In the spirit of the Winter Olympics, “Let the Games Begin!”
I have already christened 2018 as “The Year of Discovery” and I have written before as to what “Discovery” looks like in the wild. In order to kick off 2018 in the right way, there are a couple of things happening right now:
- Discovery Friday – Each Friday I will post a prompt for us to share positive discoveries about ourselves, and/or about the world we live in on the Learning Rebels Facebook page. This week I have already discovered that I know more about updating my website than I thought I knew. Which of course makes me dangerous, and I apologize in advance to my BRILLIANT website developer Nick Leffler for anything I have mucked up.
- Discovering your inner Learning Rebel. I want to discover your thoughts about what it takes to be a true Learning Rebel. Then, take some of those thoughts and ideas and put them into something actionable for you. So do me a favor and complete the short “Discover how to be a Learning Rebel” survey. Let’s discover what a Learning Rebel is!
Let’s talk about those giveaways
First, thank you to everyone who took the time to enter a Learning Rebels giveaway in 2017. Your support and positive feedback has been tremendous and much appreciated.
Some of you have been curious about past giveaways. For this, I created a designated page for all the giveaways hosted in 2017 and will be hosted in 2018. Click here to take a look. Now, if you clicked the link and cruised over to the contest page, you saw there was one already posted for March. That’s me being proactive. WHAAAAT?
I realize people may miss a blog post or a Rebellion letter now and then (I’ll try not to let my feelings get hurt), and I’d hate for you to miss the one with a giveaway you really wanted to win – because that would suck. Therefore, this contest page will always have the latest contest running for you to enter.
Lastly – I’m going to be a tad more organized about how the giveaways are presented. WHAAAT? Proactive AND organized…
Connecting Discoveries
When thinking about the theme for 2018, it seemed perfect to align both the blog posts and The Rebellion about different types of “Discoveries” – so when you see a blog post or The Rebellion with the title: “Discovering XYZ”; most likely it will have a giveaway attached. This is not to take the spontaneity out of everything, I like a little mystery and surprise.
For example, The “Learning on the Go” giveaway was inspired by a guest post from Chris Coladonato from last years ATD ICE conference and the giveaway was just for those who are part of The Rebellion village. Cheryl B won herself a RODE microphone and 5 others won Amazon gift cards.
Fun Right? So if you are not a part of the village, not only are you missing ninja learning tips but the potential for serious swag so sign up now.
Let’s get on with it: Discovering Emotional Intelligence
This week’s Rebellion focused on discovering our Emotional Intelligence skills. I found a number of helpful resources but this one stood out from Forbes Magazine:
50 Tips for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence: In the comment section – What I’d like to know is out of the 50, which tip speaks to you?
Connecting L&D to the 5 pillars of Emotional Intelligence:
Self-Awareness: Being self-aware in L&D also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and it means behaving with humility. It seems like it was a good choice to make 2018 The Year of Discovery!
Self-Regulation: Those who regulate themselves rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. It’s about staying in control. Ever felt overly defensive when someone calls your training program ugly and lash out? Ever have a knee-jerk reaction when someone doesn’t agree with you? I think we all have.
Motivation: L&D people who are motivated work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work. This journey of discovery is all about self-motivation. If we want to build a culture of active learning, we must model the behavior.
Empathy: L&D professionals with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s situation. They put the people first when it comes to development. They challenge others who are not acting in the best interests of the people and give constructive feedback.
Social Skills: L&D professionals who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators and get excited about new missions or projects. They’re rarely satisfied with leaving things as they are and are expert at building support.
The question here is how can we bring these areas to the forefront of what we do? What are we currently doing well? How do we continue to build on what we are doing well?
So drumroll please, in March we are giving away 2 copies of Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
13. Know your emotional triggers. I read a cool book a lifetime ago called Self Therapy (Muriel Schiffman). The first step was to spot the overreaction. I’ve often only done this after it has cost me, but I do now have an inventory of triggers that I’m alert to 🙂
Hi Neal – Thank you so much for sharing that insight, and thank you for a new book to add to my shelf! I agree I guess in hindsight it’s easier to spot the overaction after the fact. It’s a great idea to have an inventory of triggers. Thank you again.
I’m amazed at the magic of your timeliness! Our work group started reading this in March and are now all doing our “homework”
Lilly-Anne – #TheUniverse! I’d love to learn more about how you are applying the concepts with the team!
“Listen” is the one (though it’s hard to pick just one, goodness!). When I listen I can slow down enough to pay attention to my own emotions – and create space for those of others. It makes all the difference. I KNOW this – now to continue to practice it!
Hi Ronna – Thanks for sharing and I LOVE this, “When I listen I can slow down enough to pay attention to my own emotions – and create space for those of others.” What a thoughtful statement. It does make all the difference. 😀
44
Hi Wendy – #44 was all about avoiding drama, would you care to elaborate as to how this is a strength for you? (or an area of opportunity) Do you have tips as to how to avoid drama? Anyone who works in a corporate environment has experienced this! 🙂
I work in a manufacturing environment when I was interviewing for my position they identified Emotional Intelligence as a key training topic for all staff from Supervisors to operators. We started holding leadership classes for all supervisors to train on varying soft skills from feedback to coaching. Since I started in September I have seen a huge difference in the way we communicate as a team.
We are still missing pieces in the goal of having emotional intelligence. I think we need work on practicing some of our lacking skills daily. I am very open with the staff and coach them on anything from conversations to training. With everyone growing as people, I want to build a culture of Learning and Development within our workplace that has not be present before now.
Hi Kelly – Thank you for sharing your story! Perhaps there is an opportunity to embed nuggets of knowledge into their day to day, to reinforce what they have learned. For example, there are 50 tips – that could easily be one tip a week to share with the population. Create an email campaign and once a week, send out a tip with an example of how to use the tip in the workplace. Short sweet and to the point. What gets practiced goes into application.