Bad Circumstances and Planning

On the way to the office this morning, I heard the unmistakable sound of a siren. In this rural area emergency vehicles still draw attention.  The paramedic in me noted the weather (cool and rainy) and immediately thought “wreck”.  I was about to turn towards town when I saw something that saddened me.  At the gas pumps across the street sat an ambulance, lights flashing.  The driver’s body language was obvious even at 100 yards – frustration. Imagine the level of embarrassment and frustration he must have been feeling.  I won’t pass judgment on the crew of the ambulance because I don’t know the circumstances that led to this specific situation. What can be said is that the situation was a bad one for the crew, for the patient(s), and for the public perception of their agency.

As instructors, we often are faced with situations that are outside our control.  We have audio-visual equipment that worked perfectly yesterday, fail.  We have wonderfully planned outdoor skills stations, and then mother nature serves up lightning and severe storms. Just like the patient waiting on the ambulance, though – our students don’t really care “why” things don’t go as planned. In fact, most students don’t really care about how much we deviate from our original plan.  They want a quality learning experience. They want to learn something new, or learn how to do something better.

The value of planning and preparation cannot be overstated.  The staff should have a contingency plan for anything that can reasonably be expected to go wrong. There are four basic rules for preparation I’ve always tried to follow:

1. All A/V equipment, including the internet connection, will fail.  In addition to your backup, have a plans for training without the Internet, without power, without a projector, and without a computer.
2. Always assume the weather will be severe – plan for wind, rain, snow, lightning; remember that weather affects your students’ ability to travel also.
3. Twice the planned number of students will show up, but only half of the planned instructors.
4. Have a backup plan for every element of the day and every piece of equipment.

Invariably, every training session will have challenges.  How the instructional team responds to the challenge is what students remember.  The ideal situation is that students are not even aware of the problem.  One thing that will guarantee failure is to bury your head in the sand and hope the situation resolves on its own.  Knowing about a problem, not acknowledging the issue, and pushing forward with a bad plan can lead to a training disaster.  Even if you are faced with that “perfect storm” of training problems, you have a responsibility to your students. Give them a  10-minute break, bring your training team together, and come up with a plan.  Communicate the plan, then execute it.  Students will forgive early challenges and the unplanned break if they come back to a valuable learning session.

When things don’t go as planned, be honest with your students and staff.  If you’re in charge, don’t pass the buck or blame.  Acknowledge the fact there were challenges, and commit to providing the best program possible under those circumstances.  Students – and your fellow instructors – will appreciate your candor and honesty. They will also recognize and appreciate it when you’ve gone “the extra mile” to ensure the success of the program.

The bottom line – even if you get caught with an empty tank, pull out the spare can you had squirreled away in the bushes and fill up so you can keep driving.  Expect things to go wrong, and plan your options.  You’ll be glad you did.

Women are Superior

Women have been, for years, better than men in a lot of areas.  Women are better at meeting the needs of those around them.  Women are better at nurturing.  Women are more compassionate.  Women are better at multi-tasking.  Women are better at reading and following directions.  Women are better at asking for help when they need it.  And now, based on various sources, we can say that women, in general, make better leaders than men in the field of training and learning management.

Historically, women who wanted to succeed in the business world had to adopt certain masculine characteristics in order to be taken seriously.  Now, women are gaining ground in the office hierarchy based on the inherent qualities that make them definitively female.  These typically feminine qualities are now being seen as beneficial, even desirable, traits that were once thought of as weak and inappropriate for the business world.  

You may think that women are emerging on to the corporate training scene without much experience, but you’d be wrong!  Women have been in the business of training for thousands of years, literally.  If you look back to the Garden of Eden, Eve was the first “training executive” in existence.  She scoped out the scene, listened to the chatter, made a decision, and then persuaded Adam to follow suit.  She trained Adam.

As the family unit continued to grow, women became chief training officers by default.  It was the woman’s responsibility to educate the children, teach them manners, and train them to complete various chores, all while she maintained order in the house, grew the garden, did the mending, the wash and more.  These traits that a woman historically used to keep her family together, are now being used to unify and solidify the workplace and it’s functions.  Dr. Kanyoro of the YWCA has this to say about women in leadership:

Domination as a leadership style is becoming less and less popular. There is a new growing appreciation of...those traits that women use to keep families together and to organize volunteers to unite and make change in the shared life of communities. These newly admired leadership qualities of shared leadership; nurturance and doing good for others are today not only sought after but also indeed needed to make a difference in the world....A feminine way of leading includes helping the world to understand and be principled about values that really matter.    

In the business world we are seeing a paradigm shift from the male dominated, hierarchical structure to a micro-community of idea-sharing within the office environment.  No longer is the CEO’s M.O. “to the top no matter what” or “looking out for number 1”.  Today’s business leader is expected to nurture and encourage, team-build and even sacrifice for the benefit of the whole.  An article in the Washington Post (8/10/2011) titled “What Men Can Learn From Women About Leadership” points to some recent studies that suggest women are more adept at reading all sorts of social interactions and situations including those in an office setting.  An article in BusinessWeek indicates that women are actually performing on a higher level in most business settings than their male counterparts.

History and the research seem to indicate that women make better leaders.  From that one can draw the conclusion that women make better trainers, too.  When you consider what is involved in the training process, i.e. lots of personal interactions, dissemination and distribution of new information, keeping abreast of training innovations, sensitivity to the learners needs, etc., it’s not hard to see why women are excelling in this area.  While the male perspective is certainly useful, even needed, in some areas, this is no longer one of them.