Tip #200: Always Learning

I will stop training when I stop learning from the wise souls in the workshops I am honored to facilitate. And as long as those participants keep attending my workshops and I draw breath, I know that I will always be learning.

What a wonderful way to make a living and make a life.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

May 2008 bring you health, happiness, success, and enough challenge to keep you alive and fresh!

Our first Tip of 2008 focuses on transformation- in the form of the Hoberman sphere.

Tip #199: The Case For Credentials, Not Initials

I have a bias that I am going to share, based on thirty years of experience in training and consulting: Knowing is not doing, and doing is better.

By knowing, I mean initials based on academic degrees and professional certifications. By doing, I mean credentials based on expertise.

Yes, initials can open doors, particularly for those who are early in their careers. There are some jobs where the academic degree is a gate keeper: if you don’t have the degree, you can’t get in. And most certainly, attaining a degree or a professional certification reflects positive character traits, such as commitment and persistence to achieve a goal.

I am also aware that there are folks who have earned initials and are also able to effectively deliver on the job. That is a terrific combination. But the bottom line is that they are able to deliver on what they know.

There is nothing wrong with believing in continuous learning and seeking academic or professional certification initials. If a degree or certification program offers someone knowledge they value, more power to them.

However, regardless of existing initials, I think that the person who can effectively deliver clearly has more to offer to any organization.

When I worked in personnel for the State of Wisconsin, we could not limit recruitment to persons with degrees, unless a degree was statutorily required for a position. If a hiring supervisor desired someone with a degree, we could post that a degree was desired, but we also had to add that we would consider individuals with comparable training and experience.

I know that degrees and certifications do not automatically make an individual better at what they do. The degree may not be relevant, the certification may be theoretical rather than practice-based, and the person may not use what s/he learned.

I believe in degree programs and professional certifications that give you credit for what you have already accomplished or can accomplish on your job.

If you are seeking to hire someone, please give them a chance to SHOW you what they can do.

If you are seeking a professional certification, please make sure that the content and the focus will be professionally useful to you because you can apply what you learn- and the certification will be based on that knowledge and ability.

Why am I writing about this now? I have a dear friend who has been incredibly accomplished and effective in every area of employment in different industries over a long and illustrious career. As a manager, trainer, and employee, she is brilliant at what she does- and every organization that employs her is very conscious of the value she brings to the company, their employees, their customers, and their bottom line.

She decided to seek a professional certification- and rather than validating her self worth and her proven expertise, the experience almost devastated her. The certification test was based on who did what, rather than how to use what you know.

So she failed, not once, but twice. Imagine what they can do to your self esteem. Thank goodness, she was made of stronger stuff. She didn’t fail because she isn’t bright, didn’t study, wasn’t committed to doing well, or had test anxiety. She was busy doing her job, with no study support base. She tried to fit studying into her already rich life filled with a demanding job, extensive community volunteer work, and family life.

The certification test experience tried to tell her that she wasn’t enough and didn’t know enough to qualify. But my take on that situation is very different. As a hands on practitioner, the certification test was wrong for her. It didn’t measure what was important for her in her professional life. It valued rote memorization over practical application- and, as far as I’m concerned, that is a poorly written test.

Luckily, my friend saw the light and her strong sense of self and her sense of humor helped her learn what she needed to learn from the earlier certification experience and move on. She is now happily pursuing a different certification that better meets her personal and professional goals and needs.

So, my wish for her and for you is that all of your learning experiences, now and in years to come, will be useful, meaningful, validating, and, yes, sweet.

Tip #198: A Tribute to Flip Charts

I love using flip charts! I think that they are the key audiovisual for any interactive training. The minute you have flip charts in the room, people KNOW that they are going to have to get involved!!

Flip charts are amazingly flexible. The facilitator can lead a large group brainstorming session and post their responses on the flipchart. The group can be divided into two groups to brainstorm, post their responses, and then report out what they have written.

You can post several flip charts around the room for a gallery walk, having small groups brainstorm answers or ideas and post them before they have to move to the next flip chart.

When small groups work on case studies, problem solving exercises or other activities, they can post their answers or conclusions on the flip chart. When they report out to the larger group, there is a visual to support what they are saying.

Training rooms may not have LCD projectors or screens, but they usually have flip charts. And now that there are flip charts that are self-sticking, as long as the room has walls to stick the flip charts on, you’re set!

Flip charts have staying power. Put a title on top of the page, write in large print, and you have a great audiovisual for reference throughout the training session. Throw in fragrant colorful marking pens and you have a party when groups gather around the flip chart to brainstorm!

They are terrific for ice breakers and community building. Mixing up participants into different groups throughout the day to work on different issues that they flip chart spreads the expertise and builds new insight and relationships. That’s where the real learning happens!

Want your participants to feel that they are actively involved in creating the training content? Ask them what they want to learn, and post that on a flip chart. Is the training a mandatory refresher session? Ask the participants what types of issues or challenges they are facing, and post those on a flip chart. Then either address those items immediately or refer to the flip chart throughout the session as the training content addresses the items.

Flip charts can also be wonderfully decorative. There are books about how to decorate flip charts, but I learned the most from Sharon Bowman and Danny Papakalos. Sharon
showed me that adding colorful borders and decorations really jazz up a flip chart. And Danny showed me how to create a border very quickly by using two different colored markers in the same hand! So, no more plain white flip charts when it is so easy to add color and character to them!

Photos of the flip charts create a living montage of the group work. I’ve mentioned in earlier Tips that I take digital photos of the flip chart work, post them on Kodak Gallery and send a link to the participants. I like to believe that the photos of the flip charts give the information greater immediacy and intimacy than a typewritten page. The email with the link also reinforces the learning that occurred in the classroom.

Flip charts give participants freedom to be creative, not only in what they write but also in how they structure what they create. I’ve seen folks transform a flip chart into games and game boards. Flip charts are great and lasting surfaces for mind maps, collages, pictures of organizational visions, job aids- the list is endless!

And isn’t that the point? Flip charts are fantastic teaching and learning tools!

PowerPoint is extremely overrated and overused. With all the bells and whistles, animation, colors and fonts, the media becomes the message- and no real learning takes place. Learning is noisy and active and messy and busy, especially the learning that lasts. And flip charts are perfect for that. Besides, flip charts don’t need electrical outlets, cables, batteries, or bulbs. Talk about plug and play- you don’t even need a plug!

So, grab a few self-sticking flip charts and fragrant markers- and launch your learners on a voyage of self discovery! You and they will never look back!

Tip #197: Using Kites to Liven Up Training Rooms

I happen to like colorful decorations to liven up a training room. This preference is reinforced by the fact that accelerated learning principles promote engaging all the senses, including the visual.

My preference is explained in part by the fact that I have spent a number of years facilitating training for state employees in basement rooms with no windows and nothing on the walls. Often filled with piles of unused chairs and tables, cast off boxes and metal coat racks, there was nothing pleasant to catch the eye. Needless to say, these were very dreary surroundings.

Then I attended a workshop conducted by Dave Meier, the accelerated training guru. He transformed a rather lackluster hotel ballroom by placing kites on the walls. I remember that I was particularly taken with a huge red kite of a dragon!

Kites. Imagine that. Kites are colorful, light, portable, and easy to put up on a wall. What an elegantly simple solution!

Plus, there are all sorts of kites to catch your imagination. And we’re not talking plain vanilla kites- these are kites that come in lots of different shapes. I started to surf the internet and first discovered graceful sailing sloops in rainbow colors. Those are still my favorite kites and the ones that participants most often mention (and occasionally try to purchase from me!)

I love nature, so I was quickly drawn to kites of birds with large wing spans and colorful streamer tails. There are kites for a variety of interests. You can probably even find kites that reinforce the focus of your training.

I have now used these bird of paradise kites for almost ten years, so recently I went out on the web to see what else was available. The idea of butterflies and the transformation they represent attracted me. I couldn’t believe how many types of colorful butterfly kites were available!

Some pointers to keep in mind if you are going to purchase kites:

1. I have found that five or six kites are plenty. In addition to three bird-shaped kites, I have a very colorful banner to place on the front of my training table and a huge octagonal kite to put up when a room’s walls are very very bare.

2. Be very conscious of the size of the kites. I’ve made the mistake of purchasing a kite because I liked the shape and color-only to find out that it was much too big for me to put up on most walls. By this I mean not only the width but the height of the kite. I am also limited by how high I can reach, even when standing on a table or a chair.
I typically stick with 33” by 23” or so.

3. If you find a kite you like, comparison shop on the web. Some sites are much less expensive than others.

4. Make sure you have mounting putty to put up the kites. Tape doesn’t always adhere for very long. If the walls are carpeted, you could use stick pins or T pins.

5. Check out the sales areas on the kite sites. That’s how I found my huge octagonal kite for a great price.

6. If you are going to purchase kites to remain on the walls of one training room, it doesn’t really matter what the kites are made of. However, if you are going to travel with the kites and will need to fold them up to fit into a suitcase, make sure they are made of nylon to last longer.

If you have used kites and have other pointers or suggestions about vendors, please let us know.


Next week, I’m going to provide a tribute to flip charts, which are extremely underrated in a PowerPoint world!

Last week, we discussed using kites to liven up training rooms. Ginger Bryers wrote about a great kite shop on South Padre Island, Texas: B&S kites. You may want to check that out. Thanks, Ginger!

This week, I would like to provide a tribute to flip charts!

Tip #196: Keeping Your Voice

A trainer depends on having a clear voice. So, during cold season and cold weather, it can be very stressful if you start to get a scratchy throat or a nagging cough.
I am not a doctor and my experience is purely my own. But I have found several remedies and tips that have seen me through the trauma of a cold when I have to facilitate training.

1. Avoid dairy. It will increase phlegm, which will only make matters worse.

2. Avoid caffeinated products, cold or hot. The caffeine tightens your throat.

3. Use lemon- either lemon in water, in hot herbal tea, or in a non-caffeinated lemon beverage. It will cut any phlegm that is bothering you.

4. For coughs, I have found that Walgreen’s brand menthol or cherry cough suppressant drops are excellent. Other brands have been less effective.

5. When necessary, my doctor has prescribed a nasal spray.

6. Eat properly and get lots of sleep.

7. Have plenty of liquids- and yes, hot chicken soup is very soothing.

8. Make sure to rest your voice whenever possible.

9. If you need one, ask for a microphone so you don’t have to strain the voice you do have.

10. Get a flu shot to try to minimize the likelihood of illness.

Although it is unpleasant, it is possible to train when you are sick. Years ago, I actually fell to my knees with a coughing fit in front of a group at the very beginning of a full day of training. That’s when a kind participant who sings taught me that lemon will cut the phlegm. She went to the cafeteria, brought back lemon wedges, and got me through the day, God bless her!

I have also trained with laryngitis. I woke up prepared to conduct a three day program for folks who had flown in from around the country, and found I had absolutely no voice. I couldn’t even make myself heard on the telephone. So I had to show up, request a microphone, and spend the next three days whispering into it- which is apparently not a good thing to do if you have laryngitis. The funny part of this story is that the participants all began to whisper back!

If there is any other remedy or tip that has helped you through training with a cold, please write and tell us about it!

This week, we’re going to discuss the use of kites to liven up training rooms!. Please be aware that I do not sell these products, nor do I receive any commission on their sale. They are simply items that make a trainer’s life easier!

Tip #195: Useful Training Resources #5

It isn’t always easy putting things up on walls. Before 3M created their post-it flipchart paper, we relied on masking tape to post flip charts on the wall. And since not everyone purchases the self-sticking flip chart paper that is now available from a number of vendors, masking tape is still necessary. But some hotels have gotten pretty cranky about what tape is used, and even clients with newly painted walls are unsure about the use of masking tape.

So, Scotch blue painter’s tape (3M) arrived to save the day. Now available in more than the color blue, this painter’s tape is guaranteed not to peel paint off of the wall. According to the information on the package, this tape is ideal for painted walls and trim, woodwork, glass, and metal. It claims that you can even leave it up for 14 days without affecting the paint! I use the 1” wide tape. You can purchase this painter’s tape almost anywhere, including office supply, craft supply, and hardware stores.

The issue with using painter’s tape or any masking tape is that if you prepare ahead of time, you tear off a lot of pieces to stick on the back of the flip chart easel, so you have what you need in easy access. Then, if you don’t use the pieces of tape, you need to throw them away.

So, I have just discovered a brand new (at least to me!) option that I purchased from Trainer’s Warehouse and haven’t had the opportunity to try out yet. This is called
Infostrip from Tac-On. It is a non-marking double sided adhesive strip that sticks to most surfaces and can easily be cut to size- so you have to remember to have a scissors with you. It needs to be applied to a clean, dust and grease-free surface, and they claim that the strips can be used over and over again (although I imagine that requires you to hold onto the liners that you peeled from both sides of the tape.) The packaging claims that this will replace tac, pins, and tape. You just precut and tape pieces on the wall where you expect to need to place flip chart paper. Then it doesn’t matter if you have the plain vanilla type of flip chart paper that doesn’t already have adhesive on the back, because you can easily stick it onto the prepared strips on the wall. If anyone has already tried Infostrip, I would love to hear your review of its usefulness.

However, there are many surfaces to which tape will not stick well or at all. This includes the plastic used to make the kites I like to hang as peripheral decorations.
For these, I use adhesive mounting putty, which adheres to most clean, dry, porous and non-porous surfaces such as: wood, tile, linoleum, cinderblock, brick, metal, plastic, mirrors, or glass. This putty does not dry out, so it can be used again and again. It doesn’t leave any residue- and if it does leave a spot, you can blot it up with another piece of the putty. According to the packaging, it is not recommended for use on flocked or loose wallpaper or on peeling or fresh paint. Until I just read the package (for the first time, I’m ashamed to admit) I didn’t realize that the putty works best if you roll and knead it until it is soft and warm. I guess THAT explains why it hasn’t worked so well when I try to use it cold and brittle because it has been left in my car overnight! You can also purchase this mounting putty at craft supply and hardware stores.

Since I conduct a lot of workshops in hotel conference rooms, I often run into carpeted wall surfaces on which the painter’s tape and the mounting putty don’t work.
If the surface is relatively thick, I can use push pins -which make it a breeze to hang anything, particularly the kites. I’ve seen these for sale at office supply stores.

Unfortunately, many of the room dividers used in hotels have a very thin layer of carpeting on them, so the push pins don’t work. Here, the solution is T-pins (that’s what they look like: capital T’s with very long stems). The best place to purchase these pins is at fabric stores.

If there is any other product that you have found useful for putting things up on walls, please write and tell us about them!

Next week, as a seasonal aid, we will discuss tips for keeping your voice when you’ve got a cold or a cough!

This week, as a seasonal aid, we will discuss tips for keeping your voice when you’ve got a cold or a cough!. Please be aware that I do not sell these products, nor do I receive any commission on their sale. They are simply items that make a trainer’s life easier!

Last week, we discussed various items to put things up on walls (how’s THAT for a technical description?). Hugh R. Lander, who is a Sales Learning & Development Consultant –Western Region for Miller Brewing Company, offered an additional option: “Another useful mounting resource similar to the Infostrip is a 3M product named “4658F Removable Foam Tape”. It comes in a large roll, and one roll will typically last me a year.” Thanks, Hugh!

Tip #194: Clarifying What Participatory Means!

These days, when training conferences solicit proposals from trainers to conduct workshops, they almost always request that the workshops be participatory in nature. However, there must be a misunderstanding regarding what participatory really means in the context of a training session- either on the part of some of the trainers or on the part of the proposal reviewers.

The reason I say this is because I facilitate workshops at many conferences and I can’t tell you how often the participants come in to my conference room and collapse into their chairs with their eyes glazed over and their shoulders slumped. They are obviously the walking wounded who have just endured one or more hours of lecture and PowerPoint. Then they see the colorful kites on the walls, the candy, Koosh balls, pipe cleaners and small toys on the tables- start to laugh at the cartoons on the PowerPoint slides, and get actively involved in training activities that require them to move, talk, and write. The energy level in the room gets higher and higher, and after they leave the session, many of them come back to tell me that the workshop was the best one they attended at the conference!

I say this not because I really believe I’m the best trainer at the conference. The key difference between my workshop and the other ones the participants have attended is that they truly get to participate in activities that help them learn.

So I’d like to clarify what participatory means to me. Participatory does NOT mean that the participants get to watch a PowerPoint, raise their hands occasionally in response to rhetorical questions, and write notes on copies of the PowerPoint slides. Yes, they are participants and, yes, they are “participating” by sitting there in a semiconscious state, but only in the most minimal manner.

Thanks to Edgar Dale, we know that if participants only use their senses of sight and hearing, two weeks from the conference, they are likely to retain only 50% of what they learned. And most trainers recognize that there are a variety of learning styles, and lecture is not an effective training method for most of them.

Participatory means that the participants are actively engaged in learning activities. These activities take them beyond the lowest level of learning, knowledge, to comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, or even evaluation. At the very least, they get to put into words their understanding or experience with the training content. This means that, rather than sitting idly and listening to a speaker, they are chatting with each other, sharing information and ideas, brainstorming, analyzing situations, problem solving, creating. They are actively participating rather than passively receiving information.

I realize that conference workshops are typically 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 75 minutes, or 90 minutes in length. That is not a lot of time. And often there is a large number of folks in the room. But these are NOT good excuses for filling the time with lecture. A simple solution is to convert the lecture points into statements on a questionnaire- then give the participants a chance to indicate whether they agree or disagree, and and opportunity to voice the rationale for their vote. If their rationale is incorrect, you can correct it. However, if their rationale is correct, you can move on to the next statement. You don’t waste time teaching them what they already know, which saves you time! It is also much more respectful of their expertise.

If you include Pop Ups, in which folks with answers pop up out of their chair and stand next to it to report their rationale, you’ve added in movement that will appeal to the kinesthetic learners.

My point is simple and my bias is very clear. Regardless of the amount of time or the number of participants, there are easy ways to incorporate learning activities that engage more senses and enable the participants to actively participate.

If you are a relatively new reader of Laurel Learning Tips and would like more specific examples of how to make training more participatory, please refer to previous Tips #39-64 that are archived on my website: http://www.laurelandassociates.com.

Thank you for allowing me to climb up on my soapbox. And if you share my bias, or want to counter it, please write in and we’ll print your comments in the next Tip.

I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving- and that the next conference you attend is full of highly participatory workshops that engage you in every respect!


This week, we continue our discussion of useful training resources, focusing on how to affix materials to walls. Please be aware that I do not sell these products, nor do I receive any commission on their sale. They are simply items that make a trainer’s life easier!