ABOUT THE EXPERT
Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts.
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So it doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does it usually takes me by surprise. It’s every facilitator’s fear—the inappropriate comment. They come in lots of shapes and sizes, ranging from overly personal to highly offensive.

I remember a train-the-trainer session where a prospective trainer’s opening line was, “So Adam and Eve were in the garden.” I thought for sure this was a joke. He got to the end and said, “And that’s how crucial conversations skills could have prevented original sin.” Not the punch line I was expecting.

We all fear and dread over-shares and inappropriate comments, but what’s the best way to handle them in the moment? One thing that’s worked for me is to use a contrast of sorts: thank the person for being willing to share, and clarify what’s appropriate to share in this setting. What do you do in these types of situations?

Comment below to share your ideas.

ABOUT THE EXPERT
Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts.
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My sons hate practice—piano, soccer, math—you name it. If it’s the least bit related to practice, they hate it on principle. They even started hating other words that sound like or rhyme with practice. For example, last year we hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. In preparation for the four-day trek, we decided to do a number of practice hikes. Now, my boys enjoy hiking—until I inserted the word “practice” in front of it. “We know how to hike. Why do we need to practice something we already know?!?!??” After many years, I’ve now come to expect this from teenage boys.

Fast forward to a recent executive development session I conducted. The mere mention of practice stirred the group into a frenzy: “We understand the concept—why do we need to practice?!??!” In that moment I caught a glimpse of my whiny boys’ future. And while I expect it from my teenagers, I was surprised to hear this from execs. It was like they forgot that development was the key component in executive development.

So why do we practice? To torture teenagers and executives? To experience the higher pitches of their vocal ranges? No. Why, then?

Ethna Reid, a master educator from the Exemplary Center for Reading Improvement, provides a definitive answer to this question, “If you want to know if you’re changing behavior you have to see it immediately.” Our goal is to change behavior, and for that to happen, practice is required. So here are a few tips to make practice more effective.

1. Allot enough time to practice. So many trainers, when running short on time, skip and/or drastically cut practice time. If you can’t practice it, don’t train it.
2. Practice until they get it correct. Participants who attempt a new skill and fall short should be praised for their effort. And they should also be coached and allowed the chance to do it correctly before moving on.
3. Make it observable. If you can’t observe their practice, you have no idea the degree to which their behavior is changing, if at all. Have participants write it out, say it out loud, or otherwise demonstrate the skill so you can evaluate their progress and give feedback (both positive and negative). This doesn’t mean a person has to stand up and share in front of the whole class—practice is often best done in smaller groups. So when you are working in smaller groups, be careful to float from group to group so you can observe the participant group progress as a whole.

Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it sure helps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Nelson is a VitalSmarts Master Trainer.

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How do I handle participants who are quiet or who don’t participate?

Healthy class participation can be a function of the students, the facilitator, or sometimes both! Since we can’t control the students (no matter how badly we’d love to), the solution starts with you.

Examine Your Motives
Making sure our motives are “right” is one of the first things we should do when dealing with a quiet class. Ask yourself:

1. What is your desired outcome for the participants in the class?
2. Do you want the class to participate for your own self-aggrandizement, to keep the class interesting, or because you believe it enhances learning?
3. Do you want them to think you’re a great facilitator, tell others about the course, or simply enjoy their class experience?

Examine Your Methods
Here are a couple of specific mechanics you can use to invite healthier participation:

• Point & assign: Point to a quieter table/group before asking the question, “I’d like to ask this table what they think about . . .”
• Break it into small parts: If the class doesn’t seem to talk a lot as a large group, ask them to discuss the answer in their table group or with a neighbor. Often, if they are a quiet class, they are more likely to participate one-on-one rather than in a large group.
• Work the crowd: Establishing a better relationship with participants during breaks and during group work can drastically change participation. Improving your individual relationship with class members can collective increase safety and change their perspective of you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

David Maxfield is coauthor of two bestselling books, Change Anything and Influencer.

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This question was first asked on our LinkedIn Training Community. To Join visit us on LinkedIn.

How can I measure the ROI of a VitalSmarts training?

The challenge with any kind of skills training is that people can learn the skills, but then either fail to use them or use them in areas that don’t produce a return on the organization’s investment. For example, a participant might use the skills to save his/her marriage, jumpstart his/her career, mend a broken relationship at work, or resolve a long-standing customer problem. These are all positive outcomes, but they may or may not produce a return for the organization. This post is designed to show practitioners how to develop measuring and implementation tools that make sure their training results in significant returns.

1. Identify Crucial Moments, Failure Modes, and the Costs of Failing. Conduct an organizational assessment to identify leverage points where improvements lead to bottom-line payoffs. In addition, get a clear picture of what failure looks like in these crucial moments, and what it costs.

Example. We are working with a joint venture between two Fortune 500 firms. Their collaboration has great potential, but they’ve also identified six Crucial Moments when their teams tend to fail. Below are three of these six Crucial Moments.

• Absence of Move to Action (lack of ownership and follow up). This crucial moment happens when one party believes they have a commitment from the other party to take action, but then they don’t see the action being taken. Sometimes there is ambiguity over who owns the task or has responsibility for executing it. Other times there are disagreements about the priority of the task, the timeline for the task, the resources that will be put toward the task, etc. In summary, people are not seeing the cooperation and responsiveness they expected.
• Willingness to Increase Shared Pool of Meaning (Trust and Humility). This crucial moment happens when people begin to suspect they are being given a “sugar-coated” version of the truth. Often they believe others are hiding bad news from them, or that others are overly focused on protecting their reputations.  In summary, people are beginning to question whether they are getting the full truth. They want the good, the bad, and the ugly, and they don’t’ think they are getting it.
• Unwillingness to budge on requirements. This crucial moment happens when the business or the project is unwilling to budge on requirements or timeline when more obstacles or difficulties are encountered than were assumed during initial scope.

In this particular case, the typical Failure Mode is silence followed by violence. People build up grudges for several weeks, often until a key milestone is missed, and then launch a round of blame directed at their business partner.

Measurement. We measure these Crucial Moments along four dimensions: frequency, severity, dialogue, and solvability. We ask participants how often they find themselves in each of these Crucial Moments; how costly the Failure Mode is when it happens; how well participants engage in frank, honest, dialogue during each Crucial Moment; and how quickly and successfully they solve the problem.

Our expectation is that the frequency and severity of the Crucial Moments won’t change. They are a function of working in a tough environment. But we expect dramatic improvements in dialogue and solvability. In other words, problems still happen, but now people solve them quickly and successfully.

2. Train to the Crucial Moments. If you haven’t identified high-leverage Crucial Moments, then participants will select their own targets—based on what they care about most. While their targets may produce excellent returns for the organization, they are usually too varied to accurately measure.

Instead, identify Crucial Moments and then use the applications and contracts in the training to focus on these moments. Make sure participants practice the skills to solve the problems you have identified as highest leverage. Of course, participants will still use the skills to improve their marriages and get their kids to complete their homework, but there will be a much better chance they will also use the skills to create a return for the organization.

Measurement. Build assessment points into the training. We measure participants’ efficacy expectations—their confidence that they can use the skills to solve the problems described in the Crucial Moments. For example, “How confident are you that you can use these skills to solve XXX when it happens?”

3. Employ all Six Sources. Often, training is the final puzzle piece that makes change happen. These are cases where the organization has built alignment around the need for change, and has removed the barriers to change, so that individual skill building is all that’s left to do.

But, other times, training is relied upon as silver-bullet solution to a problem that requires more than individual ability. Make an honest assessment of the non-training barriers that could prevent your training solution from working, then take action to remove these barriers.

Example. We often work with clients who need front-line employees to speak up to their managers, and who need managers to speak up to executives. We use our Influencer approach to help them discover the range of barriers—beyond training—that can prevent the honest dialogue they need. The intervention then addresses all of these barriers, often using the training as the context. For example, we might have the training led by the participants’ manager and focus the applications and contracts on speaking up to him or her.

Measurement. We work with the client to identify potential obstacles in each of the Six Sources of Influence, and then use surveys to track our progress at removing each of these obstacles.

4. Measure Return and Investment. It’s difficult to estimate returns. We focus our measurement on the Crucial Moments, and ask, “If this problem becomes one that is quickly and successfully solved, what would that be worth to your organization?” Often the benefits aren’t purely transactional; they also include benefits to the brand, to reputation, and to opportunity. And this makes them a bit subjective.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Get the best estimate of dollar returns that you can. Involve multiple stakeholders and combine their estimates.
Investments are somewhat easier to measure. We usually include the costs of the training, of the time spent by trainers and participants, and any travel included. When a Six Source approach is used, then we add in the costs of the various non-training solutions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Justin Hale is a Master Trainer and Consultant with VitalSmarts.

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What if the other person doesn’t change despite my efforts to use the skills?

Great question.  I hear someone ask this almost every time I teach. While it’s true that Crucial Conversations skills don’t fix everything, there are a few things I have found helpful when feeling at a loss on how to improve a relationship with a challenging person:

• Don’t forget motive — The best place to start when the conversation goes badly is with our heart, our motive. What is that you REALLY want? Do you want the other person to “change?” Or do you want to stay in dialogue and build a relationship? If you are hoping, wishing, and praying for the other person to change (believe me, I’ve been there), chances are your behavior might become more forceful, coercive, and maybe even manipulative (I’ve been there too).  When we can focus on good goals (dialogue, results, relationships), we’re more likely to have a more open approach to others, which in turn allows us to get what we really want.
• It takes work — a lot of work. Not too long ago I asked a Crucial Conversations graduate what she had learned from the course and how she’d benefited. Her answer changed my perspective completely. She said, “I had a thirty-year-long relationship that was struggling significantly. I learned the skills and went to work on it. I worked and I worked and I worked . . . and I can honestly say it’s gotten better.” Isn’t that interesting? What she didn’t say was, “The other person is finally fixed,” or, “Everything is perfect now.” She saw progress for what it was—progress. She wasn’t looking for perfection in the other person but for improvement. Often we need to shift our expectations of what “progress” really looks like.
• Make it safe — I’ve come to realize that creating safety can take time . . . a lot of time. Sometimes safety is created quickly in just one conversation and other times it requires more effort over a longer period of time. When we think of safety as more than a few quick-fix tactics and see it as a true principle of creating mutual purpose and mutual respect between two people, we realize how much time (and work) it really requires to establish a safety zone that allows for healthy dialogue. As much as we’d like situations that are causing us pain, grief, and frustration to be resolved overnight, that’s not always the case. These things take time, so remember safety is conversational and relational.
• If all else fails — Sometimes we give a relationship all we’ve got and things still don’t improve. That’s the reality of life. In cases like this we may choose to end the relationship (personal or professional), and move forward with our lives. Sometimes that means moving departments  or not interacting anymore with a friend; either way that decision is personal. I find that if I care about the relationship at all, even if things are not going well, I owe it to myself and the other person to come back tomorrow and give it another shot…hopefully a better shot.

Best of luck,
Justin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

Stacy Nelson is a Master Trainer and Senior Consultant at VitalSmarts.

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What are some ways I can further participants’ learning after the training?

Thanks for the great question. Helping participants gain as much learning and application as possible is always the goal of any training. However, as a recent Wall Street Journal article suggests, this is not usually the case. The article reports that with “little follow-up or meaningful assessments, some 90% of new skills are lost within a year.” So what are some practical things that can be done?

Let me make a couple of suggestions that move beyond just follow up. Could it be that the intended effect of training is really a function of three major phases of training?

1. Preparation for training.
2. The training event.
3. Follow-up and follow through.

Due to limited space and time let me briefly talk about preparation and follow-up, with a brief reference to training.

Preparation
Avoid “blind training”! Too often, employees are “sent” to training because this is a “good seminar and they will benefit from it.” So they are already psychologically at risk. If, however, an employee were to meet with their manager before the training and talk about a development plan and how some of the skills and tools from the training could be helpful, the employee can view the training in the larger context of growth and development. This should be a joint plan. Help the employee become both the scientist and the subject as they look at potential career limiting/enhancing habits. Look for crucial moments and vital behaviors. Also set the expectation that there will be a brief post training review after the training event.

Training
One of the ways to deepen the impact of training is to customize the deliberate practice or “structured rehearsals.” Rather than using just those found in the toolkit, you can also gather typical situations that employees may encounter and put them into a structured rehearsal. We have found that this can have a significant impact on deepening the application.

Follow-up and Follow through
The basis of all education is repetition. One of the strategies that you might set up at the end of training is a deliberate practice plan. Challenge each participant to break up the training into small parts. Have them read one chapter in the book, listen to the corresponding audio CD, review the matching section in the toolkit, and work on the skills outlined on the cue card. Give participants two weeks to accomplish these tasks. Then in the following two weeks, have them read the next chapter in the book etc., until they have moved all the way through the material.

To create a simple system of accountability, have each participant pass around his or her toolkit to every other individual in his or her table group. Each person will put his or her name and e-mail address in the toolkit. Next, appoint a table captain who is responsible to send out an e-mail in two weeks, checking back with the participants on their assigned duties. It seems that group accountability is often more motivating than partner accountability.

While there are a number of other post-training and review ideas, we believe that if there were more intentional pre and post planning, the overall skill effect would be much more significant.

ABOUT THE EXPERT
Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts.
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This classic scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off comes to mind each time I prepare to train a new group. For those of you who have seen the movie, you’ll remember this scene. Ferris is absent from class. His teacher monotonously says his name during roll call in hopes that repetition will work its magic and Ferris will somehow show up.

I’ve realized over the years that, like Ferris Bueller’s teacher, our participants are hoping that we show up—and not just physically. It’s one thing to be physically present, but the participants of today expect more. They expect us to be present with them, not just present in the room. Able to read the group’s interest level and respond accordingly. Able to apply the material to their circumstances. Able to inscribe a personalized message on their heart, mind, and soul! Well, or at least a personalized message on the inside cover of their participant guide. I think you know what I mean.

So what’s your trick—what do you do in your preparation or during the session that allows you to be present with your participants? I’m interested in two categories of responses here: 1) what advice do you have for trainers who are fairly new to the VitalSmarts suite of programs and 2) what advice do you have for trainers who are so familiar with the suite they run the risk of phoning in their training?

Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Brown is a Master Trainer.
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Is compromise a bad thing when you’re trying to create Mutual Purpose?

I hear this question from participants almost every time I’m facilitating a Crucial Conversations class. Here are some thoughts:

I often ask participants, “When you are trying to push (interesting choice of words) your purpose, what is your strategy?” The common response, in one form or another, is usually “verbal persuasion.” At that point, I usually pull a Dr. Phil on them and ask them, “How’s that working for you?” The response is often, “Not so good!”

After some gentle questioning and exploring others’ paths, many participants come to the conclusion that verbal persuasion is usually not a Mutual Purpose process but rather a “Your Purpose” process. I then ask, “So, what do you do when verbal persuasion fails you?” You can see learners put on their thinking caps. The customary response to that question is, “We usually compromise at that point.” And that leads us to the following question: “Is compromise a bad thing when you are trying to create Mutual Purpose?”

In life we make many compromises. We compromise in our homes with loved ones. We compromise at school with fellow students and teachers. We compromise at work with fellow employees, bosses, and other stakeholders. You may even have to compromise with the IRS! (Whoa—too much information!)

Compromising is not a bad thing when you are stuck, but there are better options. Merriam-Webster defines a compromise as “a settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions.” And there’s the rub. A mutual purpose feels good—both parties contributing to the Pool of Shared Meaning and achieving something they care about. A mutual concession does not feel that good—the pool feels like it has sprung a leak. When you compromise, it is sometimes very difficult if not impossible to create a true Mutual Purpose.

An old football coach I once knew hated ties. He had been quoted more than once that a 7-7 tie with your neighboring town’s team was like “kissing your sister.” It was a nice gesture, but wasn’t a whole lot of fun. The same thing can be said about compromising to try to get to Mutual Purpose. A compromise or a concession makes most people feel a little disappointed and not overly positive, which hampers the Mutual Purpose process.

So what can you do when you are at cross-purposes? And if you live on the face of the earth, you will be at cross-purposes many times. Create Mutual Purpose using four skills:

Commit to seek Mutual Purpose
Recognize the purpose behind the strategy
Invent a Mutual Purpose
Brainstorm new strategies

With these skills, you don’t give anything up in a compromise, you actually create new ideas that incorporate the important points from everyone’s original thoughts, ideas or decisions. The more I work with these four skills, the more I see how important they are in helping you align your ideas with others to get better results.

One last big idea on creating Mutual Purpose: many people think that inventing and brainstorming are the most important of the skills, but I would argue that committing to seek Mutual Purpose and recognizing the purpose behind the strategy are the most crucial. These skills allow you to build safety with the other person and get to inventing and brainstorming in order to truly create a Mutual Purpose and get you the result you both want.

One word comes to mind to adequately describe the VitalSmarts REACH 2012 trainer conference: AMAZING! For two days in August, trainers from around the world gathered at the base of the majestic Rocky Mountains in Salt Lake City for a truly remarkable experience.

The new BIG Idea sessions—twenty-minute keynote speeches on a wide variety of topics—were a huge hit! With keynote speakers such as renowned psychologist Albert Bandura, VitalSmarts authors and international licensees, acclaimed author and Influencer Brian Wansink, and Facebook’s Learning and Development Manager Mike Rognlien—the BIG Idea sessions educated and entertained participants, providing them with innovative ideas to implement in their organizations and training offerings.

There were plenty of surprises along the way too—including a guest appearance from VitalSmarts video actress Jackie Houston and a ballroom dance BIG Idea session on deliberate practice where participants were invited on stage to strut their stuff! Brian Wansink conducted a top-secret food experiment with the REACH participants and demonstrated the power the environment has on our eating habits. And the Trainer Appreciation dinner reached new heights with world-class entertainment from the Piano Guys!

The breakout sessions throughout the two days were outstanding, offering trainers hands-on opportunities to learn new best practices and connect with trainers from across the globe. The client sessions were inspirational and educational, offering trainers new insights into how to successfully roll out VitalSmarts training offerings and change their organizations for good.

What did the trainers think of REACH 2012? They overwhelmingly expressed that REACH 2012 was one of the best professional development conferences they had ever attended!

But don’t just take our word for it—take a look at some of the REACH 2012 BIG Idea sessions on our VitalSmarts YouTube page and save the date for REACH 2013 to experience it all for yourself, live and in person! We hope to see you there!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Candace Bertotti is a Master Trainer.
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As an Influencer trainer, I struggle to help participants with their change plans when they base them on soft skills such as being too direct in communication with their family members or coming across as intimidating to team members. I especially have a hard time coming up with strategies for sources 2, 5, and 6. I’d appreciate some help!

Thanks for the great question! Coming up with strategies for all the sources—particularly for change plans based on soft skills—can take some creativity. Let’s look at each of the sources you listed:

Source 2: Personal Ability

Engage in Deliberate Practice. Since soft skills are still skills, encourage participants to engage in a considerable amount of deliberate practice—using realistic and challenging situations to build confidence that they can handle even the toughest situations. Even with family or team situations, you can practice scripts for when you are triggered; bounce language off a trusted friend or coach; and test alternative words, body language, and actions to see if you get a different response and result.

Participants could also practice mastering their stories—reminding themselves that people do things for more than one reason—and transform their negative emotions (that might lead them to be too direct or intimidating) into curiosity and dialogue.

Learn New Skills with Training. Participants may want to consider attending Crucial Conversations or Crucial Confrontations training, where they can learn and apply new skills for speaking up respectfully to get better results.

Increase Personal Capacity. Don’t forget that it’s hard to use most any skill when we aren’t first taking care of ourselves. For example, when you get hungry or don’t have enough sleep you’re likely to be less able to stay cool in tough situations and more likely to snap or come across as intimidating. A new strategy could be “before my in-laws come over, get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast.”

Source 5: Structural Motivation

Create a Motivating Plan or Game. Challenge participants to develop communication improvement goals—perhaps a seven-day or thirty-day plan. Then they can make this plan into a game or an experiment.

Use Incentives and Loss Aversion. Have the participants name what incentives motivate them and what punishments they want to avoid, and then have them incorporate those into their change plans. Loss aversion works well here—if they don’t meet their goals, they have to donate money to a rival university or sports team.

Source 6: Structural Ability

Use Cues. Have participants consider ways to remind themselves of the behavior they want to enact—a reminder on a post-it note on the bathroom mirror, a summary of the skill they want to employ on a screen saver, a daily reminder on their phone, etc.

Survey the Environment. Encourage participants to take inventory of their environment and determine where they are having trouble. Does the problem come up when they are talking on the phone while driving, in e-mail, or over text? Does it happen when they are multi-tasking, or after they feel icky and crabby from eating unhealthy food just because it was around? Is it after walking into their home greeted by dirty dishes and laundry they didn’t expect, or walking into an office with an overflowing inbox and a new crisis they could have avoided if they’d seen e-mail #214?

Encourage participants to find ways to change their environment to set them up for success. Perhaps they need to limit phone communication and have more face-to-face dialogue. Is their office an inviting space for dialogue—do they have an extra chair for someone to sit and talk? Are healthy snacks (instead of caffeine and sugar) nearby that may help them approach communication challenges with a clear head? Many, many possibilities in this area!

Gather Data and Use Tools. Encourage participants to gather data to increase self-awareness. Participants could create a survey and send it to friends, family, and colleagues. Some examples of simple survey questions are, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how respectful am I when I communicate?” and “On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do I listen to other points of view?” Participants could then use this data to help inform their progress and adapt their change plans.

Encourage participants to think of other tools they might need to set themselves up for success—the Crucial Confrontations audio book to listen to while driving, a smartphone that allows for video calls if a face-to-face meeting isn’t possible, etc.