One of the most valuable skills possessed by successful entrepreneurs and business leaders is the ability to make clear, calm and effective decisions. In fact, decision making is a vital component of almost every job, with the decisions you make daily having a direct impact on your organization or employer.

With many business decisions often involving difficult topics and short timeframes, it’s important to know how to feel confident, capable and clear-headed when faced with complex decisions. Are you confident in your own decision making abilities?

If this is something that you feel a little unsure about, the good news is that you can improve your decision making skills and techniques.

The Importance of Strong Decision Making Skills


In a recent article for Forbes, Lynda Shaw writes of the importance of effective decision making in the workplace. As a business neuroscientist, offering solutions to improve work relationships, communication, and problem solving, Shaw believes that “effective decision making is more important today than ever before.”

It’s important that “everyone in your team is able to make decisions quickly and skillfully,” she says. “If you or your people hesitate for too long, money can be lost and morale can plummet.”

Try 'Six Thinking Hats' for Better Decision Making

Employers and managers can help staff to develop better decision making skills and become more confident in their own abilities. One of the most popular ways to assist staff in decision making is through Dr Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

Since 1970, Dr de Bono has been a world leader in organizational innovation, strategic leadership, individual creativity, and problem solving. His methods have been used by many organizations, large and small, to deliver improved training solutions.

The Six Thinking Hats is a simple, effective technique that can help employees to become more productive, by learning how to separate their thinking into six distinct categories. Each category is symbolized by a different colored ‘hat.’

The White Hat calls for information known or needed.

The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition.

The Black Hat is judgment – the devil's advocate or why something may not work.

The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism.

The Green Hat focuses on creativity – possibilities, alternatives and new ideas.

The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.

By mentally wearing and switching the colored hats, you can learn to focus or redirect your thoughts, to get to the right solution faster and more easily. This can be incredibly beneficial for teamwork, allowing groups to tap into their collective wisdom and function more effectively.

Use eLearning to Learn More About Decision Making

Keen to learn more about how you can apply the Six Thinking Hats technique to your work? Take a look at the popular online course Decision Making Excellence.

During this short eLearning course, you’ll learn about the different types of decisions we make every day, particularly in the workplace. The course also gives insight into how our thinking processes work and provides best practice tools for better decision making.

Who Can Benefit from Improved Decision Making?

Becoming a better decision maker isn’t just a smart investment for managers and leaders. Everyone, at all levels of an organization, will benefit from improving their decision making abilities, in both their personal and work life.

Taking this course may just help get you selected for a leadership role, or better placed in terms of a promotion at work. Learning more about what’s behind your own individual thinking processes, and how this affects your decision making, helps to make you more confident, empowered and effective in your choices.

Enrol today, and get started online, all in the convenience of your own home – in just 30 minutes!

False

How to improve your decision making skills

If you’ve just enrolled in an online course, you might be wondering what to expect from the eLearning experience. Online learning offers students and employees a very flexible, convenient way of acquiring new skills and knowledge. But it can require extra levels of self-motivation, discipline and time management from participants, as opposed to teacher-led training.

When it comes to studying, do online courses require the same kind of commitment as traditional classroom learning? The answer is yes. Knowing how to study effectively for your course will really help maximize your online learning experience and results.

To help you get the most from your course, we’ve put together a list of our top 5 study tips for online learners.

First things first, make sure you have a designated space for your study. As an online learner, you’ll need to create your own learning environment, as you don’t have the physical presence of the classroom.

Having an established study space that’s yours, whenever you need it, will help you to get into the right headspace for your study sessions. Whether you have an actual home office or study you can use, or your space is simply a desk in your bedroom or living room, make sure it’s quiet, uncluttered and free from distractions.

Let housemates, relatives or partners know that when you’re in that study space you’re not to be disturbed or interrupted. When you sit down to work in your space, switch off from social media and your phone, to concentrate solely on your course materials.

Having a reliable internet connection is absolutely essential for online learning. Studying online means you need to have access to course materials, modules, assignments, online exams and discussion boards.

A lot of online courses use discussion boards to post assignment details, schedule changes, group work and so forth – so you really need to be checking in regularly to keep up-to-date with course requirements.

You should also make sure you’ve saved your trainer’s contact details in your phone or diary, so if you do have an internet outage you can get in touch with them offline.

Once you’ve enrolled in an online course, take some time to think about your objectives – that is, what you want to get out of the course. Do you want to learn a practical new skill, such as coding or web design? Are you looking to improve your soft skills, becoming better at active listening or more aware of emotional intelligence?

Knowing exactly what it is that you want to accomplish will help keep you motivated and on track, much like training your muscles at the gym. Some eLearning courses will have a section that outlines certain Learning Objectives. Make sure you pay attention to this section; it will help you define your own goals.

One of the best strategies for making your study time more successful is finding the best revision technique that works for you. Revising and reviewing information as you go helps to improve your knowledge retention, work your memory and produce better course results.

Do you already have a favorite way to practice study revision? Some people use flash cards, others have their own special way of taking notes, or using different colored highlighters. Quizzes can be excellent prompts and refreshers for online learners, allowing them to test their knowledge as they move through the course.

Getting together with a study partner, or forming a study group, can also help to reinforce what you’re learning, while also allowing you to understand it better. Group work can be very motivating and gives you the opportunity to be exposed to different opinions and learning styles, which could further help you.

As we said earlier, many online courses use discussion boards to facilitate connections between participants and create a central hub for relevant course information.

These discussions boards, or forums, also remove the isolation from online learning. Even though you’re not attending class in a physical environment, you can get to know your classmates virtually online. In fact, for introverts, online forums can provide an even better way to interact with fellow learners.

So check out the discussion boards and forums that are part of your online course. You’ll find plenty of useful information, as well as support from other students – who may even have their own online study tips to share with you!

Brisbane Lions embrace cutting edge tech as employees tap into more than 270 courses

As sporting clubs across the world continue to look for an edge over their counterparts, The Brisbane Lions have turned to online learning to take the next step in pursuit of football greatness.

Brisbane Lions has selected Go1 as its premier workplace training and learning partner ahead of the launch of a new professional development and workplace training program for all employees at the club.

Team and staff members have access to more than 270 courses, nearly 1000 workbooks and training resources, and over 600 videos and engagement with expert (training material) authors.

The materials include both existing bespoke training courses created for the Brisbane Lions, as well as courses selected from the Go1 marketplace. Courses include preventing sexual harassment, religious discrimination, dealing with difficult behaviours, identifying poor performance, communicating effectively, conflict management and emotional intelligence.

Business-focused options such as introduction to project management, finance for non-finance managers, strategic planning, and competition and consumer law are also available.

According to Emma Zielke, Brisbane Lions’ AFLW Captain and club admin officer, the Go1 learning platform will allow the club to provide its athletes and staff members with the most advanced educational tools.

“It’s about training minds as well as bodies. We want to help all the Brisbane Lions team, from the field to the boardroom to expand their horizons into areas such as leadership and sales. By implementing cutting-edge technology, we are helping our employees to upskill and manage their training path based on their areas of interest.

“The Go1 portal enables us to do this, as well as being a great way to distribute and deliver compulsory training such as OH&S and courses around club values and culture,” Ms Zielke said.

Ms Zielke believes launching the program places Brisbane Lions at the forefront of learning amongst Australian sporting organisations.

“We would be happy to share our learnings with other AFL teams in future and show them how the Go1 platform can help their organisations as well,” she said.

The Go1 service will be extended to Brisbane Lions affiliate organisations such as the Springwood Social Club where full-time staff can access the learning portal.

While the Brisbane Lions are in the early stages of rolling out the program, she expects to start seeing positive results after six months.

“I think we will see a really good return from people going the extra mile to achieve their personal and career development goals through the Go1 learning platform,” Ms Zielke said.

Go1 CEO Andrew Barnes said the company was excited to partner with an iconic Queensland brand like The Brisbane Lions to hit its workplace training and development targets.

“The Brisbane Lions is a shining example of a club that genuinely cares about their employees’ personal and professional development,” Mr Barnes said. “It is also an example of a forward-thinking club looking to be first-to-market to implement the latest technologies to ensure success both on and off the field.

“Access to more than 270 courses puts the club’s employees and players in good stead and helps them learn at their own pace and convenience.

“This is especially important in a competitive league like the AFL where teams spend a lot of time on the road. In these situations it’s easy to forget the importance of training and education, and we want to and have removed that barrier,” he said.

The Brisbane Lions are an Australian Rules Football Club which participates in the Australian Football League (AFL) and was formed from the merger of the Brisbane Bears and the Fitzroy Lions in 1996. The club appeared in four consecutive AFL Grand Finals between 2001 and 2004, winning three (2001, 2002 and 2003) to become one of the most successful teams of the modern era.

Brisbane Lions roar ahead with Go1 online learning portal

It really is surprising how many of us take communication proficiency for granted. Whether it’s in a written email, a meeting, presentation, or simply a conversation with a coworker, effective communication has a direct impact on the success of every business. 

Effective communication is a skill, and it’s a skill that should be developed in order to be successful in business. Just like any other skill, communication should be “worked out” regularly, and that’s exactly what the Communicating Effectively course can show you how to do.

This course can teach you how to communicate effectively so that you’re able to get your message across loud and clear, whether it’s at work in a business meeting or at home with your family. 

Not only will this course show you how to get your own point across, but it will make you a more effective listener as well. With the right communication methods under your belt, you’ll find that your productivity and performance at work will go up in a big way.

Communication comes in many forms, all of which help us to interact with others and express thoughts, concerns, and feelings.How you communicate will determine how people interact with you…and poor communication can have an extremely negative impact on your professional life. Not to mention the problems that can arise from low self-esteem, frustration, and a poor relationship with others. 

Unfortunately, far too many people in today’s workforce are falling short in this skill. 

We always seem to remember those times when you had a communication breakthrough or disaster, don’t we? That’s because an effective communicator will always be remembered for how they stirred emotions in you, motivated you to work towards something, or conveyed an idea that had a huge impact on your life. Excellent communication truly has a ripple effect that resonates with us. 

All careers rely on at effective communication, whether it be written or verbal. That’s just one reason why this course can benefit everyone in the workforce. 

The truth is that even the most talented communicators in your organization should be constantly “sharpening the knife” of their talent, or else it will begin to go dull!

Before we can understand the best ways to communicate with others, we need to learn why it matters so much, particularly in a professional setting. How we communicate has a huge impact on those around us - it can draw people in to your world or repel them in an instant. 

Studies have shown that just 7% of communication is verbal, which indicates that how we express ourselves through body language is extremely important. Learning communication isn’t just about how we speak or write, but about how we present ourselves to others in a non-verbal way.

Just as important as how we speak to others is how we listen. Many people think communication relies solely on what we offer to others, but it’s important to remember that listening and responding is the other half of the equation.

To be a great communicator, you need to learn how to elicit the best communication out of others too. Effective questioning can help you to get the best response - and it can save time and frustration due to miscommunication issues. 

Written and email etiquette for the workplace

In this modern age, emails and other written communication are essential forms of communication. These non-verbal forms of communication have their own unique etiquette that should be understood for the most effective and respectful response.

By covering this broad range of topics and learning not only the best way to communicate, but why it’s so important in your day to day life, you’ll walk away from this course with the skills needed to be an effective communicator.

Who Would Benefit From the Communicating Effectively Course?

You might be wondering if this course is right for you, and perhaps even questioning whether your communication skills are up to par. The truth is, we can all benefit from learning more about communication, whether it’s verbal or non-verbal.

If you talk to your coworkers or employees about the issues that they face on a daily basis you’ll likely find that communication is a common theme. It’s surprising to think that many organizations still don’t have training in place for this critical skill set.

The Communicating Effectively course can suit everyone from entry level employees to senior management. With this course in your toolkit, not only will you be able to convey your own thoughts and opinions more clearly, but you’ll understand the people you work with better as well. It’s a win/win either way!

Negotiation is an important part of everyday life, both at work and at home. In your personal life, you might have no trouble speaking your mind when it comes to choosing a restaurant or movie. Or working out whose turn it is to cook dinner, or drive. This is because when we’re in our comfort zone with family and friends, it’s not too difficult to make our opinions and preferences known.

But unfortunately, when it comes to important workplace discussions about salary, workload or job responsibilities, many people find it hard to be quite as assertive. Sound familiar?

If you feel uncomfortable when it comes to negotiating at work, you’re not alone. Many people feel intimidated at the thought of having these discussions with their boss, bargaining with clients, or going against the flow of their co-workers. However, negotiation is a critical and essential part of all aspects of life – and there’s no need to fear it in the workplace. In fact, improving your confidence in this area will have a positive impact on all aspects of your life, not just at work.

Read on to find out more about why negotiating and influencing people is so important in business, and how you can improve your workplace negotiation skills.

Why You Need to Know How to Negotiate and Influence People 

These days, most job descriptions include ‘negotiation’ as a desirable skill for potential candidates, with the ability to negotiate being more valued than ever before.

The Benefits of Negotiation for Your Business

Build and maintain positive working relationships

Improve the company’s bottom line, through increased profits and the ability to get the best deal possible

Increase their productivity and job satisfaction by expressing their needs

Successfully work through disagreements with co-workers

Contribute to a positive work culture, where opinions and needs are mutually respected

Show high level listening skills and emotional intelligence (EQ), helping them to succeed at work

Creating Win-Win Outcomes in the Workplace

Improving your negotiation skills isn’t about beating down the other party – it’s about creating a win-win situation, where each person involved leaves the table happy with their end of the deal. There’s no doubt that this can sometimes be difficult! Which is exactly why strong negotiation skills are so highly valued in the workplace.

When you feel more confident in your negotiation skills, you’ll be equipped to walk into any situation with the self-assurance you need to focus on the best outcome for the organization.

Use eLearning to Improve Your Negotiation Skills

Learning how to become a better negotiator can be challenging but also exciting. The good news is that this is a skill that can be learned and continually improved upon. So where can you learn these techniques?

Online courses provide a great way for employees to work on improving their skill sets. Through eLearning, your staff can simply enroll in their desired course, completing modules at their own pace and comfort.

Negotiating and Influencing People is a short eLearning course designed to help individuals improve their negotiation with suppliers, clients, trade unions or colleagues. The interactive course will help experienced negotiators enhance their existing skills, whilst beginners will be provided with new strategies to use and develop. Staff will also get the opportunity to test their knowledge with quiz questions at the end of each topic.

Check out the course today and arm yourself with the skills, knowledge – and most importantly, the confidence – to negotiate and influence in the workplace. This will also have a positive impact on other areas of your life, leading to more effective communication with family, loved ones and friends.


How to improve your workplace negotiation skills

Workplace health and safety proficiency is something we strive to achieve in our organizations, but sometimes its importance can be lost behind trying to hit revenue goals and/or please customers. However, it’s absolutely critical to pay attention to our health and safety practices because this is one way we can ensure that our workplaces run more efficiently, our staff are happier, and ultimately the product or service we offer is of superior quality.

Having a solid workplace safety and health culture in place not only protects our staff but ensures we offer a safe environment for customers and visitors too. When we’re viewed by outsiders as a company who takes pride in the health and safety of their staff, this reflects positively on our other practices too.

What you can learn from the safest companies in America

So, how do you ensure that your company not only meets the occupational health and safety requirements set down by law but exceed them? Some of the safest companies in America have revealed their top tips for how they earned the title, and they’re a lot easier than you might think.

There’s no need to try and tick all of these boxes off in a day, though, and being one of the safest companies in America isn’t a title earned overnight. However, with a few ideas on how you can make safety an integral part of your organization you can begin to make small changes needed to have a huge impact.

When we integrate safety into our everyday work culture, it becomes a lot easier to make it stick. Showing that we follow health and safety requirements in our work, as leaders, can create a consistent and thorough approach to creating this culture in the entire company. If we lead by example and encourage all levels of management to do the same, our employees will see this and follow suit.

Organizations that place a huge emphasis on their employee’s well-being will often see better results from occupational health and safety training, as it shows that you truly care about them.

When your employees feel that you truly value them as an employee, they’re likely to reward you with a more focused attitude to the workplace and upholding these values.

For an added interest from employees, you might like to introduce a rewards based or incentive program for reporting incidents and near misses.

Right from the first moment a new employee steps foot into your organization, they should be shown exactly how important occupational health and safety is to you. The best way to do this is incorporate in-depth training on the issue beginning with their new employee induction, and continuing on throughout their employment.

An employee who is well educated on the safest practices will not only be more likely to use this knowledge for themselves but be happy to share it with others.

By indicating just how important it is to be a safe company, you’ll leave this lasting impression on them throughout their employment.

Make training enjoyable and interactive too, so it’s more likely to be retained by your employees, and ensure that it’s always specific and relevant to your industry and work environment. This makes the teachings more relatable for staff, and they’ll better understand how it impacts them.

Many people think that to be a safe workplace you should meet the requirements handed down by governing bodies such as National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but to have a truly safe workplace you should try to exceed these instead.

According to OSHA, just under 5,000 workers were killed in 2015 alone due to workplace accidents, which is a staggering amount when you consider how many that equals per day.

Imagine now that most of these workplaces followed the minimum requirements handed down by the governing bodies and you’ll see just how important it is to go above and beyond for the safety of your organization.

Share safety responsibilities in the company

It’s all well and good to have senior management and executives handing out orders about safety and health requirements in the company, but this won’t always have the trickle-down effect you might hope for.

The best way to ensure all staff is on board with the workplace culture of safety is to elect an official on all levels of employment, from managers down. The elected officers can be chosen by their fellow workmates to guarantee it’s someone whose opinion is respected among colleagues, ensuring it has a greater effect still.

By appointing one person for each sector, you can ensure that workplace safety procedures are being met in all areas and that workers are able to have a say on anything that might affect them. According to EHS, the safest companies in America follow this shared responsibility model and have seen great success with it. In doing this, the onus of creating a safe workplace is shared among everyone and not simply an order passed down from the top.

There’s no need to complicate things when it comes to making your company safe, and if you start small and work on each of these tips one at a time you’ll eventually find your organization among the safest in America.

The best place to start is by looking at the training offered in your new employee induction, as this is where employees will get the first impression of their new workplace.

Workplace safety and health can’t be made perfect overnight, and it’s a continual work in progress to ensure you not only meet new requirements and recommendations but that you keep your employees engaged in the process.

Important training tips from the safest companies in America

No matter what industry you work in or type of job you do, your daily work life probably sees you interact with a team some way or another. However, unlike other job skills we learn and training we receive, we rarely understand the most effective way to actually communicate within a team environment.

The Team Working Excellence course is a simple way to learn how to get the best out of your team, whether you’re a manager or an employee, and how you can offer the best version of yourself to help with the team working process. This course teaches four key skills that can maximize the efficiency of your team working performance, and is an integral tool for all levels of employment.

It’s no secret that employers value teamwork and often look for this as a special skill in their potential candidates, but it’s not always a skill that we’re born with. While some people are more effective in the way they communicate with others, there are some who struggle with the right approach to working in a group setting.

Considering we are all a part of a team at work, whether we work alongside others in an office setting or not, we need to know to give it the best shot possible when dealing with colleagues. Effective teamwork can have greater results in productivity and results, so we need to start putting the emphasis on it that it deserves.

Every team has a purpose, whether it’s a goal or objective they want to achieve or a shared vision. By understanding the purpose of your team and what’s expected of you, you can be sure that you’re contributing effectively so that you can work together toward a common goal.

This lesson teaches you that it’s okay to ask for clarity when working in a team, and you should always voice your concerns if you’re unsure. This open communication is part of what makes a great team.

Dr. Belbin’s research spans over 40 years in regards to team roles, and it shows how different people have strengths and weaknesses that they bring to a team.

There are three separate categories of action oriented roles, people oriented roles and thought oriented roles, and for a team to be successful there needs to be a mixture of all three.

Teams should consist of people with different strengths and weaknesses in order to get the best out of them, so it’s essential to understand everyone’s strong points.

This section of the course will show you how essential it is to earn the respect of those in your team, and follows closely the teachings of the famous book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

With small changes to your attitude such as showing genuine interest in others, you’re able to build a rapport and friendship with them. Having this relationship makes it easier to influence others within a team, and will make it easier to offer constructive criticism.

There are many ways in which conflict can occur in a team setting, and how we approach this conflict is essential to excellent teamwork. This course can show you the correct way to approach conflict so that you can understand other’s point of view and help your team to work more harmoniously together.

With a thorough understanding of these important skills, you can increase your productivity in a team setting and ensure that everyone works as cohesively as possible. Considering so much of our work days revolve around our cooperation in a team setting some way or another, it’s too essential to pass these lessons up.

How You Can Benefit from Team Working Excellence

Just as it’s important to keep up to date with other business skills and learn about changes and advancements in our industry, so too is it important to learn these skills which help us become more productive employees and managers.

When you consider how often you work in a team setting through your standard work week, you’ll see just how important it is to learn these lessons.

With the Team Working Excellence course behind you, you’ll be able to effectively deal with conflict, build quality relationships, and understand your team’s purpose so you can work more efficiently to achieve it.

When we understand these skills we can impart our knowledge on others, so that our colleagues and employees can learn how to an effective team member too.

By improving our performance within a team, we’re able to maximize the benefits of shared knowledge and responsibility that come naturally with working in a team environment!

Get the most out of your team and build a collaborative culture

If you’re new to creating eLearning content, there’s something you absolutely need to know before you get started – and that’s the importance of storyboarding. Good eLearning courses have one thing in common. They all use effective storyboarding in the development phase.

In fact, many eLearning professionals consider storyboards to be the most important element of online course creation. Why are they so important? Let’s take a look.

Storyboards give you a map of your content

Think of a storyboard as the foundation of your eLearning course, a map that illustrates your ideas and design elements. The storyboard document will clearly show all the visual, text and audio elements of every screen in an online course. The learning objectives of your online course can also be added to this document.

In this way, you use your storyboard to communicate your ideas and objectives to clients and developers. Diving straight into the development phase, without this solid foundation, makes production more difficult for everyone involved.

Storyboarding helps your development team

Having a strong storyboard for your development team to work from will make this phase far more efficient and also make your content flow more easily. The storyboard document will clearly show your programmer, graphic designer, illustrator and narrator exactly what they need to do.

For example, your storyboard may contain notes to developers like what media to be used, what elements get synched with which part of the audio narration, which elements would be clickable, and the resultant reaction. If you have a lot of people working together on your eLearning course, a storyboard will greatly help the collaboration process and keep things in order. As Denielle Richards writes, “the more people involved in the eLearning development process, the more important the storyboarding process becomes.”

“If you are developing courses as a team effort (rather than as a one-man band), then eLearning storyboards are crucial to the process, and I’m not clear exactly how a quality eLearning product could be developed without this important step,” she says.

With this, it’s also a lot easier to see if a concept will come together well – or not! When you show a storyboard to clients, they can easily approve or pass on your concept at this stage, meaning you won’t waste any further time or money in development if the idea isn’t hitting the mark. In the case of complex animations, where it takes a lot of time and budget to develop the final product, it is a good idea to have an approved storyboard from the client first.

You’ll also be improving quality control, as your storyboard will allow you to pick up on any errors and make sure everything flows well, screen by screen. Any dialogue and media elements can be tested in this stage of development. You might even decide to use a pilot, or test, group to see how your concept works with a relevant audience.

Storyboarding allows you to make changes to content

Because your storyboard is like a blueprint of your course materials, it makes it very easy to update content at any time. You can simply edit and update your storyboard document whenever you like, as your one central file. This means you don’t have to worry about different versions or any confusion.

This is also very useful if you want to easily translate your eLearning course into another language at some point in the future.

How to create a storyboard for your eLearning course

Now you know the benefits of using a storyboard when creating your course, you might be wondering how to get started.

Connie Malamed, writing for The eLearning Coach, outlines the four main ways to go about creating a visual storyboard:

Create a template in Word (in landscape mode) and let each page represent one screen

Create a template in PowerPoint and let each slide represent one screen

Create a template in a commercial storyboarding application

For the rapid development approach, begin writing the course directly in the authoring tool, such as Storyline, Captivate, Articulate Presenter, iSpring Presenter or any of the other hundred tools. In some tools, you can write the script and other notes in the Notes section below the slide. This integrates storyboarding with actual development.

You then choose the multimedia elements you will incorporate into your eLearning course, such as videos, audio clips and graphics, and describe each element in the corresponding part of your storyboard. Make sure you leave room on each screen for these elements – simply note their position on the page with a quick sketch or text description.

As you can see, storyboarding is a very powerful development tool for creating online content. Using storyboards in eLearning production will save you time, money and potential stress later down the track.

Want to discover more about what storyboarding can do for your eLearning? Enroll in this free online course, Instructional Design Essentials: Storyboarding, for more best practice tips on using text, mockups, and rapid-prototyping tools for storyboarding. You’ll learn how to publish your project, incorporate feedback and share storyboards with others.

Why storyboarding is important for eLearning development

As organizational leaders, it’s important for CEOs to support and champion employee training programs, and getting them on board with your plan is critical for success. Knowing how to talk to your CEO about training could be the difference between implementing a successful program, or being stuck with sub par development.

If you’ve been tasked with developing a training strategy, as a manager or HR professional, it’s important that you seek direct input from your CEO. You might think that chief executives are too busy to bother with these kinds of conversations, but it’s in the company’s best interest to have a CEO that provides input and feedback on this area.

By being directly involved in the company’s learning and development strategy, your organizational leaders can help to ensure that staff are equipped with the right skills and being supported in their professional development. To help you feel more comfortable discussing with your CEO about training, here are some points you may like to consider.

Discussing the organizational benefits of training

Before you approach the subject with your CEO, put some time into thinking about the benefits of training for both employees and the organization as a whole. What are the company’s priorities and goals? How will training help to actively support these goals?

CEOs will want to know that they’re getting a good return on investment for the money that is invested in training, so you should be able to identify and outline these benefits. If you’re not sure how to start the ball rolling, take this suggestion from Forbes in 5 Things You Should Be Talking To Your Boss About. You could say something like, “I’ve noticed that our new hires aren’t picking up on the new CRM program very easily. I’d love to put together some training documentation to help them learn it a little quicker. Here’s a quick outline I threw together—what do you think?”.

Eoghan Quigley, writing for eLearning Industry, agrees that for CEOs “prioritizing the development of their employees provides one of the biggest returns. Making sure that the culture is strong, that people are learning, and that they know we’re investing in them every day is always ROI positive”. Keep referring back to the organizational benefits of training when meeting with your CEO.

Talk to your CEO about bridging the skills gap

You can also discuss the importance of training in helping to bridge the skills gap in your organization. The skills gap is a challenge and concern for many modern companies, with a mismatch between the skills that employers want and need, and the skills that workers actually have. This mismatch, or gap, can be addressed through ongoing training.

Quigley looks at telecommunications giant AT&T as an example of a CEO who recognizes that ongoing training is essential for the success of a company and its employees. Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and chief executive, is reported to have said that employees who do not spend five to ten hours a week in online learning “will obsolete themselves with the technology”.

With ongoing training, leaders can make sure staff are equipped to deal with any changes in technology and the industry, while continually improving their skill sets and contributing to the success of the company. As Quigley says, while CEOs are responsible for setting long-term strategy and short-term goals for a company, “it will be employees that will execute against this strategy and these goals”.

Encourage your CEO to invest in eLearning

Telling your CEO that company staff need more training will go down a lot better if you can also offer a solution at the same time. What training tools and methods can you include in your strategy, that are up-to-date, effective, and provide good value for money?

One of the best ways for employees to learn new skills, or improve existing ones, is through online courses and eLearning. In fact, eLearning has become the most popular way to perform workplace training these days, with online training courses proving to be a very successful and effective way for staff to receive ongoing learning and development. A massive 77% of American companies are already offering online corporate training to their staff, with this figure likely to continue to grow throughout 2017.

With eLearning, you can significantly reduce the costs of training by removing the need for room hire, travel, trainers and facilitators, and other associated costs of traditional training methods. Outline these facts in your discussion, to show the potential benefits of online training for the company. By being prepared with some clear statistics, facts, and viable training solutions, you can have a far more open and productive conversation with your CEO.

This article was originally published on elearningindustry.com

Whether you’re a professional looking to enhance your coaching skills or an expert leader who wants a refreshing approach to helping others, the Coaching Skills course is the one for you. This course takes a unique attitude to coaching and turns traditional ideas on their heads, giving a whole new viewpoint on how we can make the most of our coaching experience.

Traditional ideas of coaching may work in some areas, but the long-term results from this type of friendly and sometimes over-supportive mentoring aren’t always clear. The Coaching Skills approach gives you a completely unique take on how to be the best coach possible so that you get the full potential from your employees.

When you think about coaches you’ve experienced in the past, whether it was someone at work in a supervisory role or a football coach during college sports, you’ll likely remember straight away if they were effective or not. A good coach should have a lifelong impact on us, and not necessarily with a friendship formed, but with the valuable lessons taught.

Coaching can be extremely effective, but maybe not necessarily in the traditional sense you might be thinking. This course helps you become a memorable leader to someone, giving you the skills and knowledge to get their absolute best from them. In turn, you’ll be able to witness sustained performance improvement in the workplace.

But what does the process entail and how is it different?

The Coaching Skills course focuses on a modern approach to coaching, called FACTS. This approach was developed by Ian Day and John Blakey in their book, “Challenging Coaching: Going beyond traditional coaching to face FACTS.” The book explains how most forms of coaching used in the workplace are outdated and shows you a new and improved way of coaching others.

So, what is the FACT approach to coaching?

F – Feedback - This course shows you how to overcome your fear of giving feedback, which can often hold managers back from getting real results and seeing a change from their employees.

A – Accountability – How being held accountable in the workplace can make you far more likely to succeed in your goals.

C – Courageous Goal Setting – Rather than setting easy goals that you know you’ll be able to accomplish with ease, the FACTS approach teaches you to be courageous so that you work even harder to achieve them.

T – Tension  - You’ll learn how to create healthy tension so that you keep employees on their toes at all time and ready for anything.

S – Systems Thinking – The FACTS approach gets you to look at coaching process from a systemic and holistic point of view.

Blog