What Kind of a CLO Are You?

Inspired by a recent post by Anand (who btw has just turned to become an independent Learning Consultant, give him a shout out in case you are looking for someone) where he categorizes variety of stakeholders who want to get on the LMS bandwagon as Yell, Yum and Yes.In my view there are three kinds a CLOs implementing or having implemented a Learning Management System (LMS). They are the Learning CLO, Management CLO and the Systems CLO.The Learning CLOs are all about learning and not so much about training. In…

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False Positives by David Small

A great post by David Small on Dan McCarthy's blog Great Leadership about serving your team with honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable."How often do we have members of our team that we say “good job” too, even though we know they could be doing better? Did you know you could be doing more harm then good by not pointing out their shortcomings? Here are four tips to build up your team without giving them false positives."Read the full post False Positives.Author bio:David Small is the author of the bestselling book The Wandering…

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Don’t be Afraid to Fail

Are you afraid to fail? Do you avoid taking on new assignments because you think you are not good at them? Do you think succeeding is more important than trying out new things?If you think success comes from not failing, you couldn't be more wrong. Success comes to those who fail. Success comes from trying out new things, venturing out doing things you are not comfortable with. So recognize the new opportunities that come your way in the form of new assignments, new projects, new tasks that seem challenging. Go…

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Objective Subjectivity

 (Image source) So we've moved away from moderation in performance appraisal in our organization. Over the years moderation seemed the best though not always perfect way to grade performance of people. It made sense to rank people with relative performance levels. There was a bell curve to be followed forcing supervisors to push people in defined performance bands. However, the most difficult part was to push people in lowest performance bands. It was imperative that we identify the top performers and the worst performers. Not every supervisor was able to…

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Lessons in Professionalism

I  love watching Grey’s Anatomy, an American television medical drama series. While the human drama in the series makes it a gripping watch, what I find really amazing is the professionalism of characters in the series. The surgeons and interns are intensely competitive, and yet are completely professional about their jobs, irrespective of the positions they hold, or not hold for that matter.I feel there are many life management lessons to be learned from the series. What do you do when a peer becomes your boss? What do you do…

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Delivery Led or Sales Led Redux

About two years ago I had pondered over the question of who is a better leader for business. Is it someone rooted in delivery and operations or someone with a sales background ( http://manishmo.blogspot.in/2011/01/delivery-led-or-sales-led.html)? I think for a business to really grow, the leader has to be sales led. Having a sales oriented leader is all the more critical when the organization is in the business of service delivery. Perhaps in a products business where the product is evolving, a delivery oriented leader who is entrenched in product development and…

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Firing is Easy

We mostly hear how hard it is to give negative feedback and fire people. I have been wondering about this. Yes giving negative feedback is hard and firing people is harder. However come to think of it, actually this is a easiest thing. We are all critical of others and so giving negative feedback comes naturally. We more often than not, find it easier to find mistakes rather than appreciate what's going on well. And if a subordinate isn't working out, firing is an easy way out. The work pressures…

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Delivery Led or Sales Led

I have been wondering about this for a while now. What’s better for a business – to be delivery focused or to be sales focused?  Who’s a better business leader – a delivery focused leader or a sales focused leader? I know of companies bracketed as being sales focused or delivery focused. Sales led/focused companies are known for their aggressive attitude towards grabbing business, at any cost, at any promise, irrespective of its delivery capabilities. Deliver led/focused companies are known to be more focused on selling only what they can…

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Career Paths for Trainers

Someone asked a question on the career growth paths for trainers on one of our internal forums. And about the same time I came across this interesting blog post which talks about not worrying about career path and living your career story, written by Jason Seiden. It is from Dan McCarthy’s list of 20 Best Leadership Blog Posts of 2010. Just loved the way Jason explains the need to dump career paths and focus on building your career stories. . So, what could be a Trainer's career stories? While it…

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How to Become a Thought Leader – Part 2

Sometime back I had written about how to become a thought leader in three easy steps. Dorie Clark takes it a step further in detailing it out. She provides some useful tips on how you can share your thoughts and be publicly recognized as a thought leader. She recommends following the six steps to jump-start your thought leadership:Create a robust online presenceFlaunt high-quality affiliationsGive public speechesAppear on TVWin some awardsPublish a bookRead her full post on HBR Blogs.

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