Saturday, November 18, 2006

Tip #148: Teaching for the Small Business Development Center

t all began when I began to think about starting my own business. The University of Wisconsin had a Small Business Development Center that offered free counseling to individuals in my situation, so I scheduled an appointment. I was very concerned about the number of training consultants in the Madison area, feeling that the competition might be too stiff. When I met with the Director, William Pinkovitz, he assured me that there was nothing to worry about. As long as the other consultants were doing a good job., businesses would hire me for the unique capabilities that I had. The problem would arise if the other consultants were NOT doing a good job, because then the entire training industry would have a bad reputation and it would make it difficult for any of us to do business.

As we discussed my areas of expertise, he asked me if I would be willing to teach for the Small Business Development Center itself. Saying –yes” was one of the best decisions I've ever made! For years, we offered the only evening workshops in the area on personnel management and human resources topics. The Center publicized the programs throughout the region and I suddenly had their marketing expertise to promote me!!! The programs offered me immediate access to local businesses. I began to have name and face recognition as a trainer, which was an amazing gift for a new business.

In addition, when Joan Gillman joined the Center shortly after I met with Bill, she had all sorts of creative ideas for additional services to business. This included the Women's Breakfast Series on different topics, which was and continues to be wildly successful. It was a wonderful showcase that afforded access to hundreds of women at every level in business.

Not only did Joan become a good friend, she was also a marketer extraordinaire on my behalf (as well as the behalf of many other trainers). Joan promoted me as a speaker and workshop leader for every small business conference in the state. When inquiries came for onsite training from local businesses, she referred them to me. Joan nominated me for the Small Business Trainer of the Year, which gave me a monetary prize that enabled me to attend a professional conference. She was and still is my best promoter and business advisor.

If you've been reading these Tips for the past few months, you'll recognize her name. Joan not only opened doors for me locally and throughout the state of Wisconsin, she brought me to teach in Croatia. She is still the very first person to whom I refer any consultant wanting to get into training.

Over the years since, there have been many other wonderful people who have opened doors for me, pushed me in directions I never anticipated, and gave me opportunities I will always value and can never adequately repay. We absolutely do get by with more than a little help from our friends!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Tip #147: Teaching in a University Degree Program

During the years I had been teaching in the evenings for UW-Madison Extension and the Madison Area Technical College, I had held down a day job working for the State of Wisconsin in personnel management. Therefore, when I saw that Cardinal Stritch College was looking for ad hoc instructors for their Continuing Education Programs for Adults, I felt confident enough to apply. They required a Masters Degree, which I had earned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Once my application and resume had been accepted, the next stage of the selection process was to present a ten minute program. I think I may have done mine on Win-Win Negotiation, incorporating all that I had learned from my studies with Dr. Madeline Hunter to make the training educational, interactive, and entertaining. I know I brought koosh balls and bowls of candy, as well as my colored cartoon overheads.

It was quite an education to sit in on all of the presentations. I was amazed to see how much a ten minute presentation revealed about a trainer's skills! Later, when I interviewed trainers for my own company, Laurel and Associates, Ltd. ., I remembered and used this process. From that point on, all of my skill-building training programs (in communication, presentation, facilitation, negotiation, conflict management, assertiveness, and train-the-trainer, etc.) have included skills practice for ten minutes.

I was delighted to join the ad hoc faculty to teach in the first evening continuing education program in management for adults that was offered in the Madison area. Cardinal Stritch offered an Associate Degree, a Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Science degree. The program involved four-hour sessions offered weekly for 56 weeks. The students took one course at a time, with each course lasting for four sessions. I was hired to teach two courses for the Masters of Science in Management program: the very first academic course they received, which was Personnel Management- and one of the last, which was Organizational Development. I also taught the very first session that students in all of the programs attended: Orientation.

The students were all working adults, ranging in age from their middle twenties to their late fifties. They came from all over the area, some driving more than an hour one way to attend the classes, which ran from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

I learned so much from them:

First, that they were creatures of habit. When I returned to teach the last class, they were all still seated in the same arrangement they had assumed over 50 weeks prior!

Second, because of the travel and class time, many were tired and hungry. I found that encouraging them to bring something to eat and giving them ten minute breaks every hour kept them much more alert. It wasn't until much much later that I learned that the brain gets saturated after fifty minutes and needs that time to relax and reboot.

Third, they were already living and working what we were teaching. The classes only served to give them a common vocabulary to discuss their experience. Their examples and stories brought every management principle to life.

Fourth, given the opportunity to propose questions for their examinations, they came up with questions MUCH harder than anything I would have asked!

Fifth, once they had reviewed the class and homework requirements for earning an A, a B, or a C in the course, almost every one of them contracted for an A and achieved it. They proved the power of setting goals and accepting personal responsibility for their own learning.

Sixth, they did a terrific job on their research papers, continually teaching me new information, new perspectives, and new applications.

Seventh, that four hours was a good period of time for learning.

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Tip #146: Jumping In Without A Net!

After I had been an Assertiveness trainer for UW-Madison Extension for over a year, I was eager to expand my repertoire as a trainer. So I was very excited when there was an advertisement in the paper for an ad hoc instructor in Supervisory Management at the Madison Area Technical College. I submitted my resume and had a very nice interview with John Lalor, who was the Director of the Marketing Department that housed the Supervisory Management Technician associate degree program. A few weeks after that interview, I got a call in the evening from John. Apparently, an ad hoc instructor who was slated to teach a semester-long Supervisory Skills course was not able to fulfill his commitment. John needed an instructor immediately, to start the very next evening!

I was completely overwhelmed and protested that I had only taught Assertiveness- I knew nothing about Supervisory Skills!!! John was very reassuring, telling me that there was already a text book and that he knew I would do a wonderful job. I disagreed, knowing full well that this was WAY out of my league! But John persisted, even agreeing to meet with me in the early morning before I left for my day job with the state.

Although I am sure that I prepared a lesson outline and printed off materials sometime during the day, I really don't remember WHAT I did that first evening class. For the rest of the semester, I was always only one chapter ahead of my class. I also went straight to the library to find as many books as I could on the subject, liberally drawing content and activities from every likely reference source.

Luckily, the text book: The Art of Leadership, by Lin Bothwell, had terrific content and lots of activities, questionnaires, and self assessments. Its content and approach validated the use of dialogue, group activities, personal action plans, progress reports, and colored cartoon overheads to emphasize key points that had worked so well in the Assertiveness classes. I still refer to it to this day when I design supervisory training.

I found that I loved the subject and really enjoyed the students, many of whom were already in the work world. I was also stimulated by the constant challenge of coming up with creative and effective ways to teach new content and enable the students to experience and apply their new learning. Since the entire subject area was uncharted domain for me, I felt free to experiment with lots of different teaching methods.

When the semester was over, there was a need for someone to teach the next course ( I can't remember whether it was Running Effective Meetings or Active Listening Skills or Conflict Management). John asked me to do it and I said "Yes.” Although I didn't know anything about the topic, I now knew how to research content, create lesson plans, and incorporate educational as well as entertaining activities that launched the students on their own voyage of self discovery.

That began an entire second career for me. Each semester marked the need for a course on a new topic and I always said "Yes” and then made a mad dash to the library to start my research. Thus I slowly built up my repertoire of topics, as well as developed great relationships with many of the students. One of them actually became a life long friend, Teri Pickering, whom I am visiting this weekend to belatedly celebrate her birthday.

As you can see, this MATC teaching experience gave me many gifts. The key gift was the opportunity to face my very real fear of inadequacy. I gradually learned to trust that, if I did my homework and honored basic adult learning principles, the result would be mostly good. I was also forced to accept that I would always be a work in progress.

Lorraine Ortner-Blake pens the following quote on one of her beautiful art cards:

"When you come to the edge of all the light you've known, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen. There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.”