Keeping busy!

It's been a busy week...

• Finished class number 11 (out of 13) for my Masters in Adult Education and Training...
• Started class number 12
• Packed up my office and went 'open work' (ie: homeless)
• Received my Kindle DX and loaded it with brain candy
• Delivered slide:ology webinars to South Korea and Singapore. Both went really well...
• Helped an internal team build their vision statement
• Ended up on the winning team in an HR Iron Chef challenge!
• Facilitated a team session with DiSC, Tuckman's model, and the ever-awesome spiderweb
• Got in a hike at Alum Rock Park
• Watched the Yanks sweep the Twins (Yanks/Angels should be a great series)
• Watched the Giants beat up on the Raiders (or is that 'beat down')
• Worked with Randy Emelo on Part III of our Mentoring Conversations Model
• Worked with Ed Muzio on the instructional design of the workshop version for his upcoming book

Yep... it was a good week.

Situational Leadership II Brochure

In the past four years, I've learned two tools that changed my perspective on management - DISC Profiling and Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership II (SLII).

If you have any interest in development, you find the SLII model invaluable.

Do yourself a favor, go to this link right now and download the brochure.

Read it, read it again, sleep on it, and then read it once more.

There is not a day that passes where I don't use the SLII model.

Download it now and thank me later.

Preparation and Teamwork...

On Friday, Brent and I led a team building workshop with about 25 participants. It was a typical agenda for this type of event - Photo Facilitation for an icebreaker, Patrick Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions of a team video and survey, followed by DiSC profiling. Things were going great, until the power went out in the middle of the 5 Dysfuctions Video.

I always preach that one should never have a presentation that they couldn't nail with the power out. The idea is that you never know what will happen. Most of the time it isn't a power outage. It could be a room without a projector, a chance meeting in a restaurant, or just a change of schedule. The point is - be ready.

We quickly changed the schedule and had the team work on their DiSC profiles while we waited for power.
It came up rather quickly. We then had the issue of getting the system to work again
While I took the team through a 'chalk talk' about and got things going - turning on the projector with the correct slide, right in sync with my discussion. 

We even got a round of applause from a pretty tough crowd.

Two Lessons to take away from this event:

• Preparation: Always be ready. We could have delivered the whole session without power. I had handouts of the models and am able to give a 'chalk talk' with no slides. We had all our materials and could have taken the team outdoors.
• Teamwork: For key jobs, always have a partner. This workshop was for a key client, so I just offhandedly invited Brent the day before. Man, am I glad I did that! Be able to do it yourself, but always try to get backup support.

Does your DiSC profile change when you travel?

Yesterday, I was leading a 'High Performance Teams' session in Yokohama, Japan.
We always do individual behavior profiling, using DiSC, to open our session.

In the past, we've tested everyone using the English version of DiSC, since we're a US-based company.
This trip, for the first time, we used a Japanese language version.
As a test, I had my good friend Fumio Nishikata take both the English and Japanese versions.

Since he does a lot of work with both the US and Japan, he took the Japanese version thinking of his Japanese work environment, and the English version thinking of his US work environment.
I wasn't very surprised to see that his profile changed slightly.

In Japan, Fumio is a 'power D' (directive), with a secondary 'I' (influence). Under stress, his 'D' becomes even more pronounced. So Fumio uses primarily a directive behavior in Japan.

In the US, however, Fumio is a 'high I', with a secondary 'D'; meaning he is more likely to use influence. Under stress, his directive behavior drops, and his 'S' (sociability) rises, so he's more likely to agree to consensus decisions.

As we discussed this, we surmised that most people who are successful in global organizations probably have a similar pattern. That is, it's likely that they will become less directive, using more influence and consensus away from home.

The people who continue to be directive, on foreign land, are usually the ones who fail...