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Gary Had

Ghosts Gateway to Organizational Transformation

Lisa began her career in the financial services industry, where over the course of more than 20 years she led numerous learning and organization development functions, such as consumer sales, operations, mergers and acquisitions, and enterprise operations. Her last role with Wells Fargo Corporation, the fourth largest U.S. financial institution, was as head of executive and leadership development, where she was responsible for developing 22,000 leaders worldwide. After leaving financial services, Lisa joined Delhaize Corporation as the director of talent development, where she was responsible for creating and implementing the talent development strategies for a business with 1,200 stores and 76,000 employees across 11 states. In 2010, Lisa joined Ingersoll Rand as the director of global leadership development, where she designed and implemented a comprehensive global leadership development strategy, ensuring that Ingersoll Rand had effective and efficient development for frontline leaders and senior leaders, and a sustainable leadership pipeline for Ingersoll Rand’s growth. Lisa is now responsible for developing Ingersoll Rand’s strategic capabilities of operational excellence, strategy and market analytics, product management, innovation, and sales excellence. Lisa is also responsible for global learning, learning operations, and advanced learning technologies, as well as ensuring aligned learning strategies globally.

Lisa Knight Gary

Today’s economy is … challenging. On top of that, some organizations are still adapting to the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, like distributed teams, remote meetings, and hybrid offices. The need for strong leaders is more significant than ever in light of those obstacles.Strong leadership skills are essential for managers to build and lead engaged, innovative teams prepared to handle today’s challenges. And the key to being a strong leader might be different from what you think. In an ELB Learning webinar, Kristie DeLoreto, SVP, Client Solutions, and Laura Doerr, VP, Operations at ELB Learning, demonstrated why empathy matters in leadership.Empathy in leadership is the ability to relate to and connect with people to inspire and empower their lives. However, it’s important for leaders to understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. “It’s a very gray line,” said DeLoreto. “I think you either kind of understand it, or you need to practice to get better at being more empathetic or knowing the difference between those two.”Lack of Empathy vs. EmpathyYou may have worked in environments where the first second somebody has performance problems at work, the automatic response is to say, “You’re out.”That is an example of a lack of empathy. Unfortunately, this can be fairly standard in our business world. Someone walks into your office and says, “Your numbers have been down for the third quarter in a row. You have to pick up your numbers. Otherwise, I can’t guarantee what the future will look like.”How inspired is that person going to be at work the next day? On the flip side, here’s the empathetic approach.Someone walks into your office and says, “Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. Are you okay? I’m worried about you. What’s going on?”We all have performance issues. Maybe someone’s kid is sick. Maybe they’re having problems in their marriage. We don’t know what’s going on in their lives, which will affect their performance at work. Empathy means being concerned about the human being, not just their output. Most people don’t want to be bad performers; they want to do a good job. Leaders must remember this.Exercising empathy can help leaders build teams, hire employees, and work with clients.Building teams. According to a 2022 Gallup report, employee engagement has dropped over the last several years to 32 percent, and 17 percent of employees are actively disengaged. Recognizing and respecting your employees’ emotions—even the negative ones—is a powerful way to connect with them. Empathy lays the groundwork for mature leadership and connecting with your workers as people.Hiring employees. Empathy is also important in the hiring process. It gives insight into another person’s motivations and helps you judge whether a candidate is right for a position. “If you look at your candidate with empathy, you can see the person and the human they are. And if they’re going to bring that to the table and bring those right skills and the right fit culturally, and all those other pieces just by thinking about that,” said DeLoreto. Working with clients. By employing empathy in your conversations with clients or subject matter experts, you can better understand their pain points and get on the same page. Having an open, thoughtful, empathetic conversation—especially with difficult clients—where you align and get on the same page will improve your relationship. In addition, empathy allows you to understand how another person is likely to behave, which can be powerful in negotiations.Why Leadership Training Can HelpDuring the webinar, DeLoreto polled the audience, asking who had worked for a leader who lacked empathy at any point in their career. The response was a resounding 95 percent “YES.”Effective leadership training needs to include soft skills training such as empathy. While there will always be a demand for training on hard skills, at ELB Learning, we’re seeing more and more clients come to us for manager and leadership development.

Most Important Skill for Leaders Is Empathy—Here’s Why

Mary F. Slaughter is a seasoned corporate executive, human capital consultant, and published author. Her global enterprise roles have included chief learning officer, chief talent officer, global head of employee experience, chief diversity and inclusion officer, and chief human resources officer. In addition to consulting with Fortune 100 firms on their talent agendas, Mary has worked for such notable brands as AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Wachovia, SunTrust, Morningstar, The NeuroLeadership Institute, Deloitte, and EY. Her executive advisory roles have including the Association for Training Development (ATD) Board of Directors, Bersin by Deloitte’s Advisory Council, and The Conference Board’s Council on Learning, Development and Organizational Performance. She had also specialized in advising women CEOs leading start-ups in Silicon Valley.A frequent industry speaker, Mary has been featured in _Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, PwC’s strategy+ business, Fast Company, Quartz, Reworked, Talent Management, T+D, CLO, Selling Powe_r and Consulting magazines. Under her leadership, her teams have won awards from Bersin & Associates for leadership development, Brandon Hall for sales talent management, CLO Magazine for academic partnerships, Training Magazine’s Top 125, ATD BEST for exceptional enterprise learning and Consulting Magazine as one of the top management consulting firms for buildinga career.Mary resides in Atlanta with her amazing daughters who brighten her life every day.

Mary Slaughter

Founded in 1969 and based in Seattle, SightLife is the only global health organization working relentlessly to eliminate corneal blindness worldwide by 2040. With partners in more than 30 countries, SightLife strives to increase the number of corneal transplants performed each year to transform millions of lives around the globe. To reach this goal, the organization sets monthly targets for corneal donations and corneal transplants.In early 2012, SightLife yielded lower than usual donor and transplant cornea volumes in two separate months. SightLife’s chief operating officer, Bernie Iliakis, was unsure why the numbers had decreased, but he knew he needed to act to improve them.Wary of making major changes without knowing the root cause of the problem, Iliakis worked with SightLife’s operational team leaders to develop and implement a performance improvement initiative called Operation MAX.

SightLife: Eliminating Blindness Through Collaborative Performance Improvement

Founded in 1928, Maersk Line is now the world’s largest container-shipping company—no small feat in such a cutthroat industry. There are approximately 400 liner services in direct competition with one another. To survive, Maersk Line must attract new business constantly and retain its 59,000 customers worldwide.In 2013, when Maersk Line received a weak Net Promoter Score that indicated the company had 10 percent more detractors than promoters, its customer service excellence (CSE) team knew a change needed to be made. The team called in Cary Bailey-Findley, head of Maersk Line’s learning and organizational development (L&OD) team, to determine the root of the problem, and it became clear that the organization’s call center managers needed to better train their agents to deliver positive customer experiences.Working together, the L&OD and CSE teams created the CARE PROgram in 2014. Designed to improve the coaching and facilitation skills of Maersk Line’s customer service managers, the program would train the managers to develop their call center agents’ relationship management skills.

Maersk Line: Coaching Skills for Customer Service Managers

The year 2007 represents a watershed moment for Louisville-based Signature HealthCARE, a leading provider of long-term nursing care. Not only was it the year that a buyout of its predecessor, Home Quality Management, enabled the creation of the new company, but it was also when the company marked its transition to becoming, in its own words, a “learning organization.”For president and CEO Joe Steier, who wrote an award-winning doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania on the leaders-as-teachers concept, the importance of learning could not be understated. Yet despite establishing that culture early on, it became clear to Steier and other executives at Signature that they still faced challenges. In particular, they lacked a strong leadership development and succession planning program; without one, they could do very little to ensure the longevity of the leadership pipeline—a critical element for an organization with 143 locations in 11 states and nearly 24,000 employees.They weren’t alone. According to ATD research, only 14 percent of organizations describe their succession planning as effective, and less than half of all organizations have a formal planning process in place.The good news was that Signature didn’t have to start from scratch: The company already had a leadership program in place. However, it didn’t have a development program for new leaders, and the current program for experienced leaders needed an update. So Steier, along with Mary McNevin, chief learning officer, and Brian Muleller, community learning manager, sought to change that. One of the first things they stressed was a focus on data.

Signature: Using Data to Develop Leaders

In the morning, do you reach for a favorite coffee cup or select an attractive outfit to wear to a meeting? Did the sleek and modern design of your smartphone influence your buying decision? What about your go-to websites? Are you drawn to the ones that are attractive and well-designed rather than those that are cluttered and difficult to read? You would probably agree that the visual design of a product influences your choices and buying decisions. And you most likely know that people prefer to use attractive products rather than poorly-designed ones. But you may not realize the extent to which design can impact a person’s emotions, which in turn affects how people think and learn. A Common MisconceptionMany of us have a common misconception—fueled by outdated science—that emotions and cognition are two independent functions. At one time, researchers were certain that cognition and emotion operated as two separate systems. Underlying this theory was the idea that emotions and feelings were a lower order function as compared to higher order rational thinking.Current research has basically done away with these older theories. We now know that emotion and cognition are interdependent. Emotions are crucial for quickly assessing a situation and for making decisions. There is also much data to show that positive emotions are particularly important for learning, solving problems, creative work, and innovation. This is because positive emotions, in most circumstances, enable more flexible and adaptive thinking (Isen, 2002).Aesthetics Evoke Positive EmotionsAlthough instructional design typically focuses on the cognitive aspects of learning, a new line of research is now exploring the affective dimension too. Known as “emotional design,” this research looks at the ways a learner’s feelings and mood can influence motivation and learning results.One obvious way to influence people is through visual aesthetics, or the appreciation of an appealing design. Thus, the importance of visual design in learning is gaining in stature and will become increasingly important in years to come. Initial research has already shown that evoking positive emotions in learners through an attractive visual design (layout, colors, imagery, etc.) can help facilitate a successful learning experience (Plass et al., 2014).As a learning experience designer, this presents new opportunities for success. It means visual design is another channel for reaching your audience and influencing learning outcomes. It means that by making e-learning courses, training slides, and other materials visually appealing, you may be able to increase motivation and enhance the learning process by influencing the learner’s emotions.Some Ways Aesthetics Can Enhance LearningHere are four of the many ways that aesthetics can evoke positive emotions and in turn, facilitate learning.Enhanced Value. People make rapid judgements based on sensory input and are instantly attracted to aesthetically pleasing objects, while rejecting those that are unappealing. Learners quickly judge the materials they use in a similar way. Not only do well-designed materials increase the appeal of the learning experience, learners will be more likely to judge the materials as credible and valuable. And perceived value is an important factor to adult learners. Increased Motivation. When learners experience positive emotions (which can be evoked through an attractive visual design), it can foster intrinsic motivation or the desire to learn without an external reward (Heidig et al., 2015). In addition, with an attractive design, the learning tasks are perceived as less difficult when compared to a neutral design (Um et al., 2012). Avoidance of Negative Emotions. One factor of an appealing design is its usability or how easy it is to attain one’s intended goal. In multimedia course design, the goals will vary according to task—navigating, playing videos, completing exercises, and taking tests, for instance. A design with a pleasing aesthetic will have the simplicity required to enhance task completion. It will help users avoid the negative emotions associated with poor designs, such as frustration and dissatisfaction, therefore enhancing the learning experience. Perceived Ease of Use. In the groundbreaking book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (2005), author Donald Norman demonstrated the significance of aesthetics. He presented research showing that people perceive well-designed objects as user-friendly. In one experiment with an ATM machine, subjects perceived the attractively designed screen as easier to use than the unattractive screen design, even though both had the same buttons and functionality. Visual aesthetics enhanced the user experience. Considering how we are influenced and impressed by beautiful designs, it’s not surprising that aesthetics can have a significant impact on cognition and learning. By improving the visual design of e-learning courses, slides, learning portals, and similar learning tools, you can have a powerful effect on the learning experience. And isn’t that a common goal of learning professionals everywhere? For more visual design tips from Connie, check out her new book Visual Design SolutionsReferencesHeidig, S., Müller, J., & Reichelt, M.  Emotional design in multimedia learning: Differentiation on relevant design features and their effects on emotions and learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 44, 81–95, 2015. Isen, A. Missing in Action in the AIM: Positive Affect's Facilitation of Cognitive Flexibility, Innovation, and Problem Solving. Psychological Inquiry, 13(1), 57-65, 2002.Plass, J., Heidig, S., Hayward, E., Homer, B., & Um, E. Emotional design in multimedia learning: Effects of shape and color on affect and learning. Learning and Instruction, 29, 128–140, 2014. Um, E., Plass, J., Hayward, E., & Homer, B. Emotional design in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 485–498, 2012.

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