Grow's Model

One thing that did catch my eye was in that same article I referenced above, again on p. 127, Grow lists some assumptions. His first is "the goal of the educational process is to produce self-directed, life-long learners. Many current educational practices in public schools and universities, however, do more to perpetuate dependency than to create self-direction." Raising a thirteen-year-old allows me to see the truth behind this statement. His public school is set up not to enforce self-directed learning, but to keep him plodding down a path of dependency.  We had an opportunity to send him to a private school that had features that leaned more toward self-directed learning and independent study, and we are looking seriously at making that switch for him as he enters high-school. It's easy to see that he has moved from stage 1 to stage 2 in several of his classes and is in stage 3 for others. His school however does little to support any growth beyond that. 

I use the Blanchard Situational Leadership model with all of my direct reports and encourage them to do the same. It's intriguing to see Grow's model in this class and I look forward to using it or something similar in developing our new classes with my organization. When we see students, we see them for one day for the most part. They are all adult learners who come to our organization to get the relevant training that they need for their job. They are being paid by their company to be there, and the company pays for their classes. The company, naturally, only pays for the minimum amount of training possible to maintain profitability. So our window of opportunity to effect change with this group of learners is very short, and the large majority of the learns would most likely be classified as Stage 1 or 2 in Grow's Self-Directed Learning Stages model. 

All that being said, I've used Blanchard's Situational Leadership model to great success for many many years. Despite the problems that Grow points ou in his essay in our reading this week called: Teaching Learners to be self-directed (p. 127), I have had nothing but very positive effects through its use. This could be because alternatives are not as easy to follow or use, or there are not as many very well known alternatives, but for the most part, we use it because we see that it tends to work, and why mess with a good thing. 

When I look at Grow's model and I see the tie-ins to Situational Leadership I can't help but think that it will work well. I roll with the belief that if the foundation and underpinnings of the model are solid and well built, it has a good chance of being successful. Long and short, I look forward to using it, like you, but haven't yet. 

My Roommate!!!

 A selection of my favorite pics of my roommate! 

Great Reviews

I hope you won't mind a bit of egotism. I've been getting some wonderful reviews (here) and would love to share them with someone. These are all for Vapor Trail (here).

5.0 out of 5 stars Conspiracy theories and murder
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2020
A former soldier finds himself dealing with conspiracies while investigating his boss's death. This is another Jack Reacher style thriller and it's done very well! I like a good thriller and this one is very well-written. The pacing is consistent and the characters are great. Hannah has a great writing style that's easy to follow and he wastes no time in throwing readers into the action. It's definitely a book that I'd recommend checking out if you're into this type of story. I'd also recommend it to those who are curious or looking for something different.

I don't mind hearing "Jack Reacher style thriller." I'll take that all day.

5.0 out of 5 stars Military thriller
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020
A well written military thriller with interesting characters (the protagonist took a little while for me to wrap my mind around, truth be told), and a good dose of real-world conspiracy for good measure.  Death, murder, and conspiracy are intertwined and complicated by family ties and friends past and present that keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat.

I enjoyed the intensity of this story and would recommend this book to anyone who tends to read in this genre!  

"Interesting characters" and "good dose of real world conspiracy" . . . those are things I can accept.

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice page turner
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020
This military thriller was quite a page turner. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book was laced with conspiracy theories yet the plot was well done and easy for me to follow.

"Page turner". . . . thanks! Glad to hear it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Different in a really great way
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. The writing's impeccable while the story just kept on growing and growing on me until I couldn't put it down. It just took me some time to get into the character's head but that's probably me. All in all, I love this story and highly recommend it.

WOW! Impeccable writing! I'll take that all day every day!

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll love this mystery that must be solved.
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2020
Vapor Trail by Dick Hannah has well-developed characters and is full of unexpected twists. It provides a unique look into security and military and fitness buffs will enjoy the exercise and running. If you're into Dick Francis or Lawrence Sanders then this is the book for you.

And I'll take "unexpected twists" . . . this is a review I love.

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystery to follow
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2020
Very intense with interesting plots. it took a while for me to guess around but very engaging. Great dose for my sunday coffee!

How did they know that I like coffee, and especially sunday coffee so much!

Does an ego good to hear so many good reviews in the past month or so.

Worst of the worst

So we did and exercise in our class about worst experiences with other people we’ve just mr. This was mine. 

I had a horrible date before I got married. She was a gal I met at the gym. She would do the stairmaster every day and had great legs and looked great in running shorts. So naturally I wanted to ask her out. She also went to get smoothies after every workout, so I made sure to go talk to "smoothie girl" at the next opportunity. 

I asked her out and she said yes. I picked her up at her place and immediately she asked me into her apartment for a quick drink, red wine. Things are going immediately so well that she even asks me to be her date the next weekend at her friends wedding. I said ofcourse and it sounds like fun. It's my dream come true. Hot gal. Great in running shorts. Another date! Woo Hoo!  I noticed she was limping so I mentioned it. She said she had stubbed and maybe broken her toe but she had taken some pain killers. I didn't mention that pain killers and alcohol were a bad combination. 

So two glasses of wine, then we went out to dinner. Great dinner. South American fusion. Seafood enchiladas. Yummy. She had two more glasses of wine. So she's maybe 110 pounds and in just two hours she's had 4 glasses of red wine. I'm 220 so I was fine, but I could tell she was having troubles. I tried to get her to go home gracefully, but she wanted to go to a bar. So she had two mixed drinks there! So she was SLOSHED. So now I'm having to look out for her and hold onto her etc etc. And I'm thinking "this gal has a problem!" And at one point I said something like "you look beutiful" and she said "what's that mean?" you know, cause when you're drunk asking what's that mean when someone says youre beautiful makes sense. I said something like "I mean you look beautiful in this light" or something silly like that. 

ANYWAY, we go to yet ANOTHER bar and she has two more drinks. And she's just done for. But we are out on the patio and there's this bright porch light in my face and I hold up my hand to block the light in my eyes. And she says, cause she's drunk, what are you doing? and I say "the light's not good out here." and BOOM! she starts crying buckets. I mean she's crying like you wouldn't believe. Finally I figure out that she thought I meant she looked ugly, but I didn't mean that at all. And she's crying so much other guys are coming to her aid and looking at me like I'm a creep. 

So it's a fiasco. So I get her into my car and take her home. The whole way, I mean the whole way she is BALLING and crying like you wouldn't believe. I take her to her apartment and she runs inside. Never heard from her again. She refused all my calls. I saw her a few weeks later at the gym. I realized she looked rough around the edges. I think maybe it was okay that I didn't get that second date.

How's that for a bad date?

Old Friends

One aspect of social media that never fails to astounds me it's ability to promote the resilience of friendships. When my birthday comes around I hear from all sorts of people I never thought I'd hear from. I've got friends on social media channels who would not be friends unless for that platform. Case in point is my old girl friend Nicole.

Nicole was someone I dated in Seattle over twenty-five years ago. When I knew her (that first time) she was a sales person for a meat distribution organization and drove around in her company car with a refrigerated trunk filled to the brim with meat samples for restaurants. Coolest date ever! She reached out to me over ten years ago and we have been pen pals (on and off) ever since. Nicole sent me this the other day right out of the blue.



Thought I would pass this link along.  These books are on sale 8/17-8/23 for $.99 each.  I like Jeff Goins and there are some fiction books here.  Thought of you.  Hope you are well during this season.  Life is great - it’s hot this week - I don’t love 100+ days.  Got to paddle board yesterday.  Waiting to hear from Apple - hoping to launch my podcast later this week.  



So, several things here. First, I love the fact that she's a fan of the writing. There should be a new book out in the next few months to keep her occupied with my writing life. LOVE the fact that I'll have another podcast to listen to on my (insane) commute. So be on the lookout for that. But this blog too, is one of the oldest social media channels I have and I dig the fact that it can act as a bridge to so many people from my old life.

Transformative Learning in Insightful Leadership

Just as I felt in when writing about Kolb's Learning Style assessment, and having a chance to read about the characteristics that make me divergent, I felt the opposite when reading about Transformative Learning in Jack Mezirow's chapter on Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice in New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. When reading about the Divergent Style that my assessment told me I was, I found that reading about what makes a Divergent Learning Style was much like reading a horoscope; vague promises that anyone can see in their future, general statements that fit most personalities, nothing concrete, just enough to whet an appetite. When reading about what goes into setting up and creating a transformative learning experience for an adult learner, I found more substantial information.

Within the same above referenced chapter, Mezirow (1997) writes the following three key phrases "Education that fosters critically reflective thought, imaginative problem posing, and discourse is learner-centered, participatory, and interacting and it involves group deliberation and group problem solving" (p. 10). Unlike the vagaries of Kolb's learning style's descriptions, this is far more spot on and reads like a lesson plan for creating a transformative learning experience. It becomes even more precise when he writes, to "promote discovery learning, the educator often reframes learner questions in terms of learner's current level of understanding" (p. 10). Finally, the game plan sketches out that "the key idea is to help the learners actively engage the concepts presented in the context of their own lives and collectively critically assess the justification of the knowledge" (p. 10).

As I read this I became excited about the chance to apply this to the primary training offerings we provide at my organization. One of our key offerings is a series of Leadership classes that we call Insightful Leadership. It's designed for managers and directors within our oil and gas industry member organizations who may have had an initial taste of leadership training, but need to have a bit deeper understanding of personality assessments, situational leadership, and the leadership feedback model.

Generally what I find when I audit this class is not a teacher at a chalkboard reciting concepts, but a facilitator with decades of HR experience in oil and gas helping to make a raging discussion amongst the class take flight. The first few times I felt that the two-day class was slow and plodding, but have come around since to find that the pace is deliberate for a reason. Having read more about transformative learning I see that the plodding and seemingly lackadaisical speed of the class actually provide fertile ground for the process to take shape, and allows the trainees to teach each other.

In that class which is limited to twelve to fifteen trainees, we promote an open seating arrangement rather than uniform desks and rows. We facilitate the trainee's learning, we do not teach. We foster and promote open discussion and self-reflection about their positions, what got them to their positions, and what their own employees may see when they look at their leaders. I had no idea that those elements were a part of the playbook that would lead our trainees to their own transformative learning experience.

For the past several years as we developed our LEAD series which includes Insightful Leadership without a true roadmap to lead us to transformative learning. It was as if we knew what we wanted instinctively and could fumble our way there but didn't have the road map that would ensure we got to our destination every time. With this article and the other tools we are using in this class I feel that we can make our Insightful Leadership offering as well as our other classes designed for the adult learner in the peak years of their leadership career more powerful and informative for them. Unlike with Kolb's assessment where it felt like it was general and open-ended, I found this far more uniquely specific which is exactly what I was hoping to find. I wonder if others found that same thing to be true.

Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. In New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education (No 74, Summer, pp. 5-12). Josey & Bass Publishers.

Common Decency and Trust

I had a friend contact me the other day and recommend that I get in contact with a friend of his, Hakim. I naturally said, "sure." So, this guy, the friend recommended wrote and asked me when I was free. I told him I'd be free all the next morning on my way to the airport for a good long call. It was all set up.



That morning meeting time came, and no call from Hakim. Odd thinks I.



After ten or fifteen minutes of no call or email, I call him. Nothing. I leave a message and let him know I'll be free for the next half hour or more.



No call comes.



I board my plane. I keep expecting a call, and still nothing.



It's when I land that I see Hakim has called. I listen to the message. He asks me to call him when I land. So I do. Nothing.

It's two days later that I hear from my friend who made the initial contact. He's asking me if I ever hooked up and got to talk to his recommended guy. I tell him no. Apparently, he had called his friend and asked his friend to try and help him set up another meeting. In my world, it's no longer on me to get this set up. I've tried enough times to meet Hakim, it's now Hakim's role to get this fixed if he wants my business. Hakim should have written and not tried the "phone call" to get his message across. He should have emailed, texted and then eventually tried to entice another call. But he had basically struck out at this point, he should have tried to get another turn at the bat.



This reminded me of my roommate in that once she hung up on me when she was too busy. I was furious. I kept expecting a call of apology. None came. The other day I wrote about emotion having a place in relationships (here), that was one day where emotion played a strong part in our relationship.  In that instance, trust had been undermined. It took a while, but it was rebuilt.



It also reminded me of another old friend who had the tendency, in fact she was in the habit of blowing off dates, calls,  . . . everything. At what point does one decide that common decency still play a part? At one point I wondered if the stressors and problems associated with the pandemic played a part in this tendency, but we shouldn't give up on common decency because of outside stressors. Like Hakim, there are ways to establish and build trust, he was undermining that effort with everything he was doing. Just like my friend, the trust was gone and despite my efforts, her habit of blowing off her commitments only made the chance to regain trust worse.



Trust is easy to build, but it takes time. Rules we have built-in society, common decency, those are all things that continue to build trust between individuals. Those simple calls that say, "Sorry, I couldn't make our call today," or even better getting in front of the problem and saying, "I overcommitted and won't be about to make our call." Naturally, actually making a call that you set up, these are all things that would build trust and are all things that are built into the common mores and social guidelines.



Where did it end with Hakim? My friend wrote to me again on his behalf. I told my friend that I was open for whenever Hakim wanted to try again. He still hasn't. Funny ole thing trust, hard to build, easy to lose.

Kolb and Ranger School

When I see Kolb's Experiential Model what pops to my mind was a behavior-based safety system that my organization adopted after a fatality we suffered. We already had a strong safety system, but when we adopted this new behavior-based safety system, it was like a safety system on steroids. It had self-reinforcing process and procedures, the ability to analyze and reflect as a part of internal processes, investigations, reports, going back and auditing changes to ensure the responses are correct and effective. It was like going from 10 MPH to 120 MPH in just a few seconds. Many of our senior executives were lost and that made it hard to convince our 3000 field technicians to buy in and use it. 

The turning point, and where I see that Kolb's Experiential Model came into play, was when I was asked to go to the "train the trainer" course. This was a week-long course that was very "drill" centered, which taught trainers how to train this new behavior-based safety course. While taking the course I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes at the authoritative style of teaching, the lack of trust in the trainers, and the seemingly rudimentary tools and techniques. But after just two days I started to see the benefits of the system. By learning to train the system to others, I became a natural promoter for the course. I also moved from "active experimentation" through "concrete experience" and into "reflective observation." 

Following that moment I was unable to see the safety system as I had before and was an advocate for its adoption to everyone I ran into. To this day I continue to be an advocate for not just behavior-based safety systems but for this particular one.

(As an aside, I met the founder of the company and the designer of the system several years later, turns out he was a captain of an infantry company in Vietnam and took many of the techniques in the system from his experiences in Ranger Schoool. The entire system was based on Ranger School. Maybe that's why I found it so appealing.)

Regardless, like you, I find it's fun to look back at moments in my life, like the behavior-based safety training and see how Kolb's Experiential Model was playing a part in my active understanding of the concepts. 

Yoga as a Learning Device

When I got out of the Army I found that about once or twice a month I was laid low with debilitating lower back pain. I don't know if it was the constant movement from work in the Army, or if it was just my time, but the back started being a problem in my life. After several doctor's visits and an MRI, I was given a prescription to Vioxx and then when that was pulled, I was switched over to Celebrex. That was the doctor's plan for the rest of my life, Celebrex to manage pain. I wasn't a fan of the idea to be on medication to manage pain. 

Instead, I wanted to attack the pain, fix the pain, stop the pain. So I started going to Yoga. I have no idea what made me think to go to a yoga class, but I did. I went to a beginner's yoga at a local church, then started to go to yoga during my lunch hour at work at the gym across from my office. My goal was at least once a week, sometimes twice a week to see if my back pain lessened. After a year, the back pain was completely gone. 

My history with yoga is a very positive one. What I found was the same thing that Philomena Behmer found as she wrong in  Moving to Learn: A Meditative Yoga Approach to Teaching and Learning Anatomy and Physiology in Multiple Contexts that was a part of our reading this week. She writes in the article that she found that yoga can help create a safe and supportive learning environment that can help learners absorb and reflect on the information they are learning (p. 72).  She states on the next page, "Therefore, the positive feedback cycle of yoga, meditation, and embodied learning potentially enables students to engage in physical experiences that calm their minds, allowing for self-observation and consequently learning a new way of being in the world."

If found from my own experience with yoga that I not only was able to help with my physical pain in my back but I was also able to greatly reduce my daily stress and focus on information from work in a more self-reflective and intense manner. Several times during my yoga class, as I was learning a downward dog or mountain pose, my mind was toying with and chewing on how best to manage a project or motivate a subordinate. My subconscious mind was provided fertile ground to explore and think in a way that it could not when harrassed with the day-to-day hoi polloi at the office. 

I have been thinking about joining another yoga studio in order to help cope with the myriad of injuries that have blossomed in my life lately and knew that one of the side benefits would be the chance to distress and breathe. Now, thanks to Behmer's article I'll also look for how I can take the environment that a yoga studio creates into my work life to help trainees at my council. As I sit here and think about it, nothing comes immediately to mind, but I feel certain that with a few yoga sessions my subconscious will chew on it and come find a solution. 

Strengths of Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education

I got a chance to read Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education and thought about the strengths and weaknesses of his principles. He wrote these principles almost 100 years ago, how relevant are they today? I decided to look at two that seemed most relevant to my work and discuss the strength I saw; the staying power of the principles, the resilience of the principles to be relevant despite the era.



Basic Principle number four states, "the rapid changes within all fields of human endeavor make reeducation or continuous education essential." This article was written in 1932. If we believe in Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns (2001) even though the pace of "rapid changes" in 1932 may have been brisk, the early decades of the 21st Century, are exponentially greater and more rapid. These rapid changes, be they in 1932, or 2020, make "reeducation or continuous education" even more essential for success whether in the business world, education, technology, or in society in general.

At first glance, principle number three "the increasing complexity and subdivision of labor has decreased the demand for specific skills through the formal agencies of education" sounds like it may not be relevant in today's day and age. However, after applying it to my field of work, field safety and training for oil refining operations, it's easy to see how this principle is still quite applicable in that technology is supplanting the need for highly skilled workers. New and more automated machines are coming in and taking away the need for expertise from field workers who have decades of field experience. Companies are able to hire more workers for lower wages as technology and automation "has decreased the demand for specific skills."



I picked these two principles because it is easy to demonstrate their staying power through the years and illustrate the strengths of Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education, however, each of the 8 principles outlined is still relevant today.





Brown, F. J. (1932). Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education. Journal of Educational Sociology, 5(8),  463-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2961482



Kurzweil, R. (2001). The Law of Accelerating Returns. Retrieved August 18, 2020, from

https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

Corporate Training

When I was the Director of Training with an industrial services firm, I was tasked with training our field technicians and supervisors on the safe work processes and procedures of their field tasks in "water blasting" and "liquid vacuum truck" work. Both of these work scopes are extremely dangerous and takes years to become expert in. 

As you can imagine, a "corporate suit" coming to train the experienced field hands was never received well. I would invariably show up and was met with very "old school" and quite defensive, in some case combative attitudes. We integrated many barrier-breaking techniques into the training, but one of the techniques that had was most successful was one that you intimate in your discussion topic above. 

The best use of the combative, old school, "you can't teach me anything new" trainees was to weave them into the training as facilitators. This had a two-fold effect. First, it used their experience to help train the newer folks, which helped the transfer that knowledge to their charges AND helped them become better facilitators. But it also helped with their buy-in into the class. As I wrote to Matt in a previous reply to a discussion, once a trainee has had to train others on a topic, they become far better advocates. By subtly making these more combative trainees into trainers and facilitators we were basically extinguishing their defensiveness all together, and making a better all-around training environment. 

We used this technique for years and we were always very happy with it. It may not be exactly what you're looking to do, but from my perspective, this little technique was a gold mine in creating a better learning environment. 

Pubby.co

One of the things I try to focus on is whether or not I can create an innovative idea around a complex or antiquated process. My grandfather was an entrepreneur who started several businesses and ventures, among them the first privately owned rocket companies compete with NASA, and in the 1980's a mobile learning center which included a bank of computers in an RV so plant workers could study for the GED.

In the past few years, I dreamed up an idea for a mobile app that would automatically send postcards through the mail on the user's behalf with their images on them (which two years later became this here and here), a pet picture capture device which helped animals look at phones so that proud owners could take good pictures of them (a year after I thought of that I saw this here and here), and a learning app for kids that parents could install to help them learn. 

A while back I had to jump through several hoops to find readers and reviewers for my novels. Now there is pubby.co. Pubby links people who are readers with authors so that authors can get reviews. One issue all writers have is that Amazon is so large that it's hard to get noticed. Reviews, especially lots of good ones, help get books noticed. 

This isn't a post about those reviews for my books, but rather the fact that I appear to be slipping. I should have seen that an onerous process and found a more elegant and seamless solution to link readers and writers together. Right now Pubby is make money off of me to provide this service, I should be making that money. Need to up my game!

Korean War EQ

One of my favorite eras and actions to read about is the Korean War. A colleague of mine brought up a book about a military company commander going against orders to make the ethical decision reminded me of a book I recently finished, On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides. In the book Sides writes about two aviators Jesse Brown and Thomas Hudner. Hudner as I recall deliberately crashed landed his plane on the side of a snowy mountain despite orders not to in an effort to help his wingman Jesse Brown who had been shot down. He later received the Medal of Honor for his actions. Throughout a book that tells of many valiant efforts, that one stuck with me the most for Hudner's devotion to his buddy. Wondering if you've read On Desperate Ground. If not, you should.

I too had a boss who was a true salesman, and it wasn't until I read this article by Goleman several years ago that I realized how finely tuned his emotional intelligence was. I look through the characteristics that make up someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence and this boss has them all. It was a little like looking behind the curtain and finding out that Oz wasn't so great and powerful, but it did help me begin to develop my own emotional intelligence. 

I liked the passage in the article that discusses an executive with little empathy. Goleman states "to enhance emotional intelligence, organizations must refocus their training to include the limbic system," which is the part of the brain that focuses on emotions and memory. "That not only takes much more time than conventional training programs, it also requires an individualized approach." More time. More individual attention. Both of these would be tough to sell to any organization's leadership in an era where training budgets are so tight and will probably be cut as companies re-org after the COVID-19 losses. 

Emotion in Conversation

The other day my roommate and I had an argument over something. 

I brought up the bodycam footage and been released regarding the George Floyd killing. Although it doesn't exonerate the officers it does show certain things that I didn't know about and that I  think the media has deliberately not looked into and have missed lead to their audiences.

This could go into a long discussion about perspective which I’ve talked about before. Instead of looking at six or nine, I believe the media is actually set themselves up so that everything looks like a nine and totally disregarding the six. If you don’t understand go check out this one (here). Imagine that fella in the cartoon looking at the 9 and then moving to look at the 9 so it's a six and completely disregarding the 9 perspectives. 

But what this post is really about is about emotion. I was stunned by how heated and how quickly emotion became a part of our conversation. My roommate was actually yelling at me at one point. I naturally started yelling back. Emotion completely dominated the argument. Logic wasn't considered, other sides, thoughts, nothing. Emotion overwhelmed it all. I wonder how that plays a part in all the protests, rioting, looting etc.

Worse, lately I had to deal with a friend who I've written about here before. In that friendship I never let emotion play a part in any of the decisions. Finally, I did allow emotion to play a part. All of a sudden the path forward became easy to see. Whereas before, without using emotion, I was stuck in a vicious circle, once I allowed emotion into the equation it was easy to determine the right way to move forward. 

Looking back I wish now that I had used emotion much earlier in that relationship and seen the path forward much earlier. I wonder if they had done the same to me? Had they kept emotion out of things? Do they look back and wish emotion had been a part of our friendship earlier too? 

Long and short, my roommate and I were able to move forward easily after the dust-up. Infact the emotion might have helped things move forward quickly. 

VR Moments at the Office

 As anyone who reads this blog can figure out, I'm heavily involved in developing a virtual reality (VR) training solution for my organization (see here and here). I'm new-ish at my organization. In a company where the average time at the organization in the double digits, someone who has been there about 1 year is a rarity. Truthfully, I'm surprised I was able to get a job with this group. That being said, I feel as though I have to constantly strive and achieve to prove that I'm worth keeping. 

The other day, Russell, my boss, came into my office while he was on the phone with someone else (this is not rare). What was rare was that he plopped a magazine on my desk and tapped his finger heavily on the cover without stopping his conversation. The cover of the magazine had a picture of someone taking a VR training, and the magazine was from the National Safety Council, the national organization for our industry (see the full magazine here). 

Why is this an interesting or funny moment? Russell was telling me that I should read the article in the magazine as it was in my wheel-house of VR development. We were walking into a meeting at that moment, and as soon as Russell got off the phone I asked, "Have you read that article?"

"No," Russell said. "I just saw the cover and thought you'd be interested."

I opened the magazine to the page about the article and let my finger linger on a page with a "pull quote." It isn't a very compelling pull quote, but the name under it was. Turns out I was a major contributor to the article. I was their primary source. 

Back in December or January, someone had called me for a long and extensive interview on what we were doing with VR and how VR might change the industry. I thought I did a pretty decent job with his questions, and apparently, I did. Russell's mandate for me has always been to provide proof that our organization is the pre-eminent industry training solution. Having an article about VR in the industry where I am the primary source certainly helps with that. 

Russell was initially proud and amazed, then that turned to slightly miffed. He was upset he didn't know about it and wanted to know why I hadn't told anyone or at least let the Marketing Dept know. Thankfully, I had. I had told our marketing team several weeks earlier. They had failed to do anything with it. So that miffed-ness was transferred to them, and Russell made sure to give the magazine to our CEO and this time when he plunked his heavy finger on the page, it was right under my name. 

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

After this week's readings on emotionally intelligence, I wonder if we are truly developing our leaders effectively with our training if we don't have a class that focuses on this aspect of their personalities and leadership. The other week I posted about our LEAD series of training classes that is made up of Foundational Leadership, Insightful Leadership, and Speaking as a Leader. There is one more class we have on the shelf that we take down every now and then, it's a class on Emotional Intelligence.

The reason it's on the shelf is that our lead facilitator treats it very carefully. He has provided the class to leaders within the oil field industry only a handful of times and each time he does he feels as though the emotions that are brought about, the feelings that rise to the surface, get too raw and things get too powerful for the class. Our facilitator has worked in the oil and gas industry for almost 50 years, as a field tech, a supervisor, an HR analyst and consultant, a trainer and a mediator. He has a depth of knowledge into the industry and the type of people who work in the industry that few people in the industry could hope to have, yet, he has lad leadership development courses for decades yet here is a class that he feels is too raw and inspires too many emotions for the audience.

When I have talked to him about making this class on emotional intelligence a standard offer he demurs and never endorses the idea. He does not undervalue the benefits, he just doesn't feel as though the trainees are up to the task of exploring this side of their nature. I can certainly understand his concerns. Many of our trainees do not come to our leadership classes because they look through a catalog and select our class. Usually, they are sent here by a manager or an administrator. Sometimes they are in trouble and this is part of their corrective action. It could be a part of a career growth plan, but it's rare that organizations willingly spend that type of money on their primary leaders. Chuck's belief is that the trainee should willingly select to explore their emotional intelligence, not be told by their employer that it might be a good class to go to.

For a long time I have agreed with Chuck, but having read (for the second time) Daniel Goleman's article What Makes a Good Leader, I think I might press Chuck again on hosting these classes more often. One passage resonated with me in particular. "Emotional intelligence increases with age. There is an old-fashioned word for the phenomenon: maturity. Yet even with maturity, some people still need the training to enhance their emotional intelligence." Our mission is to help improve the safety of the oil and gas industry and part of that is done by developing better leaders. By not focusing on the emotional intelligence of our leaders we are doing them, their organizations, and the industry a disservice.

The same article states, "the higher the rank of a person considered to a be a star performer, the more emotional intelligence capabilities showed up the reason for his or her effectiveness." Just like being able to understand the personality types of the people we may lead (which we develop in Insightful Leadership) or being able to change our leadership style for the type of employee (which we develop in Foundational Leadership) or even being able to present ourselves and talk cogently (Speaking as a Leader), we should be developing the emotional intelligence of our leadership.

There may be some folks who attend our classes because they are told to by their leaders or their training scheduler to come to the class and they are ambushed into raw discussions and emotionally revealing moments, but that potential positive outcomes for the growth of leaders in our community is being marginalized to defray this risk.

GOLEMAN, DANIEL. "What Makes a Leader?" Harvard Business Review, 1998. Accessed 6 June 2020. http://jbedwardsandassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HBR-What-makes-a-great-leader-D.-Goleman.pdf

 

Maturity, Experience, and Age

I was struck during this week's reading when I read in Adult Leadership and Development, A Contrsuctionist's View by Kegan and Lahey when I read about more mature or older readers; "Their current feelings seemed not so much about changes in the intensity of their commitment but reevaluations of the shape of that commitment" (p. 201). This statement came in the section about how Levinson views many of life's changes as age-related. The reason this struck me is two-fold, first, I'm in or near the age range that was mentioned as being a part of that change, ergo, I may be experiencing a change in my own views on work right now. Secondly, it struck me how similar it was to something we read last week in Goleman's, What Makes a Leader? article. 

In Goleman's article, he states in the aside titled, Can Emotional Intelligence Be Learned? "One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence increases with age. There is an old-fashioned word for the phenomenon: maturity," (p. 5). Last week we read in this article how it is Goleman's belief that emotional intelligence isn't a necessity for great leadership, but that most great leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence. It is for this reason he wrote that being able to study, develop, and refine tools that make up emotional intelligence is so important in leadership. 

For a long while I thought most of what went into this aspect of leadership and emotional intelligence, this ability to be more self-aware, detached, regulated, and more socially engaging, was more linked to Mazlow's hierarchy of needs. Once the air, water, food, and shelter is attained, and once personal security, employment, and health are met, then one can begin focusing on belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. This I believed lead leaders I have worked for to become more capable in their leadership, more emotionally intelligent, and more successful in their businesses. Once the high salary kicks in instead of the hourly payment, once there is the investment of years in a company rather than being the new kid on the block, once there is the financial security and a network of associates, then the feeling of confidence and capability can take root. 

What this week's readings have shown me is that it is not one thing or another. The life changes that make up the development of a good leader and a leader's use of more tools and techniques can not be attributed to one aspect of leadership, but rather that it is a cocktail of leadership facets. Maturity, age, experience, external factors that contribute to a feeling of security, all play a part in creating the setting that allows leaders to flourish and further develop. What that cocktail might include will be different for each person but it is intriguing to begin to see the ingredients that are needed for that to take place. 

It would be intriguing to begin to determine how much of the different ingredients are needed and in what order and how to mix them that helps attain the best solution or soil for leadership growth. Does maturity and experience alone provide the necessary fodder for leadership development or must it come with happiness at home and financial security? Does hitting the age of fifty create the correct temperament, or must it be accompanied by the development of empathy and learning how to be more self-aware. How do all of these work to create that leadership mindset that great leaders have, or is each so individual that it must be taken uniquely and developed singularly? 

Goleman, D. (1998). What Makes a Leader? Harvard Business Review.  http://jbedwardsandassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HBR-What-makes-a-great-leader-D.-Goleman.pdf (Links to an external site.)

Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (1984). Adult Leadership and Adult Development: A Constructionist View. Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.

McLeod, S. (2020, March 20). Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

eLearning Opportunities

When I worked for a former company we had a 40-hour hazwoper training mandate (a full week of training before a new employee could go into the field), and over 50 locations across the nation. Prior to this Virtual Classroom being set up we had safety managers flying around training people in small groups, taking up their valuable time, and some were not great trainers. By creating a virtual network of classrooms we improved consistency, sped up the onboarding time significantly, and saved tens of thousands. Still, quality compared to a live trainer was lacking. 

To counter this 1) we recycled iPhones and set up quizzes (retrieval practice events) throughout the training, 2) provided videos and required the class to provide safety analysis regarding mistakes made in the videos, 3) created hands-on training lockers that allowed the class to try on and use the equipment during the training in a controlled environment, 4) created an interactive workbook that kept the trainees engaged during the training, and 5) set up spaced retrieval practice and reinforcement to follow and begin each day. At the time the project ended we were on the cusp of sending mobile coaching directly to the trainee's phones via text during their off-hours and after training. 

The purpose of all of these accouterments to the primary training deliverable was to engage the trainees in a variety of ways and constantly keep them active. We won several best in class safety and training awards for our work and it was a terrific standard to keep within the industry. Sadly, it was not scalable. A class of 20 was our virtual limit, while classes of 50 were standard with a live trainer. 

All this being said, I wonder how universities will be able to justify their class price tags when they increase their virtual classroom offering. Will parents who were content to pay 20K to 50K a semester in tuition want to pay that same amount for classes that are primarily online? I think it goes back to what we found. How many other reinforcement tools and engagement devices can they integrate into the training to make the class more effective and justify the price? 

Since we found that our limit was reached quickly, that our quality suffered when we had too many students, I wonder if this new COVID era of teaching might allow smaller colleges and universities to flourish? 

And as an aside, I provided training via the virtual classroom many times from my office, my home office, from hotels on the road and from my parent's house during the Christmas holidays once. The flexibility can't be beat.

Social Media and Civic Reasoning

In the article for this week's reading, The Challenge that's Bigger than Fake News; Civic Reasoning in a Social Media Environment the authors make several statements that as a parent to one lower school student and one middle school student, are worrying. Both of our children use social media to stream videos, play video games and interact with other players in those games, and to connect with friends. Despite our best efforts to limit their interactions with social media and to help develop their minds through more traditional means like novels, newspapers, and more well-established print periodicals, as the article states, "today's students are more likely to learn about the world through social media than through traditional sources like print newspapers" (p. 5). And despite saying how critical it is that young people be taught how to properly evaluate what they see on those social media channels, "when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they're easily duped" (p. 5).

The other challenge is being able to identify, confront, challenge, and correct what our children see on social media before it becomes encoded in their memory and a part of their understanding of the world. The speed with which a false narrative or story can travel around the world using social media platforms is far faster than in the past with print media. As the quote commonly (although perhaps erroneously) attributed to Mark Twain states, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” (Chokshi, 2017) is even more true in the era of social media, video and is made worse by a lack of critical thinking on behalf of the young viewers.

My thirteen year old commonly asks me to help clarify information that he gets from online resources and from friends. These are pivotal moments in my helping him be able to think critically. As the article states, "our findings show that many young people lack the skills to distinguish reliable from misleading information." My son lacks the ability to think critically about the information he absorbs and naturally comes to me as a bell-weather for his critical thinking. Instead of just helping him, I realize I need to ask him questions to help him develop his own critical thinking skills.

Chokshi, N. (2017). That Wasn’t Mark Twain: How a Misquotation Is Born. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-misquotations.html (Links to an external site.)

McGrew, S., Ortega, T., Breakstone, J., & Wineburg, S. (2017). The Challenge that's Bigger than Fake News; Civic Reasoning in a Social Media Environment. American Educator, Vol 41, (3), Fall 2017, p 4-11.

Kolb and DiSC

Wading into the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory,  I was excited to find out where I landed. When reading about Transformative Learning experiences in our textbook the other day I thought about moments in my life that might have met that threshold of the books cited definition from Mezirow, "Transformative learning is essentially a learning process of making meaning of one's experience," or "an enhanced level of awareness of the context of one's beliefs and feeling, a critique of their assumptions and particularly premises, an assessment of alternative perspectives . . ."

With this in mind, one moment stood out. Years ago, during a contentious merger of two large, rival companies, our executive leadership staff was tasked with performing a DiSC personality review as a group.  There was no greater transformative learning moment for me in my business life then when I found out I was an S in the DiSC personality assessment and that my nemesis Bob, was a D. There it was in black in white that we were opposites in what we were looking for from life, how we wanted to work, how we wanted to interact, and what techniques worked best to communicate with one another. We continue to use DiSC personality assessments in our Leadership Training in my new company as well as Myers-Briggs. I understand and have read numerous articles like Ron Soak's A warning against using DiSC/Myers-Briggs profiling in the workplace from Medium magazine where he states "And it’s this absence of any scientific credibility that should really be the biggest red flag that gets you to seriously question the likes of DiSC, Myers-Briggs." Perhaps I'm the type of learner who needs to be pigeonholed or and categorized first before I can build more. Despite the warnings about it's ability to profile, Bob and I did communicate more effectively following that exercise.

For a while, I worked with a major upstream oil field development organization on the West Coast that had bought into the idea of these personality assessments that all field and office employees had to take them, then wear a badge that told others what their assessments were. The intent was that just by approaching and reading the badge the employees could better able to communicate with one another. My subjective interviews of whether or not the system provided for better communication found that the employees did not think it helped much.

Was it merely knowing my personality and Bob's that helped during our merger misunderstandings? Was that the transformative experience. No. It was the experience of working through the characteristics of the different personalities with the group and hearing from Bob what exactly makes him tick that made the experience memorable and transformative. It wasn't just the knowledge that made the learning meaningful but the experience that led to the use of the knowledge. Regretfully, mine and Bob's working relationship wouldn't be healed by the understanding of our DiSC personalities alone, but it certainly made things more bearable while we did work together. I now enjoy seeing and creating those same moments of learning and experiences whenever we use these personality tests in our leadership training and always provide the same caveats to the trainees about the ultimately imprecise nature of the exercise.

Because of this experience, I found myself eager to determine just what type of learning style fit me.   Turns out I am a Diverging learning style and have a personality that balances along two or more learning styles. Secondly, as I read the characteristics of this style, much like reading my horoscope, I found my self agreeing with the characteristics that define me. Although I know this is not definitive nor might it help me in a conclusive or decisive way, in nonetheless reminded me of Bob and my DiSC experience and how much easier my life became once I was able to put him and myself into the correct category.  Fun, certainly. Intriguing and possibly helpful, hardly. Definitive, not at all.

Virtual Training at HASC

For this week's discussion, I wanted to write about a project that we've been developing at our work. Part of our work revolves around virtual reality (VR) training (see the screenshot below for a glimpse at our deliverable). I wrote my final project paper on how VR can potentially help influence long term memory making and retrieval. How VR will stimulate place cells, grid cells, head-direction cells, and sensorimotor cells to create more resilient and more easily re-traceable memories for the users. It could be a very distinct improvement for our training center. 

Understanding how memories are formed in the brain, starting in the hippocampus for the short term, then being "moved" to the neocortex for long term, . . . understanding how multiple trace theory works and functions, and finding out that creating more traces that trainees can access, and how multiple retrieval attempts strengthen and make memories more durable, also all became a part of my final project paper on our VR project. What I did not get a chance to weave into my paper was anything about the teaching perspectives.

Traditionally our training is quite one dimensional. The training is all presented flatly and is very much a "transmission" perspective. But when delivering computer-based training (CBT), transmission is the most probable outcome of any CBT development. We can add some activities and some short video snippets to make the training more interactive, but for the most part finding a way to make a safety or compliance training CBT a "developmental", "apprenticeship", "social reform" or "nurturing" perspective is just too much to ask for from a powerpoint style CBT. VR can liven things up in terms of the interactive nature, but still, it's nothing but transmission perspective. 

One feature we have added to our VR CBT is a series of test questions that encourage the trainee to consider scenarios where they are on the job. These scenarios ask the trainee to use and apply the information they may have learned while reviewing the CBT training and working in the VR exercises, and apply them to the job in their mind's eye. This more than any other tool or technique helps us move from a transmission to a developmental perspective. By asking our trainees to consider the learning objectives and apply them to their jobs, we are moving the information from simple, easy, question and answer with rote memorization to one that includes application of the information into a job. This is new in our community and something I intend to continue to develop with our training. 

• Having found out more about these teaching perspectives in this class, and understanding more about CBTs and training for large numbers of people, I wonder if anyone else has dealt with this type of difficulty?
• Has anyone found another way to move CBT style training from a transmission perspective to a different perspective? Either developmental or other?
• What other tools or techniques might be worthwhile to try and include in CBTs to help make them more fully fleshed out and worthwhile training tools?

VR for HASC

Recently I had to write a white paper about a new project for work. I was excited by the opportunity to tackle, writing a paper that reflects research into Neuroscience and Learning and the Learning and the Brain, specifically for learning that takes place using Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Currently, my organization has developed and deployed a VR training that reinforces procedures and techniques for a "fire emergency" situation. The trainees that we host are used to taking training in a Computer Based Training (CBT) or eLearning format. Our new VR training provides reinforcement exercises and simulations that take place as a part of that typical or traditional CBT style of learning. By providing both this CBT mixed with VR exercises, alongside the same CBT without VR exercises, our hope is to analyze the results to determine if VR is an effective tool and is worth the investment.

I really enjoyed writing this paper for it gave me hope that we are moving in the right direction and that the results for long term memory and memory retrieval using this style of training is positive. Although I saw some results in the articles I studied that did NOT show the results I was hoping for, there was some reason to be positive.

Incidental Memory - One study on incidental memory asked test subjects to enjoy a VR exercise then asked them questions that had nothing to with the exercise. They were quizzed on what they saw and experienced tangential to the primary exercise. The results did not show a higher degree of incidental memory retrieval in the 3D VR simulation as the 2D simulation.

Place Cells, Grid Cells etc - I had the chance to read and understand much more about grid cells, place cells, head-direction cells, sensorimotor cells, border cells, and boundary vector cells and how all of these play a part in memory making and potential memory retrieval. All of this was new to me and I look forward to finding out more about how all of these affect memory.

Multiple Trace Theory - Dr. Fishback had discussed this memory theory before in this class and in our former class, but reading about it in more detail was intriguing and finding how our VR exercises can potentially lead to more traces, stronger memories, and the chance to access the memory more easily later is interesting.

Long-Term Memory - One of the most promising aspects was a study that showed that although there might not be a significant difference between immediately recalling VR experiences (ie. after a 2-min break), after one week there was a 25% difference in favor of VR. This is very appealing for my organization in that so much of training is needed well after the initial training.

The last few months of developing our VR exercises as small snippets rather than what we have found the VR developing community advocates (more large scale and long VR exercises) has been a labor of love that is finally being launched. Seeing that the idea we had has promise in these studies has helped build confidence that we are on the right track. I look forward to the next few months as we gather and begin to analyze data that we gain from this venture.

I'm sure the white paper will make an appearance here soon. But already the VR exercises are becoming a hit in our training areas.