Have you seen the movie The King's Speech? One thing that I admire and like about the movie is the lead character's struggle to overcome his speech impediment and his perseverance in moving forward to deal with his impediment. At first he had gone through trying out everything – even though it seemed ridiculous and pointless, he was willing to try it. Then he decided to just give up, assuming that whatever he did will not work anyway so better just leave things as be. After hearing himself speak articulately via recording, he decided to go back to the speech instructor and give him a try. Yet, despite the hard work he had been putting himself through, every time he has to make a speech, he remains afraid to speak. Like every one of us, he had gone through the stages one goes through when they want to overcome an impediment or fear. The first stage of course is admitting to yourself that impediment or fear you have. Once you do, the second stage comes in. You then go about trying to find a way to overcome them. Try different cures for what ails you so to speak. Third stage is during these times when you feel nothing seems to work for you, you finally go to that “I give up” phase. For some reason, you have this inkling of wanting to try it again. I guess you could say it is that “Why not?What have I got to lose?” or “What harm can it do if I try again?” attitude. This becomes the fourth stage, many of us do find ourselves at times. Whether you got a “sign” from somewhere that you have been waiting for or you come across a certain revelation – whatever the reason is – you just have this surge of adrenalin that makes you feel invincible to give it another shot. So you do. This time you find yourself working harder, with more gusto in your efforts, pushing yourself to the limit. A greater need to go through with it this time around especially if you see improvements in yourself. Finally, you come to the last stage. You have worked hard, you feel invincible and you fee ready to take on the world. What happens? In that moment, your fear comes back again. You lose your courage and for one millisecond, you find yourself back on that first stage. Admitting your impediment or fear. However, you find some tiny bit of spark inside you that ignites. Small at first, like when you are trying to light a candle and the matchstick just stubbornly gets that small spark of a friction but does does not go all the way through. Then you try and again and maybe again until you succeed and walla – then there was light! That is how you feel inside and whatever you feel inside, it shines outside. That is when you find the courage inside you, find your confidence soar and you just do it. No matter what impediment or fear you have or are experiencing in your life, know that it is alright to go through these stages and know that it is normal. You are not alone in this, we all experience it. The big question here is, are you the kind of person that gets stuck at the third stage and remain there? Or are you the kind of person who is willing to move on to the fourth stage? Ask yourself that.

Saw the movie The Mechanic the other day. It was a story about an assassin who kills bad guys. Do not worry I am not gonna tell you the whole stole and spoil it for you if you have not seen it. =) It is an action-packed movie and yes some scenes are violent so it really watch-at-your-discretion-type. Anyway, what was most impressive about the lead character is that he has everything planned from how his target goes about his daily routine, how he starts his day and down to where he will be at what time and how he plans to kill them. Even at the end of the movie, he was prepared. His old friend had this gun which had the words “Victory loves Preparation”. I thought that was an interesting thing to find in a gun and though that it is true. Being prepared does mean victory, does it not? Now where am I going with this, you may be wondering. I am talking about us being prepared in almost our day-to-day living. Not only in your personal life but also your professional one. You have to admit that you have to be prepared when you make your plans, right? For personal ones, like a vacation, a road trip, a party or making an important personal decision. For your professional life, being prepared for say, a meeting, a presentation, a new position, a new job even. Being prepared is important. Ever gone to a meeting unprepared? How did that feel? How did you feel the whole time? Probably watched the clock and hoped the meeting would end soon, right? Did you have answers to questions that were raised and directed to you? It is hard being put on the spot in that kind of a situation, is it not? So what have you learned from the experience? Next time – be prepared so that instead of waiting for the meeting to end – fast, you would be wanting for more time to get discussion going on and on. How about on presentations? Being prepared is the key too. Especially if it is with a client. You would want to be very prepared for that. Remember to be always a step ahead of your clients. Thinking a step ahead of them, have an answer to question they will be asking as you go along the discussion. It is not that hard to do that. All you have to do is practice ahead of time. Have a mock meeting or presentation with your colleagues who will also be in the meeting or presentation. Together, think of potential scenarios and questions that my arise and then prepare answers to them. This way, there will be no 'awkward and silent moments' with your clients when they ask you a question. This way, you will come out as credible, reliable and impressive in the eyes of your client. They will see that you are doing your job and will know that they made a right choice. Like you, I have been in meetings where some people were just not prepared. It was not a good experience and furthermore, did not end well. I hate that when it happens. I have this attitude where if I came prepared for this meeting, so should the rest of my colleagues. No excuses. One thing I am not fond of is time being wasted and meeting goes on and on and to no avail. Ever been to those kind of meetings where it takes more than 1 hour and ends in 3-4 hours sometimes? I never want to experience that again and I am sure that you do not want that too. What is the takeaway here? One word: Preparedness. Include that in your everyday vocabulary. Then practice, practice, practice.

Ever had one of those days where you find yourself feeling like you are stuck doing the same thing over and over again? This the time when I ask myself this question. “What have you done lately?” As a training professional, every so often I go through some of my generic training materials and do some well-needed tweaking on them. Whether it is updating them, taking out stuff that are no longer relevant to my intended participants or introducing something new that will help them more than what I previously presented to them. The theories or approaches you have introduced to them before in your training may have helped them once they were back in their work environment – and may still do. However, bear in mind that one day these approaches will not help them anymore, let alone, work for them. This is the reason why you, as training professionals need to update yourself with what is new and the latest trends in the learning, training and development field. In turn, when you do this, you are not only benefiting from it but your trainees will too. Just like in your chosen professional field, situations change and this is also the same for your trainees. Here is a challenge for you in the next days to come. Go through your training materials and I mean, thoroughly and religiously! Take into account every detail you have on there. Look for flaws, look for good points as well as bad. Ask yourself these questions: 1) Is this still relevant?; 2) Is this needed? ; 3) Will this help achieve the message I am trying to get across to my intended participants?; 4) Does it even matter much if I include or not?; 5) Does it overall impact or just a waste of space and words? So on and so forth. Ask yourself is the key here. Put on both your trainer's hat and your trainees' hat. This way, you will get a sense of how you want to present yourself as a trainer – one who does make a difference – as well as how your trainees will perceive what you are trying to teach them and what takeaways they will get from attending your program. You know how most trainees come to a training or seminar, expecting it will be the same as the one they attended before and that the only reason they are there is for attendance (because their supervisors told them to attend and that they will check if they did!) Should you even dare ask your trainees the same “What have you done lately?” query? If you have trainees that are just there for attendance reasons, you would probably get a rundown of their day-to-day tasks and not get the answer you are looking for. When you are designing your training program, keep this in mind all the time. I want them to learn something new from me that they can – not only apply to their work environment but also encourage them to inspire, create to do something new, something better in their line of work. If and when you do this continuously, I dare you to ask your trainees “What have you done lately?” and I will bet that you will not get a recitation of their day-to-day tasks anymore. You might even be surprise (and elated!) at the responses you will receive. Are you up to challenge then?

Flipping through channels, I came across the show Speeders. It is a show about cops catching people, speeding, violating stop signs or traffic lights etc. People come out with such ridiculous excuses when they tell the cops why were they in such a hurry. A trio of middle-aged ladies gave told one cop that they were going to the salon to get their hair done because they were cougars who will be going out tonight and hit the clubs. One lady said she was going horse riding and they were already a half-hour late for it. A college student said he did not see or think that there was a cop around that is why he peeled off at a 3-way street where he was supposed to pull to a stop and wait. I just cannot help but shake my head at these people and their lame excuses. What I get from them is that if they can get away with it, they will say it or try it. Which to me is really ludicrous and downright unacceptable and irresponsible. Did they think their excuses would get them off the hook and not get penalized for their actions? They seem to have this air of attitude about them that says “If I can get away with it, why not, right?” Some attitude, huh? Which brings me to our workplace. What lame excuses do you give when you missed on a deadline? When you did not finish the project assigned to you. When your boss asked you for that progress report he or she needed ASAP. What half-baked excuse do you concoct? Maybe even blame a co-worker or people at another department for not giving you what you needed to finish that progress report. Am I hitting the spot yet? Yes, like those speeders on that show, admit it—you do give a pointless excuse and try to see if you can get away with it, do you not? Most of the time, it is all about what you do along the way before that dreaded deadline that really matters. Lack of poor time management, lack of great effort on your part, procrastination among other things. Like those speeders who said they were running late for an appointment. Well—why not, leave home early, right? Back at the workplace, why not start that project or progress report early. Tackle it with gusto the minute it was given to you to do. Early preparation is the key here. Rather than ending up looking like an irresponsible employee who just cannot be depended on.

RE-motivate yourself. I know what you think...you are thinking there is no such word as re-motivate – and you are correct. However in my world of inspiring creativity, this word does exist and rightly so. You cannot argue that there are those times that we do need to 're-motivate' ourselves. Do you not agree? When are those times, you ask? Well, let me count the times...how about when you think you did a good job and yet your boss says no, you did not. Or maybe even you still missed out a lot of things despite your unquestionable efforts. Do you not feel a little disappointed then? In some situations, you did a great job and yet your efforts were not acknowledged. You will get dissuaded if that happens, right? So we have 'those' days, so what? It is not the end of the world even if at times it feels that way. When you cannot seem to move one foot forward again and instead you just allow yourself to dwell on the disappointed, to be not motivated to continue anymore because in the back of your mind you think...”What does it matter? Whatever I do will not be good enough anyway!” Why move on? Why continue, right? Wrong! If there is the right time to continue, to move on — it is NOW! After a small or huge disappointment – you do not jump off the saddle – you get back on there! If you fall back again, just get back on is what I say. In your job, you will always experience these bouts of DE-motivation. It is normal. Accept it. Learn from it. Move forward from it. Have you ever had a boss who asked “Why you?” when you told your boss that the HR Manager is inviting you to attend an Interviewing Skills workshop because you have been the one doing that for your department for 3 years now? What do you do? Do you sulk? Did you cry and do a tantrum when you told the HR Manager that you had to decline since your boss did not allow you too? No. You just brush off the disappoint on your shoulders and say “Next time will come.” Then moved on. That time did come and the rest is history. Do not let these kind of times dissuade you from discovering what lies ahead in your path. Some people do and they discover (and most of the time – all too late!) that they wasted time dwelling on losing their motivation instead of using the time wisely by moving towards their motivation. Something to ponder about when you find yourself in same situation. Remember to just dust of that disappointment dust on your shoulders, get back on the saddle and ride of towards the sunset of limitless possibilities and opportunities that lies ahead.

Poor performance will be found in any work environment. Whether it is an occurs regularly or from time to time, you as a team leader should be aware of it. Do not wait for your client to point it out to you. I have come across supervisors saying that they have already talked to the person or persons with performance problems and yet the next month the same people are still performing poorly, committing the same mistakes they had been doing the previous month. So what do you do? You point this out again to your supervisors. What do they do? They tell you that they will talk to concerned people again. This goes on and on. But what do you do when you find out that for the last six or so months, the same list of names are still performing poorly? Still have the same problems they had from the very beginning you pointed them out to your supervisors? What do you do then? What do you say to your supervisors? Clearly you have to ask yourself if your supervisors are tolerating the poor performance or fixing it? With these results, obviously, their 'talks' with the concerned staff have not fixed the problem over the span of six months or so but instead tolerated it. Talking to poor performers is the step to do alright, however, what you talk to them about and how you talk to them is the key to fixing poor performance. You cannot just say “I just wanted to point out to you that you are performing poorly by committing so-and-so stuff...so next time, do better.” Right, like that would help the person a lot! You need to be specific about what the person is doing wrong and tell them what the consequences are of committing those mistakes. Then ask them how they can do better. What can they do next time? Then seal the deal by pointing out that by next month, they should no longer have their name of the list of poor performers, committing the same mistakes. Remember that every talk you have with them makes an impact on whether you are helping them fix their performance problem areas or tolerating them. This where some supervisors make that mistake. When it comes to talking to their poor performers, the 'talk' is just what it is, a 'talk'. One needs to remember that it is all in the 'talk' that makes the difference of turning your poor performers to your best performers. Make sure you make the most of those talks with your team members. Talk to them, really talk to them, do not just tell them what to do but involve them in their journey of improving their performance. Then sit back and watch them grow into your best performers.

I love watching the Travel Channel. My favorite has always been Samantha Brown's Passport to Europe. I like watching these travel shows because I can travel anywhere I want to in the comfort my seat. I get to see the other side of the world, countries rich with culture and beautiful landscapes and interesting people. I do, like any other viewer, would think “I am going to add that to the-places-I-want-to-and-see-someday on my Bucket List.” For now, I am contented in learning about the countries and the cultures and the breathtaking sceneries I watch in awe. I sit, enthralled, my interest piqued and learn new things about this wonderful world of ours. Different from where I am now, how I live my life and the culture I know and am immersed to. After watching the show, I feel I know more about the country, culture and ways of the people more. I am happy knowing this. Most of the time, I relate this to where I am at work. At work, we may, at times — or most of the time, not get the kind of knowledge, or training or things we want to learn that may or may not be in the scope of our job. However, we find ourselves craving to know more about. Especially if it relates to our job and that knowing this knowledge or getting this training will further enhance our work performance and make us better at what we do. Through the years that I have been in the training and development industry, I have learned that most of the time, training budgets are if not completely slashed out in the overall company budget, sometimes, it is lessened. When training budgets are limited, it is hard to get around to getting yourself the ideal training that you need to do your job. It has happened to me and I am sure that it has happened to you as well in companies you are working for or have worked for. What do you do? When this happened to me, I did not panic. After all, I cannot expect the company to provide me with every tool or training that I would need to improve myself, right? Ideally, companies should provide this but with the shifting changes in the economy, companies have to downsize the budget somewhere. If it is the training budget that gets downsized then you are on your own in getting yourself educated. What do I do if the company does not have the training I am interested in and know that this will help me in my job? I go and look for it – outside. If there is a seminar or training program I am interested in provided by a training company, I enroll myself and attend it. My advice, though is you have to make sure it will benefit you and you can really apply the takeaways back in the workplace. It will be worth your money if it does. I would make sure I have a budget for this of course. If I do find myself without enough budget for a training, I head to the bookstore and look for training and development books. No budget for training or books? I do the next best thing – I Google! I Google articles, free resources – there are a lot of them out there just begging to be researched, read, absorbed and applied! I call this chair learning and I love it! It is my own version of the travel channel. Sure, it does not take me to exotic places, but it does expose me to a new whole world of learning. It gets me updated in my current profession. It reviews me on the things I already know, it teaches me things I did not know and best of all, it helps me think of new ways or approaches that assists me to be better at what I do at work. Like when I watch my travel channel, I sit, enthralled, my interest piqued and learn new things. I challenge you to do this: Educate yourself without leaving your seat. Make this a practice and you will see that the benefits are endless and a whole new sea of knowledge and possibilities are out there just waiting for you. So sit back, relax and enjoy the journey.