Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you’ll find pointers to pieces about Education 2.0, development, leadership coaching, star performers and salary differential, and performance bonus practices.
From Reading about Leading: Education 2.0: The Importance of Ownership
“I’ve been teaching adults for almost twenty years. First as a lecturer, then as a professor and for the last ten years as a coach and facilitator for large organizations all over the world. I love technology and the possibilities that it represents but I believe that technology can only ever enable educational success. It rarely drives. As technology becomes more pervasive we must shift our focus to the driving factors. I would argue that a key driver for educational success is the internal sense of ownership each student has for his or her own development. If they have this, they will find a way to succeed. If they don’t, the technology enables ever greater levels of complacency. “
Wally’s Comment: Rob Tucker’s message is straightforward. Technology can provide an accelerant to learning, but it can’t provide the spark.
From QAspire: Training and Development – A Holistic View
“Apart from mentoring and managing people, training plays a direct and important role in improving quality. Most organizations have a limited view on training as a means of “delivering†knowledge from the trainer to trainees. Trainings are least effective when they are “one-way†affairs. In my view, people learn the most when they are involved in stimulating conversations, when their thinking is ignited by right questions and when they are a part of defining something.”
Wally’s Comment: Tanmay Vora thinks you ought to broaden your concept of “training.” In this post he suggests a few things to consider.
From All Things Workplace: Leadership Coaching: Success Is In The Agreement
“There is often an equal amount of fuzziness when it comes to Leadership Development and Leadership Coaching. As a result, the coaching issue can get blurred. So here are some suggestions after a lot of years wrestling with the issue.”
Wally’s Comment: Steve Roesler does a lot of coaching and he’s been doing it since before coaching was all the rage. His experience cries out that you need to have a good coaching agreement if there’s any hope of a productive coaching engagement.
From the HR Capitalist; Can the Young Star Ever Earn Less Than the Employees They Manage?
“In a word, yes. It’s rare, but it happens.”
Wally’s Comment: One thing that seems to happen with a true star is that he or she expands beyond the limits of job descriptions and organizational charts. Then HR has to deal with issues and sometimes play catch-up. Compensation is just one area. Years ago, Harold Geneen advised young managers to “Take the experience. The cash will come later.” A young friend of mine noted that was easy to say when you’re at the part where the cash has come and harder to live with when you’re still at the career stage where the cash is over the horizon someplace.
“We’re getting closer to revealing the winners of Winning Workplaces’ 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces award. Or should I say, our media partner, Inc. Magazine, is getting closer to unveiling them. … Inc. will go into more depth on this, but I wanted to provide you with some value now and share the top 10 practices used by our 40 finalist companies for 2010 when it comes to structuring and administering performance bonuses. The data on this was captured in Q4 2009 and Q1 2010 so it’s timely and actionable for your organization.”
Wally’s Comment: The Winning Workplaces people develop a lot of great information as part of their annual awards program. Here are some ideas you may be able to adapt and use.
