Submit Articles - Search & Find Free Content

Search:

Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D.'s Articles in Business

Show All\|Display Category\|Title\|Newest\|Oldest
Why People Give Honest Feedback...In Spite of the Potential Downsides Feedback doesn't have much value if people don't "tell it like it is." But in any given organization, employees may be circumspect about giving realistic feedback. Why Most Training Doesn't Transfer to Changed Behavior in the Workplace Most leadership and team training doesn't change behavior at all. So is the investment in leader development worth it? Once you know why most training doesn't "stick," you understand what it takes to ingrain improved workplace behavior. Who's Accountable for Learning - Trainers, Learners or the Learners' Bosses? Traditionally, trainers are held accountable for the results of training. In truth, the learners themselves, as well as the learners' direct managers, have a major impact on whether training ultimately transfers to improved workplace performance - and they should be held accountable, too. What It Takes to Make Permanent Improvements in Leader Performance While it's crucial that organizations improve the way line leaders lead, the vast majority of leadership development programs result in little or no behavior change. This is because of a lack of understanding of how skills are formed in the brain and what it takes to establish this kind of learning. A new approach to professional development called Train-to-Ingrain is designed to make permanent changes in workplace performance. What it Takes to Eliminate a Counter-productive Behavior Pattern If there’s no delete button for a behavior pattern, how can we replace a bad habit with a good one, if the bad habit has been reinforced over a lifetime? Using 360-Degree Feedback to Assess Whether Performance Is Improving Instead of evaluating whether there’s a causal link between assessment and the bottom line, it makes more sense to evaluate whether developmental programs are actually improving performance. The Ultimate Use for 360-degree Feedback: Validating Individual Improvement in Performance Considering the billions of dollars invested annually in leadership development, organizations need a way to demonstrate whether these programs are actually changing behavior. The Ultimate Training and Development Challenge: Improving Soft Skills Typically, about half of what an employee is required to do involves “soft skills” (also called “people skills”). These are typically hard to observe, quantify and measure. What's worse, people come to work with these interpersonal behavior patterns already ingrained. The Third Pillar of Reinforcement: Coaching A new skill must be reinforced for quite a while before it starts to feel natural, and only then will you use it habitually. A vital component of reinforcing the new skill is coaching. The Second Pillar of Reinforcement: Ongoing Feedback Most organizations arrange for formal feedback only once, expecting that this will result in the desired behavior change. The brain doesn't work that way. To change a work habit, motivated learners will need to work at it for months, and they'll need lots of feedback along the way to let them know know how they're doing. The Reinforcement Imperative Learning a professional skill is like learning a sport skill. If you want it to feel comfortable and natural and if you want to do it well as a matter of habit, it will take lots of practice. The Key to Improving Soft Skills: Assessment, Training and Reinforcement Senior managers mistakenly believe that people skills training programs by themselves can change how employees relate to each other. Organizations can gain a far better return on their investment in people skills training if they would do three things. The Fourth Pillar of Reinforcement: Accountability Why would an organization invest in training if they didn't expect people to improve their workplace performance? That return on investment isn't likely without an extended program of follow-through reinforcement. There are ways to tell whether learners have actually changed their behavior, and holding people accountable helps to motivate them to do the hard work of establishing new patterns. The First Pillar of Reinforcement: Ongoing Learning The trainer was outstanding and everyone raved about the course? But will anything change? A year from now, will anyone actually be doing what was taught in the course? It turns out that whether people apply their new skills depends more on what happens after the course... Survey Items Need to Be Well Constructed How well are people doing their jobs? A major part of the answer may be found using multi-source feedback. But everything depends on whether the survey items are well-constructed. Skill Building: What Happens in the Brain Learning a new leadership skill, or any new behavior pattern for that matter, is something that happens in the brain. When you learn what that something is, you appreciate why it takes so much practice and repetition to ingrain a new skill. Senior Managers Are Accountable for Training Results, Too The conventional wisdom: Trainers should be held accountable for training results. The reality: Many people - including senior managers - play key roles to influence whether training translates to workplace performance and has an impact on business results. People Skills Are Hard Skills People skills are much harder to improve than any other kind of skill. Here's why. Is Your Organization Ready for 360-degree Feedback? The initial introduction of 360-degree feedback can cause concerns and questions. Does it help if your organization already has an established program of performance appraisal? In the Zone: What's Really Happening in the Brain The study of how the brain functions gives an elegant explanation of peak "in-the-zone" performance. How Training Transfers to Business Results...Or Not The authors of "High Impact Learning" have some outside-the-box things to say about whether training transfers to changes in behavior and desired business outcomes. How Can You Get Feedback at Work? To do a better job, you need to improve your performance. But how can you do that if you aren't sure how you're doing right now. It always helps to have feedback. How Can You Build Support for 360-Degree Feedback? Any organization can benefit from a well-administered program of multi-source feedback, if it has prepared the way for this new technology. However, implementing 360-degree feedback is not as simple as installing a software program and leading a few workshops. Getting Real about Feedback in the Workplace Most people don't see themselves as others see them. For this reason, they often don't understand the impact their actions have on others. They have "blind spots." So if they want to improve how well they do their jobs, they'll need others to tell them about these problem areas. They'll need "feedback." Four Reasons Why Employees Take Performance Feedback Seriously If 360-degree feedback isn’t linked to compensation or personnel action, what would motivate a person towards self-improvement? Four Factors That Contribute to Effective Workplace Performance A supervisor can have a positive impact on all four factors, thereby helping a team member improve performance. Empowerment: The Real Meaning of a Misunderstood Concept How can employees perform if they aren't empowered? Unfortunately, the concept of "empowerment" has been generally misunderstood by managers. If you don't know what empowerment means, how can you do it effectively? Does Training Change Behavior?...What the Experts Say For decades corporate executives have invested billions of dollars annually into training and development, and the result has been little or no change in behavior. This shocking waste of resources has been documented by experts during the past 29 years. Advice for People Who Are About to Receive Feedback To improve your performance, you have to know what you're doing well now and what you should be working on to improve. This is hard to determine without feedback. But if you don't ask for it, listen to it, show appreciation for it, accept it, and do something about it--you may discover that people are reluctant to give it to you. A Familiar Tale of Woe...and the Practical Solution It's amazing how many billions of dollars are wasted annually by corporate training that fails to improve workplace performance. The fault lies in seeing training as an event, which is never enough to alter behavior patterns that have been ingrained for decades. 360-Degree Feedback: Avoiding the Problems and Achieving the Benefits 360-degree (multi-source) feedback is powerful because it makes it easy to gather and report credible feedback about important issues that are otherwise hard to quantify. Like any powerful tool, it needs to be used with care in order to derive all the benefits. Here are seven recommendations for avoiding problems. 360-Degree Feedback: A Tale of the Technology Employees aren't likely to improve their performance if they don't know how they're doing. 360-degree feedback solves this problem handily, and what used to be a rigid, cumbersome expensive service is now quite flexible, easy to use, and affordable.

Home
Member Login
Sign Up
learn more.

How to Submit Articles
to Articledestination.com and drive users to your site

Search This Site

Top Authors Most Popular Articles Submission Guidelines Ezine Notifications Article RSS Feeds About Us Contact Us Privacy Policy Terms of Service

Copyright © 2005-2012 ArticleDestination.com All Rights Reserved.

Powered by Article Dashboard