Why Learning Objectives?Why go to the bother of writing learning objectives for your training program? Our business sees many programs that simply wear participants out by being ?nine miles long and one inch thick? with little opportunity to engage learners and practice skills and in the end serving no useful purpose for the organization paying for the program. These programs have a heavy emphasis on what needs to be ?taught? with little regard to what participants will need to be able to do when they get back to their job. What is missed in a lot of cases is a focus on writing effective learning objectives that are tied to real organizational needs.What is a ?learning objective?? What is called a ?learning objective? is variously named ?learning outcome? and ?learner objective?. Sometimes the term ?student? or ?participant? is used in place of ?learner?. In any case, a ?learning objective? is what the training participant is intended to have actually learned at the conclusion of the training program. ?Learning? encapsulates new beliefs, new attitudes and new practical skills and the unlearning of outmoded beliefs, attitudes and skills.What are the benefits of defining and articulating a well-constructed learning objectives statement? I see the benefits for your program as including the following:? Learners can focus more easily on what is important to their actual workplace performance.? Learning objectives form a solid basis for sequencing and chunking program content and activities.? Participants? managers can be assured that training addresses actual organizational goals.? Learning objectives determine the relevance of program design features and content, allowing trainers to weed out easily what are just peripheral sideshows.? Trainers can better focus on the key deliverables of the training program, without being too sidetracked to the detriment of the program.? Learning objectives allow learner tests to be checked for relevance and completeness.The writing of well-specified learning objectives plays a central role in any training program. Formulating and documenting such objectives serves to guide the activities of all of the people involved in its development and delivery; course designers and developers, participants? managers, trainers and the learners themselves.The Learning Objectives ProcessHow do you write effective learning objectives? As with all good outcomes, I see the trick as following the right process. Effective training program needs analysis and high-level design consists of four basic steps. These four steps are:Determine Content, Delivery Mode and Schedule^^Write Learning Objectives^^Derive On-the-job Behaviors^^Determine Organizational ObjectivesThe first step involves working with client managers to determine the organization’s purpose for the training. This purpose should be stated in organizational terms and not in training terms. In Step 2, the organizational unit’s objectives are expanded in order to clarify what it is employees will need to be able to do following the training for the organizational unit to be able to achieve its stated objectives. The behavior statements documented in Step 2 are then converted into the language of training in Step 3. Step 3 culminates in a document specifying behavior based learning outcomes for the program. In the following Step 4, the designer determines the basic course design and delivery parameters.Step 1: Identify Organizational Unit ObjectivesIn this first step, determine clearly who are your clients (CEO, department manager, project manager, etc). Review the appropriate organizational documents (strategic, project and operational plans, etc) and conduct joint meetings with your clients. Ensure that the objectives agreed with your clients are SMART objectives; that is, that they are? Specific? Measurable? Achievable? Relevant? Time framedStep 2: Determine On-the-Job BehaviorsIn this next step, determine what behaviors participants must demonstrate back in the workplace following the training for the organization?s objectives to be achieved. To do this effectively, ensure that your behavior statements:? are directly linked to the organization?s objective,? contain active verbs, and? refer to actions that are publicly observable.To stay in touch with reality, gather a cross section of stakeholders to thrash out what behaviors are really required. At the least, invite client managers, subject matter experts and prospective training participants. At this stage, you will need to work hard to make sure that stakeholders stick with what participants are required to do back on the job, and not what they will need to know.Step 3: Write Learning ObjectivesOnly now that you and the organization are clear on business objectives and workplace behaviors are you ready to actually write the learning objectives. Translate the behavior statements formulated in the previous step into learning objective statements of the form:At the conclusion of XYZ program, participants should be able to:anticipate ?consider ?create ?Make sure that the learning objectives are learner centered and not centered on what the trainer or program will do or provide or cover.Now add the standard to which training participants are expected to perform back on the job. A racing car driver, for example, is expected to drive at a higher skill level than an ordinary road user. Also now add the working environment that the participants are expected to perform within and their available resources back on the job. Will they work autonomously or within a team? Will they have access to user manuals, or will they be expected to remember the process steps?These now constitute the terminal learning objectives - the highest-level outcomes specified for the entire training program. Many of your programs will span several modules or sessions. For each of these discrete components, now formulate enabling learning objectives. To do this, think about what it is the training participant will need to learn to be able to satisfy each terminal objective.For each enabling learning objective, make sure you consider each of Bloom?s three learning domains:1. cognitive?includes knowledge, beliefs and reasoning,2. affective?includes values, feelings, attitudes and motivation, and3. psycho-motor?includes physical movement and co-ordination.Once again, make sure that you use active verbs to describe the outcomes. By writing learning objectives that are both meaningful and practical, you will enhance your credibility with your clients and improve your effectiveness as a training designer.2006 ? Business Performance Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Summary:Sales organisations of all types spend a huge amount on training their sales people each year. Research shows, however, that most training has little impact in the long term. Here we look at what needs to be done to make sure training works - and the new generation of training approaches.If you?ve ever wondered why your sales teams struggle to consistently achieve sales targets despite investment in sales training, development and management, you?re not alone.Despite their best efforts most organisations are failing to achieve their full potential from sales training due to four main reasons;1. Most sales training has at best a short-term effect on performance because of a failure to consistently implement, apply and reinforce what is learnt.2. Sales managers (often top sales achievers themselves) lack a proven methodology to be truly effective at getting top performance from their sales team.3. Salespeople often find it difficult to maintain the correct balance between prospecting, presenting, negotiating, closing and client nurturing which can lead to sales ?feast and famine? and lost opportunities.4. Sales leaders and managers find it hard to run sales meetings and sales training sessions that are relevant, motivational, and impactful for both highly experienced and inexperienced salespeople at the same time.So how do sales leaders address these critical issues of skill and knowledge if ‘traditional’ sales training approaches simply can’t offer the level of flexibility and interaction needed to embed learning? The answer lies in designing and providing a new generation of development toolkits which sales managers can use with their teams. These toolkits can give the manager total flexibility to address the specific development needs of his or her team based on the situation at the time. In addition, they should provide the opportunity for a high degree of team interaction as well as best practice learning materials which can be delivered in a fun, energetic and bite sized fashion.Global oil giant, Shell, amongst others, is at the forefront of using such systems to empower their field sales managers using a new system called ‘The Sales Activator?’. The creators of The Sales Activator? say it has been specifically designed to address the critical shortcomings of ‘traditional’ sales training. It’s a self contained system which gives the sales manager the tools, framework and learning content to take charge of their sales team’s development on an ongoing basis.Commenting on Shell’s experience of using The Sales Activator? to overcome the weaknesses of sales training, Elza Muller - Learning and Development Manager at Shell - says; “People learn without realising and get the added benefit of learning from additional input from delegates who have years of experience. It can be done as and when there is a team meeting - no extra resource is required. The coaching role can be shared across teams, within teams spreading the skill of coaching [and] the business manager is present dealing with the system and context issues around training.”

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When I think of an executive I think of powerful looking man in a sharp suit making large business deals with international big-wigs. I think of bank accounts in the Carribean and 2nd homes in Italy. I think about the dark limousines and the power ties and golfing with the president or a powerful person in Congress. I think of Martini?s and big cigars and lawyers and secret memos.Why do I think all these things about being an executive? Well the movies of course and why not believe the movies? They are real right? Well as usual that statement couldn?t be further from the truth. Being an executive involves way more than all of this and often doesn?t involve those things mentioned above. So what does being an executive really involve? Well I want to talk about that and do some realistic guessing (I have never been one myself) about what it takes to be an executive.The life of an executive is actually a life that is filled with sacrifice. Often times people have sacrificed many, many hours working hard in a cubicle, burning the midnight oil just to get ahead in the rat race. Once they are ahead there work doesn?t slow down it is increased because you are constantly on the go in order to maintain you place of power.Power is an interesting word too. You have power as an executive but it is the power to move a company in the right direction. You don?t really have the power to move the company in the wrong direction as an executive because as soon as the boat begins to lean the board of directors or whatever you want to call the governing body of a company will be on your heels hounding you until you either get the company going back in the right direction or resign.The vacations in the Caribbean and the golf outings with important people are kind of misleading as well because you are not doing those things as often as a normal employee may have the opportunity because you don?t have time. You are such a slave to work as an executive that vacations and time spent with family are wishful thinking.It is these two last things that are perhaps the biggest argument against becoming a big-shot executive in a large company. That is being a slave to your watch/day planner and being a stranger to your family. Life after all isn?t worth living if you can?t enjoy the fruit of your labor and form meaningful relationships with people that love you.

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Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria. Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:pays attention to their work provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop judges their performance objectivelyMost Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.AppraisalsTraditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet their boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis. Your appraisal form is “the” document that is held on file as a record of how good, bad or indifferent you might have been. For some, this may be the only time in the year that they receive plaudits and even these may be guarded comments because of the close link in everyone’s mind between appraisal and pay rise despite repeated denials. Too much praise might raise expectations of a large pay increase. Poor performers, however, frequently receive far more than their fair share of management attention throughout the year.If paying attention to our employees is one of the greatest motivators, when did we decide that high performers need less motivation than poor performers? Of course they don’t! Many of the top performing companies in the world have introduced regular coaching and mentoring sessions to supplement the appraisal system and to give all employees a regular, sometimes fortnightly, opportunity to talk about their job, their performance against their objectives, their motivation and their aspirations.CoachingOften you can see situations where managers act as spectators. Their behavior plus the words they use along with their body language would not be out of place at a soccer or baseball match. They would be sitting in the stands eating a hot dog, throwing down a beer and belting out criticism at the players (their staff) on the field. There is almost no connection between the manager and the staff other than they just happen to be sitting in the same building.This image is used to point out the profound difference between the ‘manager as coach’ and the ‘manager as spectator’. A coach works individually with players, helping them to overcome setbacks and obstacles to progress forward. They know and understand how their players respond to different types of motivation and how their family life and health impact their performance.The majority of coaching is done on a very frequent basis. You simply don’t wait for the big match to deliver your advice to the team in the way the ‘manager as spectator’ does. You work very closely with everyone in the team, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your defense and your strikers before they are tested under pressure.

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Life is a hierarchy, no matter what guys like Lenin want you to believe and so we all grow up wanting in some way or another to be an executive of a huge corporation. But the question is ?Is that really what we should aspire to in life? Is it what it is cracked up to be?? Well I am going to take the position that, no that it not what many of us really want if we understand what is involved?even the high pay and in the next few paragraphs I will tell you why.Being an executive sounds good because all we think about is the millions of dollars in salary as well as the incredible stock options, the power, and the private jets and vacation homes in the Caribbean. But what is it really like to be a CEO in a huge company?Well I am just ranting really, but trying to be way more objective than most people when they think about this, that it totally sucks. That is unless you like the high pressure life, on a steady diet of antacids and sedatives; working round the clock in a constant and wearying struggle with jet lag; never having time to be with family and friends?no support to counteract the demands; under constant scrutiny about how you live your life and your business ethics; always having to compete with others to maintain power; under tremendous temptation to look for your satisfaction in more ?convenient? venues; never able to relax; never able to enjoy your salary; working when you should be playing like on the endless golf ?breaks? with clients; and the list could go on for a while. Being an executive looks good but doesn?t feel good.These troubles do add up too. Not many CEOs make it for very long any more and I would be willing to bet some serious cash (if I had enough that I wouldn?t worry about losing it) that when all is said and done they may want to have done things differently in the end. An executive may say to themselves, I don?t think I would have worked so hard for something that was so worthless and caused me more pain than true satisfaction. And look where I am, no further ahead in this world with things that matter to me like my wife and my kids and the things that I enjoy. Basically I have made it easier to get another job like that doing all of those things that I have grown to hate.As you can see I don?t think I would become an executive if the opportunity dropped into my lap. In fact I might encourage all the executive officers out there to sit down and really think about their objectives in this life. After all do you live to work or work to live?

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

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