Search results for ""American Society for Training Development""

Position your consultancy for longevity and growth."How do I position a talent development business for lasting success?" is a question Stephen L. Cohen fields regularly. In his practice, he hears it posed countless times in countless ways by independent consultants, corporate executives, and training suppliers alike.Cohen fills The Complete Guide to Building and Growing a Talent Development Firm with answers. And it is why he has organized this guidebook by key milestones for establishing a successful consultancy --one specifically focused on content, delivery, and instruction.Whether you want to start your own firm or take the next steps to grow, Cohen has been in your shoes. In his 40-year career in talent development, a deep understanding of industry best practices - and their nuances - has guided his many efforts to found, expand, merge, and even sell thriving talent development firms.Delve into timeless lessons for getting your talent development firm off the ground and start moving your business forward. You'll find sage advice on overcoming barriers to success and tips for handling potential industry disruptions.Learn to: Execute your business vision and carry it out efficiently and effectively. Win over customers and build repeat business. Pave your way to growth in new and existing markets. Build a consultancy that survives and thrives the tests of time.

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In most organizations, middle managers are in the best position to positively impact business results. Yet, for most of these uniquely talented business professionals, this opportunity is lost. ""The High Impact Middle Manager"" offers a powerful set of practices that will transform these key organizational players from task and crisis managers to strategic business partners. From understanding their true organizational role, to planning and demonstrating business results, to improving time and project management techniques, to optimizing performance and leadership capability, this book provides all the tools, direction, and encouragement needed for a life changing journey to change and career success.

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A comprehensive and frank overview of the mindset and the practical steps needed to become a consultant. It is written for trainers, learning professionals, and human resource experts, but the advice is applicable to people in any profession. Written in a conversational tone with a touch of humour, shows readers how to land their first client, set up a home office, develop sales and marketing materials, draft agreements, and more.

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Change Your Training NarrativeAs a trainer, you try to facilitate connections for learners, knowing you must first make connections for yourself. One way to do that is to be a storyteller. But how do you tell stories? How do you find stories to tell? StoryTraining: Selecting and Shaping Stories That Connect explores how to find your stories and deliver them for learners, ultimately strengthening the storyteller you already are. The challenge with storytelling, according to author Hadiya Nuriddin, is in finding a story to tell. This book focuses on that elusive part of storytelling — finding the stories lurking everywhere and telling them. Hadiya shows you how by pulling from other disciplines, especially literature and creative writing, to help you select, structure, shape, and tell stories that can facilitate connections between you, your learners, and the material. You’ll learn about the characteristics of stories that are most useful for facilitating learning, and understand what each looks like in practice. StoryTraining also includes helpful checklists as well as the author’s surefire tips, diagrams for story timelining, and favourite story models.Given the push to make training more relevant, storytelling ability will continue to be in high demand. If you yearn to find your own stories — and to successfully engage with learners and others — this is the facilitation book you have been waiting for.

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Create a fresh, intentional approach to meetingsWhen meetings draw employees away from day-to-day tasks but fail to reach their intended outcome, it has huge costs to the organization. All too often, this happens because meetings lack purpose—people gather together to discuss a problem but don’t know how to approach it strategically. Consider that the typical leader spends at least 10 hours a week in meetings with an average of five people. Now, assume each of those individuals is priced out at $100 an hour. That’s $5,000 a week in meeting costs. Multiply that $5,000 by 50 weeks, then by the 10 top executives. The cost? $2.5 million. Of course, leaders dread the thought of one more ineffective meeting, as do most other workers.With preparation and intention, you can turn these wasted opportunities into sessions that fully engage participants and teams. In Not Just Another Meeting: Creative Strategies for Facilitation, you will learn how to be intentional about diagnosing what your team requires from a meeting. By expanding your repertoire of what to do and how to do it, you can respond to any situation with calm, certainty, and creativity.Experienced facilitators and consultants Rodney Napier and Eli Sharp describe 13 classic designs, such as the Future Search, Collapsing Consensus, and Genie in the Bottle. Applying to wide-ranging workplace issues, these designs provide the tools to enable any gathering to solve problems, build trust, and deal with conflict. Accompanying them are animated videos, available online, that allow you to observe exactly how to facilitate each design. This book shines a new light on situations you’ve taken for granted for years. Break out of your old meeting habits—and actually excite the participants of meetings you lead.

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In their book, Minds at Work, management authorities David Grebow and Stephen J. Gill share what happens when managers empower and inspire people to seek out learning at a moment’s notice. They capture this turning point as managers transition from a “command and control” position to become advocates of communication and collaboration. To motivate a modern workforce, managers must encourage uninhibited, freeform learning, and nurture communities of learning, practice, and cooperation that allow people to come together and produce meaningful work. Minds at Work features success stories from forward-looking companies that have redefined norms, made knowledge sharing flat, and created a workplace culture built to last.

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For every trainer, presenter, or facilitator who has ever ""lost"" an audience, ""Crash and Learn"" is part handbook and part inspiration. From audience motivation, to honing storytelling skills, to the simple act of setting chairs in a room for maximum impact, author Jim Smith Jr. presents hundreds of road tested gems of wisdom that will help any presenter, trainer, or facilitator become more polished, powerful, and effective. Known by many as ""Mr. Energy"" and ""the trainers' trainer"" Jim Smith is an internationally known motivational speaker and the author and co-author of two other books ""From Average to Awesome"" and a co-author of ""Masters of Success"". It includes 600+ road tested tips to keep audiences fired up and engaged; shows how a good speaker holds the attention of any audience, large or small; reveals what are the common, but often overlooked, mistakes speakers make; and, provides tips and pointers to eliminate and avoid mistakes through his Jim's Gems. ""Crash and Learn"" gently instructs and positively inspires. Jim Smith and his Gems will help any speaker or facilitator become more polished and powerful - painlessly.

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Get into the business of speaking and training. There are dozens of books on public speaking. But only Speak for a Living will show you how to launch, build, and sustain a successful speaking and training career. Wondering whether making the leap into this industry is for you? In this revised and expanded edition, authors Anne Bruce and Sardék Love offer updated strategies for navigating the public-speaking business. Their new material on social media and website marketing will help you find your niche and create a unique brand that reaches the right audience. They’ll show you how to diversify your services in an increasingly globalized industry, whether through booking international gigs, getting published, or developing new products. And they’ll use their years of experience to help you avoid the mistakes so many speakers and trainers make. Speak for a Living also has field-tested tools and checklists that all speakers and trainers will find valuable, whether they’re new to the profession or old pros. Use them to identify ideal clients, prepare for any presentation, and become a meeting or event planner’s dream speaker. And if you want to sharpen your performance skills, the book has a whole chapter on how to take your abilities to the next level. Speak for a Living is the ultimate insider’s guide. Use it to gain insight into the professional speaking lifestyle and become the speaker or trainer people request again and again.

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A single reference source for understanding, leading, and managing the change process to skillfully translate vision into results.Change Basics will enable you to skillfully introduce and manage change. With an essential background on reasons for initial resistance and an analysis of possible outcomes, it provides specific strategies to counter opposition and implement a change initiative in your organization.

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Today, All Learning Is Blended LearningModern learning audiences want flexibility and personalization—development on their terms. They need a blended approach to learning that lets them grow their skills and knowledge where they actually perform their work. When designed and implemented effectively, blended learning can breathe life back into your talent development offerings. Blended Learning is packed with easy-to-apply techniques to ensure your blended learning program is a success. Learning expert Jennifer Hofmann combines the latest findings in adult learning with her time-tested best practices to deliver powerful results. Pro tips, resources, and tools included throughout help you quickly locate concepts and ideas to plan, design, implement, and evaluate a blended campaign.This book delivers. When it comes to blended learning, discover what works.Blended Learning is part of an ATD series, What Works in Talent Development, which addresses the most critical topics facing today’s talent development practitioners. Each book in the series is written for trainers, by trainers, and offers an examination of core subject matter and a defined way to solve real issues.

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Your essential guide to calculating return on investment.Build and refine your measurement and evaluation skills through ROI Basics, perfect for beginners challenged to implement a comprehensive evaluation process as well as those taking a proactive approach to accountability. Its five-level evaluation framework includes: Level 1: Reaction and Planned Action Level 2: Learning Level 3: Application and Implementation Level 4: Impact Level 5: Return on Investment ROI Basics provides a baseline exploration of ROI for the talent development function and the steps to successful evaluation: evaluation planning, data collection, data analysis, and results optimization.In this second edition, experts Patti and Jack Phillips go deeper into aligning programs to the business, detecting payoff needs, and identifying specific business measures that need to improve. They explore how the process applies beyond training to talent development and suggest how new technologies can influence ROI adoption and implementation in your organization. This updated book offers a review of two essential—and often overlooked—steps in the ROI process: isolating program impact and sustaining momentum.

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What’s your story?The most successful brands aren’t created, they are unearthed. Successful branding is based on authenticity. So how do you reveal your own brand? First, by searching yourself for answers to questions like these: What do you do better than anyone? What are you most proud of? What makes you lose track of time? In Digital You: Real Personal Branding in the Virtual Age, branding authority William Arruda describes the 21st century world of personal branding and guides you to define, express, and expand your personal brand for the virtual world. Branding is not about being famous, Arruda explains; it’s about being selectively famous. It’s about more than social media excess. When you understand the true value of personal branding, you can use it as a serious career development strategy.Digital You offers a deep dive to understanding and defining your unique promise of value—making a great first impression, mastering multimedia, and, ultimately, expanding your network and promoting thought leadership. You’ll learn how to develop, design, and sustain a personal brand throughout the fluid movements of any career. Understand how to be clear about your digital brand and your unique promise of value so you can increase your success and happiness at work and in life. It’s time to stop worrying about career extinction and start crafting a brand of distinction.

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Have you ever worked with a team that was ready for change, but then failed to follow through? Have you ever wondered why some employees fail to apply what they learn in training to their day-to-day work? Perhaps change blockers are in play. In Overcoming Barriers to Behavior Change, Juanita Coble and Adélka Vendl identify common change blockers and provide strategies for surmounting them.This TD at Work issue explains how fear, laziness, and resignation can keep employees from reaching their potential, even when they want to improve. The authors discuss how provocative coaching—or “playing the devil’s advocate while being on the side of the angels”—can help people get past the feelings that are blocking them from making a positive change.In this issue, you will find: positive and negative aspects of change blockers the six C Steps that promote behavior change stories of organizations that have made change stick strategies for thinking two steps ahead 10 ways to coach provocatively.

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Select, Implement, and Operate the Perfect LMSIf you need to manage training and education programs for employees, customers, or students, you need an LMS. Don’t waste time and money picking the wrong one.The LMS Guidebook gets to the core of what an LMS does and how it works. This book tackles the urgent challenges you will face when putting an LMS in place: Which features are must-haves? What standards should your LMS comply with to mesh with your other technology systems? How do you migrate existing learning data into your new LMS? How can you ensure an uneventful rollout?Not all LMS products will meet your needs. E-learning consultant Steve Foreman offers a broad view of the LMS categories and features so you can ask better questions of vendors and evaluate their products. He then turns to implementation and operation, offering in-depth guidance on how to establish appropriate standards, processes, and governance that will have your LMS running smoothly.Whether you’re on the instructional or technical side of the LMS, you can make the job of selecting and managing one less painful by following the proven practices in this book.

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Your Periodic Table of Learning Elements.Engaging, effective training programs are a mixture of science and art, requiring the right balance of adult learning theory, available technology, intuitive tools, proven practices, creativity, and risk. How does a trainer find the right combination and proportion of these elements? How does a trainer know what's possible?To answer these questions, Brian Washburn offers a simple yet elegant periodic table of learning elements modeled on the original periodic table of chemical properties. Washburn's elements—which are organized into solids, liquids, gases, radioactive, and interactive categories similar to their chemical cousins—are metaphors for the tools and strategies of the field of learning design; when they're combined, and under certain conditions, they have the potential to create amazing learning experiences for participants. They are that impactful. From critical gas-like elements like the air we breathe, present in every training room (think instructional design or visual design), to radioactive elements, powerful and dangerous yet commonly used (think PowerPoint), Washburn guides you through the pitfalls and choices you confront in creating engaging learning experiences. A well-designed training program can be world-changing, he argues, and if you believe in your craft as a learning professional, you can do this too. Whether you're an experienced learning designer or new to the field, this book inspires with new ideas and ways to organize the design of your learning programs. With stories from Washburn's professional experience, the book includes a hands-on glossary of definitions and descriptions for more than 50 of his elements.

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In Lead With Your Customer, authors Mark David Jones and J. Jeff Kober offer the key success tools all world-class organizations have in common and explain how your organization can adopt them, using the World Class Excellence Model. For this second edition, the authors present updated examples from organizations including IKEA, Harley-Davidson, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and, of course, Walt Disney.

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Individuals, teams, and organizations are only as good as their ability to communicate effectively.Communication Skills Training offers the crucial tools you’ll need to help your workshop participants master the skills that drive performance. The first book in the ATD Workshop Series offers practical, road-tested strategies and tactics for use at all levels of your organization.Built on the successful ASTD Trainer's WorkShop title by the same name, this volume incorporates technology in the delivery of half-, full-, and two-day workshops and offers design, delivery, facilitation, and evaluation advice that can be quickly and easily implemented. Supplemental resources are available online and include downloadable and customizable presentation slides, handouts, assessments, and tools.

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The best learning transfer happens when participants have fun! Stop wasting time, money, energy, and resources on lecture-based safety trainings that have been proven ineffective. Set participants up for success with action-based safety training activities that will prevent injuries and incidents.Safety Training That Transfers offers more than 50 activities dedicated to different aspects of workplace safety. Each activity includes an overview, step-by-step instructions, and debriefing questions that reinforce each lesson.The activities are so memorable that participants will be talking about them long after the formal training is complete. Activities range from a newspaper race to a safety scavenger hunt. And your employees will be excited to see what comes next. They increase knowledge, build coworker relationships, and boost morale. All incorporate adult learning theory and principles of knowledge retention.

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Harness the power of the leaders in your organisation to grow your learning culture.Expanding on the leadership development approach introduced in the 2009 bestselling title, Leaders as Teachers, this new action guide shares the experiences of companies where "leaders as teachers" is the driving principle for leadership development. Leaders as Teachers Action Guide: Proven Approaches for Unlocking Success in Your Organization presents easy to use instructions, as well as supporting research-based data, for developing top-performing leaders.This book will provide you with: case studies and success stories to inspire your programme tools to help determine the best approach for your organisation templates to design learning programmes that work for your leader-teachers.

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A Simple, Effective Approach to Attaining Learning and Performance ResultsJob aids are often the most practical way to get quick performance improvement, particularly in time-pressured, resource-constrained situations. Not sure where to begin, or even if a job aid is the right choice? Job Aids Basics will teach you everything you need to know about selecting, creating, and using job aids.In this revised second edition, author Joe Willmore has included new examples of how to use job aids, as well as a new chapter on creating job aids for mobile devices. This is in addition to his step-by-step guide to determining the right job aid format for any situation, developing it using proven best practices, and implementing it in a way that ensures people will actually use it on the job. Willmore also gives you an evaluation process to determine if the job aid accomplished the business objectives you set out to meet.Each chapter contains insightful tips and tricks to help you avoid common mistakes people make when designing a job aid. There are also exercises at the end of every chapter so you can practice what you’ve learned. And as with all books in ATD’s Training Basics series, icons will alert you to essential concepts and definitions. Go from novice job aid designer to expert by adding this crucial resource to your training toolkit.

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In Unstoppable You: Adopt the New Learning 4.0 Mindset and Change Your Life, visionary teacher and lifelong learner Pat McLagan shares her method for keeping learning powers sharp, ensuring that we can continuously advance and adapt in a nonstop world. Discover her seven practices for effective lifelong learning—from hearing and heeding calls to learn, to taking steps to translate new skills into action. Unstoppable You also includes a complete toolkit of supporting templates, guides, and tips. Unstoppable You is the handbook to your dynamic future. Begin actively shaping your success in fast-changing times today.

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Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it.We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better?In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukof shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead.To deliver best results, you need to: Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans. Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders. Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans. Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues. Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

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Every quota challenge has a story.Sales quotas aren’t all about the numbers.Quotas! Using Design Thinking to Solve Your Biggest Sales Challenge sheds new light on quota challenges, the story behind them, and the methods to solve them. Many organizations struggle to reach effective, market-driven sales quotas, with more than half reporting quota setting as one of their top sales dilemmas. Instead of wrestling over the number, author Mark Donnolo contends that organizations can better achieve effective sales quotas by applying a problem-solving approach. With decades of experience working with major organizations on successful sales strategies, he offers engaging stories embedded with business problems and poses challenge questions to prompt a creative, five-step design-thinking process.Chapters feature quota design frameworks and a range of applicable, scalable methods. You’ll also find rare, expert guidance through the candid perspectives and advice of CEOs and other senior leaders. This book is a must-read for those who help set quotas as well as those who fulfill them.

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Overcome Your Fear of PresentingAre you afraid of public speaking? Do you feel anxious before presenting? Are you worried about making mistakes in front of others and being judged? If so, you are not alone—public speaking and presenting are among the things people fear the most. Conquer your phobia of public speaking with 10 Steps to Successful Presentations. In this second edition, the Association for Talent Development provides an updated 10-step guide to delivering first-rate presentations whether you have several months or just one day to prepare.Discover how to develop a dynamic, engaging presentation and deliver it flawlessly. Learn strategies to reduce stress and become a think-on-your-feet presenter. Master your openings and closings (including the question-and-answer session) and captivate your audience from start to finish. Updated tools offer guidance and reassurance along the way.New content covers: leading virtual presentations telling interesting stories and relatable examples using mindfulness to recover in the moment asking questions to involve the audience.

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Master the Production of Virtual Events and Improve Engagement.Have you ever found yourself confidently delivering content for a virtual training session, webinar, or online meeting only to have a participant drop off? Or, have you bravely launched breakout sessions but found that participants got lost on where to go? These scenarios illustrate the convergence of virtual session facilitation and production. While attention is most often paid to the facilitation of virtual sessions, significantly less is devoted to producing them. Producing Virtual Training, Meetings, and Webinars rectifies this gap.In this book, Kassy LaBorie, go-to training expert and co-author of Interact and Engage! 50 Activities for Virtual Training, Meeting, and Webinars, guides you through the production knowledge and skills a trainer needs to master the production of virtual events while delivering engaging training, productive meetings, and captivating webinars—from how to prepare the technology and content beforehand to how to run everything smoothly. Using examples from and discussing differences among common virtual conferencing platforms such as Adobe Connect, Blackboard, Zoom, Webex, GoTo suite, and Microsoft Teams, LaBorie offers a plan of action for conquering just about any platform and troubleshooting potential problems. This book thoroughly examines typical platform features (audio, webcam, chat, screen share), advanced interaction methods (polling, breakouts, Q&A), and administration and logistics elements (logins, session scheduling, reports). With production in mind, you’ll also learn how to: Design session materials. Prepare attendees to participate before and during the session. Build successful virtual working relationships with presenters. Through stories, templates, checklists, and examples, LaBorie shares about her 20-plus years of engaging participants successfully in thousands of virtual events and gets you up to speed in no time.

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Find the Leading Edge in a Disrupted World.Planning our response to disruption seems impossible. Most new and emerging technologies have been in development for decades, but as soon as they land on our doorstep, they inspire “the shock of the new.” How do you, as a learning professional, prepare for what you don’t know is coming? How do you judge what is important and what is just a fad?In Shock of the New: The Challenge and Promise of Emerging Learning Technologies, Chad Udell and Gary Woodill create a new framework for anticipating emerging learning technologies, outlining six key perspectives you should consider with any new technology. They examine some of the day’s most commonly discussed emerging technologies and pose the questions that will point the way to your own strategy. These insights aren’t limited to specific applications; they give you an approach you can apply to any new tech coming your way, so you’re always braced for the shock of the new.Udell and Woodill optimistically point out that emerging technologies will help us make sense of our increasingly complex world; many more changes will occur over the next decade, so buckle up! What was once science fiction has just become real—and now is your opportunity to be on the leading edge.

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The best organizations recognize that no leader or employee can be expert in everything, but that everyone needs to be at their best if organizations are to be productive and successful. If your goal is to develop talent within your organization, this concise yet foundational book has the keys to success.Renowned industry leader and bestselling author Elaine Biech guides you through getting started, designing and implementing your talent development program, demonstrating success, and planning next steps. But just as important, she poses critical questions that only you and your organization can answer. Biech interweaves best practices with the latest technology to offer many templates, tools, worksheets, and tips to help you explore how to support your organization into the future.Starting a Talent Development Program is part of a new ATD series, What Works in Talent Development, which addresses the most critical topics facing today’s talent development practitioners. Each book in the series is written for trainers, by trainers, and offers an examination of core subject matter and a defined way to solve real issues.

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Over the course of a decade, positive psychology authority Dr. Beth Cabrera has surveyed and interviewed more than a thousand women to gather insight into how to effectively balance career and family responsibilities. Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being gathers essential findings and offers women proven strategies for living more authentic, meaningful lives.Through the lens of shared experience, Cabrera thoughtfully examines the challenges women face and presents a simple yet powerful model for enhancing well-being that can both improve and transform lives. Helpful self-assessments guide you toward feeling good and doing good, and each chapter delivers tried-and-true tactics that real women have used to manage the difficulties of fulfilling their multiple, often conflicting, roles.Discover pathways to reducing stress, experiencing greater joy, and finding more meaning in your life by employing Cabrera’s solid strategies for thriving based on personal values, developed strengths, and what matters most–enduring family ties and relationships.

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Master the new world of work.You want—no, you need—a new job. But not just any job. The job. So you polish your resume till it shines. You apply for countless openings, tailoring your message to each. You search for the hidden job market, although it remains very well hidden. And the response? Well, it’s underwhelming. To top things off, maze-like online application systems appear designed to keep you and the perfect job apart. What’s going on?How people successfully land jobs has changed. You need help from a pro, someone who navigates career data, the labor market, and hot jobs with ease. You want a coach who will tell you what to pursue and what to avoid, and an expert who has mastered job-hunting and career change to offer wisdom gained from experience. What you need is a career coach. Better yet, several.Expert career coaches contributing to this volume include Lakeisha Mathews, Dan Schwartz, Sheila Margolis, Alisa Cohn, Michelle Riklan, Marie Zimenoff, Laura Labovich, Lynne Williams, Thea Kelley, Jean Juchnowicz, Alan DeBack, Marilyn Feldstein, Vivian Blade, David Hosmer, Barbara Seifert, and Nicole Miller.Find Your Fit guides you through answering foundational questions like: What do I want to do with my career? Where should I do it? And how do I get there? As you develop a strong sense of self-awareness, you’ll be able to identify the work environment best for you, shape your online identity, and network more effectively by focusing on people instead of openings. You’ll learn about coveted employee referrals, and how to get one at your target company. With the help of experienced career coaches, you’ll be able to handle any kind of interview. And, you’ll become familiar with the pre-employment testing and assessments increasingly common today.What are you waiting for? Your personal coaching session awaits.

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Turn your training vision into a workable, functional e-learning program.In this fully refreshed second edition, award-winning e-learning expert and technical educator Thomas Toth guides technology-hungry trainers through e-learning development—without the jargon. With brand-new chapters on mobile devices, learning management systems, and e-learning development software, Technology for Trainers illuminates the techniques and processes needed to build any technology-based learning solution.Start speaking intelligently to e-learning designers and other technical experts about how to turn your design vision into a reality. Technology tips throughout the book offer pointers to help you pick up key concepts quickly and gain a better grasp on the decisions that will get you where you want to go. An e-learning glossary at the end consists of more than 400 key terms—from analog to XML—that e-learning experts of all levels will find useful.In this book, you will: Learn how to identify the technical building blocks of an e-learning program. Apply training expertise to e-learning development and examine e-learning-specific software options. Explore the basics of graphics and interface design as well as the basics of Internet technology.

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Your Global Training Adventure AwaitsThe world may seem to be getting smaller and more familiar, but that doesn’t mean the same instructional techniques or training styles work everywhere. Organizations worldwide need talent development professionals who can design and deliver learning content that meets the needs of diverse workforces. Destination Facilitation is rich in tips for creating incredible training experiences around the globe. This book brings together a team of 16 expert trainers to share their knowledge and wisdom on productive training results, whether you’re in Abuja or Zurich. These explorers present the best techniques for needs assessments, design processes, facilitation, and classroom management in whatever country or region you’re visiting. Contributors include Matthew Axvig, David Brown, Alfredo Castro, Dan DeRoche, Bahaa Hussein, Fady Kreidy, Chan Lee, Claudia Salazar, Deniz Senelt Kalelioglu, David Smith, Donna Steffey, Marby Tabungar, Hamza Taqi, Kedar Vashi, Denise Walker, and David Xue. Get to know your audience and master body language dos and don’ts. Plan for the logistics and technology constraints of training abroad. And avoid the cultural mistakes that interfere with learning transfer.When the opportunity to design and deliver training in another country arises, don’t miss out. With Destination Facilitation, you’ll be prepared to say yes!

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The old model of globalisation - including offshoring to save money- no longer applies. Globalisation now means you can better position your company for innovation and growth. To be a global leader, you must change and lead from the edge. Every day as a global leader seems to be a paradox: balancing the needs of daily operations while creating conditions that drive success in the future. Rather than try to resolve that paradox, this book helps you think about how to live within it, by developing essential traits and hearing from leaders who succeed globally. Learn from seven top executives how they shifted from individual thinkers to leading and growing organisations in an ever-changing economy. Learn the specific traits and model for business professionals to emulate and achieve success in global business enterprises. Get the on-the-ground, common-sense advice that has been applied by today’s successful global executives.

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Perfect the Skills to Excel as a ManagerAn engagement crisis, a management skill shortage, a retention problem—call it what you will, today’s research and workplace insights emphasize that many employees leave managers. . . not companies. Good managers know they need to deliver results to be successful. But great ones? They understand the essence of managing encompasses something more: making connections, embodying the right skills, and developing their direct reports. They also realize managing well takes practice. With Focus on Them, you’ll get the tools and know-how to excel as a manager.Edited by the Association for Talent Development’s own management authority Ryan Changcoco, research expert Megan Cole, and content developer Jack Harlow, this book explores ATD’s new management framework—the ACCEL model. Each chapter, written by a leader in management and talent development, focuses on one of the five skills all managers need: Accountability (Timothy Ito) Communication (Ken O’Quinn) Collaboration (Winsor Jenkins) Engagement (Hunter Haines) Listening and assessing (Michele Nevarez) By investing in your own development—boosting your ACCEL skills—you signal to your employees that you’re serious about their development and learning, too.Becoming a manager isn’t climbing a mountain. By focusing on the basics, you can transform from a results-oriented manager to the super people manager your employees need.

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Create stunning digital media quickly and affordably.Shaky camerawork and scratchy audio just won’t cut it with your learners. But can your time- and budget-constrained training department produce the polished media they expect? Absolutely.In Rapid Media Development for Trainers, veteran trainer and author Jonathan Halls uses his experience running the BBC’s prestigious production training department to help even the smallest learning team dazzle. Whether you need to build a training program, blend your offerings, or flip your classroom, this book will help you make learning dynamic with rapid media techniques.Free of overly technical jargon, Rapid Media Development for Trainers is for novice and expert learning professionals alike. It explains essential learning and media concepts and adapts standard production practices to your work schedule. You won’t need to max out your budget on expensive equipment, or stress over camera models and editing software. Use simple tools—some that you already have—to create video, audio, and online content while avoiding common missteps.Turn once uninspiring training programs into riveting learning experiences that incorporate compelling video, crisp podcasts, and eye-catching presentations.Discover: why planning media production always beats out winging it which cost-effective tools can deliver high-quality digital media what visual, auditory, and graphical concepts are indispensable during creation how you can pull all your media together and edit it for a complete learning experience. Boost your production and content quality with this ultimate guide to fast and affordable media development.

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Count the number of times you’ve said “no” to an idea. Whether you inadvertently put out a spark of brilliance or nixed a nonstarter, your response took away someone else’s opportunity to feel heard. And that’s an innovation killer.No one knows this truth better than improv expert Karen Hough. Go With It: Embrace the Unexpected to Drive Change brings you Hough’s discoveries from the front lines of innovation. She has seen how business innovators deal with dichotomy by preparing, playing, and thinking upside down. Improv troupes succeed on stage because they apply the “Yes, and” principle. Whatever the first person says, the next person affirms and adds to it. But this practice isn’t limited to onstage brilliance—corporate teams caught up in old patterns of thought and action can learn to improvise and innovate, too. Pharmaceutical scientists who know how to improvise can accelerate their fuzzy front-end work on new drugs. Technologists who are masters of going with it know how to successfully bring their breakthroughs to market. Executives who use improv techniques get their teams working and innovating together. Their stories fill this book. And they emphasize that it’s the process of listening, agreeing, and discussing an idea that’s monumentally important.Hough shows you that anyone can learn to be more creative and innovative. It just takes flexibility, humour, and focus—that’s improv.

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This is not your typical training book. You won't find a traditional training-cycle outline or a classic training table of contents. Instead, this book pinpoints the key actions necessary to successful training and focuses on the elements with the most influence on bottom-line results. Throughout the book you'll discover helpful, ready-to-use tools: worksheets, evaluation forms, tables, checklists, case studies, and reminders and suggestions.Whether you're a middle- or upper-level manager, or a workplace learning or human-resource professional, 10 Steps to Successful Training can provide you with options for enhancing the learning environment in your organization. Boost your success as a trainer and help others learn more effectively by investing in this essential guidebook today.

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Here's the basic primer on how to grow the 'right people who are already on the bus' in your organization. This new book intends to empower training and development leaders with the necessary tools and understanding to become catalysts for brining a career development focus to their organizations by implementing three success factors: making career development part of the strategic planning process and extend it across organizational boundaries, sustain the career development focus regardless of budget, economic, and short-term profit goals, and finally, rewarding managers and leaders who help others reach their goals.

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Achievers - the masters, innovators, and great ones - do not owe their success to luck, birth, or environment. Rather, great achievers throughout history - from Michelangelo to Einstein, Madame Curie to Bill Gates, Colonel Sanders to General Eisenhower - all have characteristics that the authors have distilled into actions for extraordinary success - in any field. In the process, some old notions are put to rest - including the saw that innovators must be risk takers (in fact, they not) and that great ideas just happen. This book ranges from the importance of preparing for success (acquiring expertise) to endurance against obstacles and recognizing and then seizing opportunities. None of it is easy, they say, but the rewards can be substantial. This fascinating book will be especially helpful for senior executives, ambitious managers, and entrepreneurs; many will find the clarity of its prose and sometimes surprising relevance of the examples and keys inspirational.

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Ensure Your Instructional Design Stands Up to Learning Science.Learning science is a professional imperative for instructional designers. In fact, instructional design is applied learning science. To create effective learning experiences that engage, we need to know how learning works and what facilitates and hinders it. We need to track the underlying research and articulate how our designs reflect what is known. Otherwise, how can we claim to be scrutable in our approaches?Learning Science for Instructional Designers: From Cognition to Application distills the current scope of learning science into an easy-to-read primer.Good instructional design makes learning as simple as possible by removing distractions, minimizing the cognitive load, and chunking necessary information into digestible bits. But our aim must go beyond enabling learners to recite facts to empowering them to make better decisions—decisions about what to do, when, and how. This book prepares you to design learning experiences that ensure retention over time and transfer to the appropriate situations.Gain insights into: Providing spaced practice and reflection. Tapping into motivation and challenge to build learner confidence. Using performance-support tools, social learning, and humor appropriately. Prompts at the end of each chapter will spark your thinking about how to use these concepts and more in your daily work. Written by Clark N. Quinn, author of Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions: Debunking Learning Myths and Superstitions, this book is perfect for anyone who strives for their instruction to stand up to learning science.

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Speak for YourselfDo you yearn for a book to disambiguate words and phrases commonly used in business settings, your workplace, and in life in general? Do you wish the kimono would open on idioms and clichés that stretch the bandwidth of understanding and make you wonder if your career is scalable? What are you really saying when you go against the grain and are aboveboard? What do you hear when your colleague wants face time or to move the needle? The BS Dictionary: Uncovering the Origins and True Meanings of Business Speak provides the real-world definitions to about 300 of the world's most commonly-used business terms and gives you the origin story (who coined the term? when did it start to be used figuratively in the business world?) for each one. Get the language clarity you need and have fun learning the full etymology of favorite phrases. Read humorous commentary about how phrases might be misused or misunderstood. If you are interested in language, business speak, writing, and trivia knowledge, this book is for you! Get The BS Dictionary and impress your friends with your newfound wealth of phrases and their history.

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Creating Transparent AIFrom agriculture to transportation, entertainment to medicine, and banking to social media, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how humans do practically everything. We experience AI in our daily lives through our fitness trackers, home digital assistant systems, and curated news services, to name a few examples. For talent development, this is no different.The fields of artificial intelligence and talent development have been on a collision course for decades, and their convergence has already occurred. It has just taken many in our profession some time to recognize this fact. On the horizon, AI-powered innovations are transforming the workplace and the role of the talent development professional, affecting recruiting to training to compensation. As such, there are actions TD professionals should take now to prepare ourselves and our organizations for the evolving AI revolution.In AI in Talent Development, Margie Meacham describes the benefits, uses, and risks of AI technology and offers practical tools to strengthen and enhance learning and performance programs. In layman’s terms, Meacham demonstrates how we can free time for ourselves by employing a useful robot “assistant,” create a chatbot for specific tasks (such as a new manager bot, a sales coach bot, or new employee onboarding bot), and build personalized coaching tools from AI-processed big data. She concludes each of the six chapters with helpful tips and includes a resource guide with planning tools, templates, and worksheets.Meacham dispels fear of AI’s black box—the term used to describe its unknowability and opacity—and points out ways AI can help us be better at creativity and critical thinking, what we humans do best.

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Your Microlearning PrimerMicrolearning. Is it a text message or a video? Does it need to be shorter than five minutes? Do you just “chunk” a longer course into smaller pieces? Find the answers to these and other questions in this concise, comprehensive, and first-of-its-kind resource that will accommodate the most- and least-informed about microlearning.Gleaning insights from research, theory, and practice, authors Karl M. Kapp and Robyn A. Defelice debunk the myths around microlearning and present their universal definition. In Microlearning: Short and Sweet, they go beyond the hypothetical and offer tips on putting microlearning into action.Recognizing what makes microlearning effective is critical to avoiding costly, wasteful investments in the latest learning trend or newest shiny object. Only by understanding the nuances behind it can you decide what format and style suits your needs. Whether you are creating an individual product or a series of learning solutions, you need to follow a well-designed plan.This book guides readers through how, when, and why to design, develop, implement, and evaluate microlearning. Case studies punctuate what works and what doesn’t.User-friendly and highly accessible, this book is a must-have for instructional designers and anyone interested in microlearning.

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Are you an internal consultant -- someone who is a permanent employee and staff member, yet serves in a consultative role within your organization? Then you need this hands-on, practical guidebook to help you better understand your role and improve your performance, whether you re a change agent, trusted advisor, or someone who serves in varying capacities. Just like an external consultant, it s important to design your job, develop a formal agreement, and build your practice. Consulting on the Inside provides a solid background for internal consultants, and serves as a roadmap for cultivating a successful career.

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Meetings are often poorly planned and executed events that produce no meaningful business results. ""How to Conduct Productive Meetings"" is a book designed to provide practical tools and advice for anyone planning or facilitating a meeting. Legendary evaluation guru Donald Kirkpatrick offers solid and timely advice to ensure that a meeting is necessary, the presentation is professional and effective, the participants contribute in constructive ways, and the outcome is measurable. Based on more than 40 years of professional experience, Kirkpatrick backs up his meeting methodology with both solid research and experiences from his vast on-the-ground expertise as consultant to Fortune 500 companies including Blockbuster, Caterpillar, Ford, IBM, and General Electric. The book also includes more than 130 ""do's"" and ""don'ts"" of meetings that alone are worth the price of the book. In addition to practical chapters on preparing for and leading meetings, the book provides guidance on how to use questions in meetings, how to conduct a productive training meeting, how to conduct a problem-solving meeting, and how to be an effective participant in a meeting. Pre- and post-tests allow users to examine their baseline knowledge of successful meetings and evaluate lessons learned from reading the book.

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Research continually demonstrates the impact of mentoring. Although talent development professionals are committed to bringing mentoring to others, they may not pursue those relationships. Mentorships are most often valuable, and all individuals—talent development professionals included—should seek out these opportunities. In this issue of TD at Work, Jenn Labin: demonstrates the value of finding a mentor at any stage of your career explains the different types of mentoring relationships describes how to build significant mentoring relationship with trust and respect discusses the importance of setting expectations and developmental goals equips you with practical tools for achieving your learning goals.

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The time-honored tradition of defining career development exclusively in terms of promotions, moves, and title changes is dead. Beyond, between, and besides the climb up the positional ladder, there are many other ways that employees can—and want to—grow. However, many organizations still operate under the notion that promotions are the only option for career development, leaving employees disengaged, managers frustrated, and the business disadvantaged in its efforts to retain talent. The good news is that career development is so much more than promotions alone, and managers are in a powerful position to redefine career development and create positive results for their employees and their organizations in this area. In Promotions Are So Yesterday, Julie Winkle Giulioni offers you a new approach for developing your employees' careers and helping them thrive in a company when promotions are not readily available. Discover an easy-to-apply framework of seven alternative dimensions of development (contribution, competence, confidence, connection, challenge, contentment, and choice) that will engage your employees—dynamic opportunities for growth that are completely within your control as a manager. Promotions Are So Yesterday is filled with practical advice, nearly 100 questions to spark reflection and productive dialogue, and actionable templates and tools that managers can use with employees. Help bring your employees and your organization to even greater achievement with a strategy that will increase your employees' job satisfaction, performance, knowledge, and skills, and strengthen your organization's workforce.

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In The Facilitator's Guide to Immersive, Blended, and Hybrid Learning, veteran virtual trainer and learning tech maven Cindy Huggett examines the role of a facilitator in immersive, blended, and hybrid learning environments and offers cutting-edge insights and practical advice on how facilitators can make programs effective and engaging in any scenario. She introduces the new learning experience facilitator role and the skills needed to be successful in today's modern learning environments.While the shift from traditional classrooms to immersive learning experiences (including immersive, blended, virtual, and hybrid) has exploded in recent years, the supporting technologies and techniques have been evolving over time and now include augmented, mixed, and virtual realities. In fact, immersive, blended, and hybrid learning have become the new reality of training.Cindy walks you through how to facilitate in each of these modalities, covering everything from technology needs to suggested modifications of activities. Throughout, she includes real-life examples of immersive, blended, augmented, virtual, and hybrid learning in action. And she asks the vital question: Is facilitation necessary in immersive learning experiences? The answer is yes, but to be successful, facilitators need to update their skills on an ongoing basis.Prepare yourself with the skills and knowledge to navigate the new world of learning and to make your facilitation shine.

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Human Connection Affects Much More Than the Bottom LineOrganizations thrive when employees feel valued, the environment is energized, and high productivity and innovation are the norm. This requires a new kind of leader who fosters a culture of connection within the organization. An update to the popular first edition, Michael Lee Stallard’s Connection Culture, 2nd Edition, provides a fresh way of thinking about leadership and offers recommendations for how to tap into the power of human connection.If you want to begin fostering a connection culture in your organization, this book is your game-changing opportunity. Stop undermining performance and take the first step toward change that will give your organization, your team, and everyone you lead a true competitive advantage. Inspiring and practical, this book challenges you to set the performance bar high and keep reaching. In this book, you will learn how to: Foster a connection culture. Emulate best practices of connected workplaces like those at Pixar and Duke University’s men’s basketball team. Boost vision, value, and voice within your organization. The second edition introduces new, research-supported theories about loneliness and includes new examples.

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