10 Ways to Celebrate Learning @ Work

September is Learning @ Work Month here in Canada.

Learning @ Work Month offers an opportunity to reinforce your commitment to employee development by promoting learning activities that can range from non-work related and interest-led activities through award ceremonies to business focused sessions.

 I have experienced some great sessions as part of Learning @ Work, however one of the biggest challenges organizations can face is thinking of ideas that are affordable and relatively easy to organize. With this in mind I’ve listed below some great ideas that I’ve used myself and won’t break the bank. Feel free to adapt these ideas to your own organization.

1. Educate another department about your work area
2. Run a short session on a particular topic e.g. how to cope with disruptive customers
3. Ask the CEO to talk about their experiences as a leader
4. Shadow a colleague from a different department

1. Create a short competition to engage staff, e.g. a quiz
2. Learn a new skill, either work or non-work related e.g watercolour painting
3. Run a teambuilding exercise
4. Hold a lunch event to celebrate a notable success in your organization
5. Show a selected TED talk and have a discussion about the talk
6. Invite an external speaker to give a talk to your team

 Whatever you choose to do, get together with your work colleagues and help each other out, this way it will also be more fun and social!

If you are looking for a speaker for your Learning @ Work event, check out my Fall Lunch & Learn Leadership series 

WOMEN WORK FOR FREE 1H 40M A DAY

The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) in the UK have just released the details from their analysis of the 2015 National Management Salary Survey of 72,000 UK managers reveals that women working in equivalent full-time roles earn 22% less than men, meaning that they’re unpaid for 1h 40m a day – a total of 57 working days every year.

The CIPD have produced the following infographic - below which explains their findings.

New regulations coming into force in 2016 will require large organizations to report how they pay men and women. 

How does your company compare here in Alberta? Is gender equality in terms a reality or not? I'd love to hear your views.

Check out our range of Leadership Training programs at Bluegem Learning - Leadership Programs

Is the conflict you need to resolve hot or cold?

Mark Gerzon drew on 20 years of experience of conflict management in his article in Harvard Business Review back in June 2014, in which he explored the concept that before you can start to resolve a conflict you need to first establish whether to conflict is Hot or Cold.

Mark defines "Hot" as "when one or more parties are highly emotional and doing one or more of the following: speaking loudly or shouting; being physically aggressive, wild or threatening; using language that is incendiary; appearing out of control and potentially explosive."

"Cold" he defines as "when one or more parties seem to be suppressing emotions, or actually appear “unemotional,” and are doing one or more of the following: muttering under their breath or pursing their lips; being physically withdrawn or controlled; turning away or otherwise deflecting contact; remaining silent or speaking in a tone that is passively aggressive; appearing shut down or somehow frozen."

He goes on to explore specific strategies for dealing effectively with each possibility. To read the full article visit:

https://hbr.org/2014/06/to-resolve-a-conflict-first-decide-is-it-hot-or-cold&cm_sp=Article-_-Links-_-Top%20of%20Page%20Recirculation

Stop! You're doing it all wrong!

In the second of his articles playwright, theatre producer and corporate coach, Ken Cameron describes the process of "Forum Theatre" that we utilize on the workshop "Managing the Unmanageable", a revolutionary approach to skills development.

"You wouldn’t think that a style of theatre developed by a Brazilian political activist would turn out to be a useful tool for business leaders around the world. But it is.

Managers who know that they are facing a difficult conversation with a challenging or unmanageable team member, have learned the value of role-playing. But Forum Theatre allows you to take role-playing to an extra level.

In Forum Theatre a scenario – in this case a difficult workplace conversation – is shown twice. During the replay, any member of the workshop is allowed to shout 'Stop!', step forward and take the place of the participant who is struggling. They then have to show how they would change the situation to enable a different outcome.

In our workshop we go one further, and use professional actors to make the role-play as close to the real situation as possible without having the real people in the room with you.

The strategy is the closest you can get to having the real conversation." 

Bluegem Learning will be partnering with Ken Cameron from Corporate CultureSHIFT in hosting "Managing the Unmanageable" - an introduction to the art of having difficult workplace conversations, on February 26, 2015 at the Kahanoff Centre in Downtown Calgary. 

This will be a highly interactive experience for managers & supervisors using Forum Theatre as an experience to build capability and confidence. For further details checkout 

www.managingtheunmanageable.ca

Does Your Team (Metaphorically) Run Away When You Start Speaking?

Stop Letting Fear & Discomfort Prevent You From Having Those "Difficult Conversations" at Work.

I'm delighted to announce that Bluegem Learning will be partnering with Ken Cameron from Corporate CultureSHIFT in hosting "Managing the Unmanageable" - an introduction to the art of having difficult workplace conversations, on February 26, 2015 at the Kahanoff Centre in Downtown Calgary. 

This will be a highly interactive experience for managers & supervisors using Forum Theatre as an experience to build capability and confidence. For further details checkout www.managingtheunmanageable.ca

Ken is a highly talented and successful playwright and theatre director, who uses his twenty years of creative and corporate experience to coach business leaders on how to access their creativity and increase their profitability.

In the first of a series of articles relating to this workshop Ken talks about having "The Conversation".

"People naturally fear change.

And as mammals whose brains were forged on the savanna in the company of large speedy predators, we are programmed to run away from what we fear.

The way the brain works is worth acknowledging when its time to have “That Conversation” with your Team.

There are many things we are programmed to fear.  We fear things that threaten our existing status. We fear ideas that demands new skills which leaves us feeling uncertain. Change might imply a new corporate structure, which has an impact our ability to make autonomous decisions. It may mean that new employees arrive while familiar faces depart, affecting our relatedness. And change is almost always perceived as being unfair to some and privileging others.

You can see that with so many triggers so close at hand, it’s easy to elicit a flight response and cause your employee to shut down just s your trying to being “That Conversation” about their performance.

Wouldn’t it be better to assuage those triggers: and make them work for you?

I’m pleased to be participating in a workshop with Russell Stratton of Bluegem Learning called “Managing the Unmanagebale” that gives leaders the tools to have “That Conversation” properly."