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April 18, 2012
Download the 2013 Training Top 125 Application

Trainingmagazine’s Training Top 125 Award winners are the organizations with the most successful learning and development programs in the world—and the Top 125 has been the premier learning industry awards program for more than 10 years. See if your organization can join the ranks of illustrious past winners such as Verizon, Farmers Insurance, IBM, and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

For more on the Top 125, view this short overview:

The 2013 Training Top 125 application is available now for download. Please CLICK HERE to download the application today. The deadline for submission is September 24, 2012.

May 21, 2012
Gurus and Go-Tos

Gurus and go-tos have an appropriate place in our personal and professional lives, but we can’t allow ourselves to become limited or trapped by other people’s thinking. Our gurus and go-tos should be those individuals who expand our thinking, open doors for us, and help us realize our full potential.

By Bonnie Hagemann, CEO, Executive Development Associates, and Saundra Stroope, Talent Management & Organizational Development Manager, ATK Aerospace Systems

May 21, 2012
The Real Problem with Execution

A common leadership challenge: executing a strategy that requires a significant change in human behavior. Authors Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling offer an effective solution: deeply implanting The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX).

By Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling

May 18, 2012
A Positive Approach to Modern Living

Modern living is becoming increasingly challenging with a stress-related illness affecting more and more people. The challenges we face are numerous and complex. The requirement to be more flexible and manage change is becoming increasingly important. A positive personal strategy can help each individual to cope better and improve resilience and confidence.

By Liggy Webb, Director, The Learning Architect

Modern living is becoming increasingly challenging with a stress-related illness affecting more and more people. The challenges we face—including finding purpose, defining ourselves, and managing stress—are numerous and complex. The requirement to be more flexible and manage change is becoming increasingly important. A positive personal strategy can help each individual to cope better and improve resilience and confidence.

May 16, 2012
Leading Virtual Teams

Leading virtual teams presents tough challenges, even with all the technological innovations available. The latest tools instantly can connect people across the globe, but dispersed teams still face a huge hurdle to success: building and sustaining effective working relationships. Here are five tips that can help.

By Beth O’Neill, Senior Consultant, Interaction Associates

Does the following scenario sound familiar? Rich is leading a Product Development team with members in Salt Lake City, New York, Zurich, and Hong Kong. To help focus the team and set goals, he convenes an online Web meeting. Most team members are joining via the Web and on the phone—except for Rich and three colleagues, who are in the same room in the New York office.

May 15, 2012
Measuring Learner Success in a Mastery Learning Program

Mastery learning calls for the use of formative assessments, evaluation tools used to diagnose individual learning difficulties. If it is determined a learner is not grasping the necessary concepts to move on, he or she does notmove on. Instead, the learner is provided with feedback and a corrective exercise that does not mimic class instruction.

By Robert Cooperman, Training Academy Program Director, Ohio Office of Budget and Management

May 14, 2012
Culture Change at Paychex

In September 2010, Paychex appointed a new CEO, and its Core Sales team experienced several senior manager changes. As a result, the company implemented a culture-change initiative that brought the Core Sales Leadership team (190 managers) together to focus on three areas: Modeling-the-Way (CEO-defined expectations and values), Crucial Conversations (interpersonal communication), and Performance Management (setting expectations, inspecting, and responding).

By Margery Weinstein

May 14, 2012
Developing Your High-Potential Millennial Employees

Nine best practices and ideas for HR professionals looking to engage, retain, and develop high-potential Millennial employees.

By Brad Karsh, President, JB Training Solutions

Are your Millennials prepared to be your company’s future leaders?

Every day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers reach the age of 65. This is going to keep happening every single day for the next 18 years. This startling statistic has chills running down the spines of HR professionals as they think about the organizational challenge of managing this drastic demographical shift in the workforce. Engaging and retaining the newest crop of workplace talent is a daunting challenge, but it has never been more important.

May 11, 2012
6 Steps to Sustain a Coaching Relationship

It is important for the coach to focus on the coachee’s learning style early in the relationship and find alternate ways to continually engage the learner. To support these principles of effective coaching, an organizing framework will help drive an intentional progression to the coaching relationship. The goal of this framework is to develop and sustain a coaching relationship that enhances personal and organizational value.

By Stephen Monk, Director, PwC Advisory People and Change
Successful organizations recognize the strategic advantage of increasing employee value over time and the subsequent benefits for both the enterprise and individual development. Transferring capability to build competence and commitment is key in helping people be more productive and agile in hopes of sustaining their value over the long term.

May 10, 2012
Getting the Best Results from Your Training Program

How do you make this happen? It starts with examining needs, budget, and employee demographics, followed by creating hype and measuring results.

By Kristen Meletio Kmetz, Regional Trainer, Signature Worldwide

May 10, 2012
Supercompetent Speaking: Dealing With Interruptions and Questions

As a professional speaker, you’ll inevitably face interruptions—from questions and cell phones ringing to heckler remarks—during your presentations. The audience expects you to maintain control of the presentation. So the key is to make your best effort to do so—gently and politely, but firmly.

By Laura Stack, MBA, CSP

As a professional speaker, you’ll inevitably face interruptions during your presentations. They won’t happen every time, but they will happen.

May 9, 2012
Fostering an Ownership Mentality

Discount Tire Company uses a roles-based management system that gives each assistant manager enhanced training opportunities by focusing each, in turn, on specific aspects of store operations. As each assistant rotates through the different management roles, each becomes more expert at his job and is, thus, a more effective manager. Even better, each spoke as if he were the owner of that operation.

By Michael Rosenbaum

It’s difficult to think of clipboards as an innovative training tool, but a visit to a local tire store reminded me that even the most basic tools can deliver strong impact.

In this case, the training system employed a roles-based management (RBM) style, a deceptively simple management training process employed by Discount Tire Company. I encountered RBM while researching the company for my book “Six Tires, No Plan,” a biography of company founder Bruce Halle.

May 8, 2012
How to Maximize Trade Show Exposure

Exhibiting in business-to-business shows requires different skills and approaches. The objective should be qualifying prospects, rather than selling. Here are tips for what to do before, during, and after a trade show to make the experience a worthwhile one for your business.

By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist

The number of companies participating in trade shows increases each year. While sales objectives are most common, trade shows also may be behavior, product, distribution, or marketing oriented. Booth exhibitions are viable and cost-effective sales tools to:

May 7, 2012
Game-Based Learning for the Corporate World

Games can be a strong and innovative medium of imparting training at the corporate level. Game-based learning augments existing learning programs by reinforcing key messages, increases learner adoption and retention, and  works for the multigenerational workforce.

By Julie Brink, Director, viaLearning

For generations, games have been used to teach concepts, skills, and knowledge. Think Yahtzee, Monopoly, and math; Scrabble and spelling; Mastermind, Qwirkle, and strategy; Clue and problem solving…the list goes on and on.

Games are challenging, interesting, and engaging. And with the ever-enhancing technology landscape, games are more immersive than ever. Individual or massive multiplayer online games have grown exponentially in the last few years, and projections only show gaming consumption increasing.

May 4, 2012
Training: The Solution to the Expat Challenge

To succeed internationally, companies often have to rely on expatriate professionals. Unfortunately, expatriates too often are selected for their technical skills and seldom for their ability to adapt to the host country. Even with the right candidate, everyone needs training. But the single more important reason expats fail is not even themselves: It is their families.

By Valérie Berset-Price

To succeed internationally, companies often have to rely on expatriate professionals. Expatriates, or “expats,” embody the corporate culture of the company, representing a bridge between the headquarters in the United States and the foreign subsidiary. Sadly, up to 75 percent of U.S. expat assignments fail, according to “Carry a Chicken in Your Lap or Whatever It Takes to Globalize Your Business,” by William Ayres and Bruce Alan Johnson.

May 2, 2012
Learning to the Power of Two

After 12 lectures, with pairs of students working in rotation, each of the 30 participants has reproduced the learning matter in his own words and at his own pace for six hours compared with 20 minutes in total if the participants had spoken and questioned the lecturer one after another.

By Moritz V. Poser, Initiator, 2lern.de

Students are more than empty buckets that can be filled with new knowledge. Every trainee already has a rich fund of knowledge, both conscious and subconscious, as well as various social skills. The trainer who can access the source of knowledge held by the trainee can tap into an unexpected treasure of knowledge, pride, and responsibility and create an increased level of identity both at a personal and corporate level.

May 1, 2012
Invest in Your Development

One learning and development professional’s journey as a trainer and tips on the importance of investing in your own learning and development.

By Aimee Windmiller-Wood, SVP, Training and Program Development, Fierce, Inc.

I am a lifelong learner, as many of us drawn to the training profession are. When you are responsible for training and developing others, it is vital that you continue to invest in your own learning and development. In my journey as a trainer, I’ve continuously learned and honed many skills that have positively affected both my career and the careers of others.

April 30, 2012
A Leadership Development Program that Thrives

When a SWOT analysis at GAI Consultants concluded that it lacked the leadership development and succession planning necessary to sustain future growth, it was a wake-up call to institute an intentional, sustaining commitment to the staff, the company, and the future. A corporate Leadership Development Program was launched in less than a year with courses for all levels developed as pilot programs.

By David A. Mollish, MBA, CHRO, and Diane B. Landers, Ph.D., VP/CMO, GAI Consultants

In today’s turbulent economy, a genuine investment in the excellence of an organization’s people can generate a competitive advantage for the future. The evident benefits of a continuous Leadership Development Program (LDP) are three-fold.

April 30, 2012
How La Quinta Stays Here For You

LQ Management’s Here For You program is not just a training program; it’s an all-the-time commitment to La Quinta Inn guests, fellow employees, and the entire organization. By focusing on continuous improvement, using lag/lead methodologies and the Here For You approach, the company was able to onboard 304 customer service employees while exceeding year-over-year conversion goals by 3.5 percent.

By Margery Weinstein

April 27, 2012
The Emergence of 3 Leadership Types

After nearly 30 years of consulting to business executives, Dr. Karol Wasylyshyn became intrigued by the question: Do these business leaders represent any particular patterns of behavior? In an attempt to answer this question, she spent several months analyzing the data in 300 executive coaching cases. She found that three distinct patterns of behavior emerged with “an almost astonishing clarity.”

By Dr. Karol Wasylyshyn

April 26, 2012
The Problem of Anticipation Learning

Most training is “anticipation learning,” meaning content delivered long before employees actually need it. This gives the Forgetting Curve time to do its work, where the bulk of that forgetting happens soon after the training event. The solution is training that focuses on learning at the point of need, so-called “teachable moments.”

By Dan Cooper, CEO, ej4.com

Q: What training is the biggest waste of time for learners?
A: A one-day Excel class.

April 26, 2012
Zennovation: The Lion

Tomio Taki is the businessman behind the success of Anne Klein Company and Donna Karan International. With more than 50 years of experience consulting for, financing, or directly managing both private and public companies on nearly every continent, Taki has developed a keen sense of business acumen. In his new book, “ZENNOVATION,” Taki shares leadership and management lessons and the East-meets-West approach to business that has been key to his many accomplishments.

Tomio Taki is the businessman behind the success of Anne Klein Company and Donna Karan International. With more than 50 years of experience consulting for, financing, or directly managing both private and public companies on nearly every continent, Taki has developed a keen sense of business acumen. In his new book, “ZENNOVATION,” Taki shares leadership and management lessons and the East-meets-West approach to business that has been key to his many accomplishments.

By Tomio Taki

April 25, 2012
Business Reorganizations: First Things First

Downsizing and reorganizations are painful times. Most managers dwell on the ultimate outcome or the interim period before the changes are fully enacted. Not enough attention is given to the painful sense of loss that occurs with the first announcement of the drastic news. Paying an initial tribute to previous contributions can have a lasting impact in shaping the difficult days ahead to reach a successful new identity.

By Bruce Murray

April 24, 2012
Does Traditional Performance Management Work?

Two approaches are being put forward to address the recognized weaknesses of traditional Performance Management. The first is the “fix it” camp. The second is the “abandon and rethink” camp. Here are the core recommendations being put forward by the leading voices from each group.

By M. Tamra Chandler, CEO, PeopleFirm LLC

Performance Management (PM) is currently a hot topic among business leaders and human resource professionals. While it is universally recognized that the intent of Performance Management is worthy, there are many voices challenging the value being delivered by today’s traditional PM programs—with more ardent critics going so far as to say that traditional approaches to PM destroy trust between management and employees and do little to advance the development of the targeted employee groups.

April 23, 2012
Overcoming the Challenges of Mastery Learning

In a mastery learning program, those who require additional time get it, while those who do not are provided with enrichment activities to strengthen and challenge their understanding of the material. Additionally, those who need extra time are not simply given more activities until they “get it.” Instead, the lesson is re-presented using a different instructional approach.

By Robert Cooperman, Training Academy Program Director, Ohio Office of Budget and Management