Keynote Presentations

The following sessions delivered at conferences and special events are also available on a customized on-line or on-site basis. They can be included in your upcoming corporate meeting or organizational function and can also be expanded or combined to create 1/2 day or longer learning interventions.

A leading telecommunications organization was faced with the ongoing challenge of training all their new hires as quickly as possible. They were responsible for delivering their existing classroom program to their own internal sales staff, as well as the sales staff of their independent resellers. They needed a faster, cheaper way to train this diverse group of learners without sacrificing quality. It was also important to them to maintain a common look, feel and experience for all their learners and they believed that e-learning would not work for every topic.

Explore how this organization converted their existing new hire learning program to a modularized, blended learning program that increased retention and enhanced transfer of learning back to the job.

OBJECTIVES

  • Examine the requirements for successfully blending learning interventions.
  • Assess roadblocks to effective new hire learning initiatives
  • Discover solutions to tracking individuals who work in your distribution channel.
  • Discuss how the latest trends in learning technology are making blended learning even easier.

Learning Managers are intent upon helping employees develop their full potential while ensuring that their organizations meet stated goals and objectives. Today’s Learning Managers must do this while constantly adapting their structures, processes and styles to keep up with their evolving environment. This practical, engaging session will redefine the critical strategies and techniques that frame and guide learning initiatives.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify the forces of change and our evolving roles
  • Align  learning and performance with business needs
  • Examine the guiding principles of program design and implementation
  • Identify evaluation strategies for measuring learning effectiveness

Today’s Learning Professionals perform an endless juggling act; they balance helping individuals to develop their potential and ensuring that their organizations meet stated goals while constantly adapting their structures, processes and styles to keep up with their evolving environment. This session will explore and define the critical strategies that L&D needs, to guide learning initiatives and raise performance levels.

Objectives:

  • Explore the forces of change impacting Learning and Development’s evolving role
  • Align learning initiatives with business needs
  • Identify common characteristics of high performance learning organizations
  • Identify the competencies required of a Chief Learning Officer to lead successfully.

Are you an experienced instructor who is sometimes asked to co-facilitate learning sessions with a subject matter expert (SME)? The focus of this session is to strengthen your classroom management techniques by improving your communication, organizational and leadership skills.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this session participants will be able to:

  • Answer questions effectively so that they maintain their instructor credibility despite limited content expertise.
  • Include subject matter experts (SMEs) in a discussion while remaining the session leader.
  • Harness the energy of participants who may try to challenge their knowledge.
  • Maintain positive momentum during a learning session, while addressing a variety of challenges.
  • Apply best practices of instructor competencies.

The questionnaires we all use at the end of a learning program (Level 1 Evaluation) only capture the feelings of the learners about the event. You need more data to evaluate whether the learners have learned (Level 2 Evaluation) and that, as a result, their performance improves when they return to the workplace (Level 3 Evaluation). During this interactive and engaging session, you will explore how organizations can use effective assessments to confirm learning and performance improvement.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this session participants will be able to:

  • Define what makes an assessment reliable, valid, fair and legally defensible.
  • Identify higher-level processing questions that assess the learners’ ability to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluate.
  • Describe the formal and informal assessment required at the end of the learning program and back on the job (bridging period).

Get the tools, confidence and knowledge you need to tackle a real-world training situation by modeling the systematic approach to designing learner-centered training, including electronic job aids and a detailed support manual to help you apply what you learned once back on the job. You’ll explore:

  • Key activities for project planning, course design and material development.
  • How to select the right content to support performance improvement.
  • Tactics for immediate designing back on the job and several innovative shortcuts that reduce design time.
  • How to forecast design time and launch dates with confidence.
  • A variety of presentation, application and feedback methodologies.
  • Real-world examples of course design.

This is a highly-interactive 3-day program.

With people changing jobs frequently, with new technologies and a dynamic business environment, the demand for learning initiatives is enormous. However, these opportunities have led to difficulties in finding good qualified technical instructors. A successful strategy to overcome the shortage of good instructors is one of “grow your own.”

This session identifies the four key steps required to develop excellent  instructors and ways to overcome some of the challenges of developing that internal resource.

OBJECTIVES

  • Describe a four-level approach to developing excellent  instructors.
  • Identify the selection criteria for instructors.
  • Determine the requirements needed to train and develop technical skills.
  • Identify the requirements needed to train and develop excellent instruction skills.
  • Examine the steps necessary to coach and monitor the progress of your  instructors.

Managers and senior staff. are often required to coach a dispersed work group to high performance. Find out what it takes to get results using telephone, e-mail or collaboration software.

OBJECTIVES

  • Explain the impact of distance on the coach and the performer.
  • Adapt five key coaching skills to the remote environment.

The use of online learning—both self-directed and facilitated—continues to increase. As learning professionals, we need to ensure the promise of convenience and flexibility has not been at the expense of accountability, performance and results. This practical engaging session will define today’s drivers of e-learning and some of the challenges organizations have faced in implementing e-learning initiatives. You will examine the barriers to successful e-Learning initiatives as well as the reality of generational differences with respect to technology and the learning process.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this session participants will be able to:

  • Identify some early drivers of e-learning.
  • Examine the link between business needs and successful blended learning initiatives.
  • Discuss key challenges of implementing e-learning.
  • Identify ways to maximize learning, performance and results by meeting the needs of each generation of learners.

During this interactive session, you’ll explore the impact that technology has on specific design decisions. Ultimately, you’ll assess and choose the right technology for your own learning initiatives. You will:

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify the times during the design process when critical technology decisions should be made.
  • Explore the impact of technology choices.
  • Examine how technology selections impact the overall development effort.

Among the various roles of learning and business professionals is ensuring individuals acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the organizations’ business goals and objectives. Effective learning assessments let you measure, develop and retain your top talent while ensuring your learning and development resources are achieving the required learning, performance, and  results. This practical, engaging session examines the five keys of effective assessment-Alignment, Validity, Reliability, Transparency and Fairness-so that you’ll know what is required to create your own effective learning assessments.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify the purpose of an assessment.
  • Define what makes an assessment fair, reliable and legally defensible.
  • Align learning objectives with test items.
  • Describe the types of effective questions that assess learner understanding for synchronous and asynchronous  learning.
  • Identify higher-level questions that match and assess attainment of learning objectives (knowledge and demonstration assessment).
  • Describe the formal and informal assessment required at the end of the learning program and back on the job (bridging period).

Can new sales representatives in our industry be more effective after Initial Sales Training? Do we only need subject matter experts to deliver the program? Can we use a more active learning model to keep our learners engaged during the learning process? These answers are critical for the success of all our learning initiatives.

This hands-on, interactive case study will explore how one corporation re-vamped their Initial Sales Training to get better performance and results from their learning investment.
You will receive and share new ideas and strategies that can be successfully implemented to address your business needs.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify critical design and delivery activities required to enhance performance that supports business goals back on the job.
  • Apply a Systematic Learning Process that ensures learner engagement.
  • Identify effective strategies to be used by non Subject Matter Expert (SME’s) trainers, that ensures learner understanding.

“Most ideas about teaching are not new, but not everyone knows the old ideas” Euclid, c. 300 BC

It’s the simple truths that need the most practice. Take a fresh look at some of the basics: What is learning? How can we establish and maintain learner motivation? How do you differentiate between a presentation that is designed to inform and persuade and a presentation that has instructional intent? What methods, tools and techniques are available to you to make your sessions dynamic and engaging? What about the most visible media—yourself! Learn to speak and move effectively, and most importantly to listen so that you can respond to your learner’s needs for clarification and feedback. Anything new here? Depends on where you are coming from but we tend to agree with Euclid. On the other hand, it never hurts to engage with some simple truths.

OBJECTIVES

  • Integrate the principles of adult learning into course delivery.
  • Use learner-centered learning objectives.
  • Apply the Systematic Learning Process to course delivery.
  • Deliver the program so that participants are motivated to learn.
  • Implement a variety of instructional methods.
  • Use questions to ensure interactive instruction.
  • Test for understanding using questioning techniques.
  • Respond to questions using four different methods.
  • Give and receive constructive feedback.
  • Improve delivery skills through practice and feedback.
  • Plan continued self-development as an instructor.

Before getting the green light on your e-learning initiative, your leadership team wants the ROI (return on investment). This session helps you meet the challenges of determining the ROI. Highly interactive, you will also benefit from the use of a ROI job aid to help you back on the job.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify variables that impact e-learning costs.
  • Estimate the cost of a learning solution.
  • Compare costs of different learning solutions.
  • Calculate learning ROI.

It is more crucial than ever that learning and performance initiatives are not only effective but are tied to the business results. In this interactive session, participates will focus on making links between learning needs and those of the business as a whole. Further they will consider how businesses must assess the impact of learning, and look at how to maximize the affect of learning back on the job for continued organizational success. Participants will the have the opportunity to discuss content and work collaboratively during this session.

OBJECTIVES

  • Link learning issues to business needs.
  • Identify evaluation strategies for measuring learning effectiveness.
  • Integrate and reinforce learning transfer and post-learning support.

This session provides you with a foundation that consists of ways of adapting your instructional style to manage a positive learning experience. These techniques will help you assess a group and make adjustments accordingly.

OBJECTIVES

  • Analyze and adapt instructional style.
  • Determine the appropriate instructional sytle to meet the needs of the group.
  • Use effective job aids as tools to reinforce group process.

Examine ways to optimize your standard design work and create a roadmap that you can follow to complete design projects with tight deadlines.

OBJECTIVES

  • Adapt a standard design methodology to work in your environment.
  • Develop standards and templates to improve efficiency.
  • Optimize a design for your specific needs.

Performance coaching has become an important tool and key capability in supporting a high-performance oriented culture in many organizations. Effective and timely performance coaching can make the development and implementation of a business strategy more successful, especially in an environment that is faced-paced, competitive and uncertain. This session will introduce you to an ongoing process designed to help the Person Being coached (PBC) gain greater competence and overcome barriers to improve performance.

Objectives:

  • Define successful performance coaching that motivates and engages the PBC
  • Identify the role of the performance coach
  • Apply the techniques, tools and practices associated with performance coaching

Skillful use of questions is an important competency for trainers and facilitators. This session builds on the basic questioning skills that facilitators bring to their sessions and moves them to a new level of performance. You will explore different types of questioning techniques to encourage learning by your participants. You will focus on specific delivery and listening techniques that motivate participants to respond in depth.

OBJECTIVES

  • Create effective questions to assess learner understanding.
  • Use higher-level questions to match and assess attainment of learning objectives.
  • Create processing questions that assess knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,  evaluation, and creation.
  • Facilitate applications that demonstrate effective coaching and feedback skills during the debriefing and summary phase of a learning application.

Business leaders see effective learning as essential in the knowledge economy. Yet, learning often works outside the loop of the organization and cannot show real and tangible results. To maintain budget and focus, Learning and Development must be seen as having a positive impact on the organization’s bottom line. This session explores the critical elements for learning and Return-on-investment (ROI) strategies necessary for the learning organization’s success.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify common barriers to transfer of learning that effect ROI, and reasons for measuring ROI.
  • Link learning initiatives to job performance and business needs.
  • Determine the value of learning to: learners, Learning and Development managers, senior management.

High performance can only be sustained when people are truly engaged. Leadership involves inspiring others to willingly and consistently contribute their best efforts to achieve exceptional results. As leaders create alignment and shared commitment to business goals and objectives, HR and Learning and Development must work collaboratively with them to cultivate an environment in which individuals can achieve their potential through coaching.

Objectives:

  • Determine when coaching is the best performance improvement strategy
  • Identify coaching opportunities as well as the role of HR and L&D required to support the coaching process
  • List best coaching practices

Build your confidence in designing for the virtual classroom. Acknowledge its constraints, and use its power and flexibility to design effective learning initiatives.

OBJECTIVES

  • Be strategic in selecting learning initiatives suited to the virtual classroom.
  • Determine which components of the learning process take place before, during, and after the live session.
  • Design session activities to capitalize on the virtual classroom capabilities.

It is often said that only 10% of learning comes from formal learning events. As a learning professional, do you know where the rest of it happens in your organization? This session will demonstrate how to create a map of where and when learning occurs, whether it’s on the job, via social learning, or through other experiences. You will identify how to use the map for employee attraction, on-boarding, retention and continuous learning.

Objectives:

  • Define all the moments when learning may occur in an employee’s career (journey).
  • Describe the benefits of using the Learning Lane
  • Identify “people practices” to capture explicit learning moments to use as a learning blueprint.

In this time of increased competition, budget cuts and restructuring, certified training professionals stand out among their peers. Key certifications provide trainers with recognized credentials that secure their own position and create enhanced learning environments for their learners. During this session you will examine the critical components of CTT+ certification, and it’s value to the trainer, learners, and also to the credibility of the Learning industry as whole.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify the critical delivery skills for instructional certification.
  • Identify the real benefits of certification.
  • Examine the key components of CompTIA CTT+ certification.
  • Identify the necessary steps for instructional certification.
  • Identify content and performance expectations for certification.

Do you sometimes have to provide product training at client sites? This highly interactive session will both model and promote instructional excellence by incorporating adult learning principles, following a systematic learning process and practicing learner-centered instruction.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this session participants will be able to:

  • Adapt the program agenda for specific client needs.
  • Organize all the materials required for a successful learning session.
  • Create an effective learning environment for learners.
  • Prepare for last minute changes.
  • Deliver the program in a clear, concise, and engaging manner.

Training and performance initiatives are too important and costly to be started on a whim. While there is much written about the need for TNA, there is very little definitive information about actually conducting one. This session will focus on critical importance of performing needs analysis and examine key factor, issues and steps.

OBJECTIVES

  • Define training needs analysis (TNA).
  • Identify the importance of training needs analysis.
  • Identify the purposes and initiators of TNA.
  • Examine key TNA issues.
  • Identify the stages of analysis.

Validation of learning initiatives is key at major points during design and development. The use of focus groups can provide feedback essential to the success of the learning initiative. During this interactive session you will focus on the key elements of effective focus groups. How to plan and manage the group to achieve the relevant data you need to validate your learning programs.

OBJECTIVES

  • Determine how to plan an effective focus group.
  • Examine the purpose and objectives of focus groups as a validation tool.
  • Describe the phases of a focus group.
  • Plan to ask the right questions.
  • Explore key facilitation considerations of the focus group.

Learning Managers are intent on helping individuals develop their potential while ensuring that their organizations meet stated goals and objectives. Today’s learning managers must do this while constantly adapting their structures, processes and styles to keep up with their evolving environment. This practical, engaging session will redefine the critical strategies and techniques that frame and guide learning initiatives used by successful learning executives. It will examine common characteristics and distinctive features of High Performance Learning Organizations and the competencies required of a Chief Learning Officer to lead successfully.

OBJECTIVES

  • Examine the forces of change impacting the evolving role of the Learning Executive.
  • Identify the characteristics of High Performance Learning Organizations.
  • Identify the most pressing issues of today’s learning organizations.
  • Align learning initiatives with business needs.
  • Identify tactics and behaviors used by successful learning executives.

The answer to this question is more in your control that you realize! Explore how to improve the key relationship between designers and SMEs.

OBJECTIVES

  • Discuss what and how SMEs contribute to a project.
  • Examine challenges on both sides of the relationship.
  • Choose actions to reduce friction, improve communication and speed the process.