Releasing the Inner Cowboy - a professional confessional.

As I have mentioned before, I've had a variety of paid jobs over the years.  Apart from the obligatory 'student' Summer jobs and the like, most of these other roles came about because it was difficult to find and stay in work in my first chosen profession, as an actor.  In a professional acting career of some 12 years, I probably worked as an actor for about 5 of those years; the rest of time, I was "resting" (a bigger misnomer I have yet to find), and undertook a variety of other jobs between acting work to keep the wolf from the door.

I left school able to type (I have a Secretarial Studies SCE 'O' Grade) and I learned to drive in the Summer holidays before I started Drama School.  So between those two ‘essential skills', I was always able to find work in between my infrequent acting jobs - usually in some kind of audio-typing or transcription work or as a delivery driver.  And the typing jobs led to me being offered several permanent officework positions.  Why?  Because I was still acting when I took on those roles - I dressed the part, I walked the talk, I was articulate, accurate in my work, I stepped in where the need arose and tried to do the best possible job I could.

An actor friend put it this way, "When you put an actor into another job, you're employing a cowboy who doesn't necessarily know the 'rules' or the politics of the situation, who is 'quick study' and just gets on with it, but in a more creative and effective way".

Eventually, marriage, mortgage and a desire to start a family, coupled with a realisation that the next level of acting work wasn't happening quickly enough to achieve those aspirations, led me to take up one of those offers of a permanent job, and I became the Office Manager for a Transport & Planning Training Company in London.  Again, I learned the job on the job (the work is the learning is the work) and I was off on another professional career, which eventually led to training and training (now Learning) management.

But what I realised over the years is that the more 'professional' and good at the job I became, the less spontaneous, creative and engaged I felt.  I was gradually conforming to my different employers' cultures and politics such that my 'inner cowboy', the amateur pirate that got me into these positions in the first place, had become depressed and gone off in a sulk.  And you don’t want to be around a sulking actor, believe me!

Jump forward to last year. I attended a one day Learning & Skills Group conference, and got my first experience of Twitter, in a session run by Jane Hart and Barry Sampson.  People around me were whipping out their iPhones and laptops and we could all see something called a ‘Twitter Backstream’ projected from the Internet onto the screen.  People, identified by strange @names, were commenting, answering - and asking - questions; and some of them weren't even in the room!  Jane and Barry (or @C4LPT and @barrysampson as I have come to know them) kept things on track by getting everyone to use the same 'hashtag' (more magic), which meant that we could focus in on the topics under discussion.  I had vaguely heard about Twitter, but with no context or application, had never grasped its potential.

So I came home, signed up and got myself an account.  I said 'hello' and people I knew (and some I didn’t) said ‘hello’ back, and a dialogue commenced.  I started following people in the L&D and Social Media industry, and over the last year, I have developed an inspiring and challenging Personal Learning Network, to which I hope I have added some value myself.  I have re-engaged, conversed, argued, learned from and generally 'got my mojo back' through the conversations and discussions with these clever and creative people.

I’ve realised that there’s a parallel here with my professional career.  In between acting jobs, I was essentially an amateur at everything else I did, until they became more permanent, professional positions.  I started out as a Twitter amateur (an #amatwiteur, if you will) and have found the whole thing to be an interesting and inspiring experience.  It has opened my eyes to the potential of social media in learning, and by being 'under the radar' at work, has refreshed and re-energised my inner cowboy.  I have engaged with others, with my own team and with people at work in a way in which my 'professional' approach was not working - for me or for them.  We’re all now playing with and reflecting on the potential of these new technologies in the workplace.

Now, with a role change imminent at work and the refocus of a new leadership position in Learning Technologies, I am releasing my inner cowboy, my creative amateur, and starting to mix things up again.  I’ll be updating this story with how things are progressing, in my session with Clive Shepherd at the World of Learning Conference in Birmingham on Tuesday 27^th September (#WoL11).  I hope you can be part of that too.

Assumptions in a Virtual World

In one of my previous blogs, I talked about my daily commute to London. One morning recently, my train pulled in to City Thameslink station and the usual crowd got up and left the train. In the ensuing - and brief - silence which followed, a woman standing at the door of the carriage called out "Is this City Thameslink?" Without giving it any thought, nor looking over my shoulder to see, I made a very presumptive judgement about her. "The station name's written on the wall! It's just been announced by the driver! Stupid woman." I didn't say that obviously, but I most definitely thought it!

But then I had another thought, "Hang on, who's being stupid here? What assumptions have I just made without checking? Maybe she's blind; or deaf; or both! Maybe she has learning difficulties, or is Dyslexic! Did I hear a foreign accent? Is English not her first language?" You see where I'm going with this. Because I couldn't see her or be bothered to find out anything about her, I made a horrible, knee-jerk, inappropriate judgement about her because of that one heard question. There, I'm glad I got that off my chest - confession is good for the soul!

Then I got to thinking how similar that situation is to that in which I have found myself when running virtual classroom sessions or webinars. My guess is that the majority of us don't use webcam or video in these sessions (bandwidth, etc), so we rely on our participants' voices, their web chat, their interaction with mark-up tools, responses to questions or polls, for us to get any sense of who they really are and the circumstances in which they are participating in our session.

But what don't we know or can tell from this? Are they private? Are they in a shared office? Can they interact freely? Are they shy? Do they have difficulty in seeing the screen? Do they need glasses? Are they 'newbies' to this environment? Do they not like the sound of their own voice? Is English not their first language? Is this session engaging enough? Am I encouraging participation with my questions, my polls, my arguments?

In the classroom, we identify some of these issues because we can see the learner and actively flex to engage them as we go along. Do we pay enough attention to the quiet ones in our online sessions, without those clues?

We talk a lot about non-verbal communication and how we rely on it to contextualise our face-to-face or classroom sessions. As my team and I look to retool, revitalise and revive our Virtual Classroom sessions and uptake, maybe we need to pay even more - and urgent - attention to our virtual interpretation and communication skills.

Have you got any similar experiences and/or hints and tips to share?

Man on the Moon

Being something of an armchair astronomer (remember, I know a little about a lot…), I was recently asked to write a short, 300 word piece, on the subject of ‘The Moon’, for a local community newsletter. That was the extent of the brief; so I wrote and submitted the following:

TITLE: "There is no dark side of the Moon really..."

Towards the end of Pink Floyd's seminal 1973 album, Dark Side of The Moon, a character can be heard saying "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark." Sounds deeply mystical and meaningful, doesn't it? But it's wrong.

We assume that, because we always see the same 'face' of the Moon turned towards us, the other side must be dark. However, we see the different phases of the Moon each month - New, 1st Quarter, Half, 3rd Quarter, New - when the sun illuminates it from different angles as it orbits the Earth every 29 days. And remember, when we have an eclipse, the Moon comes between us and the Sun and blocks it from view for a few magical moments. At that point 'our' side is the dark side and the Sun is shining fully onto the other side.

We also assume that the Moon doesn’t rotate like the Earth does (our 24hr day). But it actually rotates one full turn during those 29 days!

Don't believe me? Draw a Man in the Moon face onto a ping-pong ball (your ‘Moon’), turn it to face another larger, spherical object (your ‘Earth’), and then, WITHOUT TWISTING your hand, move it in a circle round your Earth. You'll see the 'face' eventually turns away from the 'Earth' until, half way round, it has turned its back and faces away from the Earth altogether! To keep the same 'face' towards the earth, you HAVE to twist your ‘Moon’ round so that by the time you return to the starting point, you have rotated it by one full turn. Our Earth Month is one Lunar Day!

The truth is there is no dark side of the Moon really. Full Stop. (End of article)

So why am I sharing this article with you in my blog? What has this got to do with my professional life and interests - or indeed, yours? Well, the clue is the last paragraph, where I suggest a practical exercise to explain the concept. It’s not a theoretical exercise. I wanted to make an out-of-this-world scientific fact into something tangible. Having read up the science bit (fttp://www.universetoday.com/19725/lunar-day/), I did it myself to be sure I fully understood the principle, and then I talked my son through doing the same thing with a grape and an orange, to check that it was an understandable - and do-able - practical exercise. He learned something he didn’t know about our Moon, without us getting bogged down in complex discussions about orbital dynamics and tidal locking.

You see, I’m not a book learner; I need to do and see things for myself for them to make sense. That’s how I developed as an IT trainer many years ago, by learning to use software for myself. For example, any time I had to write a new word processing course, I used the actual software itself to write the course materials – Word, WordPerfect, AmiPro etc. - so I could walk the talk when it came to sharing with my students. It's how I'm learning to blog!

My limited knowledge and understanding of astronomy came initially from buying a pair of binoculars 20 years ago and pointing them at the moon (I was really trying to see Halley's Comet - never did). I subscribed to an astronomy magazine, which really whetted my appetite to see more. So I bought a telescope and hunted down some of the planets - Mars, Venus, Jupiter - and I will never forget the thrill I experienced the first time I saw the Rings of Saturn for myself through that telescope. Theory became reality by translating it into action, discovery and by looking closer.

That’s how I learn, and I’ve used that approach with many others over the years in IT Learning & Development. Make it real, make it challenging, make it fun and they'll be with you all the way. Don’t, and they won’t.

What are your techniques for keeping your training alive for your learners?

Under the Commute

Another beautiful day in Sussex on Sunday, so @MandyRG and I hit the road to Ardingly Reservoir for a country walk - nothing as strenuous or as challenging as @BenedictBeau's recent South Downs walk (http://lionslastroar.blogspot.com/) mind you - and then I took myself off for another hour to walk down the Ouse to have a look at the Balcome Railway Viaduct and take some photos (see below).

There are a host of facts about this 1841, 37-arch viaduct, which I won't repeat here - you can find all that stuff easily on the Web.

So, why did I need to get up close and personal to this piece of our industrial architecture?  Well, apart from my natural geeky curiosity about all things 'trains', I actually pass over this viaduct on my daily rail commute to and from London, and have often admired the surrounding countryside as we sweep overhead at 75 mph.  I thought it would be cool to see both the viaduct and its setting from another perspective.

I was reminded of @StephanieDedhar's post last week "Looking at things the right way", where she discusses how seeing the same topic from different perspectives can add weight and understanding to a learning experience (http://stephaniededhar.wordpress.com/). 

And talking of perspectives, I can't think of a better illustration of that than the second photo, looking through the piers of the viaduct, from one end to the other.  They were built with hollow centres (to save bricks?) and can only be seen in all their glory by being directly underneath the structure.

As this picture was being taken on autotimer, a train thundered by overhead and I smiled to myself that, come Tuesday, I'll be doing that again myself, with several hundred other regular commuters. But I'll never take that particular part of my journey for granted again - I've been under the commute.

Appraising Appraisals

It's that time of year again, when people across organisations - Managers, Supervisors and staff alike - wake with a song in their heart, looking forward with eager anticipation to their annual appraisals. Managers thrill with anticipation at the prospect of conducting those deep and meaningful conversations - that they have so diligently prepared for - with their enthusiastic and motivated staff; whilst those same staff have assembled their evidence and documented their progress against the specific, meaningful, achievable, realistic and timely objectives which they agreed with their managers at their previous annual and then their interim review 6 months ago...

Hang on a sec! If there were a soundtrack attached to this blog, this would be where you would hear the record player needle scratch across and fall off the vinyl record, wouldn't it?

I am a big fan of Appraisals. I think that , done effectively, they are powerful tools, engaging and empowering managers and staff alike. I have been conducting them for over 14 years now, and being appraised for longer than that. I have worked with different appraisal models. For me, it's not the model itself which is important - it's the conversation, the human face-to-face interaction - that matters!

I particularly like the concept of a Professional Development Portfolio, whereby everyone has their our own folder (physical or virtual) into which they file their reviews, their agreed operational objectives, their development plans and their record and evidence of achievement. This is very effective, generating a real sense of ownership and personal responsibility amongst staff at all levels. It becomes a living document, reviewed formally twice a year, but updated by the owner throughout the year as they achieve objectives and gather the evidence from both planned and unplanned activity.

I've also found a simple Leadership Model - 'Set the Direction; Enable; Monitor' - to be the key to managing my team's performance, and being managed myself. I use the same approach in applying any appraisal system. Let's just look at that Model in more detail, by posing some questions that are particularly relevant whilst the annual appraisal round is in full flow everywhere (remember, this works bottom-up just as well as top-down):

'Set the Direction' - Did your manager set your direction for this year? Did you agree your objectives with him or her? Were they SMART objectives? Did you understand how your objectives contributed to the departmental and organisational strategy and plans? Did you agree with your manager what measures you would use to determine weather or not the objective had been met? Did you discuss whether or not you had the skills required to achieve those objectives, and if not, how you were going to acquire them (this leads us nicely on to...)

'Enable' - Did you have the right amount of time, the proper tools, the skills and the motivation, to achieve your objectives? If not, did you discuss this with your manager during your appraisal? Did you agree an under-pinning personal and professional development plan to ensure that you could? And did you take/were you given the opportunity to get that learning and turn it into the delivery of your objectives?

'Monitor' - Do you and your manager have formal or informal one-to-one's in between your appraisals? Do you talk to him/her if you have any issues between times? Do you keep him/her informed of your successes? Do you record them for inclusion in your Appraisal discussion? Does your manager know what else is going on in your life which may or may not be having an impact on your ability to do your job, and is he/she making provision for that? I guess the main thing for me here is - do you have an open and honest relationship with your manager?

I'm not sure that I can honestly say I have been able to answer all of these questions effectively as a Manager (Appraiser) or as a member of staff (Appraisee) this year. But as we all complete our appraisal forms and prepare for those discussions with our managers, I encourage you to think about those questions, and to consider the Leadership Model I have outlined above. Remember, good leadership is something we can ALL demonstrate, whether or not we are actually managing other staff, and thereby ensure that this year's appraisal conversations are authentic and meaningful.

What's been your experience and your thoughts on appraisals?

The Blog Bullet - Bitten!

Hello and welcome to my new blog.  This is something I've been procrastinating about for a long time.  I started 'micro-blogging' in the Summer of last year, after attending a Learning & Skills Group conference in London and experiencing Twitter for the first time.  That inspired me to get myself a Twitter account and to start interacting with others in the Learning & Development and Social Media world.  I began to 'get it' and to feel reconnected.  As of today, I have 'tweeted' 1,302 times, I am following 210 interesting people and organisation, and I am being followed by 198 people who really ought to know better!  All OK so far...

So why venture into 'proper' blogging now, and what's with the name, "A Little About a Lot"?

Well, I've already passed the Twitter 140 character limit just getting to here in this blog!  I've seen how others use their Tweets to lead interested people to their blogs and to engage more deeply in their topic.  I've seen colleagues and friends take their first steps into blogging and been surprised and impressed at the depth of their knowledge and wisdom.  And they've been encouraging me to do the same, despite my misgivings about whether or not I had something useful to share and even then, if others would be in the least interested.

So I started 'journalling', making an effort to regularly jot down ideas, thoughts, reflections, jokes etc in a notebook app on my laptop.  I started a document called 'Blog Ideas' and it's run to two pages already.

I've been many things in my working life - Fruit Picker, Postman, Delivery Driver, Shop Assistant, Theatrical Lighting Rigger, Stage Manager, Actor, Audio Typist, Barman, PA, Office Manager, Business Owner, IT Trainer and I've been a Training Manager for the last 14 years. I've been a husband for 25 years and a dad for 19.  So, I know a little about a lot and a lot about very little!

I look forward to sharing with - and learning from - you too.