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Mark Ruth is director of research and education for the International Coach Federation (ICF). Since joining ICF more than a decade ago, Mark has been committed to developing and expanding the ICF’s presence as an industry thought leader. His department has unveiled more than a dozen global industry studies on the coaching industry since 2006. Prior to joining ICF, Mark served as Market Research Analyst for the National Tour Association, where he managed an economic impact study of the North American group travel industry.

Mark Ruth

Recent research explores how helpful coaching and formal training are with achieving change management goals.

Helping Leaders Embrace Change Through Coaching

As part of leadership training, Odyssey Teams has found a way for people to discover the best in themselves. Bestselling author Mark Miller discusses how the best leaders are the ones who are committed to lifelong learning, and the band U2 has qualities and traits that should be emulated in leaders. Read about these topics and more in this month's LX Briefing.Take LXB with you—click on the PODCAST button in the upper right hand corner of selected features for a handy audio version of the articles. Every executive needs to be concerned about developing people. This is the last copy of Learning Executive Briefing. You won’t be losing the great articles that have been a part of this publication; they are just moving online to the Senior Executives Community of Practice Page.Ruth P. WeissEditorruthweissart@bellsouth.net

May 2012 LX Briefing is Live

**Gail GriswoldManager, Learning and DevelopmentNeustar**The challenge Neustar faced was how to create an onboarding experience for new hires. The company needed a solution that was more than an onboarding “orientation.”  Instead, it required an onboarding “experience” that better conveyed the essence of Neustar to new employees in a fun, accessible, and innovative way.In February 2013, Neustar’s Reality TV Training Program was born as a blended learning approach. The show followed the journey of five new hires and their experience of working at Neustar. Gail Griswold, manager of learning and development, and her team, created the training program. Q:  Why did you feel that Neustar needed a new onboarding experience?  What did you find lacking in the existing one? A:  Like most companies, Neustar had a typical onboarding process. Employees sat in a room and watched a four-hour Power Point presentation with an HR business partner or someone from talent management. While it served the purpose of communicating key information, it didn’t convey who Neustar is. We are a company that supports innovation and forward-thinking. We are passionate and love what we do. A program where you sit and watch a PowerPoint presentation didn’t really convey that.  In the new onboarding program, new hires would experience what it is like working at Neustar, by watching current employees in their day-to-day roles. More important, we were able to create a program that would be scalable. Regardless of where someone sat in the organization (their function or location), everybody had the same experience and could relate to what others were going through by watching the reality TV program.  Q:  Can you explain how you and your team came up with the idea of a reality TV series and describe the program. A: The concept allows new hires to experience what it’s like to work at Neustar by watching video vignettes of five new hires. It’s a scripted reality show with each character representing a different persona in a different location. One is an engineer with several years of experience; one is just out of college; another is a manager; and another is someone transitioning into a new career at Neustar. The personas were created so that new hires could relate to one or more of the main characters. We follow each workers journey as they learn what they need to know to start their careers with Neustar.  The episodes contain a blend of video vignettes and e-learning components. Employees are able to learn at their own pace and have the opportunity to practice what they learn, as well as print key take-aways for reference as they become more familiar with the organization. The episodes also include commercials that feature different departments within Neustar. These commercials spotlight departments, allowing new hires to learn about a department in a two-minute commercial. The program consists of 12 episodes: nine are required and three are on-demand.  We ask that the new hires complete the episodes at their own pace during their first five weeks on the job. They can log in to our learning management system, click on an episode, and watch it. At the end of every episode we provide optional tasks and assignments. Q:  How did you come up with the idea of a reality TV training program? What was the impetus for that vision? A:   We definitely wanted to incorporate video into our project. In an age of YouTube, we believe that people are highly engaged by video done correctly. With reality TV, everyone can relate to something. Whether it’s a cooking show, a competition like Survivor, or even a drama, everyone tunes in for one reason or another. Whether our new hires are relating to a character in our program or to the experience, we felt our employees would be better able to learn on their own journey.  We did some research and we didn’t come across a similar program from another company. Q: What were the most important elements you wanted to include in the reality TV programs?  A:  We asked ourselves, what do new hires need to know to be successful during their first month on the job? We wanted to focus on the vision, culture, and mission of Neustar. We wanted to share everything they would need to start a successful career—from career growth, to goal setting, to performance management, to individual development plans. We also focused on sharing some key information about Neustar’s services, in an easily digestible way. For instance, one thing we shared with new hires was the goal-setting process. We walked them through the process of what it means to set goals at Neustar so they knew how to measure their success. We showed what it’s like for a new employee to go through this process. We showed one of our actors partnering with someone in the company, to demonstrate how we are one team with one mission. This episode also contained an e-learning component that walked through the goal-setting process.     Q:  What were some of the challenges you faced?A:  Everything was done in-house. Of course, we had to get buy-in, so before we moved forward with the project, we identified the main stakeholders, such as our business partners within HR. Those are the people who understood what Neustar employees needed, what they were asking for, and what questions come up on regular basis. Our vice president of HR was a key stakeholder, as well as the senior leadership team. We pitched this proposal to the top level at one of our senior leadership team meetings, so from top down we had the support we needed.  The buy-in required us to show what we were talking about, so we created a pilot episode to show the possibilities. We delivered episode one to the key stakeholders. Additionally, we shared the pilot episode during a lunch hour with anyone who was interested in learning more about the program. We received some very valuable and insightful feedback from this session. One of the challenges of developing 12 episodes was dealing with a lot of content. We needed to figure out how to divide the content; how to write the scripts; how to decide what would be included in the videos versus the e-learning or commercials. We engaged our corporate communications team, as well as some of the HR business partners to be part of the script-writing process. The challenges we encountered during filming mainly centered on getting the five main characters together at the same time. They still had jobs to attend to, so we had lunchtime and early morning meetings.  Next, we dealt with the editing process. There were lots of components and different people developed certain aspects of the program. Sam Weber, who brought five years of video editing to the project, was our main video editor. We had another person, Nikki Gunter, dedicated to e-learning, and Craig Lutz and Stephanie Tong dedicated to the commercials. We also needed a guide/mentor to walk the new hires through this experience. Kim Austin was our resident guide/mentor; she not only introduced all of the episodes and checked in with the cast, but also was part of the script-writing team. In addition, David Carson, from our corporate communications team, was integral to the script-writing process. Another challenge we encountered was staying on track; making sure things were reviewed and approved. We built a tracking system using Microsoft Sharepoint, where we could manage how many hours each section took; who was responsible; and what percentage a particular person completed. Every week this tracker showed our overall progress. Q:  Six months post-launch, the team implemented a 90-day, new hire survey to learn more about employees’ first three months on the job. Neustar wanted to gain insight into the feedback about the program. Can you tell share any insights? A:  The survey has been extremely helpful. The 90-day survey allowed us to look back at the new hire experience and gauge whether we were delivering what they needed and in a format that worked. In addition to the onboarding program, we asked them other questions about their first 90 days. We were able to gauge whether the reality TV training program was effective. We asked our new hires whether we presented them with the right topics. We also asked them about what else they wanted to know, and whether we missed the mark on anything. In addition to the survey, each employee could also give immediate feedback at the end of each episode. We held focus groups for anyone who wanted to talk with us in more detail about their experience. We give new hires five weeks to complete the program, but most new hires completed all of the episodes in their first week. That was a huge learning moment for us, because we felt we were providing episodes and information when people needed it. We’re always trying to tweak and update the program, and having such great feedback helps. We’ve continued to update the program as information changes, and we’ve looked to streamline some of the 30-minute episodes to make them more concise. It was exciting to do this program. We were able to create a completely different and unique approach to learning, and we had the internal resources, participation, and support to make it happen. Neustar’s support of the program from the beginning gave us the creative license to build a learning approach that is fun and engaging.

Reality TV Show for New Hires at Neustar

Mark Delisi is Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility for AvalonBay Communities. During the past 18 years, he has directed programs that advanced corporate responsibility, global sales success, talent development and leadership training, and employee and customer engagement. His passion for building sustainable, business-driven programs has led to triple bottom-line financial, environmental, and social sustainability results.  Q: What is corporate social responsibility?In simple terms, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an umbrella term for how an organization (business, government, education, non-profit) views its responsibility to both the environment and the communities in which it operates. Another term often used is “sustainability.” I particularly like the following definition of sustainable development from the UN Brundtland Commission, 1987**: “**Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” I think this statement gets at the inherent tension, in particular, of public companies that must report quarterly yet plan for a much longer time-horizon. CSR goes by many names, but ultimately, it is about a widening of the purpose of an organization to take into account environmental and social impacts. Q: How did you become involved in the CSR movement?The term “movement” is interesting here. Is it a movement? I think, rather, it’s a natural evolution and maturation of our understanding of the significant impact an organization has on the world, which historically was quantified and reported in financial terms.My involvement came about because my company realized that many stakeholders (investors and clients, primarily) wanted to know more about a wider set of impacts: How were we addressing climate change?What were we doing to drive down energy and water consumption costs?Did we have an understanding of our supply chain risks associated with human rights abuses or environmental damage?What were we doing beyond paying taxes to support the communities in which we did business? These inquiries were relatively new. Over time, we realized that our stakeholders were demanding a more comprehensive and transparent set of answers. I happened to have had a long history with the company in other areas, such as leadership development, sales training, and account strategic planning, consulting, and the company wanted someone to look into these inquiries who knew the business. I think that’s a key quality of any professional moving into the CSR/CR space—you must know the business! Q: What role does leadership of the company play in the CSR initiative?Executive leadership and leadership by example, in particular, are key to the success of any CSR program. That almost goes without saying. But I also think you have to ask what is the definition of “leadership.” I like Stephen Covey’s explanation: “Leadership is a choice, not a position.” By that definition, I think the leadership of every associate and employee in the company is critical to any CSR/sustainability effort taking hold for the long term. If everyone sees sustainability as fundamentally part of their job, and everyone understands that they have a choice to lead or not to lead, and they make the choice to lead, then great things can happen! Q: How would you define a socially responsible leader?A socially responsible leader is someone who understands that his or her actions and decisions affect a wide variety of stakeholders in their organization. These leaders take a wider view of: the organization’s purposehow they contribute to the environmental and social challenges businesses face today. In addition, a socially responsible business leader, leading a for-profit public company, is someone who understands that shareholder value is driven by managing the business for the benefit of all stakeholders, including the communities in which it does business, as well as the investors, associates, clients, and supplier partners.

The Socially Responsible Leader: Q&A With Mark Delisi

This is the second post by Angela Stopper dedicated to sharing information from the ATD Research report Building a Talent Development Structure Without Borders.

Future Challenges for Talent Development

During a conversation the other day with the chief operating officer of a manufacturing company, the COO asked about cross-selling. “It’s so important to us,” he said. “How do other companies make it work?” My answer was, “It’s more realistic than optimistic." Cross-selling sounds perfect on paper; you’re already in front of the customer, why not sell him more stuff? But complications abound. Here are a few of the challenges we see with cross-selling—and ways to make it a realistic possibility in your sales organization. Optimistic Perceptions of Cross-Selling 
---------------------------------------- We can grow our business! Cross selling seems to hold the potential for greater growth in our customer base. Opportunities are everywhere! White space mapping (by product and/or account) often shows low product penetration and an abundance of open opportunity to cross-sell.It will be easy to compensation reps for cross-selling! Even though we still haven’t figured out how to pay our reps to cross-sell (and when we do, it usually doesn’t end well).Seriously, how hard can cross-selling be? In reality though, cross-selling presents some unique challenges. By giving thought to the realities of cross-selling, you can plan accordingly and set your organization up for success. Realistic Preparations for Cross-Selling Establish a clear value proposition. The products you are cross-selling must fit within a broader value proposition that is compelling to the customer and furthers your competitive differentiation.Look for a natural fit. The buyers of your current products must also be either the natural buyers for your cross-sell offers. You also must be able to recognize the opportunities and refer your team to the right buyers.Make it an important part of the sales role. Let reps know that cross-selling is strategically important and a responsibility they own.Get the cross-selling foundations in place. Cross-selling can’t happen in isolation; it must be built on a solid sales strategy, with well-mapped territories and a coverage strategy.Train them to be ready. Build rep competencies to recognize cross-selling opportunities and then either refer those opportunities to a team member or close the sale themselves. Sending a rep in unprepared to recognize cross-selling opportunities or to communicate a compelling value proposition sets them up for failure.Build trust. If cross-selling involves bringing in another rep from a separate team, often the rep originating the opportunity weighs the benefit of cross-selling with the risk of bringing in another seller and hurting the customer relationship. Build trust among your reps and teams to know that they can confidently introduce new offers and sellers into their valued customer relationships.Compensate. Once you've done the groundwork in the sales strategy, customer coverage, and sales enablement disciplines, you can include cross-selling in the sales compensation plan or the rewards program. Consider whether you want to hardwire the cross-selling incentive (which requires the rep to hit those goals) or create an upside incentive (which rewards additional incentive beyond target for cross-selling). In early cross-selling stages, when setting goals and integrating cross-selling into the strategy is new, creating an upside incentive is usually a more positive message with successful results. Cross-selling is an important part of an overall sales strategy. Don’t let optimism blind you to the challenges. Rather, enjoy the confidence that comes from a realistic plan.

Cross-Selling Is More Optimistic Than Realistic

 In the field of neuroscience, there are a number of "neuromyths" — a term that is now being used to describe misconceptions and inaccuracies about brain functioning. These are myths that pervade popular culture, education and business, including many L&D departments. According to research, there is no more widely believed and yet "thoroughly debunked" neuromyth than learning styles. While learning styles is an umbrella term that can refer to a number of different categorization models, the most well-known is VAK: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (seeing, hearing, doing). It is important to note that people who believe they may have a particular learning style—what's known as "study preferences"—is not being disputed. There are many people who believe in the idea that they are, for example, "visual learners" or "auditory learners." What is in dispute, however, is the idea that having educators match the delivery of content to learners' stated preferences will improve learning. The Meshing Hypothesis This central point of contention is what's known as the meshing (or matching) hypothesis. As noted in “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” the myth of learning styles is the myth that matching for preference necessarily leads to better performance. "Most critically, the reality of these preferences does not demonstrate that assessing a student’s learning style would be helpful in providing effective instruction for that student. That is, a particular student’s having a particular preference does not, by itself, imply that optimal instruction for the student would need to take this preference into account. In brief, the existence of study preferences would not by itself suggest that buying and administering learning-styles tests would be a sensible use of educators’ limited time and money," write authors Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork. The problem for proponents of learning styles is precisely that there is no credible scientific evidence to support this hypothesis, having now been reviewed and tested rigorously by several independent sets of researchers. For example, a 2012 survey of teachers in the United Kingdom and Netherlands (242 primary and secondary school) revealed that the learning styles meshing hypothesis was the #1 neuromyth, believed by 93 percent and 96 percent respectively. Another study of 938 teachers in five countries, conducted by Paul Howard-Jones in 2014 of 938 teachers, placed the figure at 96 percent. Yet, the widespread acceptance of this teaching paradigm is in sharp contrast to the research that has been published in scientific journals and the growing campaign that is trying to raise awareness about these findings. 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (2009), Great Myths of the Brain (2014), and Urban Myths about Learning and Education (2015) are just three recent books that tackle the issue. Meanwhile, an array of scientific and mainstream articles have been written to set the record straight, including authors, scientists, and journalists from the likes of Psychology Today, Popular Science, Scientific American, Washington Post, Wired, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, The Guardian, Slate, and BBC radio.  Even The Onion offers its own satirical take on the issue with the article, “Parents Of Nasal Learners Demand Odor-Based Curriculum.” The OECD established the “Learning Sciences and Brain Research" project in 1999 as the authoritative resource dedicated to education on the subject of neuroscience and highlighting misinformation, which targets neuromyths such as learning styles. The exact origin and spread of learning styles is beyond the scope of this post; however it is often associated with Howard Gardner's influential theory of multiple intelligences, who notes that people frequently credit him with inventing the term and some even believe the two concepts are the same thing. Gardner, keen to relieve the "pain" and "distraction" this misinterpretation has caused him, wrote a piece featured in the Washington Post, “Howard Gardner: 'Multiple Intelligences’ Are Not ‘Learning Styles,'” in which he explains, “If people want to talk about ‘an impulsive style’ or ‘a visual learner,’ that’s their prerogative. But they should recognize that these labels may be unhelpful, at best, and ill-conceived at worst." Complexity and Evidence While there has been a long list of researchers who have raised questions about the existence, identification, application and commercial exploitation of learning styles in education from a variety of different angles, there are two major reviews in particular that are often cited in the research literature. The first is the 2004 review, "A Critical Analysis of Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: A Systematic and Critical Review," by Coffield, Moseley, Hall, and Ecclestone. Commissioned by The Learning and Skills Research Centre, the four prominent cognitive psychologists identified 71 models of learning styles, with 13 categorized as "major models" from 3,800 papers. According to the review, "The enormous size of these literatures presents very particular problems for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers who are not specialists in this field. It is extremely unlikely that any of these groups will ever read the original papers and so they are dependent on reviews like this one, which have to discard the weakest papers, to summarize the large numbers of high-quality research papers, to simplify complex statistical arguments and to impose some order on a field which is marked by debate and constructive critique as well as by disunity, dissension, and conceptual confusion. The principal tasks for the reviewers are to maintain academic rigor throughout the processes of selection, condensation, simplification and interpretation, while also writing in a style accessible to a broad audience. In these respects, the field of learning styles is similar to many other areas in the social sciences where both the measurement problems and the implications for practice are complex." In the 2004 review, the 13 major instruments were analyzed and matched against four "minimal criteria" (internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity), with "only three of the 13 models—those of Allinson and Hayes, Apter, and Vermunt—could be said to have come close to meeting these criteria." The researchers go on to say that "some of the best known and widely used instruments have such serious weaknesses (e.g., low reliability, poor validity and negligible impact on pedagogy) that we recommend that their use in research and in practice should be discontinued." Despite the lack of scientific rigor by most publishers of learning styles inventories, the uptake and popularity of testing (particularly in the United States and United Kingdom) is widespread and attributed to several reasons, including very small-scale research efforts conducted by test publishers (rather than independent researchers) that initially appeared to support the hypothesis. This is addressed by the 2004 review: "It is important to note that the field of learning styles research as a whole is characterized by a very large number of small-scale applications of particular models to small samples of students in specific contexts. This has proved especially problematic for our review of evidence of the impact of learning styles on teaching and learning, since there are very few robust studies which offer, for example, reliable and valid evidence and clear implications for practice based on empirical findings." This point is further emphasized by cognitive psychologist Josh Cuevas: "The strongest empirical studies published on the topic since 2009 have shown a consistent trend—they have found no effect of learning styles or the matching hypothesis (Allcock & Hulme, 2010; Choi, Lee, & Kang, 2009; Kappe, Boekholt, den Rooyen, & Van der Flier, 2009; Kozub, 2010; Martin, 2010; Sankey, Birch, & Gardiner, 2011; Zacharis, 2011). Two experimental studies did claim to find that elusive interaction effect, but one of those tested different behavioral outcomes rather than academic learning (Mahdjoubi & Akplotsyi, 2012) and the other used such a small sample size (N=39) and only a single 15-minute treatment (Hsieh, Jang, Hwang, & Chen, 2011) so the results would need to be replicated if we are to trust their credibility, particularly in light of so many other contradictory findings." Probably the most often-cited and devastating critique of learning styles was the 2008 review by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork. They concluded: "Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis. “We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." Indeed, learning itself is an incredibly complex activity. What’s more, there isn't room here to sufficiently summarize all the research on learning and pedagogy or, in a similar fashion, what neuroscience tells us about how the brain processes information and how we might improve the quality of learning interventions based on these most recent findings. But we can recommend a good book: John Hattie's Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (2013), in which he aptly sums up the current position on the issue of learning styles: "There is no recognized evidence suggesting that knowing or diagnosing learning styles will help you to teach your students any better than not knowing their learning style."Editor’s Note: This post is reprinted from the DTS International Blog.

L&D Neuromyth: Learning Styles (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic)

 So much of sales is about getting in the door—identifying the right buyer, developing a relationship with them, and learning more about their needs. But that’s all pre-work to actually designing a customer solution that wins the deal. One method to help identify the customer’s real needs is to ask questions around four critical elements. What are your goals for your product? What are your financial goals? What are your goals for the market? And finally, what resources do you need to accomplish these goals?  The answers to these questions will help uncover any hidden problems that your solution can address. Developing a customer solution often involves coming up with a range of ideas—from simple to complex; from modestly-priced to expensive. Pick the finalists from the list of ideas that will fit the customer situation. You don’t yet have to settle on one. You may select two or three to share with the customer, depending on how willing the customer is to explore options. When I worked as a designer it was common for us to pitch several alternative ideas because we knew it was a whole lot easier for clients to accept our recommendation if they had a chance to reject another option. As you narrow the pool of possibilities, it’s important to revisit those four critical questions (around Financial, Market, Product, and Resources) to assess each of your solutions. Financial. Rate each of your solutions on the financial dimension. If your customer implements this solution, what kind of financial return might there be in terms of revenue, profitability, cost, productivity, or any other important financial measure?Market. Examine each of your solution options from a market perspective (if a customer applies it to their customer). When thinking of market implications, ask how this solution will affect your customer’s customers.Product. Judge each alternative with the customer’s offering in mind. How will this solution impact the sale of the product? If the customer is addressing an internal situation, rather than an external customer situation, think about product as the application of the customer's solution.Resources. Consider how this is going to match up to the customer’s resource objectives to make things happen or get things done. This may refer either to resources that the customer needs to work externally with its customers or to the resources required for internal operations. Because you use these questions to define the problem in the beginning of the process, these dimensions offer the perfect standard against which to test your ideas and help you objectively evaluate a range of creative ideas and build consensus among the team. Now, you’ll see which of your solutions have potential, and which should be filed away for later use.

Four Questions for a Better Customer Solution

Mary Lyons and Jeff Hesse discuss how learning executives can help create value with talent strategies. Their recommendations are based on a PwC survey of U.S. CEOs.

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