CIASTD Monthly Newsletter

Welcome to 2005 and an exciting year for your Central Indiana ASTD and the workplace learning community. I want to use this first message to share the plans your Board of Directors has put in place to move the chapter forward this year.

The Board spent some time late last year revisiting areas that we thought were critical to elevating the chapter to a new level. The first of those was a look at the chapter’s vision and mission. These were initially crafted several years ago, and we felt they needed a re-look to bring them up to date.

As the leading-edge workplace learning association in Indiana, CIASTD cultivates an environment in which to network, learn, collaborate and have fun. CIASTD offers business, education, government, and not-for-profit organizations a single source for:

Link workplace learning professionals with resources to promote recognition as strategic partners in their organizations

We will use that vision and mission to drive everything we undertake to provide value to you, the members of the chapter. The language of “workplace learning professionals” is very intentional in that it moves our focus away from the “training and development” activity to the result that we must obtain in our business in order to be relevant.

With that in mind, here are some of the objectives your Board has developed for the chapter to accomplish to better serve you in 2005:

I invite your comments on these plans for the new year. If you’d like to comment, send me an email at jim@jpattonconsulting.com.

Developing Leadership
By Eric Denney, Facilitator Staff

Figure 1
Join us for the upcoming January meeting with the program “Best Practices in Leadership Development…Programs that Get Results.” Our speaker is the esteemed newsletter editor Jay McNaught from Cinergy, with a panel that includes Tena Frazer (Anthem), Sandra Dean (Roche), Bill Fanelli (Eli Lilly and Company), and Hugh Harvey (Rolls Royce). The presentation will run from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., with a cranberry juice cocktail networking session starting at 7:30 a.m.

Strong leadership is critical for organizations to compete in today’s constantly changing environment. Many companies have recognized the need for leadership development, and in most organizations, the responsibility for leadership development has fallen squarely on the shoulders of the Training and Development department. The January program will show you what is currently being done in Leadership Development by organizations that have successful programs in place.

At the end of the presentation, you will be able to identify critical success factors for quality leadership development programs, understand goals and objectives for leadership development, have a working knowledge of various assessment tools that can be used, learn the basic steps of designing and implementing a leadership development program, and be able to utilize a variety of resources that can enhance and compliment a leadership development program. The presentation will also include an interactive panel discussion, in which the experts answer questions from the audience.

Cost for the program is $25 for members, $35 for non-members, and $15 for students. There is, however, an additional $5 fee for walk-in registrations. You can register at the CIASTD website by clicking on the following link:

https://secure28.nocdirect.com/%7Eciastdc/secure/ciastdregister.htm

The meeting will be held at The Marott, located at 2625 N. Meridian Street, near the intersection of Fall Creek Blvd. and Meridian.

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December Meeting

Holiday Celebration

The CIASTD December Holiday Party happened on Friday, December 3.

Those attending enjoyed a full breakfast buffet, networking with their peers, a silent auction, a prize drawing, and an awards ceremony to honor outstanding CIASTD members of 2004.

Food items were collected to donate to Partners in Housing, an organization dedicated to providing low-income housing, job opportunities, and guidance for the poorest of our community. Pictured below are the CIASTD who were honored at the event.

Pictured below are the CIASTD members who were honored at the event.

Roger Reeves, Leanne Batcheldor, Linda Bush and Andrea Moore

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Member Spotlight

Daniel Johnson
By Fred Oaks, Facilitator Staff Member

[A regular feature of The Facilitator, Member Spotlight profiles a member of CIASTD randomly selected at a sponsored event. We hope this helps everyone get to know one another.]

Dan Johnson is immediate past president of CIASTD, an instructor in the Human Performance Improvement Certificate Program (a nationally recognized certificate series offered in cooperation with CIASTD and the IUPUI Community Learning Network), President of the International Coach Federation, a professional executive coach, and the founder of Performance Mastery (www.performancemastery.com). Though he has accomplished a great deal, he does not linger over his achievements. Dan’s focus is on being, not doing.

“Our doing comes out of our being,” he says. “We are each extensions of Source energy. How we choose to use that energy is what’s important.” Dan is intense but not driven, confident but not arrogant, focused but not myopic. He is a thinker who remains in touch with emotions. Has earning degrees from both Purdue and IU enabled him to learn a balance that eludes many of us?

Purdue granted Dan a degree in financial planning. Shortly after graduating he became a supervisor in a financial services company. “It was a toxic work environment,” he recalls. “People were miserable. They were calling in sick, quitting their jobs…” Dan believed that work environments could be nurturing instead of oppressive. He left that company himself after a short time and began work for a worldwide association.

“Working for the association was an exciting opportunity,” he recalls. “I learned quickly that different cultures think about management in diverse ways.” These differences helped Dan appreciate distinct cultures and challenged him to sharpen his own thinking about management. “I enjoyed the work a great deal. After a while, however, the extensive travel required was too much.” While working for the association, Dan earned a master’s degree in Instructional Technology from IU. When he left the association he put it to use.

Dan became part of an in-house consulting team providing performance improvement training for a financial services company. “We provided a wide range of services that went way beyond training,” he recalls. Dan became a member of the International Society of Performance Improvement, then president of the local chapter. During this time Dan began to explore his own interests more fully. “I asked, ‘What am I turned on by?’” he recalls. Training was the answer.

While working in the training field, Dan imagined launching his own consulting business. In 1999, after eight years of planning, he started Performance Mastery. Performance Mastery is a coaching and performance consulting firm that maximizes individual and organizational performance. Dan began part-time and then moved to full-time in 2002. “I enjoy working with individuals and organizations willing to be changed, to evolve,” he says. “I like to work with those who want to be the leading edge of the leading edge.”

Dan was recently certified as an executive coach. “Enduring impact requires changes in people,” he says. “I take an inside-out approach. Interior changes are reflected on the outside – this is the Law of Attraction. People who are feeing trapped may be focusing on the negative, or they may lack courage to follow their intuition. I help them get in touch with who they are by encouraging them to focus on what they do want and claiming their power. They move from motivation to inspiration.” Dan conducts tele-classes for groups. He also provides Organizational Systems Coaching and Relationship Coaching, which acknowledges the relationship as a living third entity. “Some conflicts cannot be resolved,” he says. “But by focusing on the relationship, people can acknowledge the conflict while keeping their relationship strong.”

Asked to recommend good reading, Dan cites Ask and It Shall Be Given by Esther & Jerry Hicks. Dan may become an author himself in the future. “Right now, I want to become clear about and open to what inspires me,” he says. “My long-term goal is to reach folks worldwide, help them become deliberate creators. I want to help companies become deliberately creative and attract their ideal customers.” Companies like that will not oppress creative people, but liberate them.

A member of CIASTD since 1987, Dan became President in 2003. “Years ago, people didn’t share much,” he recalls. “Vendors bombarded people, pitching their products, but there was not much sharing. That has changed.” So much so, in fact, that Growing camaraderie and sharing among members is listed as one of the accomplishments of the past year in the 2003 Annual Report. We agree. Dan has made a difference. Looking back, he says, “I tried to lead well. Good leadership draws out the best in people and energizes volunteers.”

To new professionals, Dan advises, “Be really clear about your inspiration. Find a way to connect to your own personal power and sense of what is eternal. Surround yourself with supportive people. Let go of what ‘the experts’ say, what the MBA program said. Let the universe work with you and surprise you with how it all comes about.” In other words, focus on being and the doing will follow.

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Books in Review

Credibility
By James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Review by Jay McNaught

Kouze, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2003) Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kouzes and Posner are considered experts in leadership and leadership development. With their recent book, Credibility, they have reverse engineered their research on leadership. Their classic book, Leadership Challenge, did a thorough job of identifying the qualities of successful leaders. However, in Credibility, they have taken a different approach and have studied successful followers. By focusing on the followers, they are able to work backwards and determine the type of leaders that make followers most effective. They asked the question, “What are the qualities that followers want from those who lead them?” They conducted surveys over the last decade and found a clear message about what people expect from those who lead them. Their top four characteristics were: Honest, forward-looking, inspiring, and competent (2003, p. 13).

In the introduction they explain, “Credibility is about how leaders earn the trust and confidence of their constituents. It’s about about what people demand of their leaders as prerequisite to willingly contributing their hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. It’s about the actions leaders must take in order to intensify their constituents’ commitment to a common cause” (2003, p. xiii).

In their research, they identified six practices that they discovered were foundational to establishing leadership credibility. They are discovering yourself, appreciating constituents, affirming shared values, developing capacity, seeing a purpose, and sustaining hope (2003, p 51). The book gives detailed descriptions of these practices, and offers practical advice on how a leader can develop them.

One of the main underlying concepts of the book, is the approach of servant leadership. The authors believe that this is the best and most productive style of leadership in the modern work environment. “As more and more people become professionals in organizations whose competitive advantage is knowledge and not brute force, there is increased resistance to being treated as ‘inferiors.’ When people do things with their heads rather than by hand, they rebel at being controlled and demand to be in control themselves” (2003, p. 7). In the new world, followers want leaders that will empower them and not control them. Kouzes and Pozner offer practical advice, “In a productive work community, leaders are not commanders and controllers, bosses and big shots. They are servers and supporters, partners and providers” (2003, p. 7).

While they believe servant leadership is the best and most productive approach, they are practical and realize that today’s organizations still have hierarchies and organizational charts. They know that the org charts won’t be thrown out overnight, and they know that people will be appointed into leadership positions – not voted for. “Although we are not advocating open elections inside organizations, we suggest that managers not kid themselves. People do vote – with their energy, their dedication, their loyalty, their talent, their actions. Do you put forth higher-quality effort when you believe that the people leading you are there to serve your needs and not just their own? (2003, p. 8). If you’re interested in becoming a better leader or if you are responsible for developing quality leadership in your organization, Credibility is a “must read.”

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