If you missed the third webinar, or if you fell asleep in the middle of it, or if you want to refresh the key points from the webinar, here’s a video for you.
This screen flow video presents the slides and the narration from the webinar the RRID Module 3. Principles and Procedures.
Enjoy!
A client calls me and asks how long it would take to design a leadership training workshop for all employees in his high-tech corporation.
I say, “If all employees become leaders, then maybe there would be nobody left to follow them!”
The sarcasm is lost on the client. After some more conversation, I tell him that I’d run a pilot test of the new training package on Monday. My client becomes suspicious since it is Friday afternoon now. But he agrees to assemble a group of participants for the pilot test on Monday.
I know that there is a lot of stuff written about leadership. To test this hypothesis, I google “leadership” and find more than 490 million documents available on this topic. Next, I go to Amazon.com and find 125,972 books on leadership. I browse through the website and select 30 different titles (judging the books by their cover) and order them to be shipped overnight.
On the fateful Monday, I drag in three cartons of books and dump them in the middle of the workshop room. Without any preamble, I announce, “We are going to master powerful practical leadership principles and procedures. Here’s what I want you to do: Each one of you grab a book from these piles. Choose any book you like. Later, if you don’t like it, throw it back and pick a substitute. Then grab a highlighter. Sit down anywhere you want and speed-read the book. You have 20 minutes to discover six practical ideas that you can use tomorrow on your job. Highlight these six ideas. If you finish ahead of time, read some more and see if you can locate better ideas.”
After 20 minutes, I blow a whistle and ask everyone to find a partner. When everybody is paired up, I give these instructions:
“Take turns sharing your leadership ideas to each other. Share one idea at a time. When you are listening, practice all of your active listening skills. Lean forward, maintain eye contact, make enthusiastic noises, and take notes. You have another 20 minutes. If you finish sharing all 12 ideas before time’s up, talk to your partner about how you plan to apply these ideas tomorrow.”
Within a few minutes, a pair of participants come to me and complain, “These two ideas are exactly the same. They are in different books stated in different words, but they mean the same thing.”
I exclaim, “Congratulations, you have obviously discovered a powerful principle. Make a note of it.”
Twenty seconds later, another pair approaches me with a confused look.
“These two statements contradict each other. How could both of them be correct?”
I exclaim. “Congratulations, you have discovered the basic tenet of situational leadership. Some leadership principles work very effectively in some contexts but fail miserably in other contexts. Talk about these contradictory ideas and figure out under what conditions each of them will work …”
After 20 more minutes of these interactions, I ask each pair of participants to join another pair. In each group of four, participants take turns to share ideas presented by their partners during the previous round. So in another 20 minutes each participant listens to 12 new ideas — in addition to the original 12 they shared during the previous round.
Twenty minutes later, I announce the final round: I ask each group of four to select the most useful leadership strategy and send a representative to the front of the room to explain it to everyone else.
I then ask the participants to discuss the similarities and differences among these ideas.
For the rest of the day, I conduct six other activities, all related to practical leadership principles and their application to job-related situations. I don’t have any prior plan about which activity to use at which time. I select the suitable activities based on what happened during an earlier activity in terms of participants’ reactions, responses, and comments. The activities are flexible templates that permit me to plug in relevant content and work toward achieving the training objectives.
Specify the external goal. Also, specify metrics for measuring the results.
External Goal: Managers and employees will develop professionally from the feedback they receive. They will not suffer from defensiveness and damage to their self-image.
Metrics: Self reports and interviews.
Analyze the performance system. Identify the performance gap and establish that training is the appropriate intervention. Identify supporting HPT interventions.
The top management recently decided to bring about a culture of trust and open communication.
Ideal situation: Managers and employees will develop professionally from the feedback they received.
Actual situation: Resistance, holding grudges, defensiveness, damage to self- image, and mindless acceptance.
Justification for training: People lack evidence-based techniques for flourishing from all types of feedback.
Specify the context. Identify resources, constraints, schedules, number of participants and other administrative details related to training.
Resources: 17 Books (including Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, Thanks for the Feedback). Articles from Harvard Business Review.
Constraint: Has to an instructor-led training session.
Duration: Half day (3 to 4 hours)
Participants: A total of 325 employees, in groups of 20 to 30.
Identify a module. Select a self-contained part of the training package.
Different Types of Feedback: How Should We Deal with them?
Construct a test. Develop authentic test items for measuring the achievement of the module objectives.
We created a large number of authentic dialogues portraying different types of feedback in corporate settings. In the test, participants were required to identify the type of feedback, suggest appropriate method of processing and benefitting from the feedback, and justify their suggestions. The dialogues can be presented in text, audio, or video formats.
Retrieve. Collect existing content and usable activity templates.
Content: We will synthesize a classification system for different types of feedback from different sources. We will co-create the scenarios with representative employees.
Activities: Classification card games for fluently identifying different types of feedback embedded in different dialogues. Roleplay-based training activities including Gut Talk, Inner Voice, and Repeated Roleplay.
Also a series of jolts that involved becoming aware of the different between how we give feedback and prefer to receive feedback.
Align activities with content. Design activities that require and reward interacting with the content.
We prepared a checklist for processing different types of feedback and used it for briefing and debriefing the participants’ roleplays.
Align three key components. Ensure that activities, content, and test items are aligned with each other.
We drew different sets of dialogue cards from the same pool and used them in the initial demonstration, card game, roleplays, and final performance test.
Identify and list other modules. Make sure you have listed all necessary and sufficient modules for achieving the performance goal.
We identified three other Modules
Repeat, repeat. Repeat the module design steps as needed.
We repeated the same design procedure with three other modules.
Integrate. Collect all modules into a training package.
We collected all modules and assembled a set of slides. Also purchased copies of a book and duplicated checklists and articles. Prepared a concise Facilitators’ Guide.
Deliver mindfully. Deliver, evaluate, revise, and repeat.
We delivered the workshop to a representative group that included future facilitators. We tweaked the activities and materials based on the responses and reactions of the group.
Let go. Train other people to deliver the training. Revise on the basis of their feedback.
We asked a facilitator to conduct another workshop session, using the Facilitator’s Guide. We made a few minor tweaks based on what happened during the session and also the facilitator’s suggestions.
Design supporting interventions. Remove obstacles and add reinforcement.
We designed a companion workshop on How To Give Feedback. We required all participants to take both workshops.
Keep on Improving. Continue updating and upgrading the training package (until you die).
We continue scanning research reports, books, and online resources to update and upgrade the workshops. We also incorporate participant-generated dialogues to our collection of scenarios.
Here are the slides used in Module 3. Principles and Procedures
Here's a segment of the Take Five with Thiagi series that deals with key concepts in this module.
