Networking: How my perceptions & practice have changed

Rachel Burnham writes: I am writing this post about networking, as a number of the L&D practitioners I am currently working with have recently raised the topic of networking and its value.

I used to see networking as one of those things I ‘ought’ to do as a professional.  It was always listed as one of those things that an effective and well-rounded professional ‘should’ do. And like many things one feels one ought to do, I could never quite see the real benefit – and just like cleaning out the cupboard under the sink, it was a task that I would put off until I really had to do it.  I saw it as a necessary evil, part of the downside of freelance work, as one strand of developing potential new clients. 

I always associated it with rather awkward events where a lot of strangers would gather eat canapes, exchange business cards and try to sell to one another.  (Or possibly exchange canapes, sell cards and eat … well may be not!) Definitely not part of my comfort zone.  Made worse, by a combination of introversion and lack of practice.  Rather a self-fullfilling, downward spiral.  Hideous.

But no more! Now I see networking rather differently.  Now, it is part of my day to day work.  And I even enjoy it!

So what has changed?

The key shift for me was when I started to see the purpose of networking differently and started to see it first and foremost as about learning.   More and more people are seeing the value of their personal network for learning and you now often hear people refer to their PLN or Personal Learning Network. Why not check out #PLN for many interesting links and references?

This shift enabled me to let go of a lot of baggage and distaste towards networking, as being all about selling yourself and seeking business benefit.  Instead I am able to focus on networking as learning, which fits far better with my values.   Paradoxically, this has also allowed me to reap immediate and ongoing benefits from networking, from the exposure to new information, exchange of ideas, access to resources and opportunity to test out my own experiences against other professionals in the same field.

I have also changed the way that I network.  Using social media is a big part of this.  Using social media to network and particularly Twitter, has enabled me to come into contact with a much greater variety of L&D and HR professionals than before, both here in the UK and across the world.   And, also to make contact with people in other fields too.

I find using social media works well for me as an introvert.  I have been able to build relationships with people at my own pace and switch off when I want to.  It gives me time to reflect before responding  to comments.  And it means when I do meet people in person, I feel far more relaxed and have much more interesting conversations that I ever did before, because we are often building on an existing relationship.  The foundation has already been laid.

One of the things I do now as I network, is to share what I am currently working on. This Working Out Loud (WOL) can give networking much more value and interest.  For me this changes networking from a ‘promotional’ activity in which a glossy front is maintained, with perhaps rather superficial exchanges, to something that is a bit more real, messy and hair let down.  Not that every networking conversation is a deep exchange about L&D practice – sometimes I’m discussing growing carrots or dandelions in the lawn or what music I’ve been listening to (‘cause I’m into gardening & jazz)  – but often when we do talk work it is a bit more honest in my experience, than in those traditional networking events.

My other revelation in relation to networking, is that it is possible to network and meet up one to one!  Not sure quite why the penny took so long to drop for me with this!  I now have lots of one to one networking meet ups for tea/coffee and cake or lunch.  I find I have much more productive conversations one to one or in a small group.

But the funny peculiar thing is, now I have made those changes, I now am much happier in group networking events and so now participate in far more than I ever did before! 

I will write more on this topic shortly and explore the second part of my Sketchnote, which covers some practical tips for networking.

Rachel Burnham

30/10/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Line managers - what are they good for?

Rachel Burnham writes: About a fortnight ago, I participated in the ‘Northern Powerhouse: People and You’ conference organised jointly by the Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire Branches of CIPD.  The event involved a mix of speakers and facilitated discussions amongst participants – if you would like to find out more here is a link to the Storify of the event and to my blog with all the Sketchnotes I created from the speaker led sessions.

Looking back over a very busy event, what stood out for me were the keynote presentations from two very different organisations and what they had to say about line management.  These two presentations were about The Contact Company, who provide out-sourced contact centre services, based in the Merseyside area and SLH Group, which is a housing association, based in South Liverpool and winner of the Sunday Times 2015 best not-for-profit organisation to work for.

Kevin Horgan of The Contact Company spoke about how important skilled line managers are to the way they manage people in their growing organisation.  He talked about how the organisation has decided that these roles should focus on managing their teams, with other staff holding the technical expertise, so that line managers can concentrate on managing people.  In recruiting these managers, they had come to the realisation that ‘a good agent doesn’t necessarily make a good manager’.  He also talked about the importance of conversations in the way they tackle their role – ‘talent management through talking to people’.

Julie Fadden gave an inspirational talk about many features of people management in SHL Group.  Early on she made the point that ‘if you don’t sort out the leadership, you won’t be able to sort out the frontline service’.  She too spoke of the importance of conversations in managing staff – emphasising ‘honesty & integrity’ in those conversations, whether managing sickness, performance or providing feedback.  She shared many examples of these types of conversations where honest, even blunt conversations are also tempered with care.  In my view it takes not only integrity to have those kinds of conversations, but real skill on the part of the manager to be able to do this and to move away from the rule-following and tick box approach that seems to be favoured in so many organisations.  And it also requires trust from the organisation in those line managers to enable or ‘permit’ this approach to be taken.

At the lunch break, I sat beside a HR person from one of my clients and we were reflecting on what we had heard from the speakers.  We were particularly impressed with how The Contact Company had decided to focus the work of the line managers on people management, and also have separate technical experts.  Often in my experience people feel that to have career progression, they need to move into management roles, even if this doesn’t fit with their own strengths. Having separate roles, can allow organisations to benefit from making the best use of individuals’ particular strengths whether this is working with people or in a more technical role.  This echoed a positive experience that my lunch partner had had within her own organisation.  Within one of the areas of their work, two distinct career paths had been developed: one for technical specialists and one for people managers and this is working well both from a career development point of view and even more importantly from the impact on effectiveness of the day to day work.

The way that line managers’ roles are designed is a crucial component, alongside the effectiveness of their skills and the organisational culture, in determing how effective they can be.  This reminded me of hearing John Purcell speak a number of years ago about some research he had done into line management in the health service and how unrealistic were the demands placed on first line managers, with large teams to manage, plus conflicting demands in terms of direct patient care and administration.  I remember him saying that many first line managers saw management as being about the pile of paperwork that had to be completed at home, as there was never time to do it in work hours!

That is a very different picture of line management responsibilities to this people focused, conversation-holding, enabling role described above.

Yesterday, I read a blog by Sukh Pabial 'Line Managers and the Learning Conundrum', which was asking challenging questions about how those of us in L&D see our relationship with line managers.   And this made me think again, about the different expectations that are held within organisations about line managers.  About the different expectations that people in HR and in L&D roles have of line managers.  About the different expectations that are held of whether we should work together and how we should work together.

From my point of view, as an L&D professional it is wonderful to be able to work in partnership with line managers and together, to work with individuals and teams who are also taking responsibility for their own development.  And there are things we can do in L&D to build that positive partnership.  But when line managers don’t live up to this ideal, perhaps we should look more closely at what the realities of their role are and whether our expectations are realistic?

Sukh Pabial argues that we in L&D don’t have to be dependent upon having a supportive relationship with line managers and that there are many other ways we can be as effective in working directly with employees – and I agree with this. Nor is there just one model of what effective line management should look like – it will be different for different organisations and even within organisations. 

What effective line management requires is more than just developing the skills of the individuals – though this is a helpful step and a challenge in its own right that I have written about before.  It also requires organisations to be clear about the expectations for line managers, to design roles that allow line managers to be effective and for this to be within an organisational structure and culture that work together.

Returning to the ‘Northern Powerhouse: People and You’ conference, at the end of the day we had a reminder from John McGurk about some of the key challenges that we are facing in making the Northern Powerhouse a reality.  A key one of these is the lower level of productivity overall in the North compared to London and the South East.

‘… the North has an entrenched productivity problem. The UK as a whole underperforms compared to countries such as Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium by between 23 and 32 per cent (Dolphin and Hatfield 2015), but the North underperforms the UK’s national productivity rate by 11.1 per cent.’ (‘The State of the North2015’ IPPR North)

Effective management is one of the components of improving productivity. If we want start tackling this productivity gap, then we have to take the issue of improving line management effectiveness seriously.  And that means not just developing skills, but looking at what the expectations of managers are and developing line manager roles that work.

Rachel Burnham

19/10/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Sketchnotes from 'Northern Powerhouse People and You' Conference

Rachel Burnham writes: On Friday 30 September 2016, a conference titled ‘Northern Powerhouse People and You’ took place at Chester Racecourse.  It was jointly organised by CIPD Manchester, CIPD Merseyside & North Cheshire and CIPD Lancashire branches and involved a mix of speaker led sessions and table group discussions.  The whole day was facilitated by Esko Reinikainen (@reinikainen) who got everyone participating and contributing their thoughts & ideas.

Here are the Sketchnotes that I created live on the day mainly for the speaker led sessions.

Professor Sir Cary Cooper talked about the challenges of well-being.

Kevin Horgan, The Contact Company shared their experience of managing people and their particular approach.

Julie Fadden, SLH Group, inspired us with her down-to-earth and direct approach to managing people.

Peter Cheese, CIPD responded to questions and challenges from the floor.

John McGurk, CIPD Scotland shared a few challenges for the Northern Powerhouse at the end of the day.

Rachel Burnham

2/10/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Learning to listen effectively to podcasts

Rachel Burnham writes: I have a love/hate relationship with podcasts – actually that is way too strong!  I can see the value of podcasts; I frequently recommend them and build them into programmes I’m designing;  and sometimes I even listen to them myself – but I don’t really find them an effective way of learning personally.   I can listen to comedy podcasts fine and I can certainly listen to jazz based podcasts with great enjoyment and attention, but when it comes to business podcasts all that goes out the window.  I get distracted; I start clock-watching – ‘Are we really only 8 minutes into a 20 minute programme?’; I instantly forget what is being discussed; and if the podcast is good it gets me thinking, I start chasing that thought and then lose my place in the broadcast.  On many occasions I don’t even make it through the whole podcast!

But what is a podcast?

If you haven’t come across the term ‘podcast’ before, it refers to a digital audio-recording and is a bit like a short radio programme, except that they are usually available via the internet.  They can be a one-off programme, but many are produced as part of a regular series and can be subscribed to, so that every time a new one is ‘broadcast’ your phone or tablet or PC receives it.  Just like a radio programme, a podcast can be a single person talking, an interview, a panel discussion or a whole mix of segments.  There is no reason why they can’t involve drama or music too – although these are less frequent components of business podcasts.  Podcasts can be used as part of corporate communications or as a learning resource and are particularly suited to being accessed from mobile devices.  They are relatively cheap and easy to produce and so can be a valuable option for L&D.

 I love to read

But for myself, I prefer to read.  I love to read and have done since I was a child.  Even though I struggled to learn to read, I always loved books.  With books you can have pictures and diagrams.  With books you can read at your own pace, pause at any point to think more about what you’ve read, easily go back and re-read a section or jump forward to a more interesting page.  And you get to hold them and smell them.  I am a proper bookworm and I read to the end of the book. I do love to read!

 The experiment

So, when we started to explore the use and creation of podcasts as an L&D resource, during the ‘E-learning: Beyond the Next Button’ year-long MOOC that I am studying with Curatr this year, I was intrigued and slightly embarrassed about my own lack of enthusiasm for podcasts.  Eventually, during a Twitter Chat (#LTMOOC16) I owned up to my reservations.  As I shared them, I noticed that they sounded very like the sorts of comments, I often hear from people who don’t like reading – they get distracted, they forget what they have read, it doesn’t go in, it seems endless.  In this situation, I have often recommended highlighting key points, adding your own notes linking the material to your own experience or mind-mapping to summarise what you have read. So I decided to take my own advice and try this sort of strategy with podcasts myself.  As I like Sketchnoting, I decide to experiment with sketchnoting whilst listening to some podcasts and see if this made a difference to my experience with podcasts.

So over the last fortnight, I have listened to three different podcasts and created a Sketchnote for each one.   The three podcasts were from different sources and in each case, I sketchnoted as I listened.   The three podcasts were:

‘Communities of Practice and Showing your Work’ a Good Practice podcast 13 September 2016

‘Curating & Sharing Knowledge’ a CIPD ToolClicks podcast featuring Martin Couzins

‘Neuroscience & the Organisation’ a Learning Now Radio podcast featuring Amy Brann 2^nd June 2016

By comparison, I have probably only listened to about three podcasts in the past year prior to this fortnight (excluding jazz related podcasts).

 Did it make a difference?

I felt that Sketchnoting made a huge difference to my experience.  In all three cases, I felt that I had a much clearer sense of what the podcast was about – I could picture it.

I actually enjoyed listening to the podcasts and was still attentive at the end of each one – this is a major breakthrough for me.  

When listening to the middle podcast, I was interrupted by family members who came to chat and by a phone call, but because I was Sketchnoting, it was easy to find my place again and pick up the thread by looking at my picture.  In the past, I probably would have used the interruption of the phone call as a reason to give up on the podcast and not complete it.

From previous experience of Sketchnoting, I know that I do refer back to Sketchnotes that I have produced to remind me of key points and that they do work to jog my memory.  It helps that I have them altogether, in a bound notebook and so it is easy to find these notes.  It is interesting that I hardly ever referred back to more traditionally made notes, except when doing a formal course and I have needed to for an assessment or exam.

So, although three podcasts is a small sample, I do feel that Sketchnoting has improved my ability to listen effectively to a podcast and has as a result changed how I feel about podcasts for the better.

If you haven’t listened to any podcasts before why not give it ago.  All three of the podcasts I listened to are part of series and there are many others available for free via ITunes. 

Rachel Burnham

25/9/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Developing Ourselves

Here is a Sketchnote that I created to summarise some key points from Learning Live 2016 7 September, organised by the Learning and Performance Institute (LPI).  It focuses on the importance of investing in our own development for L&D professionals.

Rachel Burnham

7/9/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

The value of asking - my learning from working with people with disabilities

Rachel Burnham writes: A couple of weeks ago the #LDInsight twitterchat explored how we work with people with disabilities on learning.  Many of the participants identified that this was not something that they had experienced very often within their professional careers.   My experience is rather different and looking back I realise that I have fairly regularly worked with colleagues and clients with disabilities.   These have included people with visual and hearing impairments, people with mobility problems and people with dyslexia, which takes many forms.  Actually, the disability comes from the environment, a failure to adapt the learning programme and our attitudes, rather than the condition itself. 

I thought it might be useful to share two key learning points from my experience.  I make no claims to expertise and I am definitely still learning about how to more effectively make learning accessible to all.

My first learning point, came from very early in my time in training – it definitely was training then!   I think it was only about the third or fourth programme that I had been involved in delivering and I’ve never forgotten it. We were working with an external client on a two day programme.   To our surprise one of the participants in the programme was blind and we hadn’t known that until we turned up.  I remember feeling so embarrassed that we hadn’t known in advance and also feeling that we had been dropped in it by the client.   When we reflected afterwards, myself and my co-trainer, realised that actually we had never asked about whether any of the participants had any particular needs.  We had just assumed that they wouldn’t.

So we changed our practice and from then on always asked as part of the commissioning and identification of learning needs. 

I think it is worth building this kind of prompt into our processes and practices – so I ask this when I am talking with stakeholders or I might build it into an application form or discussion with individual learners.   I think this sits alongside asking about dietary requirements and in an ideal world shouldn’t really be any more difficult to ask and answer than that.  I know that not everyone wants to share this information – I think by including it in, we start to build an environment in which it is OK to be open and explicit about our individual needs.   

I know I am influenced in this by my personal experiences of disability – for example since I became diabetic, dietary requirements and specific needs go hand in hand.  As a child measles damaged my hearing, which in turn affected my schooling for a short while, until I was able to have some treatment.  I am comfortable with being open about this – but then I work for myself.  And I know that there are many disabilities that are perceived far more negatively than diabetes.

So my first piece of learning is  to ask the question.

My second piece of learning is that when it comes to making adaptations to enable an individual with a disability to participate in a learning experience, it is always worth speaking with that person and asking for their advice.  Don’t make assumptions or work from generalisations.   Many disabilities impact on people very differently.  In my experience, it is always worth talking to the individual directly - they are an expert on their needs and have usually discovered what works for them best.

I was once tasked with organising an induction/initial training programme for an individual joining one of our regional teams, in an office at some distance from where I was based.  Normally, their manager would have had this responsibility, but they had just moved onto to a new role outside of the organisation themselves.   The challenge was that we had severe budget restrictions at the time, so I had no money to travel in person to the location and this was so long ago that there was no online way of communicating in our organisation (hard to imagine now!) and so I needed to mostly work with her over the phone.  And she was deaf.  So, I contacted her before she formally started and asked her advice.  She was able to suggest the type of modified phone that would best suit her, where to order in from and how to get funding to do this!  I asked her what else would help her induction and she made a number of other practical suggestions including on office layout, as she used lip-reading and so it was important that she could easily see her work colleagues when they were speaking together.  I was so glad I asked her advice!!

So, my second piece of learning is to ask the individual concerned for their advice.   In fact, I find I increasingly ask the question of all the people I work with ‘What can I do to make this learning experience work better for you?’

Most L&D professionals I come into contact with are keen for learning to be accessible for all.  I suspect as a profession that we have not done as much as we could to make this a reality.  Time for a change.

Rachel Burnham

1/9/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

What happens in our brains when we improvise?

Rachel Burnham writes: Last week I took a week’s holiday to enable me to fully participate in the Manchester Jazz Festival.  As well as getting to hear lots of wonderful music (check out #mjf2016), I also went to a fascinating lecture organised by the Festival, in association with the Manchester Science Festival, about ‘What happens in our brains when we improvise?’  This lecture focused on musical improvising and was given by Dr Graeme Wilson from the University of Edinburgh, who is both a psychologist and a saxophonist.  The session was also supported by improvised music by Adam Fairhall on keyboards and Tom Ward on saxophone and flute.  Here is my sketchnote from the talk:

I found Graeme Wilson’s talk most interesting both from the viewpoint of someone who listens to lots of improvised music and as an L&Der.  It got me thinking a lot about what is going on when we encourage people to ‘improvise’ at work both in their day to day to work and when we are more specifically encouraging innovation. It also got me reflecting on my own practice when facilitating learning – as that very often has elements of improvising within it.

This is one of the very best sessions I have ever participated in that draws upon evidence from neuroscience.  Wilson explained that the session drew from a combination of neuroscience studies, predominantly using fMRI scans, cognitive psychology experiments and also interviews with musicians about their experience of improvising.  One of the things that particularly impressed me about the session was the way Graeme Wilson from the outset was clear about the limitations of these studies.  He reminded us of how impossible it is to actually interview a musician whilst they are playing and improvising – they usually have something in their mouth and are rather occupied!  So interviews are always after the event and an interpretation of what happened. He spoke of the artificiality and limited nature of many of the experiments and gave examples to illustrate.  He mentioned one particular example that involved a study of pianists improvising that required them to play the keyboard upside down and in the dark to enable them to be scanned!  He described the process of interpreting fMRI scans as ‘like watching television with the sound turned off’.  I think it made a significant difference to the way he spoke about the research, that this is both an area in which Graeme Wilson is not only a researcher, but also an active practitioner.   And during the session, we were treated to some of his playing when he and Tom Ward improvised together on their saxophones to explore some of the points discussed.

Here are three key areas from the session:

Improvising is demanding

One of the studies compared musicians playing someone else’s music to when they were improvising and identified that much stronger cognitive control is exerted when improvising.  Improvising effectively requires both mastery, but also the ability to ‘let go’.  One musician described improvising as a ‘mystery’ that required you to ignore mistakes when in the grip of improvising - this also sounds like being in a 'flow state' as Csikszentmihalyi describes.  A study of pianists (the one where they were playing upside down in the scanner) showed in their scans less activity in the brain areas associated with self-monitoring and inhibition.  In my experience you can often see and hear the moment when a group of jazz musicians relax and let go – the quality of the music immediately takes off.  

Graeme Wilson talked about the different degrees of improvisation you get in music, sometimes just sections of a piece of music are improvised such as in solos.  In this situation, musicians often describe themselves a focusing on playing key notes and then using familiar phrases – ‘patterns’ to get from one keynote to another – I relate this to the way we use habits or patterns of behaviours in daily life.  Some music has a much high proportion of improvisation and when there are no conventions to rely on, the cognitive load is huge.

Improvisation is social

Much improvised music is social involving several musicians improvising together.   Some of the studies shared explored the characteristics of this.   ‘Trading fours’, a common musical practice in jazz, where two musicians take it in turns to play in response to each other, has been studied.  This found activation of the brain areas associated with syntax and deactivation of the areas associated with processing meaning.   So improvising socially involves aspects of communication, but perhaps holding back sense-making/judging?

Again, from my own experience the most effective groups of musicians can very often be seen to listening carefully to each other and to be very attentive to each other’s body language. An example of this comes from the group ‘The Impossible Gentlemen’ who played during last week’s festival.   I have to confess to not being very keen on drummers, but Adam Nussbaum, the drummer from ‘The Impossible Gentlemen’ is a wonderful drummer and my observation is that he seems to always listening and paying attention to the other musicians.  I think the most effective listeners make better music together!

In other studies, it has been found that different musicians make sense of what is happening when they improvise together differently.  For example, Graeme Wilson and a colleague interviewed a number of musicians after a collective improvisation in which a number of musicians stopped playing and each person had a different interpretation of that event.

Improvising involves making choices

Wilson explored that when musicians improvise they make choices and this is more complex than some of the simpler models of music creation in other circumstances.   So musicians may choose to:

·       Maintain ie to continue playing as they already are – this is what is done most of the time. 

·       Or initiate change.  This is done less frequently.

Initiating change can be through either:

·       Doing something completely new, which is rarely done.

·       Or responding to what someone else is doing.  There are three options in how you can respond:

o   Adopt – start doing what someone else is doing;

o   Augment – build on what someone else is doing;

o   Contrast – do something different to what others are doing but to support what they are doing.

I found this most interesting and could relate it both what happens in conversations and also when introducing new ideas & practices to the workplace.  I think in L&D, there has been an awful lot of adopting going on when we have lifted wholesale practices from one organisation to another, without fully considering the different context in which we have been operating.  

Some thoughts from me on high performance

Drawing from this has made me wonder whether high performance in the workplace, from individuals and teams, that requires some element of improvisation involves:

·       Mastery;

·       Knowing when & how to ‘let go’ – ie break with convention;

·       Highly effective communication between co-workers, particularly listening;

·       Recognition that different degrees of improvisation may be needed eg sometimes just picking out key notes and using existing patterns of behaviour to move between them and sometimes all out collective improvisation.

I found this a very stimulating and thought-provoking session and I would love to hear your views on it.

Rachel Burnham

7/8/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.