Our company brought in an outside trainer to give a dozen of us a half-day of management training. The speaker was knowledgeable and had some good points, but he lectured almost the whole time. He answered a few questions, but I don't think I learned much at all. What do you think of this type of training?
There are times when a lecture can be appropriate, such as a presentation in front of a huge audience, but lecturing is generally regarded as one of the least effective training strategies in smaller sessions.
For real learning to occur, there should be opportunities for practice, feedback to the attendees, discussions and exchanges of ideas, active attendee involvement, and varying strategies and training techniques to deal with the ways that people learn. A lecture is premised on a one-size-fits-all learning philosophy, and that simply isn't reality.
To prevent an encore appearance and experience, you and your fellow attendees should let management know how you feel about this session. You should also do a little homework and generate a list of individuals and educational institutions that are likely to do a better job and ultimately help you do a better job, too.
I was at lunch with a new employee in my department, and I noticed that when his entree arrived, he put salt on it, but did not taste it first to see if it needed any. I heard this is a sign of a person who does not carefully analyze new situations, but just jumps in and does what he did in the past. What do you think?
Maybe your new employee knows that what he ordered is often bland, or perhaps he has even been to this restaurant before and knows that his order needs a little spicing up. Either way, drawing conclusions based on this type of limited data is little more than a snap judgment and stereotyping.
At the same time, there are some single incidents, actions or comments that can give you broader insight into someone else. For example, if you were at lunch with this same employee and he made a bigoted comment, you could probably come up with some fairly accurate descriptors about his personality and how he would react to various situations in the future.
If you really want to know if your new employee has a tendency to rely on habitual strategies, take a look at the way he approaches new assignments. You can learn far more by observing how he handles his job responsibilities rather than how he handles a salt shaker.
One of the managers who reports to me makes long lists of whatever I assign to him. The problem is that when I follow up, he scrambles through his list, finds the missing assignment and says he will take care of it. Too many projects are falling through the cracks, and I am wondering how to correct this.
The first step in dealing with this employee's untimely behavior is to express your concern over lost projects and missed deadlines. You should ask him if he has a plan to correct the problem.
If he does not have such a plan, or if his approach sounds like it is behind the times, advise your employee to have separate, prioritized to-do lists for the next 30 days, starting today. When you give him an assignment, he should include today as the starting date, then go to his other calendar lists and fill in benchmark dates and the projected completion date. Whether they are stored online or on paper, he should have a list of what he needs to complete each day, and this list should be reviewed and revised when he arrives at work.
If your employee continues to struggle in this area, you should help him obtain some time-management training.
