellectual capabilities and learning potential as a human being, from that point on.

In school, children were tracked based on those numbers. In the workplace often one’s job and/or possibility of advancement was based on scores on these so-called “intelligence” or “ability” or “aptitude” tests.

When people “bought their score”, so to speak, the score became a “self-fulling prophesy” limiting their vision of what was possible for themselves.

Of course you know exactly what I’m talking about here. It’s the famous “IQ” or “Intelligence Quotient”.

Well, the findings of those who have been investigating human intelligence and human learning have called into question almost everything we used to think intelligence was. In fact what has been revealed are two very different paradigms of intelligence and learning.

Below is a comparison of the two paradigms. I’m calling them the “IQ (Intelligence Quotient) Paradigm” and the “MI (Multiple Intelligences) Paradigm”:

* The IQ Paradigm: Intelligence is fixed and static at birth
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence changes, grows, and expands throughout our entire life.

* The IQ Paradigm: One’s intelligence and learning potential can be measured on paper-and-pencil tests.
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence and learning can only be measured accurately by its performance in life.

* The IQ Paradigm: Intelligence is genetically determined.
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence is nurtured and shaped by a wide range of experiences.

* The IQ Paradigm: Intelligence = high ability in language, math, and some spatial tasks.
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence = the range of our innate capacities for knowing, learning, acquiring, and processing information.

* The IQ Paradigm: Your IQ score defines your intellectual and learning capabilities in life.
* The MI Paradigm: We are a blend of eight intelligences (or learning modalities) with some more developed than others; they all can grow.

* The IQ Paradigm: Intelligence and learning is primarily a mental function.
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence and learning occurs throughout our brain-mind-body and beyond in our social environment.

* The IQ Paradigm: Cultural differences and environment have little effect on one’s intelligence and learning.
* The MI Paradigm: Different cultures emphasize the importance of certain intelligences over others.

* The IQ Paradigm: You’re stuck with the intelligence given you by nature.
* The MI Paradigm: Intelligence capacities are developmental and move from the level of novice to mastery.

* The IQ Paradigm: The key is to find out how smart people are.
* The MI Paradigm: The key is to find out HOW people are smart.

* The IQ Paradigm: Standardized intelligence assessment instruments reveal one’s intelligence and learning capacity.
* The MI Paradigm: There is no such thing as a standardized person — we are all unique; standardized tests are invalid.

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]learning, intelligence,learning styles,multiple intelligence,paradigms[/tags]

How often do you prepare and prepare and prepare and make what you felt was a brilliant presentation, only to have the participants leave grumbling about what a waste of time it was?

How often do you knock yourself out to make a presentation interesting but as you look out at the participants you can tell their minds are off somewhere else?

How often have you really given your all to communicate your information or content and you realize that participants just aren’t “getting it”?

Whether you are talking about traditional business training and development or “field training”, these issues present themselves.

Of course the traditional training and development situation is often in a classroom, a conference call, a webinar, or an online course in which one is participating.

The field training situation is what we often call “on-the-job” training or training in a “real world” setting. Field training tends to me more hands-on.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT REVISITED

Let take a brief look at the whole area of training and development (T&D). They are really two sides of a single coin:

* Training can be defined as preparing someone’s skills to perform specific tasks.

* Development is concerned with empowering people who have the readiness to deal not only with present needs but also those of the unknown future. Stephen Covey calls this “sharpening the saw” to be ready for whatever comes.

Training and development are natural processes. In many ways, the evolutionary process and T&D are the same. Evolution is a process by which an organism changes its behavior or form in order to better compete with other organisms or to adapt to a changing environment.

Evolution is the unfolding of potential. Nothing can unfold if it has no potential. Therefore, in a metaphorical sense, evolution can be described as a process of remembering potentials which have been forgotten or which may have not been needed previously.

T&D works the same way. Through the awakening of new knowledge, novel perspectives, untapped capacities, hidden skills, and different ways of knowing, potentials which have been latent prior to this awakening process are now activated.

Once this has occurred, one’s perception of everything is different because seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling–in short living itself– is happening on many more levels than before this awakening.

Obviously what I have just described is the ideal T&D experience. How often does this really happen in training sessions you conduct, meetings you lead, or presentations you give?

The good news I bring you in this article is that the awakening I described earlier can happen one hundred percent of the time IF the training session, meeting, or presentation is structured properly to take into account all the we know about how the human brain learns and processes information.

A “MULTI-MODAL” APPROACH TO TRAINING

What does multi-modal learning mean? In a nutshell it means learning something in wide variety of ways. The scientific research behind multi-modal learning has documented that:

* The more different ways a person learns something, the more they will really learn it.

* The more different ways they learn something, the more they will remember it.

* The more different ways they learn something, the more they will genuinely understand and assimilate it

In most of your formal education you basically learned required information in two or three ways at best — the traditional “reading, writing, ‘rithmetic” which were are at the heart of most of the learning we did in school.

However, not everyone learns and processes information best in the traditional ways. Most people need to learn and process information in several different ways for the information to really stick.

In multi-modal approaches to teaching and learning people discover how to learn anything more quickly. They discover how to remember forever what they’ve learned. And they learn how to apply the information they get to their personal and professional lives.

When you’re involved in communicating with others, you’ll be surprised at how much better they’ll understand what you’re teaching when you structure your training session to access a wider range of their learning and knowing capacities. The key to doing this is to structure your training around the eight multiple intelligences.

Let me introduce you to a tool that will forever change any training you’ll ever do, whether it’s a formal training workshop, the more informal training which occurs daily on-the-job, leading meetings or discussions, making a presentation, or any time you’re involved in situations where you’re needing to communicate with others.

It’s a revolutionary training tool called the “Multiple Intelligence SmartStrategies”. The “SmartStrategies” provide all of the strategies, techniques, methods, and tools you will ever need to put together dynamite training sessions, meetings, or presentations in which people will learn the material you’re teaching better than you ever thought possible, and they’ll have fun in the process!

Multiple Intelligences (a.k.a. The 8 Kinds of Smart) is simply a model for understanding the different ways people learn, understand, and process information.

Briefly The 8 Kinds of Smart are:

* ImageSmart — uses the sense of sight and being able to imagine and visualize an object, including making mental images inside our head.

* LogicSmart — uses numbers, logic, scientific reasoning, and calculating to help solve problems and meet challenges.

* WordSmart — occurs through written and spoken words, such as in essays, speeches, books, informal conversation, debates, and jokes.

* BodySmart — uses physical movement and performance (a.k.a. learning by doing) to understand.

* SoundSmart — learns through sounds, rhythms, tones, beats, music produced by other people or present in the environment.

* NatureSmart — the knowing that occurs in encounters with animals, plants, physical features, and weather conditions of the natural world.

* PeopleSmart — uses person-to-person relating, communication, teamwork, and collaboration with others.

* SelfSmart — the knowing which comes from introspection, self-reflection, and raising questions about life’s meaning and purpose.

Here’s is a a sampling of three teaching and learning strategies for each intelligence which you can incorporate into your teaching.

ImageSmart Strategies

* Create diagrams or pictures of the information.
* Visualize how to use the learning in your life.
* Mind map the information.

LogicSmart Strategies

* Make graphs of related facts and figures.
* Pass out an outline of the key points and subpoints.
* Use different thinking patterns to analyze the information.

BodySmart Strategies

* Role play or act out concepts being taught.
* Turn the information into a physical game.
* Watch an expert and copy what they do until you master the skill.

NatureSmart Strategies

* Find equivalents for your information in the natural world.
* Examine environmental issues that connect to the topic.
* Incorporate natural objects into your presentation.

SoundSmart Strategies

* Make up a song about the information.
* Think of background sounds you associate with what you’re teaching or learning.
* Use different ways of speaking to explain the information (loud, soft, fast, slow).

WordSmart Strategies

* Turn the information into a limerick or a poem.
* Write it up as a front-page newspaper story.
* Make up riddles, jokes, or puns based on the information you’re teaching.

PeopleSmart Strategies

* Interview experts in the area you’re studying.
* Explain what you’re learning to a group of friends.
* Learn with others, with each person learning a part then teaching it.

SelfSmart Strategies

* List personal implications of the knowledge for you.
* List 10 ways to use what you’re learning right now.
* Think about the spiritual or universal implications of what you’re learning.

What so often happens in learning is that people learn something only in the space between their ears and above the neck. How long does it usually last?

In my experience, sometimes as soon as thirty minutes after the training session, people have forgotten most of the information.

However, when you employ multi-modal teaching and learning strategies, the learning takes place throughout the entire brain-mind-body system and beyond, in the social environment as well.

If you want to reach everyone, everytime, and know that people will leave your training having genuinely understood your information, you’ve got to present it in a variety of ways to appeal to the different intelligences.

And I promise you, The 8 Kinds of Smart are already present in any group you train or to whom you make a presentation!

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]training and development,T&D,multiple intelligences,multi-modal training[/tags]

I am passionate about training, both getting as much training for myself as possible, and making sure that people on my business team receive the absolute best training possible.

The training I pursue for myself is a matter of continual personal growth and development. I can always get better. There’s alway more to learn that can help me be more effective as a human being, both in my personal and professional life.

The training I provide and pursue for my team is to help them be all they can be and develop their full potential. It’s also a matter of retention. I know that if my team is growing personally, they’re going to become stronger and more successful in their business, and thus will stay, even when the going gets tough.

Following is how I approach training my team and how I mentor and coach other home business entrepreneurs who are interested learning from me and my experience.

First, it’s important to understand that we all process information in a wide variety of ways not just one.

* Some people are more visual in how they learn.
* Some need to discuss things with other people.
* Some need a very logical presenation of the material to be learned.
* Some need lots of written material to read.
* Some love lectures and learning via the spoken word
* Others just need time to “go inside” and think about it, or meditate on it.
* Others need some kind of physical activity — acting something out, or something that gets them up out of their chair.
* For some, music helps them learn — put what you’re teaching into a song and they’ll get it instantly (remember how you learned the alphabet years ago)?

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MENTORING, COACHING, & TRAINING

If we’re concerned to really reach everyone with the training, consulting, mentoring, and coaching we are providing, we need to understand their personal type, but it’s got to be “multi-modal”. Research has shown that the more different ways we learn something, the more we really learn it and understand it!

This is based on the Harvard reseach conducted by Dr. Howard Gardner in the mid-1980s. It’s called “Multipe Intelligences” or, as I’ve called it in books I’ve written, the The 8 Kinds of Smart.

You see, we’re all VERY intelligent but not in the same ways. When we were in school, there we two main ways of being smart that were valued: verbal/linguistic intelligence (a.k.a. Word Smart) and logical/mathematical intelligence (a.k.a. Number Smart). If you were strong in these areas you likely did very well in school.

However, not everyone learns best via these two favored intelligences. Please reread the bullet points above to get a feel for other ways we are smart. Gardner’s research documented that there are at least eight intelligences– eight ways we learn, understand, process information, yes at least 8 Kinds of Smart!

SO WHAT ARE THE 8 KINDS OF SMART?

1. ImageSmart (visual-spatial intelligence) — uses the sense of sight and being able to imagine and visualize an object, including making mental images inside our head.

2. LogicSmart (logical-mathematical intelligence) — uses numbers, logic, scientific reasoning, and calculating to help solve problems and meet challenges.

3. WordSmart (verbal-linguistic intelligence) — occurs through written and spoken words, such as in essays, speeches, books, informal conversation, debates, and jokes.

4. BodySmart (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) — uses physical movement and performance (a.k.a. learning by doing) to understand.

5. SoundSmart (musical-rhythmic intelligence) — learns through sounds, rhythms, tones, beats, music produced by other people or present in the environment.

6. NatureSmart (naturalist intelligence) — the knowing that occurs in encounters with animals, plants, physical features, and weather conditions of the natural world.

7. PeopleSmart (interpersonal intelligence) — uses person-to-person relating, communication, teamwork, and collaboration with others.

8. SelfSmart (intrapersonal intelligence) — the knowing which comes from introspection, self-reflection, and raising questions about life’s meaning and purpose.

So here’s the short and skinny of it. You should work to set up a teaching-learning environment that incorporates the The 8 Kinds of Smart — not just lectures, conference calls, and stuff to read.

At a minimum, go for “webinars” where at least you can get something visual happening during the training. Give people a chance to interact with other people, to ask questions, and hear stories. Give them time to think on their own, to reflect on the training and find what’s important to them.

You probably won’t find this approach in the the training you get from your company but I can show you how to “multi-modalize” it so it’s more in sync with different way your team or business partners learn best. And, I promise you you’ve got all eight intelligences on your team and in the participants you’re training in one form or another.

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]learning styles,multiple intelligences,training,consulting,mentoring,coaching[/tags]

Following are some of the misconceptions which have crept into our profession as professional trainers and presenters. If you believe the myths they are guaranteed to seriously inhibit the learning you want in any mentoring, coaching, or training you provide.

Following each “Myth” I’ve presented the “Reality” of what we know today about the adult learner and how to maximize their learning potential.

As you read this article I suggest you keep a checklist of which of these you have consciously or unconsciously bought.

MYTH #1: If the trainer is well-prepared and thorough, participants will understand the material.

REALITY: Well prepared material presented in only one way will reach less than ten percent of your participants. While there is no substitute for knowing your material inside out, HOW it is presented is as important. Research shows that material presented in a wide variety of ways reaches everyone.

MYTH #2: The more times the information is repeated the more participants will remember it.

REALITY: There is no direct correlation between frequently repeated information and memory. The ways we remember are highly individualized and specific to our over-all intelligence profile. It is probably more accurate to say the more different ways we learn information, the better we’ll remember.
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MYTH #3: The trainer is the expert.

REALITY: Participants are the experts where the rubber hits the road! While it is true that the trainer has hopefully mastered the material to be covered in a training session, the real expertise lies in facilitating participants making meaningful connections with the material and seeing how to apply it.

MYTH #4: If participants really pay attention they’ll get it.

REALITY: Participants’ active involvement with the training material is how they’ll really get it. The direct instruction approach to training (a.k.a. “stand and deliver”) is effective with the adult learner for less than fifteen minutes. Participants must have an opportunity to make the material their own.

MYTH #5: Human beings basically all learn the same way.

REALITY: Each human being has at least eight different ways they learn, acquire knowledge, process information, and understand. In a nutshell, they possess at least eight intelligences! In each person certain of these “intelligences” are more highly developed than others. The key to an effective training is presenting the material in ways which take into account these differences.

MYTH #6: A trainer’s main job is to cover the material.

REALITY: A trainer’s main job is uncover the material! In Webster’s dictionary the meaning of the verb “to cover” is “to hide from view”. The trainer’s job is facilitate the learning process in participants, that is to get them excited and involved with the material. Racing through a specified amount of material wastes time and money because little real learning will occur.

MYTH #7: Adult participants can be expected to understand the content being presented in a training session.

REALITY: Just because a great job of presenting was done does not mean understanding happened. Participants’ capacity for grasping information in any training is directly related to how it is presented. To reach everyone, presentations must minimally take into account participants’ prior knowledge and life experience, their intelligence profiles, their ages, gender, and their educational, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

MYTH #8: Some groups are smarter than others.

REALITY: Some groups learn differently than others. The key to every group is to find out what will help them learn. It is then the responsibility of the trainer to do whatever it takes to reach them. It’s not a matter of how smart a group is. The question is rather HOW are they smart.

MYTH #9: When presenting new information in a training, the direct instruction method (a.k.a. lecturing) works best.

REALITY: Research has shown that the adult brain can productively handle only about 15 minutes of direct instruction! The key to teaching new material is to first assess participants’ prior knowledge and then to build on what they already know or think they know about the content. Even when learning brand new information, participants’ interaction and involvement with the information is more effective than lecturing at them.

MYTH #10: If you really want to learn you’ll learn.

REALITY: If you really want to learn, maybe you’ll learn, depending on the learning situation. A learning environment in which participants do not feel respected, where their input is not valued, where they are “talked down to”, and they are expected to simply “sit and git” the information will destroy the desire to learn for even highly motivated learners.

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides a wide range of training resources and services for home business entrepreneurs, coaches, and trainers. Find out how to turbo-charge any training, mentoring, or coaching you provide @ Small Business Mentor Training.

[tags]training,mentor,coach,training myths[/tags]

There is an abundance of computer software applications used in homes and offices all over the world today. There are the word processing applications, the database applications, the presentation applications, and there are the spreadsheet applications - these are just a few among the many that make our jobs, and lives, more streamlined and manageable.

Opinions are a dime a dozen, but MS Excel is probably the most important and beneficial of all spreadsheet applications in the workplace. In fact, Excel dominates the spreadsheet product industry with an estimated market share of 90%.

It is for this reason that currently-employed and prospective workers are required to learn and stay abreast of Excel developments in order to be an asset in the work environment. Not only is Excel used for everyday functional tasks, such as basic spreadsheets and databases, but it is becoming increasingly utilised by employers for decision support too.

Perhaps you have been using Excel for some time now and you feel comfortable admitting you know the ins and outs of writing basic formulas, and you know how to copy those formulas from one cell to another. But, what often occurs is that your perfect formula, once copied to destination cells, produces incorrect results. The reason for this occurring is the difference between ‘relative’ cell references and ‘absolute’ cell references.

Relative cell references
When you use a relative cell reference in a formula, you are telling Excel that you are referring to a cell by its position relative to the cell in which the formula is written. This is Excel’s default, but it can lead to an incorrect result for the answer you are looking for as, if it is moved it will change in relation to the new location of the formula. A relative cell reference looks like this: D2.

Absolute cell references
An absolute cell reference tells Excel not to think of a cell reference relative to the cell in which the formula is written. Instead, it tells Excel to think of it as a cell address. No matter where the formula is copied, the cell reference remains the same. Absolute cell references are made with the dollar sign to hold a column or row reference constant. The predominant reason for using an absolute reference is when you have a handful of formulas that all refer to the same cell and you want them to remain constant. An absolute cell reference looks like this: $D$2.

Mixed cell references
One can also make use of mixed cell references. For example, when you create a table where the values are derived from a multiplication table, as mixed cell references are a combination of relative and absolute. They can be either relative row, absolute column or absolute row, relative column. A mixed cell reference looks like this: D$2 or $D2.

As you are aware, whether your industry sector is private or government, education or accounting, manufacturing or human resources, you are very likely to be required to use Excel, as just about every workplace has a demand for a spreadsheet application that can do so much more than just elementary calculations. An Excel training course will assist you in staying in top form on this software application.

Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on excel training uk, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net

[tags]excel training uk[/tags]

Management can be daunting for those that have not taken on the role before; it is often wise to take your new members within a team on a management development course. As a manager the major problems that can occur are that you do not think about the management issues because you do not know what they are the first time round. When you become a manager for the first time you can learn quickly from your mistakes and the first option is to do what is expected of you. This article will look at how to become a successful manager and create your own management development.

When you are a manager of a team, you gain control over your own work, not all of it, but most of it. You become able to change things and be able to do things differently; you have been given the ability to change things and create an impact on the way your staff works, you are able to shape your own work environment. Within a large company your options are far more limited on how you can change the corporate culture, however instead of fighting the system you can work within it.

Within a smaller company you will have much more space to widen your management development as the custom is probably far less rigid. The impact of your success will be proportionately greater than within a larger company. Once you start working well this will be recognised far quicker and nothing creates faster approval within the work place than success. The idea of starting out alone can be difficult, especially as managers may face resistance to change from fellow colleagues within your team as they will be the ones most affected. However people will come around to change.

Overall for management development one should realise that there are three major roles for a manager to play. The first is the role of the planner, which has to really be one project ahead in order to ensure that work is not repeated or that work problems have been tackled too late. The next role is that of a provider, the manager will have access to information and materials that the whole team need, as a manager will have the ability to influence or acquire things that the other team members couldn’t. The final role is that of the protector, protecting their team against any problems they may encounter at work.

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the training industry.
Find out more about Management Development and how the services available can help with furthering your career with training.

[tags]Management Development, Management Training, Training, Leadership Training[/tags]

Good leadership is vital within a successful business; every level of the business needs leaders. At this current financial climate company’s need to ensure that at every level the management is working, as failing management can be very damaging to the entire company. Here in this article we shall look at attributes that are associated with good leadership skills. Leadership training is a great option for any company wanting to maintain high levels of service, as even the best leaders can benefit from learning how to inspire and lead those around them.

First of all a leader should be able to communicate easily and clearly to those around them, good communication shows others the leader’s vision and causes others to follow it. The leader should communicate passionately as passion is contagious and needs to inspire others. Good leaders should be able to work single-mindedly as well as direct actions to their team toward the goal they are all trying to achieve. A leader should always be doing something to pursue this goal and therefore will motivate others to do the same.

Integrity is an important trait for any leader, as it would be taught within leadership training, a person with integrity is the same on the inside as the outside. An individual like this can be trusted as he or she never looses sight of inner values, even when it may be expeditious to do so. Trust of follows is integral within business so any leader that wishes to gain trust needs to show integrity within situations. Predictable reactions, well-controlled emotions and the ability to not lash out with tantrums and unnecessary outbursts is a sign of integrity. A leader that leads with this attribute will be far more approachable than leaders that do not.

Dedication is also a huge asset to any leader that is interested in leadership training, a leader that is willing to spend time and energy to accomplish a task sets an example to the rest of the team. By setting a great example to others, in that there are no nine to five jobs, just opportunities to achieve.

An open and fair leader is also a successful one, magnanimity is important to giving credit where it is due within a business. A leader that is magnanimous makes sure that credit is given widely throughout the company, yet failure is taken with personal responsibility. These are just some of the traits that are needed to create a successful leadership.

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the training industry.
Find out more about Leadership Training and how the services available can help with different types of skill training for your business.

[tags]Leadership Training, Training, Management Training[/tags]