#workshopinsight

Recent neuroscience suggests that slowing down and writing (rather than typing) fires up the brain, improving long term memory retention and increasing our ability to generate ideas. Scientists think that’s not only because we’re less distracted by notifications flying across the screen, but because writing by hand requires a deeper level of neurological processing. (You can read more about that research here and here.)

Since writing allows us to better comprehend and remember our thoughts, we feel it’s important to support those brain functions with the right tools. That’s why we are picky about our workshop materials. Our worksheets are created in-house by our content writers and designers, and we print everything on eco-friendly, recycled paper.

To print our new Frontier Academy notebooks, we’ve teamed up with Scout Books. Based out of Portland, Oregon, Scout Books crafts high quality custom notebooks right here in the USA using 100% recycled paper and Earth-friendly, vegetable-based inks.  Their shop even runs on renewable energy. (You can read more about Scout Books here.)

Don’t they look great?

First, check your mindset. Training isn’t something your people do on their own. They shouldn’t be solely responsible for their own growth immediately after being introduced to a new tool, concept or mental shift. Instead, recognize that you play a critical role in creating the environment they’ll need to change and develop.

Why? It takes between 21 and 254 days for individuals to form new behaviors. It’s a bumpy journey, one that requires reinforcement, focus, and nurturing. What you’re really doing when you form a behavior is replacing the old way of doing things.  And that’s super painful. The old way has worked for so long that you’re naturally going to fight the new way, consciously and subconsciously. Which is what the people on your team will do, too.    

Which begs the question: so what do you do to get the most out of training, exactly?   

Before the Training

A checklist you are likely familiar with.

1. Identify the skill gap or area for growth.  (We can help if this is a struggle, as it often is.)

2. Source the content and learning partner, internal or external.

3. Plan the implementation and iron out those logistics mentioned earlier.  

During the Training

Here’s where the real work gets started, and questions are important.

 1. Listen.  

Once you begin, and activities unfold between your team members, get ready to hold back.  Because you have so much invested—both in terms of resources and your own energy—you will have an almost unfettered desire to re-direct conversational tangents or assert a rationale for a current process.  You will want to tamper skepticism when it arises to anything new.  Don’t.  Instead, ask yourself, “what is the underlying issue?”  Provide enough space to find this.  

 You can always ask a clarifying question as the conversation unfolds, or afterwards, at lunch or over a phone call.  When your team expresses concerns or communicates their reasons for pushing back, listen: They are about to give you something valuable. Think of it as critical intel on the roadblocks you can help remove for your team to move forward. Shut this communication process down, and you’ll have no clue what needs attention in your organization’s environment. 

Note: if you are not attending a session in person, find a surrogate to do this for you—someone that you trust to give you their honest observation, even when—especially when—that means hearing something they know you won’t want to hear.  

2.  Identify one item your people need most.  

Because you’ve listened, you can now clarify the needs being expressed.  And here’s where your judgement and experience come in. What, truly, is going to fuel your people? What is in their way regarding the new practice everyone wants to see in action? Is it time? Clearer direction from you? Access to different information? More accountability between business units? Find these things, then, pick one as a place to start. Keep your notes on the others for future consideration.  

After the Training

Here’s where it gets tangible.

1.  Require commitments of your team and, most importantly, of yourself.  

Start by sharing the primary item you’ve identified that your team needs—this can be done in 3-5 minutes. Then, most importantly, tell your team what you are committing to do about it. That could mean a commitment to a new sales-pitch flow, creating protected time for people to spend on a new practice, or socializing a new feedback practice. Each individual will need to do this, too. Ideally, everyone will self-identify what they need to work on so that they are personally invested. If, for example, you run your team through a workshop like Insight Selling, some people will need to work on how they structure their pitch and others will need to work on re-calibrating their collateral. Allow enough space for your team to identify an area for change or improvement. Capture these goals and make time for regular and shared reflection on the progress between leadership and team members.  

 2.  Adopt a new mechanism for catalyzing the progress and use it intentionally.

Here’s how I’ve seen this done after a workshop with Frontier Academy.  Start by picking a tool to drive a desired behavior. Think of this tool as your small, burning ember.  If you’re not personally attending the session, this is where your surrogate becomes most important.  They’ll need to recommend this piece and you’ll need to advance their recommendation.  This could look like a feedback tool, a new formula and process for innovation, that new sales pitch flow that everyone will adopt, or even shared expectations regarding meetings management.  Now, allow that tool to do the building it is capable of.  Use the language and vocabulary that supports what you’ve selected.  Do this regularly, and do this yourself.  Push opportunities into meeting agendas.  Where else does your team think this tool needs to exist?  Work with them to put it there.   

3.  When you see effort, reward it.  

As you move forward you may see a furrowed brow or hear someone asking for help, or maybe you’ll witness early morning arrivals to invest more time into the project at hand.  When you see this, well before the final product is shared, reward the effort.  A thank you in person, a card to the same effect, calling someone out at a team meeting, or even stopping into their office with ten bucks and a walk to grab some coffee around the corner will nurture the effort—and progress—being made.  If someone identifies a mistake and works toward understanding what happened to learn from the misstep—it’s critical that you reward that, too.  

4.  Share what you’ve learned—the good, the bad, the key takeaways.

Find a time and format for sharing your own learning—this will model the type of sharing you are looking for from your team.  This is can be as simple as sharing small anecdotes about what happened when you used the tool you committed to.  What were the bumps?  What worked well?  Great.  Now, what’s your team got to share?  This reflection both demonstrates there has been effort made and generates shared engagement with the new behavior(s) you’re after.  Without this follow-through and digestion, that ember from several weeks ago will die.  Keep it appropriately oxygenated.  

The good news about all of this is, really, that it won’t consume epic amounts of time.  Instead, you can reflect on the pieces above as you move through the process, adjusting and tuning as you go.  The hard work is re-configuring what you are doing right now when the topic of training comes up.  Print this out, put some time on your calendar to take your own notes, and you’re on your way.  

And if you need additional support, we’re here to help.

If you’re ready to start a conversation about how Frontier Academy’s workshops can help your team engage with one another on a deeper level, here’s what you need to know:

Our content is based on tons of research but also our personal experiences, observations, and your feedback. So we thought it’d be fun to show you how your feedback has helped us improve (and given us a few laughs).  How we don’t take it for granted. How we hope it builds your faith and trust in us to continue as your partners moving forward. My point is, we hear you and appreciate you. We’re listening.

Below are real comments from workshop participants over the last year and the subsequent actions we’ve taken as a result. Because we know we’re also humanly imperfect and could always do better.

Q: What would make this course more effective? A: More beer!

Frontier: Who doesn’t want a beer after a long day of class?! While we can’t pass you a brew on a break, you can always keep in touch with us after a workshop and set up time to grab a drink and talk more about what’s going on in your world. Ardent, Three Notch’d, The Veil, Isley, Blue Bee, Hardywood… they’re practically in our backyard, and we love to support local. This comment has me thinking of a new Happy Hour series, “Get a Beer with Frontier.”

A: Less sitting. My ass needs some (customer) service.

Frontier: Well, we don’t do massages, but as we truly love our standing desks, we can understand your desire to stand more throughout the day. This comment has me thinking about ways we can incorporate our standing bar tables into the workshop space to offer participants the option to move about throughout the day.

A: Less worksheets.

Frontier: We hear this feedback a LOT. But hear us out: We give you all that paper for a reason. Writing helps you retain and focus on ideas and information, so when you leave you can’t possibly say you didn’t learn something. It also gives you a reference for later on. Because, you know, we want you to use these things again. But this does have me thinking that for some of our less complex activities, we could skip the extra paper and just let you use the notebooks we give you instead.

A: More Michael Jackson.

Frontier: As one who prides herself on a good mix tape, you have my word that we will revisit our break time tunes to include some more MJ… and other genres to shake it up a bit. Hip-hop? The 90s? Bieber? Why not. (Don’t worry, no Neil Diamond.)  

If you’ve got some more feedback you’d like to add to this mix, we’re here to listen. Always. Just drop us a line.

In any given week, our team hosts multiple workshops and travels around the world for our clients’ specific needs. We really believe every workshop is unique, important, and special. But we wanted to mark our 100th open enrollment workshop because these open workshops bring together professionals from countless walks of life to learn alongside one another. And we wanted to mark the occasion in some way that supported our company’s core values (which, incidentally, also happens to include cupcakes).

Soon it hit us: Why not celebrate in some way that also acknowledged what we had just taught the group?

In our Influencing Stakeholders workshop, we teach that practicing the habit of gratitude is a great way to become a more influential person. We start by sharing a 2011 TED Talk from Shawn Achor, CEO of Good Think, Inc., called “The Happy Secret to Better Work,” which suggests that the more positive we are, the more successful we will be.

Then we make our case: If you want to be more influential, you’ve got to be a nicer, happier person. No one wants to work with a jerk, right? Of course not. People are more willing to collaborate with you—which gives you more room to influence—when you are have a positive presence. One way you can create this presence is by practicing gratitude. So we challenge our participants to show gratitude by getting more involved in their communities and noticing daily the small things in their lives they are grateful for.

Building on this idea, we decided to take this mini-challenge a step further by challenging everyone in the room to collectively complete 100 acts of gratitude. Here’s how it would work: The 11 participants, along with the two Frontier Academy facilitators, would spend the next seven days doing as many acts of gratitude as possible. If we reached 100, then Frontier Academy would donate $50 to one of three charities on behalf of each participant.

Here are a few ways this group of amazing workshop participants stepped up and made their communities, and themselves, better:

Letting someone cut in line at the post office—during the holiday rush, no less

Contacting one person a day to let them know the contribution they make to the team

Taking time to meditate 

Donating to charity on behalf of another person

Every day, writing down three things to be grateful for 

Buying gifts for a family in need during the holidays

Thanking a long-time mentor for their support

Showing gratitude to a colleague for the consistent feedback they provide

Providing public praise for great work

Reminding someone that they appreciate them for who they are

Together, we hit our goal: 100 collective acts of gratitude. Because of these participants, Frontier Academy was able to match donations and give back to our community, all while starting a new tradition in the process.

So in the spirit of continued gratitude, here’s what we’re really grateful for: the opportunity to help people everywhere build new and better habits every day. 

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If you’re ready to start a conversation about how Frontier Academy’s workshops can help your team, here’s what you need to know: