i got your back

 

I recently attended the ACPA national convention and went to a session on women in higher education, specifically focusing on strategies for advancement, growth/development, and overall happiness with their work environment. One of the primary factors in a woman's perceived and actual success in their jobs was the prevalence of role models and mentors in their career. Gender of that mentor was not necessarily a large factor, but the presence of one did. A good discussion began among those in attendance about how much more complex this concept of mentoring really is than many make it out to be. A true mentor is very tough to come by. We may have supporters or good colleagues, but really finding someone that is invested in your success, celebrates those success with you, and is there to help you problem solve when things go wrong is a tough thing to find. It is a relationship vested in learning and mutual respect.

 Do you have a colleague that wants to see you succeed, catches you when you fall, and is there to listen to you process through ideas or vent? In my opinion, everyone needs a "biggest fan". It didn't take long for me to to realize, after getting into my first professional position, how different the work place was going to be from my experience as a student. In a workplace there are people with wide ranging levels of confidence in their self, differences in motives, and competition for attention from leadership (mostly driven by a need for increased resources or wanting to be recognized for potential promotions). With politics and these varying motives now in the mix, it seemed as though it would be tougher to find someone/people that I could rely on in this way. Don't get me wrong, I have great colleagues. But, as I mentioned above, a mentor is tough to come by. I have since found a few great mentors, and can't imagine working without them. It has inspired me to pay it forward. I haven't been working for too long, three years, but long enough that now a few new professionals have been hired since me. My new reflections on this have lead me to have a greater appreciation for those I have in my corner, and has motivated me to be more attentive to relationships I have now and will have in the future when I can serve as a mentor to others.

Questions I am trying to ask myself more often...
Who is your biggest fan?
Have you thanked them lately?
Does someone look up to you?
What are you doing to maintain that relationship, and enhance the learning and development of the one you mentor?

Here are a few good tips for maintaining these important relationships that I have learned from my biggest fans. They can and should be used by both parties in these relationships:

• Seeing a workshop or opportunity they might be good at or interested in, forwarding it along to them, and encouraging them to apply, join or attend
• Recognizing them with a "good job", lunch or nominating them for an award
• Thank you cards
• Being observant when they just need to vent and making time to let them do that
• When they vent, picking them back up with helping to brainstorm solutions or giving them positive words of encouragement
• Being there to review a project they are working on or offering them helpful feedback when they ask

These are just a few I have noticed from those that have made a difference in my life and continue to cheer me on.

anti-workshop series: crisis management

Crisis management is a life skill and a skill that many of our student leaders must learn and continue to build upon. Many times we teach this skill with roll plays or reviewing protocol with our students. I don't think we need to put an end to role playing or reviewing protocol, but to really explore the topic and ignite excitement about it there needs to be a little more training. Here are my "anti-workshop" suggestions.

• Pre-training: There are a few things you can have the students do before the training. I wouldn't do all of the following, but one or two is a good way to start building curiosity about the topic: Have the students write about a time when they felt like they poorly handled a crisis and when they (or someone they worked with previously) successfully handled a crisis.  Have them watch a video from an online news site of a crisis situation, tell them they are the leader in this situation (mayor, president, etc.) and ask them to respond to the following questions. What is the first thing you would do? What questions do you have about the situation that are not answered by the video that you would need answered to help deal with the situation? What does "success" look like in this situation? Lastly, have the students come up with a list of 5-7 questions they have about the topic?
• Training: As with any "anti-workshop" approach, the first thing I think about is who are the experts?

Who better to serve on a panel of experts, or serve as a site visit host than a fire"person", surgeon or trauma doctor, or police"person"? Setting up a site visit is a great opportunity to get the students off campus and into an environment that will challenge their thinking about problem solving and crisis management. Hearing from someone besides their boss or the typical person on campus that deals with crisis will ensure the learning will stick with them longer. The "typical person on campus" might know a whole lot about the topic, but bring them in at a later point. Giving students exposure to experts in the community is a great way to build relationships in the community as well. Provoke reflection. Have them look back at the reactions they originally wrote in the pre-training, and ask them to identify changes they would make now implementing what they learned. These changes can be captured as an assessment of the training.

defining success

 

Just a quick thought for today. You gotta know where your going in order to get there. Have you ever been working on something and you have a lot of thoughts or ideas about it but can't make sense of any of it? A lot of times when I am working with a student or another co-worker and I get the sense that this is happening to them, I ask one question. What does success look like? It brings clarity to the problem, and will help organize ideas and thoughts.

anti-workshop series: event management

As promised, the first in a series of posts. Teaching event management the "anti-workshop way". So before we get started I have identified a few key components of the anti-workshop approach.

• The learners need to be involved in the teaching. Whether it is through reflection, exercises that force the learner to teach others, or through much discussion and interaction. 
• Identify the expert. I'm not talking about the guy in the office down the hall that has done a workshop on this topic before. The expert in events management are the people that are behind the events you and I go to, the one's we pay money to get tickets to. Think big.
• Design an experience. Learning that is "sticky" will "stick" with the participant for many days, weeks, months after the learning occurred. When someone experiences something they are more likely to talk to their friends and family about it. The more they talk it through, the more they learn.

Ok, that's enough of that. As a professional staff member in the orientation office I am assisting with the management of 15 "events" over a 3 month time period. Each event with close to 400 participants attending, and each event lasts 2 full days.  I am talking about the summer orientation sessions. I am accompanied each summer by a graduate and leaderhsip team staff that serve almost completely in a logistics and problem solving capacity for each of these "events". This year we will be doing some intensive trianing with this group designed to explore the skills needed to be a successful event manager.

Who are the experts (that are somewhat local) in managing logistics, problem solving on the fly and producing event after event? Well the people working everyday to put on live shows like the Today Show, SNL and Jay Leno probably know something about all that. I would also assume the people that work as stage managers and actors on Broadway might have some wisdom to bestow upon our team about problem solving and managing multiple logistics at one time. The cool thing is that if your willing to look for it, a few hours of intense googling does the trick, there are experiences out there already packaged to meet the needs of your training. Does your school have any alumni working the field? Maybe a cast or crew member is a alumni from the school you work for, and if that's the case, chances are they would be psyched to sit down with your students to meet with them and share some tricks of the trade. For instance, NBC studios already packages a behind the scenes tour, but just doing the tour doesn't maximize the learning experience. However, following the experience by having lunch with an alumni working there as a crew member or producer to process through the experience does maximize the learning experience. Not everyone is a train ride away from NYC, but the point is that there most likely is something nearby that serves the purpose. By experiencing something out of the typical work environment and meeting with experts you can set the learner up for a memorable and "sticky" experience. The key is to integrate plenty of opportunities for reflection and processing throughout the experience. That sets the day apart from something that is just fun but empty, and ensures that the focus is on learning. If time allows, give your students time to present what they have learned to other colleagues or to their peers.

does anyone have any ideas?

Where do ideas come from?

Ideas don't come from watching television
Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture
Ideas often come while reading a book
Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them
Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom
Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide
Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do
Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner's mind. A little awareness is a good thing
Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week
Ideas come from trouble
Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless
Ideas come from nature
Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence
Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice
Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we're asleep and too numb to be afraid
Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we're not trying
Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute
Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones
Ideas don't need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity
An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn't join us here, it's hidden. And hidden ideas don't ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone.

Brainstorming

Having a hard time thinking of a new idea or an alternative solution to a problem? Check out this quick video showing a unique approach to brainstorming. I went to an "accidental creative" workshop in January and used the process shown in this video. We got a lot of new ideas out of it.

introducing: the anti-workshop series

Have you ever been to a crappy workshop? Someone reads a book or tries something once and all the sudden they are the expert on the topic. They whip up a boring powerpoint, maybe add in a little interactive piece and for the most part just speak at you and the other attendees for an hour and a half. This is not my idea of learning. Here is my other issue...The thought that training is just a coordinated effort of presentation after presentation. Yuck! I can't just complain and not offer any solutions, because I don't like that either. So here is the plan: I will write four posts (well at least as a start) on four different typical training topics and  identify a few "anti-workshop" approaches to the topic.

data + graphic design= my new favorite things

For those of you that know me, two of my favorite (work related things) would be data and stuff that looks pretty. I have a few design blogs on my flipboard that I will peruse from time to time and recently came across the wonderful world of infographics. Below is a sample infographic I designed to illustrate the assessment data collected after our January Kick off retreat. It gives some information about the retreat and provides the reader with a snapshot of the assessment data collected.

This is just one of the ways these can be used. Infographics can be great visuals to use during trainings. I am working on one now that is designed like a board game and along the path of this game are the different parts of the orientation program. At the very least it has potential to help the student staff learn the program, and what role they play in each part. If I can dream big a little, the hope is to get it blown up to life size, lay it on the ground, and have students literally roll the dice and walk through the game with different challenges along the way. Tell me what powerpoint lesson can beat that...

If this is something your interested in there are a lot of good resources and examples out there. This link is probably my favorite to get started with.