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Optimize Your Learning Experience

  • Pick one learning platform that works for everyone, and stick with it
  • Set up collaboration events between specialized teams to discuss and share learning content
  • Reuse content that can be reused, modify content if needed.
  • Avoid silos: they drain resources and team agility

An image that displays the chaos of multiple LMS systems

Have You Optimized Your Knowledge Share?

How Fragmented Is Your Knowledge?

At just about every mature company I’ve worked in, there have been at least 3 major training teams, with 3 different platforms for training.  

  • HR general onboarding is usually done through the HR app, and used for both general onboarding and compliance training
  • Sales onboarding and enablement are done through a separate environment because of the need for constant training development for new and updated products, competitive discussion points, and certification on new presentations (usually submitting recordings for evaluation)
  • Customer onboarding and enablement are done with a customer-facing training platform, sometimes paired with a knowledge base and community for discussion.  

You may have others in your company, depending on leadership needs, how centralized training and onboarding teams are, and whether or not you have a leadership structure dedicated to training and enablement within your organization. 

Fragmentation Is Inefficient and Expensive

Fragmented systems without a supporting structure are greatly inefficient and economically unstable.  Work is often duplicated, training content is largely the same, and yet multiple teams are developing, polishing, and publishing the content to their respective base.  On top of that, there’s the administration of those platforms.  It’s difficult, inefficient, and often the result of new organizations bringing in experienced leaders who are often only comfortable with one platform.  This leads to technical debt and employee headcount to manage the technical debt.  

Centralizing Training Is Also Risky

What if you were to centralize around one platform, one team, and have them develop all the training content for everyone?  On paper, this looks ideal, but in practice it’s impractical.  Every organization that requires training has specific needs, often requiring specialized, audience-specific training that requires specific skills—centralizing your training teams into one single team that caters to everyone runs afoul of the value of specialization.  It’s not enough, even though the economics make it attractive.  You need to think in a different direction.  

 

A centralized Learning Management System that caters to all teams

Centralized Platform, Decentralized Development

When looking at the viability of a Shared Services Model within a company, Marijn Janssen at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands identified a clear pattern emerging:  there was a need for some decentralization within those services, and the structure needed to accommodate both centralized and decentralized components (Janssen, 2005).  In other words, a centralized platform for services that can accommodate the decentralized nature of your services is the best method of managing a shared services-style training program.  So what does that look like in practice?

One Platform, Many Uses

Not every LMS is going to be able to manage this type of work, because they are built with the needs of one silo in mind.  Why?  Well, back in the day when Learning Management Systems were new and online learning was spoken of with mocking laughter, platforms were generally home-grown and built to solve one problem.  If you were a University, the LMS would be built to deliver courses over several weeks, each gated to release at the necessary week, and past-due content was locked.  If you were a corporation, the initial need was compliance training.  Sales found it more efficient and scalable to publish Sales Training through an online LMS and evaluate presentations asynchronously through recorded and uploaded videos.  Finally, corporate customer training was built to track completion and, as gamification was built and (initially) misunderstood, provide a badge on completion.  

The point is, that each specific need was met with a specific set of requirements, and those requirements were met by a specific LMS.  Eventually, you would get some bleeding over as learning management systems tried to cater to new markets, but that bleed-over was often half-hearted at best.  Fundamentally, they would remain true to their original purpose while providing some under-developed services that cater to potential new markets.  

Enter AI And The Hype

Since the announcement of AI, there has been a lot of scrambling by existing LMS platforms to figure out how they are going to utilize it.  The majority of them, from what I could tell at Devlearn, applied AI in two ways: 

  • Generative AI to evaluate or rewrite content as it was being added to the platform.  While this seems great at first, it is easily ignored (perhaps saving the LMS money) and doesn’t apply to those companies that develop training using SCORM systems.  While Generative AI has its place, it’s not going to replace real development.  
  • Generative AI for translation/video/Avatar creation was all over the place at Devlearn, and that was fascinating. Video is expensive, and translation is even more so.  AI has done some amazing things with translation in the last few years, with fewer grammatical errors.  AI video and AI avatars are still early, in my opinion, making it obvious that the AI is speaking (because words are often mispronounced) and avatars only moving their mouths, making it somewhat creepy (again, my opinion).  Still, there’s some interesting stuff here.  

What’s missing from most of these LMS systems is the analysis that AI can do, as well as some structural development.  There I only found one platform that looks like it could handle it all:  Fuse Universal.  

Siloed training programs are an economic drain on any organization.

 

Based on the social learning updated, knowledge documents assigned to the team, and already assigned training, the AI can create a learning path for every role.

Centralize Your Learning Using Fuse

Fuse Universal impressed me.  They unify the Learning Management System, the Knowledge Base, and the Learning Experience Platform into one AI-driven platform that not only tracks learning but provides learning on demand when you need it.  Experienced learners can share their knowledge through social learning, meaning teams can share tribal knowledge without having to post it to the L&D team, get manager sign-off, and wait 6 months for content to be available.  

The killer feature that impressed me the most:  AI-generated learning paths for every role within your company.  If you are in HR, this is your killer feature.  When going through my MBA, it was understood that HR should have skills analysis for every role in the company so they can

  1. Hire people with the right skills needed for the role
  2. Train people through employee onboarding systems that teach all skills, so all bases are covered

I’ve worked at a few organizations where they tried to do this (eBay comes to mind immediately), but not many.  Most HR departments have team managers write up their skills requirements (because managers are skilled at skills analysis, I suppose), and leave it to the hiring team (silo) to do their onboarding and training.  Hiring teams then struggle to complete this, because they generally lack the expertise and resources to accomplish these tasks.  

AI Skills Analysis And Learning Paths:  The Killer Feature!

Enter Fuse Universal’s AI analysis feature:  Based on the social learning uploaded, knowledge documents assigned to the team, and already assigned training, the AI can create a learning path for every role.  Think about that for a second.  Every role in your company will have a learning path.  That means every employee looking to advance into a different role has a development path to follow.  Every struggling employee has a development path to help them refine their skills.  And no one had to run a skills analysis.  AI took care of all of it.  

 There are several other reasons why you would want to use Fuse as your learning platform of choice, as it can cater to all your typical silos (Onboarding, Compliance, Sales, Customer Enablement, etc).  If you haven’t heard of them before, check them out.  If you have heard of them before but are not using them, reevaluate that decision.  

Co-workers expressing gratitude at work.

Collaboration Events

The centralized platform provides the structure and stability for your learning development teams, but that’s just the foundation.  You will need to move into a polycentralized organization or an organization that has multiple collaborating teams that specialize in their respective fields, yet work with the same centralized content.  This will require collaboration events.  An example of this would be new product launch prep meetings:  different development teams will work together in their relative spheres of expertise, but share the content.  

  • The Product Development team would provide the technical documentation and expertise to make sure all training content is correct, relevant, and accurate.  
  • The Product Marketing team takes that content and provides customer talking points, marketing guidance, and messaging to be shared with customers by internal teams.
  • The Sales Enablement will take the content from the Development and marketing teams to put together the sales campaign training and enablement, shared with both Sales and Customer Success teams.
  • Learning and Development works with all teams to create similar content (reusing what they can from Sales) and conducts internal training for
    • Support
    • Professional Services
    • Employee product onboarding
    • Customer onboarding and enablement

The content may not differ much, just enough to make a difference in the structure and audience.  Specialist development teams are invaluable for your organizations, and collaboration can cut down time-to-value on training significantly:  much of the analysis work would be done by another team.  

Specialist development teams are invaluable, and cross-departmental collaboration Tiger Teams can share resources and increase the time-to-value of training.

 

By polycentralizing your Training and Development team, you can take advantage of the natural bridging between silos and increase cross-departmental collaboration

Reuse Content When Possible

I’ve worked for teams where they work through the whole ADDIE process with in-depth analysis, thoughtful design, and conduct hours of development and when it gets to implementation, their work is almost the same thing as another team’s for their silo.  The good news:  everyone’s working hard and producing similar content.  The bad news is that there are a lot of people working to produce similar content.  

I’m a huge supporter of the write once, use often mindset.  When using UNIX-based platforms, I try to automate tasks as much as possible.  Creating training, I reuse assets all the time (you might have noticed some similar images ^_^).  If I can shave off some time without sacrificing quality, I will.  If I work for hours creating the essentially same thing that someone else created, a little part of me dies inside.  When I can, I reuse content.  It might mean re-recording existing written work or editing some existing video, it doesn’t matter.  Anything that takes less time to qualitatively repurpose is more valuable to me than “reinventing the wheel.”  

Avoiding Silos

As I started my career, I thought that siloed teams were a fact of life or an entity that was necessary for the corporate world to run.  I was a cog in the great machinery of the office, and if I did my work and handed it off to the right people, the machinery would turn and the business would flourish. It wasn’t until I joined leadership that I realized the truth:  silos were a natural withdrawing process, and it builds distrust within organizations.  They are inefficient, rarely effective, and require more work to reconcile the work done than, well, the work done.  

The thing is, it’s really difficult to break down silos within an organization, even if you are building that organization anew.  Silos naturally happen, and yet they also have natural extensions into other teams, and Training and Development is one such natural extension.  By polycentralizing your Training and Development team, you can take advantage of the natural bridging between silos and increase cross-departmental collaboration.  

Seize Your Moment

If you are struggling with your training teams, are buried under several LMS licenses as technical debt, and see a lot of siloed work churning out very similar results, it’s time to rethink your approach to training.  Contact us for more information and let us help you build an efficient, effective learning program that increases time-to-value, reduces technical debt, and re-energizes your training development and enablement teams.  

 

Bibliography

Janssen, Marijn. “Centralized or decentralized organization?.” ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. Vol. 89. 2005.

Jeremy Robb

Jeremy Robb

Chief Learning Officer

 

 

Success in Navigating your Motivational Pyramid

  • Identify what motivates you
  • Do your best to fulfill that need
  • Develop the necessary skills to do your part in navigating the next motivational need
  • Enjoy the journey, instead of focusing on the destination

Computer on the desk

How Does Training Relate to Motivation?

You Know What Motivates You, What Now?

There have been several jobs in my life that were taken because of survival: I needed a new role and I needed to get a paycheck that would fit my needs. Many I took because I was excited to learn something new, and others I took reluctantly because I needed the paycheck. In all cases, I still did my best in the role. After all, I needed the paycheck.

All Motivation is Still Motivation

I have pointed out the values of moving up the motivational pyramid toward Purpose, and I can understand it might cast each lower level of motivation as slightly negative:  you want to move to Purpose because it’s the most productive and valuable motivator.  The thing is, if you are just working to survive, that is a valid and good motivation!  If you are motivated by the good camaraderie of your peers, do it for them!  What motivates you is clearly what you need to get through the daily grind. 

Use that same motivation to get to the next level.  For instance:

  • If you are in survival mode, work to keep what you have and move to that feeling of safety
  • If you are feeling secure, do what you can to feel part of the team
  • If you work for your social connections, build your value, and earn recognition for your unique contributions
  • If you and your work are valued, find the connection between your values and the value your work brings to others

At every level of motivation, you have a desire to do well, at least to satisfy that level of need.  If you are motivated by survival, you will look for the best chances of survival.  If the work you are doing is your best chance, you will invest your time and effort into satisfying that need.  This means you will tolerate everything and anything to remain employed.  This isn’t necessarily a bad situation, though it might not be ideal.  There are several scenarios where this would be the case:  

  • If your company had gone through a cycle of lay-offs, you might feel like you are in survival mode  
  • You might be new to a company and want to show you are valuable as quickly as possible
  • Current economic conditions make it difficult to find a job, so you are looking for and working any role available, even if it is not your ideal position

In all three scenarios above, you are in a legitimate survival mode.  What makes the difference is how quickly you can move into a more stable mode of safety, which will reduce the amount of stress you are experiencing, and therefore improve the quality of work you can produce.  Each level of need will come with its own goals, situations, and reasons for succeeding, and it’s not wrong to be at whatever level of need you have.  The important thing is to realize where you are with your needs, you are getting what you need with as little stress as possible, and you can progress along your levels of need.  Skill development can assist with each method of motivation.

 

Leonardo da Vinci's diagram of a supporting bridge

Skills Development To Improve Motivation

While in survival mode, I moved my family over a thousand miles to the sunny coast of Southern California.  My boys needed better services for their disability, and I wanted to be able to provide them with the best possible options in life.  So, I took a Survival-type job, even as defined by leadership at the organization.  It was an entry-level position that was meant to leap-frog into another role.  I took that role seriously, did everything I could to make a positive, lasting impact, and took advantage of the skills training made available to all employees through Skillsoft training.  I quickly became the most active person on the platform in a 100,000+ person organization, learning everything I could so I could move to my next level of motivation:  Safety.  

Skills development training provides the tools necessary to navigate the motivational pyramid.  

  • Survival needs are met by providing the skills to land and retain positions that satisfy that need.  Perhaps you are moving into a new role or new industry and skills training is necessary, or you just need to complete your New Hire Training paths that will prepare you for the new position you just landed.  Either way, skills development training satisfies your needs. 
  • Safety needs are met by refining skills, learning soft skills, or utilizing parallel skill sets to increase productivity and value.  You could be preparing to move into a more secure role, or landing a new position within the firm that provides more stability. 
  • Social needs are benefited by additional soft-skills training, helping everyone help others feel more inclusive.  It’s often believed that others are responsible for your inclusion, and while that’s true at a high level, you need to start with what you can control:  your social interactions with the group.  If you struggle to feel part of the team, look for opportunities to contribute.  Social soft-skills training can be valuable here.  
    NOTE: I need to point out that everyone is responsible for social inclusion, not just the person on the outside.  While you as the outside person can learn soft skills and inclusion methods, everyone else needs to learn how to be inclusive as well.  Don’t think that through this list I’m laying the burden on the one on the outside.  That would be unfair, unrealistic, and very much the status quo that has broken many a corporate culture.  
  • Esteem/Recognition needs can be met by learning how to be more visible in your role.  New skills, mastery of skills, and new ways of approaching problems will draw attention to your work.  Striving for excellence in your day-to-day is a journey that will benefit you with a curious mind that explores new and better ways of doing things.  
  • Purpose needs can be met by learning about the industry, customer problems, customer needs, and how the company meets those needs.  Skills development in this area ranges from better industry understanding, customer issue awareness, and better communication skills.
Skills Development:  Build Your Bridge

I love the visuals that Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions give, particularly his bridge (pictured above).  The bridge is built of multiple logs, each notched in such a way that it can rest on another, and by the power of compression, these logs do not move.  The result is a bridge that can be carried, built, used, and disassembled without a single nail or piece of rope.  I have a small model replica sitting in my office as a reminder of the importance of pieces as a whole. 

It’s important to build your bridge to each level carefully.  Find the training that provides you with the necessary skillset you need to thrive in your current needs level and will help you along your journey to the next.  Remember that your needs journey will always be in flux, and your motivation will change.  New roles bring new challenges, changes in economies will make life a little less certain, and feeling comfortable and unchallenged in a role will bring a desire for new challenges and new growth.  Your career is a journey, your development will be part of that journey.  Sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy the scenery! 

“Skill development can assist with each method of motivation.”

 

  • Fix the tribal knowledge problem by documenting the job. 
  • Fix your disjointed processes by documenting set processes for everyone to follow.  
  • Unify your learning and knowledge platforms to reduce technical debt

Employers:  Facilitate your team’s Motivational Growth

To this point, I’ve only talked to those going through their journey.  Now, let’s talk about the job of the Employer.  As an employment entity, you have a goal to accomplish.  You might be trying to end world hunger or make it easier to take pictures of cats and post them to social media.  Whatever your end goal, you have hired folks to help you meet and maintain that goal.  As part of the employment contract, you provide an environment that best supports your employees, so they in turn can provide your company with their best work.  Together, you move the organization forward and meet your goal.  

Here’s the thing, particularly with start-ups:  the hiring trend is to try and find people who have done the job in a similar role and convince them to come over and do the same thing, structuring the department and team along the way.  If it’s a new role, new company, or new growth, this makes sense!  The new role and department need to be defined, and scaled, with roles, training, etc. all developed and documented as the department grows.  Here’s where it all breaks down:  because only people are hired who have done the job before, nothing gets documented, training isn’t developed, HR doesn’t know the necessary skills for which to hire, and everything becomes the wild West as folks from different companies and different process plans try to do their thing and make everyone else comply with their process.  Warring processes require a lot of substructure to make it work, and heavy technical debt, and only those folks can do the job because no one else will know what to do.  Tribal knowledge rules, and is lost as folks move on in their careers.  

Fix the Tribe: Write It Down!

I’m going to highlight this scenario by pulling from Ancient Athens.  For generations, they relied on a tribunal of judges that would “remember” the law and rule for or against citizens, and their rulings were final.  This period had no written law and no defined punishments.  It was left to the judges.  As I’m sure you could imagine, the common people were ready to revolt, feeling that the wealthy would be favored due to connections and gifts, while the same rulings were denied to everyone else.  It wasn’t until 621 BC when Draco was commissioned by the leaders of Athens to create their legal system that laws were finally written in stone, literally!  Laws and punishments were all clearly written for all to see, with the associated punishment.  We know these as Draconian Laws, because Draco made them, and they are considered harsh as death was the result of just about every infraction.  The people loved it because the laws were applied equally to everyone.  

Take this to your organization:  It’s difficult to feel safe and motivated if there’s no right way to do things and you are judging performance with subjective measures.  You can’t say, “Be more like Wilson” because Wilson doesn’t share, or have time to share, his processes.  Mentorships are great, but only work when the mentor is willing and able to share their knowledge.  This is why documentation of processes is so important in every organization as soon as possible.  

Unify your Knowledge:  Make Learning Accessible! 

As your teams grow and develop, new processes will be necessary.  To simplify your life, the lives of your team, and the technical debt the IT team needs to manage, unify your knowledge platforms.  So many companies will have more than 3 LMS platforms that are specific to teams, with their own licensing and configuration demands.  Additionally, the teams will have an equal number of Knowledge platforms to share information, all of which have their own licensing and configuration demands.  The result is a strange, Frankenstein-esque technical infrastructure that is so difficult that roles alone cannot maintain the complexity.  

Simplify.  Use one LMS platform, ideally with an integrated Knowledge platform that combines written and engaging training.  Don’t listen to the “need for specialist platforms” because knowledge is knowledge, skills are skills, and an LMS is an LMS, regardless of the bells and whistles they sport to cater to a particular demographic.  If you can’t use the LMS for onboarding, sales, employee development, and customer training, find another LMS.  

Have Questions?

Not sure where to go next?  Why not contact us and find out!  

Still wary and want to see what we are about?  Check out our free training courses or follow The Training Guy on YouTube!  

Jeremy Robb

Jeremy Robb

CLO and Consultant

 

Pilgrims and Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving.

Why Is Gratitude So Important?

From Pilgrims to Union soldiers, Thanksgiving is a day when we all can be united in showing gratitude.  

It’s time for Thanksgiving in the United States, a time when we as a nation take stock and express our gratitude for what we have.  We look into our lives, values, freedoms, relationships, goals, and situations to identify the positive.   In a world of criticism, cancel-culture, anger, distrust, and polarizing politics, we as a nation can sit together at a massive table, carve a turkey, dish out some stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied yams (sweet potatoes), and massive slices of pie and be thankful for what we have.  

The origins shared in American schools about the pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, and salvation from kind Native Americans make a great story (particularly if you have ancestors from the Mayflower), but national days of Thanksgiving were announced regularly before it was formally established by President Abraham Lincoln after the battle of Gettysburg.  The key value of each declaration was the same:  be grateful for what we have.  Unique to every other holiday, this day is dedicated to the idea that we all have something for which to be grateful.  

Co-workers expressing gratitude at work.

Gratitude Builds Positive Relationships

The highest valued connections we have as a society are our social relationships.  It’s through our social relationships that work gets done, businesses are built, cities are run, countries thrive, and the global economy hums.  Positive social relationships increase overall health and well-being, decreasing deaths from smoking, alcohol consumption, and obesity.  The reliable method of building and fostering positive social relationships is expressing gratitude. 

Sharing your gratitude for someone expresses the value you see they bring to your life.  Think about that for a minute.  You can express to someone the value you see in them.  Just how amazing is that!  In a world where we are so divisive and willing to see the worst in people when you choose to see the best in someone, it can change their life.  It’s a pity that people often undervalue the impact of expressing gratitude.  

What’s just as amazing is the personal impact of sharing gratitude with others.  Those who express gratitude are generally more happy, have an overall increased sense of well-being, and have an increased sense of life satisfaction.  Simply by sharing their gratitude, either verbally or written, one can change perspectives for a more positive outlook.  

I was amazed by the amount of research done on this subject and the impact gratitude can have on both the giver and the receiver.  It seems to be the most powerful method of building each other up.  It’s a small wonder that many companies attempt to build a culture of gratitude to create a better overall company culture.  It’s an easy, cost-effective, powerful cultural practice that can have a real impact if done sincerely.  It satisfies a person’s Social and Recognition needs, building a strong push toward motivating through Passion.  

 

“The reliable method of building and fostering positive social relationships is expressing gratitude.”

 

 

Journaling gratitude

Personal Challenge:  Express Your Gratitude to Someone

We are coming into the Holidays which encompasses the majority of December.  I challenge every one of you to express your gratitude to someone and then write down something for which you are grateful every day.  Keep a journal of your gratitude, and measure the change in your outlook throughout the month.  

Share your gratitude with others, and then journal your personal gratitude to make a change.

Culture of Kindness

  • Define your Values
  • Give Earned Credit
  • Address Conflicts Constructively
  • Focus on Lessons Learned, Not Blame
  • Measure Individual Success
  • Show Gratitude

Leonardo da Vinci's Self-supporting bridge diagram.

What Socially Motivates You?

Being Kind:  Why Kindness Matters

I see this same theme showing up every weekend in my feed on LinkedIn:  Be Kind.  I don’t know if it’s a reminder being sent out to teams after an awesome week, or a cry for help, but it’s always there.  During the week the feed changes to various exciting things happening in the world of business, before shifting back to the same theme:  be kind.  

Why?  Why is it important to even think about kindness?  It’s an interesting question, and as we talk about social motivators it’s the first one I want to bring up.   More than any other individual social condition, a culture built around kindness can increase your teams’ productivity and create a sense of belonging that will translate into more productive, successful teams (Vo, 2022).  I know that’s quite a claim to make, so let’s go over it.  

Social Motivators and Research

In 2022, Vo and team conducted a massive data research project to explore the effects of social conditions meeting individual needs as it relates to work motivation.  There were four motivating conditions that were explored:

  • Religious Affiliation
  • Political Participation
  • Humane Orientation through Kindness and Altruism
  • In-Group Collectivism as expressed by pride and loyalty for the organization

The research then focused on six key hypotheses tested as it relates to work motivation: 

  1. Competence:  How one’s mastery at the tasks at hand impact their motivation to do the job. 
  2. Autonomy:  The ability to do their job, make their own decisions, and take accountability for their own actions. 
  3. Social Relatedness:  Feeling secure with their teammates through social connections.  
  4. Motivating Conditions Impact Competence:  The impact of each of the four motivating conditions are expected to enhance one’s motivation at each level of competence.  
  5. Motivating Conditions Impact Autonomy:  The impact of each of the four motivating conditions are expected to positively effect one’s motivation at each level of autonomy.
  6. Motivating Conditions Impact Social Relatedness:  The impact of each of the four motivating conditions are expected to enhance social connection motivation.  

So there’s a lot to unpack here, and if you want the full details of the research project, check the link below.  The primary goal is to explore the impacts of Competence, Autonomy, and Social Relatedness on work motivation.  Each are powerful influencers, and should not be ignored.  I’ll dig into each in future articles.  What’s really impressive, though, is the follow-up:  How social conditions can mitigate or enhance the impact of competence, autonomy, and social relatedness.  

The Competence Exception and Motivation

It seems pretty intuitive that someone more comfortable with a job will feel more motivated to complete the job, and to a certain extent that is true.  What was interesting is that the more competent someone was at a role, the less motivated they were to complete the role (Vo, 2022, p.9).  There wasn’t a conclusion as to this result, though it’s hypothesized that, once a task become routine, there is less desire to do the tasks.  Challenges appear to directly impact motivation.  What’s really interesting is that both Autonomy and Social Relatedness behaved as expected:  The more of each one has, the more motivated the team gets. 

The Impact of Kindness 

As researchers reviewed the differing impacts of motivating conditions on competence, autonomy, and social relatedness.  The results were very interesting: 

  • Competence  
    • Positive Impact Observed
      • A strong culture of  Kindness had a positive impact, statistically increasing motivation for those at every level of competence, even as motivation dropped with higher competence.  
      • High Company Loyalty also increased motivation significantly, though it still dropped significantly with higher competence.  
    • Interesting Insight:  Religious affiliation had a very interesting impact on motivation with competence, effectively evening out the difference between high and low competence on motivation.  
  • Autonomy
    • Positive Impact Observed
      • Higher political participation had a slightly higher positive impact with increased autonomy, though only when high levels of autonomy was granted.  
      • A strong culture of Kindness very significant increase in motivation for those with autonomy, even when low levels of autonomy were observed. 
  • Social Relatedness
    • Positive Impact Observed
      • A strong culture of Kindness was the only statistically significant motivational factor that increased motivation with regards to social relatedness, and it was significant.  I found this particularly enlightening, and once pointed out I could see how this same concept could be rubber-stamped across all social environments.  

As outlined above, kindness was the one social motivator that could impact an individual’s work motivation, regardless of one’s level of competence, how much autonomy they have been given, and how much one relates to their team.  

Building a Culture of Kindness

We know that Kindness makes a huge impact on a team’s motivation, but how do you build a culture of kindness?  Here are some key steps you can use to shift your company culture, regardless of who you are in the company.  

  • Define Your Values:  Company values are great, and every company has a list of values they like to highlight.  These should be communicated, reiterated, and focus on the importance of kindness and compassion while working with one another, and then act on them.  Writing your values is a great step, but you, as leadership, employees, and as teams, need to live them.  
  • Give Earned Credit:  Recognize those who have great ideas, and give credit to those who deserve it.  This means recognizing a great idea from the janitor if they are overheard and the idea is used, not the guy who implemented it.  Be willing to recognize those who make a difference, and don’t take credit for someone else’s work.  This seems obvious, but it’s amazing to see how often this is not done.  
  • Address Conflicts Constructively:  Conflict is going to happen, and believe it or not, it’s healthy if approached constructively.  Everyone should have a chance to have a say, every perspective should be listened to with the desire to understand (not respond), and then move forward with the understanding that all concerns where heard, understood, and considered.  
  • Focus On Lessons Learned, Not Blame:  It’s human nature to find someone or something to blame, and feel like a bad situation was completely out of your control.  The honest truth:  you can always do something to mitigate all risk, even if you didn’t know you could at the time.  That’s part of learning, growing, and becoming better.  When you run into issues, focus on the lessons you are learning and how to avoid the problem in future, rather than who is to blame.  When folks feel like they are allowed to make honest mistakes, they will be more willing to put all their effort into making something happen.  And you will earn their trust. 
  • Measure Individual Success:  Not everyone is going to be at the same level, and often it can feel like they continue to struggle while others who have more seniority get all the recognition.  As a leader, meet people where they are and recognize their individual growth.  
  • Show Gratitude:  As a teammate, show appreciation for the contributions of your peers, however small it might be at the time.  Gratitude can go a long way in building social bonds.  

Research has shown that a culture of kindness, above all else, can have a more of an impact than any other factor in your organization.  By building a culture where everyone is kind and compassionate, you will increase your teams motivation at a social level, engaging them as a team to complete tasks and accomplish more than you could at any other cultural level.  Treat people with respect, listen to understand, and show gratitude at all levels, and you will have a truly great place to work.  

 

For more information on the research, check out the referenced link below. 

Vo, Thuy Thi Diem, Kristine Velasquez Tuliao, and Chung-Wen Chen. “Work motivation: The roles of individual needs and social conditions.” Behavioral Sciences 12.2 (2022): 49.

 

 

2.6x More Productive

Employees who trust their leaders are 2.6 times more productive on tasks, bringing more value to the team!

41% Lower Absenteeism

Employees who trust their leaders are more likely to show up, be engaged, and stay engaged.  

50% Less Likely to shop for another job

Employees who trust their leadership are more likely to stay where they are and grow in their roles, rather than shop around for other positions or companies. 

Safety Motivation: 

Does your Team trust You?

Why You Need To Build Trust

We have all been there at one point or another in our careers.  A leader comes into a new position, starts making changes, and the layoffs start.  I’ve seen this happen to other teams, and to my own team.  The results are painful to watch.  The remaining team members just keep their heads down, doing what they are told.  Feedback isn’t taken, feedback isn’t wanted, and no one wants to give the new boss a reason to let them go before they are ready.  Resumes are flying, and soon the team starts to lose members all over the place. 

In the case of really good, quality organizations, leaders that cause this type of disruption for the sake of disruption are let go (I’ve seen this happen twice).  For those organizations that are not quality, they let their best people go, hire new people, and start a cycle of high turnover.  It’s not pretty, and it could all be avoided if leadership took the time to build trust.  

Trust Makes Good Teams

Trusting employees are 260% more motivated to work, have 41% lower rates of absenteeism, and are 50% less likely to look for another job (Reichheld & Dunlop, 2023).  Teams that are able to trust their leadership build better relationships, and are free to create a social structure that is strong, inclusive, and supportive of each other.  Trust satisfies the Safety need in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and is itself a foundational need only superseded by the need for survival.  Without it, all other motivational methods are rendered useless.

Distrust Is More Rampant Than You Think

The numbers are grim: roughly 1 in 4 workers don’t trust their employer. At the same time, most employers overestimate their workforce’s trust level by almost 40% (Reichheld & Dunlop, 2023).  That’s right; in most organizations a full quarter of your workforce doesn’t trust you as leadership.  What’s more, you likely overestimate the amount of trust you have because, as an untrusting body, your employees are not going to tell you they don’t trust you for fear of retribution.  

Build Your Trust Now

It’s often been said, you build trust in drops, lose trust in buckets.  If you have a team that doesn’t trust you or your leadership, you have a long row to hoe.  You can either say a lot of words and hope they will believe you (spoiler alert:  they won’t), or you can get to work.  Here’s how you build trust. 

  • Be Empathetic: Know your team and listen to understand.  Your team is going to say things, even if they don’t trust you.  They will tell you there are problems, even if you don’t want to hear them.  Actively listen and try to understand the problem.  Don’t dismiss concerns, listen.  Don’t try to fix anything, listen.  Don’t try to second-guess their problem and come with a solution, LISTEN.  Once you fully understand the concern, circle back around with the team and discuss solutions AND GET THEIR INPUT.  
  • Be Compassionate:  Actively advocate for your team and alleviate their challenges.  Trust that people are basically good, and when given the chance will do all they can to be the best at what they do.  Work to remove obstacles, work round them, or build solutions with the team to make things better.
  • Be Honest:  Transparency and honesty are respected, even if the team doesn’t hear what they want to hear.  There will be bad times.  There may be some folks that will need to leave because of performance issues or attitude issues.  There may be lay-offs that are necessary because projects vary, come to an end, or economics mean demand has gone down.  Show that you understand their concerns, be straight-up honest about why people are being let go (when legally possible), and explain how a decision was trickled down to them.  
  • Be Honorable:  If you say you are going do to something, do it.  If you tell people that there will be no lay-offs, keep your word.  If you promise training and career development options, don’t exclude anyone.  The minute you break your word, you are no longer trustworthy.  

“A full quarter of your employees doesn’t trust you as leadership.”

  • Be Empathetic: Know your team and listen to understand
  • Be Compassionate:  Actively advocate for your team and alleviate their challenges
  • Be Honest:  Transparency and honesty are respected
  • Be Honorable:  If you say you are going do to something, do it

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Everyone is talking about AI, though they generally mean Generative AI.  While GenAI will likely have a huge impact on Learning and Development, I’d like to explore the impacts of Analytical, or Behavioral, AI.  Behavioral AI is the sleeping giant of Narrow AI applications, and will likely have a larger impact on our lives and business than Generative AI.  But how will it impact training? 

You have a lot of content that requires a lot of practice and application before you build on it. Your content is well structured, and you need the best way to deliver it. That’s the strength of the Flipped Classroom! Best served in the cohort model, consider flipping your classroom if you need to teach for more than 24 delivery hours (3 business days) in a row.