Kevin's Remarkable Learning Blog - A weblog of Kevin's thoughts, ideas, and lessons learned regarding learning on every level. Read Kevin's Remarkable Learning blog today.

Here is a quick quiz for you...

Do you want to find a way to increase the pace of people's development in your organization?

Do you want to improve retention of talent in your organization?

Do you want to increase your own job satisfaction and get more enjoyment out of your work?

Do you want to add to your legacy?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, mentoring can be the answer. Regardless of your current role in your organization, you have something to offer others as a mentor.

If you are a leader you may be able to help others who want to build their leadership skills. If you are newer employee, you may be able to ease the entry of brand new employees. If you play a role in a community or church group, you may be able to mentor others there.

Mentoring is one of those activities that can be an amazing win - for everyone involved - the mentee, their organization, as well as you yourself as the mentor.

If you would like to learn more about how to succeed in your mentoring role, I encourage you to join our August 18th teleseminar.

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, Teamwork and Training

A Bunch of Great Questions

Posted at 11:38 AM on Sunday, July 24, 2005

I don't read Science Magazine typically, but you can bet I'll be reading this month's issue. And you should too. In the introduction to this special anniversary issue, you'll read,

"For this anniversary issue, we decided to shift our frame of reference, to look instead at what we don't know: the scientific puzzles that are driving basic scientific research."

They identified 125 questions that science doesn't have answers to, but could well make great progress on in the next 25 years. Before you finish this intro article you will have read some of them, including:

What Can Replace Cheap Oil--and When?
To What Extent Are Genetic Variation and Personal Health Linked?
How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended?
How Are Memories Stored and Retrieved?
How Did Cooperative Behavior Evolve?

And many more. From this introductory article, you can link to the specific articles on these questions and many more.

I encourage you to read at least one of these articles to:

Learn something new to expand your perspective
Reflect on how the answer to this question could impact us as humans and you specifically (and perhaps your business)
Use as a reminder of the tremendous power in powerful questions.

Also posted in Learning and Leadership.

Note to Hotels - It isn't Just the Bed

Posted at 11:16 AM on

I'm back to blogging after a week's vacation in Cocoa Beach Florida ... a week's vacation, with a one day business excursion to South San Francisco to speak at the HR Star Conference on Wednesday sandwiched in.

I flew into SFO late Tuesday night and stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton in South San Francisco. I noticed on my arrival that this chain has decided to differentiate itself with new beds, just like many other chains (which limits the value of the differentiation, doesn't it?) While the bed was nice, and the high speed access appreciated (and now expected), what defined my experience was a bent piece of metal and plastic called a shower rod.

I've stayed in all sorts of hotels from Family Ins to Five Seasons, from Holiday Inn Expresses to Hyatts and Red Roof Inns to Radisons. And in most all of them I couldn't take a shower without part of my body either on the shower wall or on the shower curtain. So I immediately noticed the curved shower curtain rod the the Four Points, because it made the shower a much more pleasant place to be.

The moral of this story is that we can please, delight and wow Customers in many ways, and some of the best ways are little ways.

Whatever your business, look for your equivalent of the curved shower rod. And remember that all the little things that might not even cost anything, might mean more to your Customers than the big new planned investment in a branded bed.

What is your curved shower rod?

Also posted in Customer Service.

A Lot to Learn From Geese

Posted at 8:43 PM on Monday, July 18, 2005

A couple of years ago while working with Alberta Envirofuels, I watched a training video (I think this is it) about Canadian geese and what could be learned from them about teamwork.

My colleague and friend, Holly Powers, never saw the video, but wrote a great post about what we can learn from geese. It contains four powerful lessons for us as members of teams.

When you read it, reflect on who you team with and how you can support them better. I'm betting you will find an immediate application for your success.

Also posted in Learning and Teamwork.

The Students Have It Right

Posted at 7:13 AM on Sunday, July 17, 2005

What a great article in the New York Times yesterday, Students Say High Schools Let Them Down (free reg required).

The article opens, "A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting, according to an online nationwide survey of teenagers conducted by the National Governors Association."

It continues sharing some details of the report and the surprise of the Governors that the "kids" would recognize the gap in their preparation.

It doesn't surprise me.

People want a challenge, want meaning, and want to learn. While it is sad that our high schools aren't always delivering what their Customers need, it is equally sad that this report surprises people.

When we set higher expectations we get higher results.

By the way, only 1 in 9 of the students in the survey who have dropped out of school or are considering it cited "school is too hard" as the reason. The biggest reason given? 36 percent, said they were "not learning anything."

The message for is very clear - as leaders, as team-mates, as parents, and yes, as citizens concerned about our educational system - set higher expectations. Give people a challenge. Give them meaningful things to learn and help them see the relevance. Give them the support and resources they need, and watch them succeed.

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, Teamwork and Training

An Important Strategic Element

Posted at 4:36 PM on Monday, July 11, 2005

A&W Canada has been working through updating their Strategic Plan this summer. One of my long time friends is on the senior leadership team there and we were having a phone conversation awhile back. She reminded me of the one of the main reasons she took a job there several years ago. They consider their Climate (what most would call company culture) to be a significant part of their strategic plan.

In our conversation she talked about how Climate generated much conversation as to its ongoing strategic place in the business.

How great is that?

Imagine senior leaders discussing the components and relative strength of the company culture. Imagine discussions about identifying weaknesses and gaps as well as important things to reinforce.

It is one thing to state in your mission or related statements that "People are our #1 asset." It is quite another to raise the culture of the organization to the strategic level and leave it there over the long term.

Knowing this, does it surprise you that their website can say, "A&W is Canada's original hamburger quick service restaurant chain, and today is one of it's fastest growing."?

It doesn't surprise me.

Think about how you can raise the importance and value of company culture, team culture or the general climate in your organization. Maybe you don't sit on the senior leadership team. But you can, regardless of your position, think about what you can do to have a powerful impact on this important business component and then take action on your thoughts.

Also posted in Leadership and Teamwork.

Your Great Question Collection #3

Posted at 12:24 AM on Sunday, July 10, 2005

I found this question on an index card as I cleaned up my messy desk today. While the question might not resonate as much with you personally as it does for me, it can be extremely powerful to ask those you lead, coach or mentor.

"What can I be the best in the world at?"

This question evokes emotions and begs us to focus, two qualities of the most valuable questions.

Also posted in Leadership and Learning

Your Great Question Collection #2

Posted at 9:39 PM on Friday, July 08, 2005

Your Great Question Collection #1

Posted at 9:15 AM on Thursday, July 07, 2005

Great Questions - Make a List

Posted at 8:59 AM on

In my last post I shared some reasons why leaders need to ask more questions, but I didn't say what questions they should ask.

I believe we should all collect a few things in our lives, and one of them is questions.

Why? (There is a good question)

Because it is through asking questions that we learn.

To be a more effective leader, team member, trainer, professional, parent, member of society, person, we need to keep learning. And questions are one of the best ways to keep learning.

With that logic in mind, I will help you start your own question collection starting today. I resolve to occasionally post new questions here that you can add to your list. Starting with my next post.

p.s. If you want see some ways I use questions in my work, check out Powerquotes and Powerquotes Plus. I'd love to have you join me there!

Also posted in Leadership, Learning, and Training.

Leadership Tip #8 - Ask More Questions

Posted at 8:50 AM on

If you want to be a better leader, ask more questions.

We need to ask more questions to understand others better.
We need to ask more questions to learn more about a situation.
We need to ask more questions maintain an open mind.
We need to ask more questions because they help us build our relationships with others.
We need to ask more questions to get input into decisions - so we can make better decisions.

Any questions?

Also posted in Leadership and Learning.

Guess-the-Google

Posted at 7:13 AM on Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Want to take two minutes to:

Stretch and exercise your brain?
Stir up your creative thinking?
Get a little competitive with yourself (if you are competitive?
Learn something?

Then go play the Guess-the-Google Game. This game provides you with a montage of 20 images generated from a Google search on a specific keyword. Your job? Figure out the keyword.

It is a bit addictive, not always easy, and hey, you get a score (for the competitive types)

I played this today and can see myself using it personally, before creative activities, or just as a chance to have fun.

I also love the idea of the image montage as a small activity in training. If I do more with this training activity, I will report my results here.

Thanks to Kris Bordessa for the suggestion on her Great Solutions to Team Challenges blog.

Also posted in Creativity, Learning and Training.

Are Best Practices Best?

Posted at 6:48 AM on

Mae West said "too much of a good thing is wonderful." We can all speculate on what types of good things she was speaking of, but I'm confident it wasn't about using Best Practices.

Best Practices (and its cousin benchmarking) are often seen as the Holy Grail in a corporate setting. Describe your process as a Best Practice and you will:

shorten the meeting
close the conversation
lose any chance for identifying a better practice

Shorter meetings might be tantalizing, but that result shouldn't outweigh the risk of closing the exploration for the best possible solution, not just the best one that has been identified to date.

Do Best Practices have value? Of course they do, as a starting point to get to Better Practices.

Thanks to Elearningpost for pointing me to a great article on Best Practices on Marketing Profs.com (free reg required). Their four key points about Best Practices are a bit different than mine, but I completely agree with them:

They rarely work
It's a follower's strategy
Change comes from within
They don't come with a manual

My take? Use Best Practices as a starting point, not the finish line.

Also posted in Creativity, Leadership, Learning, Teamwork and Training.

Christmas In July

Posted at 8:37 PM on Tuesday, July 05, 2005

As a part of our ongoing communications with our Clients and colleagues, we decided to wish them Christmas in July. In our letter to them I told about a restaurant when I was growing up that always celebrated Christmas in July with the decorations, music, etc.

Today I received a thank you note from one of the recipients who told me of her favorite Christmas in July memory.

"Like you, I have fun, fond memories of Christmas in July. In a prior life, coworkers and I decorated and exchanged tacky gifts. In fact our rule was to see how little you could spend on a gift. That made for some wonderfully creative gifts and lots of laughs."

While I have never celebrated this way, is sounds great.

You may think Christmas in July is strange. You may not even celebrate Christmas at all. It really doesn't matter. Because the message in this post is the creativity of Judy and her former coworkers.

Take this idea and use it for your team, your family, your neighborhood, or the whole office.

Pick a reason to celebrate. Have people draws names to exchange gifts (or find another way to share the gifts) and set the "rules" like Judy did: spend as little as possible.

You might even add some other "rules." The first ones I think of are:

Be as creative as possible.
Make the gift as tacky (or memorable, or funny, or whatever-other-adjective you pick) as possible.
Make it fun.

This could be seriously fun way to build team relationships, reduce stress, celebrate an achievement, boost group morale or enhance creativity.

Thanks Judy for your note and your idea!

Also posted in Creativity, Leadership and Teamwork.

How Customer Focused is it?

Posted at 8:20 PM on

A random act of surfing tonight led me to Armytage and Mason Blog (subtitled The Blog for Strung Out Managers Everywhere!). Their most recent post shared a link to an interesting website - Customer Focus Calculator.

The site says, "As proud as you may be of your company and your product or service, most customers only care about how well you can help them meet their wants and needs. If you want more of them to buy, your focus has to be on your customer. How do you communicate that to them? With the words you use on your site. Are you talking mostly about them and their needs or are you talking mostly about yourself?"

The calculator analyzes a webpage you submit or it can review any copy from a brochure, advertisement, to help you see where the focus of your copy is.

It isn't perfect, but they don't purport it to be, but it is a great way to look at how Customer focused your writing is.

Also posted in Customer Service.

On Mission Statements

Posted at 9:07 PM on Monday, July 04, 2005

I often get asked when facilitating strategic planning to help people with Mission and Vision statements. And when that happens, people often want examples. Now, I'll have a place to refer them.

The Man on a Mission Blog. A blog with consisting entirely of examples of mission, vision and other similar corporate statements.

If you are helping work on a mission statement, or are interested in these types of things, it is worth a look.

My first observation confirms my experience. Most all of them are too long.

Thanks to Business Pundit's Blog for the tip.

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

Coaching vs. Mentoring

Posted at 1:51 PM on Sunday, July 03, 2005

I have had the good fortune of helping organizations build both coaching skills and mentoring skills in their leaders. We continue to have that opportunity and I love helping people develop those skills.

I have long said that from a corporate perspective, the skill sets of great coaches and great mentors are similar, and in that setting that the largest difference is that people usually coach those they supervise, but mentor people they don't supervise.

Today I read a post from Jay Abraham's blog where he talks about the difference from his perspective. He says coaches help us reach the goals we have set for ourselves, while mentors see our greater potential and push us beyond our own perspectives and goals.

I think it is very useful to delineate the two perspectives that way, though I wouldn't call that the defining difference between the roles of mentor and coach.

The best leaders in an organization help others understand, set, and achieve their goals, and help them stretch and see the even bigger potentials that they have.

I encourage you to strive to do both, whether as a coach or mentor.

We are offering teleseminars on both mentoring and coaching in the coming months - you can learn more and register by clicking on the links below.

Mastering the Art of Mentoring
The Leader as a Coach - Five Powerful Ways to Support People's Improvement

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

It's Halftime!

Posted at 6:41 AM on Friday, July 01, 2005

Many people set annual goals based on the calendar. Which typically means there is a big flurry of thinking about goals in late December and early January. And another flurry late in the year trying to make progress towards those goals.

Today is July the 1st. We have just completed the first half of the calendar year.

I recommend another flurry of activity.

It is halftime in the your goal-achieving game for 2005. Time to take stock, reflect, check progress and results, and review everything.

Here is, in short form, what you should do:

1. Get out your goals and review them. See if any of them need to be adjusted because the world has changed. Maybe a new opportunity has bumped one of these goals from being a priority for the rest of the year, for example.
2. Check progress towards the achievement of these goals. If you have action plans for each goal see how close you are to being on-track.
3. Review your plans for the rest of the year. Do these plans still look like they are the best way to aid you in successfully achieving the goal? If not, make adjustments now.
4. Lastly, and most importantly, resolve to review your goals MUCH more frequently than at halftime!

Put your goals in front of yourself regularly - daily is best. Remind yourself of them and remain focused on them. This new practice will be the most valuable single action you can take to help you have an amazing second half of 2005.

It is halftime. And in the U.S. and Canada, with Canada Day today and Independence Day on Monday, we should be able to make time for this important activity. For those of you in the rest of the world, just make the time.

Great coaches encourage their players at halftime by talking about and reinforcing what was done well in the first half and by helping people identify what they can do better.

In the goal setting game you are a player and coach. Use halftime to reflect, re-energize and take a break.

Then get out their and win YOUR goal achievement game!

Also posted in Leadership and Learning.

Begin to Unleash Your Remarkable Potential today!

Unleashing Your Remarkable Potential is Kevin Eikenberry’s guide to helping you have amazing success while developing your professional and personal potential.