How Supervisors Can Help Employees Learn

How teamberaterins Can Help Employees LearnHow Supervisors Can Help Employees LearnHow Supervisors Can Help Employees LearnHow Supervisors Can Help Employees Learn PDFNote Youll need Adobe Reader to view the PDF file above. Download Adobe Reader.Wednesday,December 12, 2012Supervisors can have a dramatic impact on employee learning. This webinar will share innovative practices for helping front line coachs build skills critical to their performance. By developing their skills using real workplace challenges, teamberaterins strengthen their ability to lead their teams and improve key business metrics.In this session, you will learn how toUse experiential, work-based learning to build skillsReinforce critical skills taught in other traditional, mora formal training programsEmbed training concepts into day-to-day workplace behaviorHave a long-lasting impact on supervisorin performancePresented byPhyllis SnyderVice President, CAELPhyllis has led CAELs Philadelphia rtlich office since 1993 . She was responsible for designing and implementing the Department of Labor funded Nursing Career Lattice program in 10 sites throughout the country. Phyllis and the workforce development staff have created many CAEL consulting products, including Educational Strategy Sessions, Workforce 2.0 tools, and Supervisor Circles. She has also served on the CAEL team that consulted with the MassJobs Council to shape the One-Stop Career Center System in Massachusetts. As part of her interest in designing initiatives for mature workers, Phyllis has conducted research for the Conference Board and Civic Ventures, helped to develop and implement the Tapping Mature Talent project, and created the Mentors 4 STEM program. Phyllis educational background includes a masters degree in teaching from Harvard University, a masters degree in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelors degree from Smith College.Laura WintersSenior Project Director, CAELLaura Winters has worked with CA EL in a sortiment of capacities for over twenty years. In her tenure with CAEL she has been responsible for designing and implementing initiatives and projects for corporations, workforce organizations and colleges. Winters workforce development and consulting work has included a diverse group of CAEL clients including Exelon Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, CF Industries, Northeast Utilities, Levi Strauss and Company, University of Chicago Hospitals, Inland Steel, Chase Bank, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mayors Office of Workforce Development, DePaul University, South Seattle Community College, US West, Ameritech, Scott Paper Company, and Ford Motor Company, The Workforce Boards of Metropolitan Chicago, the U.S. Department of Education, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, and the U.S. Department of Labor. She holds bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in psychology and communications. Winters also completed doctoral cu rsework at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for several years in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania hospital in research, editorial and administrative positions.Webinar Transcript How Supervisors Can Help Employees LearnGood afternoon. Im Jim Thompson, senior writer from Monster. I would like to thank you for joining us today for this exclusive webinar hosted by Intelligence.Todays webinar is entitled How Supervisors Can Help Employees Learn. Phyllis Snyder and Laura Winters from CAEL, the Council for Adult Experiential Learning, will be presenting this afternoon. In this webinar, Phyllis and Laura will discuss how to use experiential work base learning to build employee skills, reinforce critical skills taught in other traditional and more formal training programs, embed training concepts into day-to-day workplace behavior, and have long lasting impact on supervisor performance.Before we get started, I would like to mention a few housekeeping it ems. Todays presentation, and a copy of the recording, will be posted on hiring.monster.com within the next two to three business days. Please click on the resources tab and navigate to HR Events to obtain a copy. All registered participants will also receive an email with a direct link to todays materials.Intelligence helps HR professionals improve worker performance, retain top talent, and enhance recruiting strategies. We analyze and collect data from over four million unique searches performed on each day. We invite you to visit hiring.monster.com and read our in-depth reports and analysis. For our latest materials, click on the Resource Center tab when you visit the site. After the presentation, therell be time for questions. Our meeting manager will help to facilitate the QA. Please feel free to type your questions into the available space during the event, and well make every effort to include them in todays QA. And if youre listening to todays presentation via telephone, you ll be placed on mute until the Q and A session begins.Now, Id like to provide some background on Phyllis Snyder and Laura Winters. Phyllis Snyder is the vice president of CAEL. Phyllis has led CAELs Philadelphia lokal office since 1993. She was responsible for designing and implementing the Department of Labor funded Nursing Career Lattice program at ten locations throughout the country. Phyllis and the workforce development staff have created many CAEL consulting products, including Educational Strategy Sessions, workforce 2.0 tools and Supervisor Circles. As part of her interest in designing initiatives for mature workers, Phyllis has conducted research for the Conference Board and Civic Ventures, helped to develop and implement the Tapping Mature Talent project, and created the Mentors 4 STEM program. Phyllis holds a masters degree in teaching from Harvard University, a masters in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a bachelors from Smith College.Our seco nd presenter today, Laura Winters has worked with CAEL in a sortiment of capacities for over 20 years. During her 10 years with CAEL, Laura has been responsible for designing and implementing projects for corporations, workforce organizations, and colleges. Lauras workforce development and consulting work has included the diverse range of CAEL clients including Exelon Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, Levi Strauss, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Laura holds a bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in psychology and communication. Phyllis and Laura, I will now turn the webinar over to you.Well, thank you so much, and I want to tell all of you how pleased we are to be here with you today and to have this opportunity to talk to you about our approach to developing supervisors. So, as you heard Im joined today by my colleague Laura Winters, but also, and very importantly, joined by Steven Frenkel, who has been our partner in implementing the Super visor Toolkit at Northeast Utilities. Steven is a senior leadership development consultant at Northeast Utilities, and youll be hearing from him in a little while.So, what were talking with you about today is an approach that weve created to develop front line supervisors, and its grounded in their own organization. Its bedrngnislage just about learning in a classroom. So you may be wondering who is this organization CAEL? For those of you who dont know it, just a few quick points about what we do.The focus of much of our work is increasing access to learning. That is learning that occurs in all environments, at work, in the community, as well as in the classroom, and we try to connect that learning to business needs and challenges.A characteristic of all of our projects and our work is that we work collaboratively across sectors. We might begin our work with a college, or in the public sector, or with an individual business. But as the project develops, we bring in the other partne rs and our knowledge of the issues and challenges in each area help to inform the project and the collaboration.So we want to learn a little bit about you and how you approach supervising your training right now. Were going to ask you to just answer very quickly two questions. So the first one is right here, Your new supervisors in your organization have access to training as soon as they are promoted? So you have a simple choice there, either Yes, No, or if you dont know, then you answer Dont Know. So choose your answer and then please submit it. Since it is leidlage a difficult question, we hope you can answer this very quickly, and then well be able to see what the picture is across all the participants.Looks like we have results, Phyllis.Actually, here we go. I didnt see them right yet. And interestingly, what we see is that its pretty evenly divided. Some of you have managed to make that happen, which is admirable, but some of you are struggling with the fact that when supervis ors are promoted, there are lots of other things that are on their plate. So thank you. Thanks for sharing that.We have one more question that wed like to ask you to answer right now, and that question is, Does the training focus on the specific challenges for your workplace? So in other words, the training that you give to behauptung newly promoted supervisors, does it focus on the specific challenges in your workplace? Again, the choice of Yes, No, or I dont know. All right, so many of you have recognized the importance of doing that. A slight probably more than half of you have done that and the rest of you are they realize that its important, but havent yet been able to do this. So thank you very much, that really helps us as we go forward and talk to you about our approach.So let me begin. Laura is going to plek this up in a minute, but I want to begin by explaining to you how we have approached this issue of training newly promoted supervisors who often come in to this new rol e without any background. So you heard me say that we have links to higher education but we are also very committed to the notion that learning happens in many different places, in many different environments and that the classroom is not the only locale where you can learn something. One of the things that we do a lot in our focus on experiential learning is to find ways to recognize and to help people process learning that they obtain from their work. Because we all know that as we are doing things what is the phrase thats often used just in time learning we know that we are learning lots of things as we undertake the tasks that we are faced with on a daily basis, but we often dont have the opportunity to stock and to process and to extract the learning from what weve been doing. So one of the fruchtwein important principals and which our Supervisors Tool Kit is grounded, is on this notion that I just talked about, that we take the learning that people have obtained from the wor k that theyre doing, the rich body of experience that all of us gain through our work, and we help people. We give people a framework which allows them to extract the learning from that experience and what really helps, is that they do that in the company of their colleagues, their peers. So that theyre not doing it on their own. Theyre doing it in the company of others who are facing similar challenges and who can help them to reinforce those lessons. So, Im going to turn this over to Laura, whos going to take us a little further in this approach.The reason that we asked you those particular poll questions is that and why we are focusing on the supervisor position, is because its a position thats most frequently promoted from within and what practices changed a lot over the past decade or so. The person selected for promotion is often the most technically proficient. Whether or not they have really exhibited strong leadership skills, and its often the case that new supervisors are sent to formal training immediately after promotion. Sometimes thats too soon. Especially, when it comes to soft skills like communication and coaching employees to support their development. Alternatively, its most of the technically specific training around compliance, discipline, and scheduling. If thats postponed because of the training delivery schedule, that can be too little too late.A great deal of supervisor training, whether its delivered internally or externally, is not very workplace specific, even if its very participatory. The participatory exercises within the training are too generic and dont seem so relevant to trainees. This really sometimes can limit the transfer of the learning to the work place. The Supervisor Toolkit is rooted in CAELs approach to learning. And a core concept underlying the Toolkit approach comes from experiential learning theory. This research that is experiential learning is more than just experience, rather its the process of making meaning from direct experience or learning through reflection and doing. Experiential learning focuses on the learning process for the individual. Unlike continuous improvement, experiential learning is an iterative process. The experience is the basis for the learning it is not the learning. The Toolkit approach provides a way to focus and direct a supervisors ability to be mindful of their supervisory experiences, reflect upon them, consider alternatives and practice of alternative behaviors in order to achieve better results.Here what you can see is a simple diagram that demonstrates the experiential learning theory. Now we have a few more questions about your training practices and your approach to supervisor training. First, Are most of your supervisors sent off-site for training? And what were getting at here is not only are they physically not in their workplace, are they then likely not to be participating in training with their peer group within your organization?Organizations ofte n send supervisors off-site for leadership for soft skill training. In many ways, this can make a lot of sense especially for smaller organizations. Many of the core concepts and skills in the organization to help the individual develop, are coming to all organizations. And developing this kind of training in-house is either impractical or seems too much like youre reinventing the wheel. It looks like that most of you dont send people off-site. So that probably means that theyre mostly participating in training if not with their peers then with other supervisors within your organization depending upon the size of your organization.The next question we have, Is every new supervisor assigned to a mentor? We asked this because coaches or mentors have proven to be an effective way to build skills, and most organizations seek to have all leaders be responsible for coaching and mentoring their employees. Mentoring is often most effective when provided by peers or someone outside the indiv idual employees department unit or chain of command. Okay? We should, yes, it looks like in most cases, and the majority of you dont have supervisors assigned to a mentor. Certainly, when theres a new supervisor anyway.The last question we have is, Do you provide opportunities for new supervisors to share their experience with their peers? Again, we ask this because peer learning is a powerful tool, but its often hard for organizations to facilitate and harness the power of this learning. Part of the reason for the difficulty has to do with just the organization of that practice, as well as being able to take so many people at the saatkorn level off the job at the same time. Looks like that a third of you do provide that opportunity, but the majority of your organizations dont. Phyllis is now going to take you through a mini example of Toolkit training. Drawing on an example that we developed for a client in a Healthcare industry.Thanks, Laura, and so what Im going to do in one seco nd is put up on the screen a story, and the reason we chose to do that is that the tools are organized around stories taken from the work place. We have a mini story for you. What were going to ask you to do is to read it. Well give you a few moments to do that, and then were going to ask you three questions about that story. I hope you can make a few notes in front of you to answer those questions. Well give you some sample answers afterwards, but since there are so many of you, we couldnt have you volunteer your answers as much as we would like to. First of all, youre going to read the story, then were going to put up three questions, and we ask you to make some notes on the answers to those questions, and then well discuss them.So, first comes the story. Please take a few minutes to read this toolkit story. Well give you another few seconds, because I know Im a htte nicht viel gefehlt reader, but let the rest of you finish and then Im going to put the first question up in just a moment. Okay, so here comes question number one, What do you think are the outcomes of this meeting? So, just make yourself a few notes and well come back and discuss it in a minute. What do you think are the outcomes of this meeting? Or actually, you know what, maybe we should discuss it now. I think that would work better. So, write down what you think the answers are and let me tell you what some of our other participants have told us in the past. They see this as unproductive, that nothing was going to change as a result of this meeting, that it was just going to foster a low morale, that blame was placed on the wrong person, that the whole meeting was a waste of time. So Im assuming that you also saw it in a similar way.Second question, Will they help the team to improve what they are doing and change the scores? So theyre being measured. Is this meeting going to contribute to improving their situation, so that they get a better score the next time? So again, please make a few notes. So what weve heard in the past is that this meeting is not necessarily going to change anything if the issues arent addressed. And one of the most significant answers was, if the team isnt allowed to give input, they wont feel any sense of ownership and nothings going to change. And in fact, theyll only become more defensive. So those are the kinds of things that weve heard from others. Im hoping your answers were along similar lines.And the third question, Please suggest three changes that Carlos can make in trying a new approach. So three things that he could do to make this situation better, be very specific here. Some changes that you would suggest that could be made. So here, some of the things, some of the suggestions that people madepresent the problem as an opportunity that allows the group to develop a solution,build on whats happening in that environment as positive rather than emphasizing the negative,send out material in advance so that team members come in and th eyre prepared for the topic thats going to be discussed,focus on one issue at a time rather than throwing the kitchen sink at them at once,allow input which is similar to what we said already,and not have Carlos do so much of the talking.This gives you really just a tiny taste of what the Toolkit experience is like, but just for you to know, what would happen after a group has a story that is a negative, just like the story you read. It would be followed by a story that is positive. Showing how that situation could be addressed in a way that is constructive rather than destructive, and what Lauras going to talk to you about now, a little bit about how we approach the Toolkit training. How we embed it into preparing supervisors.Thank you Phyllis. Phyllis is going to talk a little bit more later about how you select tools and develop them or customize them to meet the needs of your own client organization, but Id like to share a bit more about how the training process itself works. Tr aining is conducted in small groups or cohorts, since learning from peers is one of the key benefits of this training approach. The training is facilitated when CAEL is involved, either by a CAEL facilitator or company facilitator, who has been oriented to the proto materials by CAEL in the trainers session. The number of training sessions depends upon the number of tools that are incorporated into a specific organizations Toolkits. Usually, organizations choose 5 to 10 topics of behavioral clusters to focus on. Training sessions are scheduled anywhere from four to eight weeks apart sometimes a little longer than that depending upon the needs of the organization and the challenges of scheduling things.During the first session, the tool kit training process is introduced. Participants read an anfangsbuchstabe situation like the one that Phyllis went through with you that embeds an issue addressed by that tool. Then a discussion of the key behaviors and their impact is facilitated. Participants then read a second story or a second version of the story in which alternative behaviors are employed. This is followed by a discussion that moves into a comparison of behaviors and outcomes between the two stories. Then the tool itself is introduced. It summarizes the key principals and behaviors to imply in practice. The session ends with the brainstorm of the possible setbacks and solutions and the identification by each participant of one or two behaviors to focus on in applying this to life and work situations before the next section.At the next section, they begin focusing on sharing and discussing participants experiences and practicing the strategies and behaviors introduced in the first tool. They also, at this point, start discussing how changing their behaviors and modeling behaviors help their own employees incorporate and learn how to change their own behaviors and improve their own performance and engagement. After this discussion, the next tool is introd uced, and its gone through in the similar way that the first tool was. And in those lag times between the second session and the third session, participants are practicing the key behaviors that are introduced in the second tool. Usually at the end of the session, individuals identify one or two things that they are going to work on, and thats what they focus on working on. Sometimes in a tool, there are many behaviors that are introduced that are a cluster around a specific issue like communication, and there are many, many different things that people can choose to practice. Usually participants are pretty good at identifying those areas where they are challenged. And those are the ones that they usually choose to work on. Generally, the training process itself follows this general format or as a modification of this process.Now wed like to talk about an organization we work with thats currently implementing this training. Northeast Utilities is an energy utility with electric and gas operations in Connecticut and Massachusetts. When we began to work with them on this approach, they already had a robust supervisor training program.And now well turn this session over to Steven Frenkel, who we introduced earlier as a Senior Leadership Development Consultant at Northeast Utilities. He has a background in both organizational development in training, and hes going to share some of the companys reasons for using the Toolkit with field operations supervisors, and some of their experience so far in implementing the training. Steven?Thanks, Laura. Yeah, let me start with why we decided to roll this out. As you said, we do have a pretty robust supervisory training program, but we operate over a fairly large territory. Its all of Connecticut for CLNP, but we also have companies in New Hampshire and Massachusetts as well. The courses take up a lot of time, anywhere from one to five days of classroom time plus travel, because people have to come from all over the state. Because we bring them in from all over the state, we try to give them a lot of information, and theyve been likened to drinking water from a fire hose. The amount that they can retain is limited, and we know that. We combine both field supervisors and professional service supervisors in these classes, because theyre sort of open enrollment. Obviously, each group of participants has their own challenges and focal issues.So, with these new Toolkits, we go out to them. We do the travel. Theres two of us going out to six to ten rather than make them all come to us. Its a very respectful approach because we dont monopolize their whole day. We use two-hour chunks of time and they really are that, because they are not the ones traveling. Some folks from the Southern part of the state were coming to us, the two-hour class would cost them six hours of their day. We also like it because it gives the information bite size chunks that they can actually absorb and focus on implementing, and they get information thats specific to their needs in the field. We actually did focus groups before we launched the Toolkits session to find out what do they need help with? And then we build the Toolkits around the issues that they asked for help on.That all covered the large territory issue. The second issue is that our supervisors often feel isolated. They report to a centralized model. So they dont connect with the other supervisors in their region. When they connect with their supervisors in their hierarchy, they come back to headquarters and report here. Many of them come from the union. So, theyve come from a bonded brotherhood and then come into operate as the supervisor without the interaction and friendship that they had in their previous positions. So these Toolkits connect them to their peers. They give them an opportunity to address both relationships but also regional issues not just functional issues, because each of our service centers has different micro-cultures and i ssues between customer base and staffing levels and resources and whatnot. The Toolkits enable them to talk together about shared struggles and challenges and also offer their solutions. In these regional locations, they often come up with their own solutions. Its not something thats taught. Theyve just found a way to make it work, but they havent been sharing that with each other. And in this (coerce), they really can share those best practices as much as possible. And it really enforces the value of reconnecting with each other for helping advice, and were seeing a lot of that increase as a result of these sessions. In fact, thats something that we ask about in our evaluations. We check in with them. Are you utilizing each other more as the resources that you are? And were hearing the answer is yes, and thats increasing.The third issue to cover is that our supervisors are strong technically. So they need a little bit more help with the supervisory and the leadership skills. Softer skills that you might say they need, and thats what weve decided to target in these sessions. We respect their technical expertise, and then we offer them a little bit more leadership skills in these sessions. So they can use them and see if they work and coach each other.Another issue there were a bunch of them that went into the decision to move in this direction. We have supervisors, Northeast Utilities, and utilities in general have long term employees. We have life-time employees here at the company. Theyve been on the job for 20, 30 even 40 years. And when they leave, they take their institutional knowledge with them and because of staffing limitations and regulations, were not allowed to overlap people in their roles. So, we cant bring on a new supervisor to overlap and shadow and learn from a supervisor whos leaving after 30 years. Obviously, a headcount is a headcount but theres no replacing a 40 year supervisor with a newbie. Its just not the same. So, even if they cant o verlap and work with their predecessors, they can get together with the other supervisors in their region and get the help that they need. So they might not be able to benefit from the supervisor that they replace, but they can benefit from all the other experience and institutional knowledge that the other supervisors in their region have that they can learn from.So that was the why that we rolled this out. There were a lot of issues we were trying to address, and we were looking for a new creative way to approach these challenges and the Toolkit really fit what we were trying to do. We rolled it out by identifying the most likely need for leadership skills over technical skills. Again, we conducted focus groups with supervisors and their managers to hone in on these specific needs that they had, and then we narrowed it down to teams and we selected the top five. With those top five, were conducting effective meetings, communicating up and down, making the most of teachable moments , making the most of change, and making data talk. All of those were repeated themes that came from the multiple focus groups that we held. They kind of were standing out at us as something that supervisors were asking help on.As I said, we go out to them in two-hour chunks and deliver these sessions, and we selected experienced facilitators to deliver this kind of content not traditional classroom trainers. Were not standing in front of the room. Were not working with PowerPoints. We have these very simple, wonderful Toolkits that CAEL helped us developed or CAEL developed for us. And we sit down with them and have a session around the table and were working on a facilitated discussion. Theyre doing most of the talking. Were asking pointed questions using the Toolkits, using the stories and the scenarios to prompt their thinking, and then theyre talking. Were just capturing their list of best practices and successes and feeding it back to them, and encouraging those who arent usin g some of those approaches or skills to try it and see if it works. It helps because theyre hearing from their own peers and colleagues that this stuff works.Weve seen benefits so far. Weve been doing this all through 2012. We know these are benefits from both the evaluation forms and also conversations with supervisors and managers. Weve seen strong participation. Theyre eager for these sessions. They come back. Weve just had good participation, and they show up when they could have lots of other things to do. They really appreciate the new approach. Its more beneficial for them and its less intrusive. So theres a double win there, and they really do feel respected because for the first time in a long time, they have people coming to them to offer assistance instead of making them come up to headquarters. One of the best byproducts that we hear is the tremendous appreciation for conversation with their peers. Really, they didnt often get together with their counterparts like they d o now for these kinds of discussions. And just creating a space for them has been tremendously beneficial and valuable and seeing what they want to talk about in addition to what we raised is enlightening.And the last thing that this has really done for us, this helped us break down silos, because they were functional reporting. There are functional reporting relationships. One supervisor may work with another supervisor in this same area work center and never get together. Never talk. Never cross those silos. Their always reporting up their own chain and not interacting with their peers, and with these sessions weve broken down silos between not only departments, but also companies. We had both our gas division and our electric division supervisors from the same region in the same room, and they were learning a lot from each other, and they had never met and never gotten together even though they were working out of the same area work centers. So were getting a lot more cross-funct ional collaboration and a much better sense of team. All as a bi-product in addition to building skills and supervisory capabilities.So I think that about covers what we talked about Phyllis and Laura, but thats really what weve seen, thats how weve approached it, why weve approached it that way and what were getting out of it.Well, Steven you are as always a wonderful presenter and youve highlighted, I think some of the key elements that wed like to conclude, by emphasizing youve done just a great job of setting that up for us.And I was taking notes as you were talking, because you highlighted so effectively the points that I wanted to make in this final slide. I think what is so important, and what Steven did is to emphasis how much the tools are developed from this specific environment, where were working. So its the issues that take place there that people are facing. The stories are drawn from focus groups that we conduct at the beginning from meetings that we have with manag ers to let them know what were trying to do to understand where they see supervisors struggling. We approached it with a lot of respect. Steven really emphasized that. We listen to the employees and we allow them to do a lot of the talking rather than talking, just trying to fill that for knowledge into their heads is sometimes starting these sessions, we really give them the opportunity to talk, to respond, to share with one another and then to reflect on what is the learning that theyve gained in doing it. Steven referred to the specific tools, and you saw it on your screen, the tools that they use because the issues that Northeast Utilities was focused on with the communication, the meetings, change, teachable moments, and they can gain a talk. Those are common across many work places, but we have other tools as well, and it depends really where each work place sees the need.The Toolkit has a distinctive approach, which Laura talked about as kind of an armature, but the specific content really is driven by what are the urgent needs and challenges in the work place where were working. We do this collaboratively and Steven explained to you, CAEL can come in. We always develop the tools, and we do the initial focus groups, and we listen and meet. But we can deliver, or in a case like Northeast Utilities, where theres a skilled body of facilitators who have a background to be able to listen and to work with employees. We can work with them to prepare them to do the delivery themselves and really to make it their own. So, it can be either way, the trainer approach or a CAEL-driven approach, but what we are sure to do in the beginning is to make sure that the stories that we develop are the focus that reflects the culture and the challenges of the particular environment where the tools are being used. And they have been used in public sector as well as private sector environments. Everyone struggles with as you know, the same kinds of issues. Im going to stop tal king at you, which is what we say we dont do in the Toolkit and allow you to ask some questions. Probably this is a new and different approach, and as youve been listening hopefully youve been thinking of some questions, and wed really love to hear from you and try the best we can to answer them.Thank you ladies and gentlemen. If youd like to register for a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. You will hear a three-tone prompt to acknowledge your request. Your line will then be accessed from the conference to obtain information. If your question has been answered and youd like to withdraw your registration, please press the one followed by the three. If youre using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before I turn in your request. One moment please for the first question.And if I could interrupt, I do have a question here standing by from our end. Ill just jump right into it. Do we need to work with CAEL in order to implement the approach youve discussed this afternoon?Laura, do you want to take that or do you want me to take that?No, we dont think that you have to work with CAEL to implement the approach. We think the concepts that we employ are general. We certainly would love to have opportunities to work with organizations, and we presented this material as kind of how we approach this, and how weve approached it with in a particular case study. But we think that weve that the concepts are general, and that we do offer some ideas around how to embed more truly grounded experiential learning in the kind of training that you do. Take it out to the people, give them opportunities to work with peers. Embed the learning in situations that are very real and resonate and then build in a practice session and a feedback session so that people practice those skills. Phyllis, I dont know if you want to answer that in a different way or add to that?I think you covered it.Or add at all?No, thank you. Were taking this inaudible to the next question. Thanks, Laura.Ladies and gentlemen thanks very much for that.As a reminder to register for a question, press the one, then four. And we do have a question from the line of Alex Ross. Please proceed with your question.Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for the presentation. I was just curious if a PDF version of the slides that were shown would be made available to us?Hi. This is Monster. Yes. A PDF version will be sent directly to you if you registered. It will also be available on our site within two to three business days on hiring.monster.com.Okay, excellent. Thank you all very much.Gentlemen, I have an additional question here on hiring from Monster. Question number two, much of todays webinar was focused on changing supervisor behavior. Can you relate this to strategies supervisors can use to help their employees learn?Phyllis, you want to take that one?Yeah. Ill start and you can fill in. Great. No. Its a great question. Let me just summarize the question, which wa s about this focus on changing behavior, and then how do we link that and translate into helping them learn? And I think that what I would say in response is that there is a readiness factor here. If theres resistance, if the supervisor is not able to work with his or her team in a way that they are listening, that theyre interacting, that theyre open to discussion, then there wont be any learning that can take place. So, weve put a lot of emphasis on the behavior because the behavior allows that team to come together to communicate openly and get ready for the learning that needs to take place. So, I would say that this is the first step in the learning process, that it creates the climate, the receptivity, which allows the learning to happen. And Laura, you feel free or Steven, to add anything you want to that response.Well, I guess the only thing I would add is there are some pieces that we build into the actual tool itself with each tool that gives some guidance for supervisors on fostering, as their behavior changes to foster the development of these skills and the people who report to them as well. In some of these sessions, where a couple of the tools for example that Northeast Utilities used, where one is focused on making data talk and the other one is on helping people cope with change. Both of those also specifically have some very clear cut guidelines around how a supervisor can help his or her direct reports, checking reflect on their own behavior and a cope with the kind of changes that seem to be more and more rapid and frequent within organizations in the 21st Century. As well as, for example, the making David talk gives helps the supervisor breakdown information that they are receiving in a data form and really help not so much. It isnt focused on the hard scale in and of itself of what does a particular data mean, but it really focuses on understanding why different kinds of data are important in order to measure organizational effectiveness and team performance.Thanks very much, and operator do we have any additional questions on your end.Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to register for a question, press the one, then four.And if we do not, Ill proceed with the questions we have here on our side.We do not have any questions at this time.Okay. All right, one additional from us. When discussing this topic with colleagues, what is the best way to communicate the benefits of your approach?You know, I would love to have Steven answer that. Steven if you dont mind, because youve been in this situation of having to do that in your work environment. So if you wouldnt mind giving an answer to that? And we can always follow up if needed.Would you repeat the question one more time for me.Sure. How do you youll correct me. I think its, how do you if youre talking to your colleagues, how can you communicate the benefits of the Supervisor Toolkit approach?I believe what were getting at, I think, is the kind of a teach meeting in ternally to proceed with this type of a program.Right.Sure. It was not a hard sell. Our managers really understand the you know, I dont want to put it this way, but limitations of their supervisors. They understand their opportunities for growth and whats possible in terms of relationships with their workforce if we can successfully skill up our supervisor team. What we did was a mini road show for all of our managers and all of our supporting directors to explain to them what were trying to do. Why were trying to do it. What the possible benefits could be and what support we need from them. And they were actually saying to us, Can you copy us on the summary e-mails, so we see what theyre learning? Can you give us a heads up when theyre coming in so we know what theyre working on? And so what weve done is establish the process where a couple days before each Toolkit session, we send out an e-mail to the supervisors copying their managers saying, Were coming. And then a separate emai l to their managers giving them access to the tools, and saying, This is what your supervisors going to learn about. Please have a conversation with him or her before they walk in the door about why this is an important skill and if theres any type of feedback, or anything you want them to focus on to build, please do that. Please read through the Toolkit, model the behavior that youre asking them to exhibit, ask them about it after the session, and see what kind of coaching they need to reinforce what theyre learning. And theyve been extremely supportive the whole way through.Thank you, Steven.Thats great. And I do have one final question on my end. Can you discuss how this approach may be more effective than some of the other types of the employee training are currently available in the marketplace?Sure, Ill start and I know my colleagues will be happy to supplement. So I think weve tried as weve been going through this to make the distinction between the Toolkit approach and some of the more traditional supervisor training models. So couple of things that I want to highlight are the fact that this is not generic in any way. Its very much grounded in the specific issues, challenges, culture of the company and the organization with whom were working. So thats number one.Number two, it is highly participatory. The sessions are not taught. They are facilitated. There is essentially a discussion leader but most of the talking, most of the engagement, comes from the supervisors, the participants, and they are doing it in consent with their peer. So theyre learning from each other. Theyre sharing with each other. Steven mentioned how often they share innovations that they have developed themselves. And they also have their peers to go back to reinforce the learning that they may have gained.Third, what were teaching, we use specific situations, and weve definitely developed a tool around the challenges that a company will talk to us about, and that we hear about i n the focus groups that we conduct initially. But really, what were teaching, what were helping to develop is a new way of approaching their work and their challenges with the supervisor to be able to step back, to be thoughtful, to reflect, to involve their team in the conversations in coming up with solutions. So it is as you pointed to in one of the earlier questions, were developing a change in how the supervisor behaves. How he or she is prepared to address new challenges that will come up and that will help them to engage the team, to help them do their best, rather than to be critical and to even when theres a problem, you heard one of the tools thats been most popular has taking advantage of teachable moments and when a teachable moment is a problem something that went awry and how does a supervisor take that situation where something didnt go as it should have and use it to help the team think about how they would behave the next time it happened? What could be done diffe rently? So, it is about what were helping people to develop is a new way of approaching their work that can be applied to a diverse array of situations. And Laura and Steven, I dont know if you have anything else you want to add?The only thing that I would add is that I dont think that the way to think about it is as necessarily more effective to all other kinds of supervisor training. I think that its more effective particularly in developing behaviors and interpersonal skills and some organizational skills and communication skills. I think that its really worked very well as a complement to more standardized training, or if you only have so many resources to spend on building the soft kind of leadership skills or soft skills, even in non-supervisory positions, that this is an effective way to do so in a way that will immediately be grounded in the workplace and in day-to-day situations, and immediately have a behavioral component.Excellent. Thanks very much for clarifying that. We do have time for one additional question. I have one on my side here. So, Ill go right ahead. How often do you suggest holding the individual Toolkit sessions?That really depends on the organization. The typical gap between sessions is four to six weeks, but it could be shorter. It could be a little longer, probably not too much longer. Probably up to two months, but nothing longer than that. But typically its four to six weeks.Excellent, thank you. Well, this time Id like to thank Phyllis, Laura as well as Steve, for sharing their insight and knowledge with us today. This concludes our webinar. A recording of this event will, as well as the presentation materials, will be available shortly on our hiring site, hiring.monster.com. Just look under the Resource Center tab. And thanks again for joining us, please join us again in 2013 for additional webinars from Monster. Thank you and have a great day.