Who's ready for winter to be over?
Well, you're not alone. We've dedicated this month's newsletter to the types of things that may have been put aside for awhile. Hopefully, our reminders will bring the spring back into your office!
The Soft Side of Leadership
We have recently completed a number of leadership development courses for a number of our clients. Upon review, we realised that the requested focus of these courses was along the lines of concrete skills such as time management and performance review. We want to take this opportunity to highlight the importance of soft skills development in leaders and the impact to an organisation if it is left out of the training curriculum.
Soft skills such as empathy, self-awareness and motivation are all critical behaviours for a leader to be successful in a progressive organisation. They form competency within the broader category of emotional intelligence (EQ).
EQ is our ability to read the needs of others and adapt our responses and reactions accordingly. Without this skill, leaders cannot gain loyalty, motivation or engagement from their team members. Imagine what would happen to an organisation with disloyal, unmotivated and disengaged employees. It is not something any business could afford to happen in today's competitive marketplaces.
Optim Learning Solutions has specialised expertise in the development of customised EQ learning and development solutions. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you in developing the soft side of your organisational leadership capacity.
Effective Project Management
The one thing every successful training program has in common is effective project management. However, for some reason, this component of developing and implementing a training program often gets left on the to do list. Generally this has to do with budget constraints, but in our experience good project management will always ensure that your project costs remain minimal.
It is important that you follow an effective project management methodology to ensure that your training initiative design and delivery is successful, on time and within budget. Your methodology should include the following project management considerations:
- Defining the training initiative
- Planning the training initiative
- Implementing the activities identified in your plan
- Controlling / overseeing the training initiative development and implementation (including ongoing risk management)
- Reviewing and closing the project.
If you would like some assistance with your learning and development project management activities, Optim Learning Solutions can help.
September Tips
This month's tips are focused on developing leading online learning. To ensure that your learners get the most out of your computer based training, try to incorporate some of the following:
- Tip 1: Utilise a robust instructional design model such as the ADDIE model (Analyse, Design,
Develop, Implement, Evaluate) - Tip 2: Avoid page turning and layer content
- Tip 3: Ensure the style of language used is clear and concise; limit sentences to approximately 15 words
- Tip 4: Ensure language is present tense and in active voice
- Tip 5: Avoid colour for text as it can be difficult to read
- Tip 6: Make use of white space to draw the learner's attention in; avoid making the screen to busy
- Tip 7: Remember that you are using multimedia technology! Be creative in your design, computer-based training has far greater capability than its paper-based counterpart.