Techniques for Professional Trainers Part I

Training become very fashion today, it becomes very hot filed for different people from different background, in this blog I will provide some techniques of how training and trainers should perform today using both science and art of interpersonal skills since we have passed the basic of train the train regarding the voice and tune used, the colors and dressing, to more focus on how actually human learn and train and benefit form what they learn and how the mind work with the emotion so we can really make the training experience beneficiary.  

The first techniques is "The adult Learning Theory":

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997) was an American educator well known for the use of the term Andragogy as synonymous to adult education. According to Malcolm Knowles, andragogy is the art and science of adult learning, thus andragogy refers to any form of adult learning.

Knowles’ 5 Assumptions Of Adult Learners:

The 5 assumptions is describing how the adult learning is different from child learning and by using these assumptions by trainer in his training he can trigger the experience of training and make it beneficiary. 

1. Self-Concept.
   
   
2. Adult Learner Experience.
   
   
3. Readiness to Learn.
   
   
4. Orientation to Learning.
   
   
5. Motivation to Learn.

Trainer should think and incorporate their training with these assumptions so the training experience for the participants can cater for their need to gain knowledge, skills, behavior and attitude so they can reflect it on their life.

To apply the adult learning Knowles has suggested 4 principles:

1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for the learning activities.
3. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.
4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

The point here is that trainers are dealing with adult either employees, entrepreneurs, CEOs, leaders all those are adults and the way adult learn is more or less as Knowles suggested, but if the trainer is using the old concept of training where he is the star of the stage, Mr. know it all talking all the day and other they just listen or they just follow his thoughts this will be sad bad experience for those adults that will end with disaster or worse they will hate training and see it as waste of time and money.

Trainers must also today focus on specialization, today world are developing in all fields so fast than we can follow, and by the time we learn new knowledge, skills, or transmitting to new behavior a new and developed one come out faster than before, also trainer need to build up his experience and application to come out with his results and lessons learned so he can share it with others while he is training them since who is does not have it he cannot give it.

Working Hard or Working Smart or Working Creative

Date: 08 April 2017

Previously when someone want to be rich or have a business or try to raise his income they advise him to work hard, which mean he work two or three jobs in the same time or working part time or he just work overtime. Workers tend to work long hours and try to extend their working even in weekends, holidays and special holidays so they can have more income or grow their business. The time pass and new concepts and development in business occurred regarding productivity, excellence, cost ratios, quality and customer service, these new concepts changed the idea of working hard because they saw that working hard alone cant reach the goal or even it reach with high cost and waste of resources like time, material, human capital cost, therefore the concept of working smart has become known and advised instead.

Working smart means that you work with the resources you have, time, money, human capital and materials by following and implementing quality and excellence approaches and apply efficiency and effectiveness in work place, working smart concept is growing and being recommended in business world these days since its more logical to reach your goals and objectives by using with you have already without extra cost, resources or time, the use of this concept promote the perfect idea for business to not waste their available resources and use it to its potential and not add additional cost on their operation cost, but the question here arise about can workers work smart only? Can new recruited work smart once they join the organization? is working smart enough in business crisis or economic recession?

Although working smart is very beneficiary for business since its help in using the full potential if their resources but working smart alone cant make the business survive, for example new recruiters need to work hard on their selves in order to fully understand the business need and carry out their responsibilities in short time, but at the same time they need to work smart using the resources and ideas to reach the goals and objectives in minimal cost of time and resources, but even though businesses cant survive by working hard and smart alone they need to work creatively as well, in business the competition is very aggressive and this generate new challenges for other business to survive as well, so they try to create new services, products, technology and methodologies to stay in business, working creatively is another element business need to survive and to be competitive.

So does that mean businesses need to embed all these concepts in their workplace? The answer is yes and they also need to embed more concepts, there is no one methodology or model that suit all or solve all problems, businesses face many challenges and obstacles since their environment is dynamic, and by using one approach or model they cant face the other risks that the environment rise, therefore embedding different approaches in the business and deciding which to use will depend on the situation the business face.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME Certified ROI for human capital development

The Oil of Tomorrow for GCC Countries

The oil of tomorrow for GCC Countries

Date: 01 April 2017

In the early 20^th century the oil was discovered in GCC countries but not until the late of 20^th century GCC countries benefited from the oil discovery after the British colonizing ended and independent granted to GCC countries, from that period the oil has become the wealth of past present and future for all GCC countries to develop the infrastructure, education, health and economic, until the economic fluctuation happened and crash oil prices many times and GCC countries suffered from recessions although it was not affected that much because the world economy was not globalized like today where every western economic crisis strike all countries, but it was still affecting the GCC and the economy.

The cycle of oil price crash continue throughout the 20^th century and the 21^st century as well, but in the 21^st century something happened it wasn’t happen before the oil prices went crazily up to $100 and more which made GCC countries rich more than they can imagine and things started to look promising and huge projects and economic changes been initiated, but in 2014 the cycle of  oil crisis crash strike again the prices went down again and the GCC countries entered into shock because they cant afford the economic changes and huge projects they instituted and they cant stop it as well. Especially that the region is in war with terrorism and political revolution in some countries that result in civil war which sucked the GCC countries budget into war as well and made it worse.

Today as after any oil price crisis crash there is a talk about diversifying the GCC countries income and economic resources which during the past 50 years was repeated after every crisis for oil prices crash, but why until now GCC countries did not success in diversifying their income and still the oil consider as 90% of their income? The answer is education and human development. GCC countries developed their infrastructure, government system, political system, economic system, health and education system then before the era of oil discovery, but all these development tools were imported from western countries and on top of that even the minds made it and managing it have been imported and still everything is imported, from nails to food to cars even medicine everything is imported from the world to GCC countries, this made it so exhausted on the economy because whatever money the country is making it goes to importing goods and services that means they money is going outside the countries but not coming back in any form and whatever prices the producers ask GCC countries have to pay even borrow from money market to cover the differences in income and expenses. This cycle has gone now for 50 years and still and no matter how much GCC countries made from oil or other resources they will not cover their expenses and in the same time making investment in infrastructure and provide service for citizens.

The only answer for the GCC problem is to invest in human capital not to give them higher degree like Msc or PhD instead to build their mind to be creative, innovative, educative and productive, GCC need to make their people produce goods and services that cover the local needs and in future export to other courtiers not just oil but goods and services that made by human mind like western and eastern courtiers do, now even these days small countries are producing using their people, local resources and even historical culture and customs for tourism, with amount of money GCC have today they can easily invest in people and build infrastructure that can produce different kind of goods and services the only problem facing this initiative is to embed it in the practices and strategies of the system since the system is still talking about changing but it doesn’t have the mentality, tools, tactic plans, human capital to make it happen in real life, the past 50 years was an opportunity to change but it did not happen today its an opportunity to change will we ask the same question after 50 years?

The opportunity is here and now people in the GCC can see it very clearly now they cant continue living as they did and their fathers did, change must take place now and with clear tactic plans build stage by stage that can be seeing and make difference with time, the education system is the first step each developed country started with to be what they are today knowledge, science, education combined with human mind, creativity, innovation and experiment is what needed to build strong nation and countries, the future oil for GCC countries is human capital which will last and never crash down or fluctuated in economy crisis or run out as natural resources.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME Certified ROI for human capital development

Organizational Culture Moral and Leadership Moral

Organizational Culture Moral and Leadership Moral

Date: 24/03/2017

Leadership has become norm in training, conferences, seminars, book publishing and corporate training and professional certification programs. Leadership is a very needed a powerful tool corporate use to maintain its survival and success in the global completion, recently the world and business are facing leadership problem where leaders supply is short and demand is high, this create problems for both the political and business field. For that reason corporate are investing and even the business are making benefit from this shortage by providing so many leadership programs even online, which resulted in publishing ,many books about leadership and so many stories have been share about leadership in business world today.

The one that catch my attention is the furloughs  story, this story where the CEO was facing a decision to layoff workers or to cut off wages to face the financial crisis, but after long discussion he decide to let the workers take the decision and he inform them about the situation and decision and to choose, the workers thought of their families and debts but yet they thought of those who will be layoff without income, so they decide to take leaves without pay in turns for those who have enough in their saving to make it, after a while they save for the company double the amount they expected, this story is always told for leadership moral and lesson learned which I really find it excellent, but most of storytellers miss the other side of this story.

Although the CEO showed a role model in leadership moral but the workers who took the decision also showed other moral side in the company, those workers would not take that decision without a reason behind it, what could be that reason other than thinking of their fellow's workers? It’s the organizational culture, a company that has a CEO let workers make a critical decision decently has an organizational culture that promote other excellent moral thinking, practices and behaviors,  the organizational moral here plays very important aspect as the leadership did, it was obvious that the workers before the financial crisis have strong believes about their company that its worth saving and in the same time they do not want to save it on the cost of their fellows workers, they saw that the suffering of all will lead to all success yet they might let some of them suffer but in the end they will all suffer and the company might not be saved, this kind of thinking is promoted only by strong and practices organizational culture that lead to this result.

There are many stories about the organizational culture moral that can be found in books and life, in the end wither you are looking for good leadership, talented employees, creative and innovative employees, problem solvers or behavioral, it’s the culture the organization promote, support, practice, follow and role model by top management who can provide all these and other organizational need, organizational culture can play very important role in the crisis the organization face if it was relevant, strong, adapted by all and invested well by top management.

To make sure that you have organizational culture that is strong, relevant, adopted by all the following points can help in this matter:

1.       Organization mission, values and vision: the organization culture must reflect the mission of the organization the purpose that organization exist for and employees work for without clear mission and embedded in the organization culture it will not make strong and relevant. In addition the culture must reflect the values of the organization each organization has its own values that it could in a way or another similar but there is always different in the interpretation and practices depends on the industry and other influences factors, the values play very important role in crafting the organizational culture since it will emphasize on the believes and expectation of all employees. the vision where the company going ahead in future is also a factor must be considered in  crafting the culture since it will use as a guide and measure to make sure that all employees behave, think practice and act towards fulfilling this vision.

2.       Top management support: top management play very important role in supporting organizational culture not just by crafting and approving but also by being role model for other employees support the practice in situations where it must reflect the values and believes the culture embedded, also in crisis the top management must not forget their culture especially when it comes of strategic decision that affect the organization and employees future it must reflect the culture by all means.

3.       Middle management and supervisors: organizational culture mostly practiced in the lower level of the organization, no matter how much the top management support the organizational culture if the middle management and supervisors are not reflecting and practicing and providing the environment for the culture it will not be adapted and embedded in employee daily performance and behavior. Top management must make sure that middle management and supervisors are adopting and practicing the organizational culture and providing the environment for their employees to practice it if this fail the culture will not be successful not because its wrong or irrelevant but because there is a subculture that took place by the middle and supervisors that made the organization fail to reflect the values mission and vision which resulted in employees low moral, low performance and high turnover because of the conflict of what top management state and support and middle management and supervisors practice.

Organizational culture is a key that successful organization pay attention to it and make it work for them and for the employees joining them aboard, organizational culture is the physiological contract that attract, retain and motivate employees to fulfill organization mission and vision.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME Certified ROI for human capital development

HR Is Not Your Hammer But Your Strategic Partner.

17 February 2017

HR has been known for long time as the bad part of the organization, its where discipline, termination and warning happened to employees, top management and supervisors have been using HR as their hammer on employees which let the HR been perceived by employees as their enemy and executioner, but this is not the top management and supervisors fault alone its also the HR fault that they agree to been perceived in this way by the employees rather than as their partner.

HR has come long way than before where the admin work is only the main thing and major role for HR staff, today HR professional are providing professional work for the organization including the normal admin work, succession planning and management, training need analysis, performance management, talent management, leadership program are all HR programs that lead by HR professional. This fact is so true that today HR has become in many successful organization as strategic partner like finance and marketing where before HR has no place or business to do with top management meetings or discussing strategy of the organization, but today HR is the main role player in the organization strategy, business operation and even finance.

Although HR has been as cost unit and still many organization still treat HR as a cost unit and try to cut their staff short, the program and training and any program related to HR to cut the cost, but at the same time they cannot ignore the fact that HR today is strategic unit that has strategic role in the organization. Organization today mostly the successful ones are not using HR as their hammer anymore or just occasionally when its really necessary and needed, they let the HR to take the strategic role and lead the organization program and support HR staff to perform their duties and responsibilities as they do to the marketing and finance staff, which in return provide them with the best performance and output of the employees and obtain competitive advantage among other competitors.

When you see an organization using HR as a hammer you can immorality conclude that this organization has high turnover, unstable rate of production, high unsatisfied employees and high presser and stressful atmosphere and less creative and productive environment. This kind of organization you can also conclude that HR manager position is always has high turnover in HR manager position as well, since it has high negative aspect that make it hard for a human to continue doing it for long time, the organization will always face problems, crisis, and even bankruptcy if it continued in this path of using HR as a hammer in a world that HR and human become the capital for the organization to successes, business continuity and competitive advantage.

Dave Ulrich quote state the importance of HR "People will change when they see that the change will help them reach their goals. If the CHRO sees that the HR transformation that others desire will help the CHRO reach his or her goals, then there will be more support. Absent this reasoning, the CHRO may go through the motions, but the transformation will not be sincere or lasting."

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development

In 2017 Do We Consider HR a Profession or Career?

In 2017 Do We Consider HR a Profession or Career?

13 February 2017

 

HR has come across a lot of changes, updates, innovation and improvement in concepts, practices and models. We can consider HR as ancient as human with different styles depends on the time and circumstance and environment people dealing with at that time, the shifting and attention HR gain during the past decades came from the urgent understand of how to get the best out of people without making them work themselves out or ending up losing their motivation and positivity to develop and improve to match competition and changes in the environment. Today organization pay more attention to HR role in the organization since it has the main function that import the competencies needed and make the organization work in harmony and provide the main capital (people) with the necessary motivation to keep their positive performance. If we went years aback we can see that HR is a place where anyone and everyone especially those who are not needed or need to be punished work in HR because it was considered as a administration work, today HR is considered to be a strategic function and partner in the organization that’s why experts, competent and gurus people are wanted to be working in HR, but with change a question must be asked do we consider HR a career or profession?

Although this question may be seen as not significant but it does has an important point to be considered. If we looked to the definition of profession we will see many who define it in a way or another but let us take this definition for now "Profession is a an occupation where certain qualities, competencies and level of expertise are known and needed to fill this job". For career we can take this definition for now "An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress". If looked into these two definitions we can see that both are applied to HR today, HR people need very high competencies, experience and certain qualities so they can deliver the service for people on all levels to enable them to provide the organization with the desired result of their performance, this is fact that no one can deny anymore today about the HR people. But which one is considered to be the HR representative in 2017.

In my work in HR an training and development for the last ten years, my humble opinion if you may let me say that both they do not represent HR in 2017, you will ask me how? Well my answer will be because with the fact that acknowledged by organizations today that HR has become a very recognized career and known profession they both become part of the HR package for those who want to be in HR, but since they are both can be obtained, learned and practice by people in my humble opinion I can say that passion is what can represent HR in 2017. Why passion?

Dealing with people today is not like decades ago where they work like slaves or work under the rule of stay survive, people today have knowledge, experience, qualification, professional certification they use technologies and they have their own mind, decision, freedom, labor law that protect their rights and they act an behave different than before because with the environment changes and complicated people adopt and become changed and completed, for that  dealing with people today need to understand who their mind think and work, their values that drive their motives and behaviors, their rules of right and wrong, their personality and so on, by known all this HR people can take the right decision, action and rules regarding motivation, performance management, remuneration, organization culture and other HR service that will bring the best out of the people to serve the organization, by known what make them click HR people can save on the organization a lot of losses, money wasted and time by taking the wrong action to bring the best out of people.

So what does this has to do with passion? When we talk about passion its normally and internal motivation towards doing something which is not very easy to teach, learn or practice, although it might be obtained and adopted or awaken in some people but its easy to get passion people for HR and work on them to take it as a career then profession than do it the other way, this will save lot of work, conflict and it will work out sooner in the end, for example you can have a guru HR professional working for and inexperience HR specialist with passion, you will be surprised that the inexperience will try hard and his best to come out with solution to serve the people in organization even if the law is not supporting it while the guru and professional doesn’t do that, why because of passion and with time the one who will be  consider guru profession is the inexperience specialist that work on serving people and provide the best for them to get them best from them, because he will always work to improve his competencies and expertise to serve the people with quality and humanity as he can.

HR is a continues filed that will never stop surprising us with new advancement, improvement, upgraded and innovative concepts, models and practices as long as human are living on this earth HR will be as well.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development

Between Knowledge and Talent which is most important to Organization?

Between Knowledge and Talent which is most important to Organization?

04/02/2017

With the growing competition, advance technology, smart customer and globalization organizations are faced with so much in their environment that even a dynamic terminology is not enough to describe it, economic disturbance and fluctuation are getting more and more close than before where every fifty years there is fluctuation now its almost every five years, labour market are getting more and more diversified and scarcity in skills which make organization shifts for low labour market rate and more skills on top of that organization need to cope with the changes happen with the advance technology like e-market, cashless payment and online customers and suppliers all these changes and others are occurring today and faced by organizations which must be lead by the organization leaders and employees using their competitive advantage to continue the business and adopt these changes it heir business. But now this return us back to our question to in this environment do organization need talent or knowledge to face this environment?

First we need to identify each terminology before we answer the question, what do mean by talent and what do mean by knowledge? Talent is "a set of personal characteristics that enhance one’s ability to achieve expertise in an accelerated manner". Knowledge is ""the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association". So which one organization needs more to face today competitive and aggressive environment. Although the answer is obvious that organization need both to survive and continue the business but if we think about it which one has the most effect on organization leadership, people management, resources management and business strategy. The answer is knowledge employee, those employees who has the information, know how, expertise and tactics to lead and manage people and resources which talent is one of them. Although talented people has special and rare skills but they do not have the ability to lead and create path so people can follow their steps because their talent is built within its not something can be share or even copy, which the opposite of knowledge that its easy to share, exchange, copy and follow by others which its make it easier to find people ready and able to do the things related to knowledge and mange and lead with the same steps and even develop it with time.

Knowledge employee can update themselves according to the changes in the environment they can upgrade, learn and adopt easily with changes, which is the opposite of talented people that they need time to master and develop their talent, they cant change it according to environment and circumstances, and the organization cant make others to replace them or learn from them or develop what they were doing or creating.

With that saying does that mean talent is not important for organization and knowledge employees are the important one? The answer is defiantly no, talent is very important for organization and its competitive advantage its add value for the organization, what we trying to say is knowledge employees are more likely to be find in labour market and add value for the organization as we stated, but when it comes to talent there are so many aspects need to be considered to acquire it like what is talent for the organization since each organization has its own need and type of talent that can be fit to its business nature, how to identify and measure it, how to make it fit and work for the organization and so on all these aspects need to be addressed when considering talent which its not applied for knowledge employees.

Knowledge is power this is the phrase of today, knowledge economy is another phrase used today to describe the importance of knowledge. In today world who has knowledge he just role the world wither its business or globalization or even cyber business, by putting talent and the other organization resources, people, strategies and leadership in optimum use.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development