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A career federal investigator for nearly 20 years, Colin May oversees the training and leadership development for a large investigative component of a federal office of inspector general. He has extensive experience as a training, course developer, and organizational leader implementing change and performance management initiatives.As a professor at Stevenson University, May has taught graduate-level courses since 2010. His interest in leadership has resulted in conducting coaching, mentoring, and leadership training for a variety of government, law enforcement, and nonprofit organizations. May has presented on career development strategies, after-action reviews, lessons learned, and performance improvement for the Federal Improvement Team, the Performance and Strategy Working Group, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of the Treasury, and other interagency groups. He became a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) in 2006 and a Certified Cyber Crime Examiner (3CE) in 2018. In 2023, May was granted the National Certified Instructor (INCI) designation by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST).

Colin May

These tips from the August 2024 TD at Work can help you during difficult feedback conversations.

Can We Talk? 

Colin May explains evidence-based methods for giving and receiving real, usable, and helpful feedback  in this issue of TD at Work.

Feedback for Better Performance

April 2024 - TD Magazine

Take strategic ownership of your development.

Your Career, Your Call

ATD Research recently completed a comprehensive study on the use of coaching by managers. This summer, 575 learning leaders from a wide range of industries completed an online survey on the status of coaching in their organizations. We also had numerous conversations with insightful and passionate learning executives about how the learning function can prepare and encourage managers to coach.What exactly is coaching?The report, The Coaching Approach: A Key Tool for Successful Managers, defines coaching as a process characterized by a manager proactively listening to an employee, asking nondirective questions, and delivering actionable feedback. Ideally, coaching empowers the employee to take action toward performance and self-directed development.Not surprising, analysis of the survey responses found that more than six in 10 learning leaders agreed that coaching contributed greatly to improvements in each of these critical areas:communication between managers and employeesemployee engagementtransfer of skills to performanceproductivityspeed of skill development.However, despite their overwhelming belief that coaching is connected to higher organizational capacity, only about one-quarter of survey participants reported that their own organizations heavily incorporate coaching into their talent development portfolio. In fact, almost half reported that their organizations incorporated it only to a small percent or not at all.What does this mean?Why don’t more organizations emphasize coaching? And how does a learning leader in an organization that doesn’t emphasize coaching develop and champion managers-as-coaches?Some answers to the first question emerged when we reviewed the comments submitted by survey participants. Several learning leaders lamented the lack of support for coaching from senior leadership. Other learning leaders pointed out that both managers and employees may be resistant to coaching because it is seen as a corrective process for underperformers.One leader wrote, “Much more can be done to elevate the importance of coaching, but the term has a negative connotation of being for those individuals who need help in problem situations or for those in a rut.”To address the second question, ATD Research turned to learning leaders at organizations that have successfully launched formal coaching training programs. One learning executive we spoke to was Colin Pitcairn, the learning and development manager for Keller North America, which recently started training all managers as coaches.Pitcairn described how Keller’s senior leaders were introduced to the company’s coaching program through a clear, simple one-day workshop. He also echoed the importance of removing any stigmas or fear surrounding coaching: “The goal is to make coaching part of the vocabulary and not a secret to individual contributors. We don’t want coaching to be perceived as something that is ‘being done’ to them.”Want to learn more?I encourage everyone to join us for a free webcast hosted by ATD Research on November 18, 2014, at 12:00 p.m.. We will discuss the report’s findings and feature insights from Colin Pitcairn, Learning and Development Manager, Keller North America.The full research report, The Coaching Approach: A Key Tool for Successful Managers, is available for purchase online. Members have complimentary access to the whitepaper version of the report.

The Coaching Approach: Key Findings

 Much has been said about stakeholder management. But it is easy to miss opportunities to accelerate the level of engagement with your stakeholders—and to make sure they are the right ones, too. To help keep you focused on deciding how to engage and whom to engage with, here are seven stakeholder management principles that, if followed, will move you faster toward your goals.Identify all stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest (positive or negative) in what you are trying to achieve. Anyone who is going to win when you win, or lose when you win, is a stakeholder. Even if their loss is simply having to do their job a different way, they could be a very important stakeholder. This makes for a very large group of people.Focus on stakeholders who have the most power to help or hinder your goal. This narrows the field down to help you focus your engagement on the stakeholders who are most important. Remember: It is also a good idea to check out those stakeholders who have the greatest interest in your result—even if they don’t have the power, they might work quite hard on your behalf to make it happen (or not, as the case may be).Be very clear about what you want from each stakeholder. You may not necessarily communicate your wants directly with them, but at least you need to know specifically what you are shooting for.Connect stakeholders’ interests to your goals. To engage positive stakeholders, you need to connect their agenda with your goal, and disconnect with negative ones. Those with a positive interest in your success will work harder for you if they can see how it serves their purpose and helps them achieve their goals. Conversely, with negative interest, you really need to remove yourself from their radar.Increase your goal’s priority. To achieve higher engagement, you need to increase your goal's priority in the mind of positive stakeholders, and lessen it with negative stakeholders. Yes, this is a selling job. Curiously, you might gain quite a bit from proactively engaging those who have a negative interest. Rather than leave them guessing, show them how it doesn’t affect them.Don't always deal directly with stakeholders. Often, the most powerful people will be inaccessible (or at least not readily available) as they stride around the corridors of power. That doesn’t mean they are not a stakeholder; it’s just that you have to be more creative in your approach. Seek out others who influence them and engage with them instead. Then, these intermediaries can influence on your behalf.Attain enough agreement to secure goal. You don't have to get all stakeholders to agree on everything—just enough to secure your goal. As a result, how you define your goal is a nuance to consider. If you want to get a long-term sustainable result, you will need to get more stakeholders to agree than if your result is a simple one-off piece of work never to be repeated.There is one other principle to stakeholder engagement that seems a little too obvious to be mentioned in the list, but makes a fine point to end on: Stakeholder engagement is not a spectator sport. You have to get out there and do it. Don’t overthink. Instead, take the risk of overacting.

Seven Guiding Principles of Stakeholder Engagement

During its 2016 International Conference & Exposition held in Denver, CO, the Association for Talent Development (ATD), formerly ASTD, recognized organizations and individuals for their excellence and contributions across the talent development field. The event was held at the Denver Performing Arts Complex on May 23.“The ATD Awards Ceremony is an event dedicated to recognizing excellence,” said Tony Bingham, ATD President and CEO. “Individuals are recognized for their dedication to and passion for developing talent. Winning organizations demonstrate how learning can increase the performance and success of organizations worldwide.”Individual honorees included:Liz Wiseman – Champion of Talent Development AwardRuth Colvin Clark – Distinguished Contribution AwardJames Vesper – ATD Dissertation Award.On the organization side, ATD recognized Tencent Holdings Limited with the association’s Innovation in Talent Development Award. Rotary International received the CPLP Employer award.ATD also honored the 2015 Excellence in Practice Award winners, recognized for results achieved through the use of practices and solutions from the entire scope of workplace learning and talent development.Thirty-one awards and 32 citations were presented in 10 categories: career development, coaching and mentoring, diversity and inclusion, facilitating organizational change, integrated talent management, learning technologies, managing the learning function, organizational learning and development, performance improvement, and sales enablement. Awards are presented to organizations with proven practices that have delivered measurable and sustained results. Citations are awarded for those practices that show significant promise.The organizations selected to receive Excellence in Practice Awards are:Belle Worldwide Limited (a member of Belle International), Shenzhen, ChinaCardinal Health, Dublin, OhioChailease Finance Co., Ltd., Taipei, TaiwanDubai Police Department, Dubai, United Arab EmiratesEczacıbaşı Holding, Istanbul, TurkeyEmirates NBD, Dubai, United Arab EmiratesENN Group, Langfang City, ChinaHewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, CaliforniaIBM, Armonk, New YorkITU AbsorbTech, New Berlin, WisconsinJohnsonville Sausage, LLC, Sheboygan Falls, WisconsinMinor Food Group PLC, Bangkok, ThailandMTR Corporation Limited, Hong KongSAP SE, Walldorf, GermanyState Grid Corporation of China, Beijing, ChinaTanfeeth, Dubai, United Arab EmiratesTata Consultancy Services, Mumbai, IndiaTeknosa İç ve Dış Ticaret A.Ş., Istanbul, TurkeyTencent Holdings Limited, Shenzhen, ChinaTurk Ekonomi Bankasi (TEB), Istanbul, TurkeyTürk Telekom, Altındağ, TurkeyVestel Ticaret A.Ş. Müşteri Hizmetleri, Yunusemre, TurkeyWestern Union, Englewood, ColoradoZurich Insurance Company Ltd., Zurich, SwitzerlandA complete list of Excellence in Practice award and citation winners can be found on the ATD website.About ATDThe Association for Talent Development (ATD), formerly ASTD, is the world’s largest association dedicated to those who develop talent in organizations. These professionals help others achieve their full potential by improving their knowledge, skills, and abilities.ATD’s members come from more than 120 countries and work in public and private organizations in every industry sector. ATD supports the work of professionals locally in more than 125 chapters, international strategic partners, and global member networks.

ATD Recognizes Excellence in Talent Development (May 2016)

Employee engagement is one of the most talked about issues in government today. Amid falling engagement levels across government, and a presidential mandate to improve them, managers and agency leaders are taking a hard look at what works and what doesn’t when it comes to boosting morale. The Social Security Administration (SSA) may have a few answers to that question. The agency’s talent development policies have made it one of the few in government that can boast the highest levels of employee engagement—all while continuing to serve the nearly 59 million Americans who depend on more than $863 billion in Social Security benefits. At the helm of that effort, SSA Commissioner Carolyn Colvin has prioritized training and leadership development to keep engagement levels high despite increasing workloads, decreasing resources, and high attrition. In an exclusive interview with ATD’s The Public Manager, Colvin identified three major factors that have contributed to SSA’s success when it comes to cultivating a culture of engagement. First, training is a top priority for the agency, said Colvin, noting that giving an employee the tools they need to feel confident in their ability to do their job is one important first step towards creating engagement. “Even in this austere budget environment, SSA emphasizes training and development. It’s a natural tendency to cut training when you have budget challenges, but I think that’s the absolute last thing that should be cut,” said Colvin. Second, SSA closely monitors engagement surveys and follows up with departmental action plans designed to identify and address factors that could hurt engagement. “When we get the results of the federal engagement survey, we break it down into its various categories, and each agency component is required to develop a plan of action to raise those engagement scores,” she said. Colvin added that an important follow-up step SSA takes is to actively communicate what the agency is doing as often as possible. And the third way SSA addresses engagement is to take a close look at how, and where, its employees work. With employees in offices around the country, addressing talent needs by moving competent managers and other workers with specialized skills may not be a viable option. Instead, said Colvin, one way to promote growth and prevent attrition may be to make the workplace itself more flexible. “SSA is really implementing telework, and we’ve had a lot of good experience with that strategy. I hope it can give our workforce some flexibility,” Colvin said. Read the full interview with Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin in the debut digital issue of The Public Manager in September. Not a TPM subscriber? Sign up here to receive TPM, the only journal of its kind—an opportunity for public managers and executives to write and share ideas about critical public management issues.

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