Research Findings about Outdoor Adventure Training for Corporate & Management Development

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Factors Which Influence the Effects of Outdoor Education Programs

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Leadership:   Strengthening Leadership Development
Some months ago, I was invited to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to speak at a dinner for 120 CEOs and board members. They were all a part of the strategic investment house, called Khazanah, owned by the government of Malaysia.  Over time, they are  privatizing a piece of each of the many companies  they own.  They are called GLC’s (Government Linked Companies) and the government still has the controlling interest.   Khazanah is a very progressive and professional group of experts providing oversight and training for the CEOs, senior management and their boards of directors.  This group of companies produces over 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.  The market capitalization of the group is approx. 30% of the entire stock market.  This has been a major undertaking. 

They want their CEO’s to spend at least 30% of their time developing leaders.  That includes a minimum of one hour per quarter giving personal feedback to all of their direct reports.  They want high potential employees moved into positions to challenge their growth. 

They have designed detailed metrics and programs all included in:  The Orange Book for Management and The Green Book for Boards of Directors.  They focus heavily on their values and culture.  But most of all they focus on the  “importance of human capital.” 
This kind of leadership development needs to be a part of every organization, small, medium and large.  It was most impressive to see people walking their talk.
_____________________________________________ 

Howard Putnam speaks on leadership, change, transformation,  customer service, teams and ethics. The National  Speakers  Association inducted Howard into the CPAE (Council of Peers  Award of Excellence) Speakers Hall of Fame in 2005.  He also is  accredited as a CSP (Certified Speaking Professional). 

He is the former CEO of the highly successful Southwest  Airlines and the first CEO to take a major airline, Braniff  International,  into, through and out of Chapter 11, getting it  flying again  in less than two years.    

Howard authored “The  Winds of Turbulence”.   If you would  like more information on how purchase it go to 
http://www.howardputnam.com/products.asp

To check his  availability as a keynote speaker or seminar  facilitator, go to  http://www.speakersoffice.com or call  SpeakersOffice at   1-760-603-8110. 

Tim

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Every year on this day (April 1) I wonder who is going to be the first to play an April Fools’ joke on me. Luckily no one has done this but the day is still not over. For all of you who are curious about the history of “April Fools’ or All Fools’ Day it is a day celebrated in various countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool’s errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, such as the UK, Australia, and South Africa the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an “April Fool”.[1] Elsewhere, such as in France, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, The Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S., the jokes last all day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of January 1 as New Year’s Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.” (Wikipedia, 2010)

Anyway, I expect your Spring time transitions are going well.  Grand Dynamics has lots of exciting things happening this year such as the Grand Adventure <http://www.granddynamics.com/revitalize/the-grand-adventure.html> which is taking place in Jackson Hole Wyoming on August 19-22. Feel free to check out the Podcast  <http://granddynamics.podbean.com/2010/03/31/grand-adventure-teleconference-325/>  with Tim Walther and Chief Exum guide Christian Santelices if you would like to learn more about this exciting high-impact event. You can check out our team building events, seminars, speakers and more at our web-site, www.granddynamics.com <http://www.granddynamics.com/>  .  Amidst all the challenge and uncertainty, there abounds opportunity. I wish you well in seeking out yours and enjoying the process.

I look forward to hearing from you and working and playing together this year. Also feel free to send me some funny April Fools’ pranks that you did or had done to you as I am always looking for a good laugh. Until next time, LIVE YOUR ADVENTURE!!

Will Leggett

Regional Vice President
Grand Dynamics International
(201) 483-6255
will@granddynamics.com
www.granddynamics.com

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You’ll never have a product or price advantage again.
They can be easily duplicated,
but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
-Jerry Fritz

The goal as a company
is to have customer service that is not just the best,
but legendary.
-Sam Walton

Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game.
Service wins the game.
-Tony Alessandra

Biggest question:
Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service?
And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?
-Jeffrey Gitomer

The customer is king.
-unknown

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
-Roger Staubach

The customer is never wrong, they might not be right,
but they are never wrong.
-JT

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it.
It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
-Peter Drucker

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again
and bring their friends.
-Walt Disney

If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will.
-unknown

Our life is frittered away by detail.
Simplify, simplify!
-Henry David Thoreau

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world,
they might each tell 6 friends.
If you make customers unhappy on the Internet,
they can each tell 6,000 friends.
-Jeff Bezos

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect.
They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.
-Donald Porter

Our greatest asset is the customer!
Treat each customer as if they are the only one!
-Laurice Leitao

Well done is better than well said.
-Benjamin Franklin

To my customer. I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it.
I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.
-unknown

In business you get what you want
by giving other people what they want.
-Alice Macdougall

As far as customers are concerned you are the company.
This is not a burden, but the core of your job.
You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back,
perhaps even to make or break the company.
-unknown

People don’t want to communicate with an organization or a computer.
They want to talk to a real, live, responsive, responsible person
who will listen and help them get satisfaction.
-Theo Michelson

More Inspirational Customer Service Quotes

If you want to be creative in your company, your career, your life,
all it takes is one easy step… the extra one.
When you encounter a familiar plan, you just ask one question:
What ELSE could we do?
-Dale Dauten

Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck,
because they do.
-unknown

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
-unknown

Here is a simple but powerful rule-
always give people more than what they expect to get.
-Nelson Boswell

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.
He is not dependant on us, we are dependent on him.
-unknown

There is only one boss. The customer.
And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down,
simply by spending his money somewhere else.
-Sam Walton

Washrooms will always tell if your company cares about its customers.
-unknown

Every great business is built on friendship.
-JC Penney

Quality, is job one.
-Ford Company

One customer, well taken care of,
could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.
-Jim Rohn

It’s much harder to provide a great customer service
than I would have ever realized.
It’s much more art than science in some of these other areas
and not just about the facts but about how you are conveying them.
-David Yu

Customers may forget what you said
but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.
-unknown

More business is lost every year through neglect
than through any other.
-Jim Cathart

Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.
-Gucci Family Slogan

The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.
-William H. Davidow

The purpose of a business is to create a mutually beneficial relationship
between itself and those that it serves.
When it does that well, it will be around tomorrow to do it some more.
-John Woods

The customer’s perception is your reality.
-Kate Zabriskie

Customer service is training people
how to serve clients in an outstanding fashion.
-unknown

Be everywhere, do everything,
and never fail to astonish the customer.
-Macy’s Motto

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How do you think it relates? — Posted by Tim Walther

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Heres the High Level:

Professor David Guest at King’s College, who analysed the survey, says: “A key theme to emerge from the survey is that the notion of employee engagement is more important than ever and is set to be the big issue for 2009 and beyond. Redundancies, more assertive management, and cuts in pay and training are all likely to impact on levels of employee engagement.”

Here’s is the full article.  What you will find, is that employee engagment is critical. When you are ready to improve employee engagment, contact Grand Dynamics!  Enjoy. – Tim

City law firm Speechly Bircham has teamed up with King’s College London HRM Learning Board to conduct a survey of senior HR managers. The survey paints a challenging picture for UK businesses; it reveals the damage caused by the economic downturn to employee engagement with stress and claims of bullying and harassment on the increase, while pay, bonuses and training budgets are being cut.

The survey shows that, despite widespread workforce reductions continuing, 28% of organisations are still experiencing staff shortages. Interestingly when asked about the criteria for selecting people for redundancy, an employee’s absence record was cited as one of the top criteria. Maintaining employee engagement is cited as the biggest challenge facing bosses.

Reductions in pay and training budgets: 36% of respondents reported a reduction in the size of pay increases, with 33% having reduced the number of staff receiving a bonus and 45% reducing the size of the bonus pool; while 37% reported a reduction in training and development budgets.

Commenting on the findings, Richard Martin, employment partner at Speechly Bircham, said:

“Employers need to realise that although their immediate reaction may be to cut bonuses and pay pools, they do still need to invest in the safeguarding of their talent long-term.”

“One way they can do this is to try, wherever possible, to maintain existing training and development programmes, as cutting back on training will only bite back in the future when they are faced with a glut of underdeveloped staff. The ongoing need for specialist skills is particularly pertinent given the UK’s longstanding, wider skills crisis. The report identifies talent management as a key concern going forward as well as ongoing problems with a shortage of skilled staff. There is an obvious disconnect between a skills shortage on the one hand and a cut in training budgets on the other.”

Increasing workplace problems: 29% of senior HR managers reported an increase in levels of stress among employees, and almost a third of respondents reported an increase in employee relations problems including bullying, stress and harassment. Despite this, 25% reported a reduction in levels of sickness absence.

Richard Martin comments: “This is a clear rejection of the Benylin advert! While an increase in stress might usually be reflected in higher levels of sickness absence, staff appear to be more reluctant to take time off as they rightly realise this may expose them to greater risk in cutback programmes.”

“Employers need to be wary, however, of taking into account sickness absence caused by stress resulting from workforce bullying and harassment or they may be faced with claims.”

Redundancies and staff shortages: 42% of businesses reported redundancies in the past year, and of them, 80% had used compulsory redundancy. Despite this, 28% said they were still experiencing staff shortages – and that the problem lies in finding staff with specific qualifications/skills.

The effect of a trade union presence on grievances: Senior HR managers responding to the survey felt that, looking ahead to the next twelve months, the factor that makes the greatest difference to a rise in grievances is whether or not there is a trade union presence. 33% of those with a union presence expect an increase in the number of grievances compared with about 18% per cent of those with other forms of employee representation or no representation. This is particularly surprising as a union presence is not associated with the rise in grievances in the previous 12 months.

Tougher management and an increase in grievances: 29% of respondents reported an increase in grievances over the past year; 23% expect more to come in 2009. The main grievance issues cited were relations with senior and line management (18.5%) and bullying and harassment (15%). In the coming year, an 11% increase is expected in grievances associated with pay and conditions.

Richard explains: “There seems to be a real concern about grievances escalating considerably at a time when employee engagement is cited as a major concern. With the abolition of the statutory dispute resolution procedures as of April 2009, employers will have to continue to devote energy and attention to their internal dispute resolution processes. Managers must realise that aggressive management is not always the way to drive efficiencies across a business.”

“What is encouraging is that 42% of those who had made staff redundant in the past year, engaged in some form of collective consultation.”

Major business challenges: The top HR challenges for the next year are seen as: maintaining employee engagement (cited by a huge 58%), succession planning (44%), talent management (38%), managing redundancies (35%) and, perhaps surprisingly, managing growth and expansion (31%).

Professor David Guest at King’s College, who analysed the survey, says: “A key theme to emerge from the survey is that the notion of employee engagement is more important than ever and is set to be the big issue for 2009 and beyond. Redundancies, more assertive management, and cuts in pay and training are all likely to impact on levels of employee engagement.”

Recruitment decline: Half of all respondents said that there had been a decrease in general recruitment. However, interestingly only 17% reported a decrease in recruiting graduates.

Richard Martin explains: “In past recessions, one of the first steps taken was to cut graduate recruitment. When the economy recovered, employers realised they had missed out on a generation coming through the ranks. Employers appear to have learned their lesson and are maintaining at least some graduate recruitment for the moment.”

Impact on HR departments: The downturn has not hit HR departments themselves disproportionately – 25% say they have actually increased headcount over the past 12 months. Restructuring of HR departments continues apace. 38% had restructured in the previous year and 31% expect to do so in the next year.

Professor David Guest comments: “Contrary to expectations in such a volatile environment, is that a remarkable number of HR functions are satisfied with how they are able to influence their organisations and the support they receive. This would appear to be a good news story for HR professionals, who have sometimes been seen as the poor relation when compared to other functional areas.”

Stuart Woollard, Managing Director of King’s HRM Learning Board and co-author of the survey report comments:

“It is evident that organisations are facing serious workforce issues that are a direct fallout from the current economic environment. There are clear challenges here for management to grasp quickly and act upon to avoid damaging any strategy to ‘ride the recession’. Fortunately, HR functions appear to be anticipating potential problems such as disengaged employees and the impact of stress, which if left unchecked may have significant additional cost and performance implications for staff and businesses.”

“However, it will be interesting to see if HR can push these to the top of management agendas. HR functions will need to play a central role to drive actions that mitigate the negative outcomes that arise from this recession and help their organisations create a stable and engaged workforce that will take them through and beyond this exceptionally challenging period.”

Notes to editors

Riding the Recession? The state of HR in the current economic downturn is one of the most comprehensive surveys to date on the effect of the downturn on employers and their staff. The questionnaire was distributed to approximately 5,000 predominantly private sector senior HR managers in November 2008. 329 responses were received by early December in time for analysis. A large majority of the respondents hold the title of Human Resource Director or Head of HR. The data was analysed by Mike Clinton, David Guest and Stuart Woollard at King’s.

Speechly Bircham’s Employment group is a leading employment law practice meeting the diverse needs of a broad range of employer and senior employee clients. The employer clients include public and private companies, partnerships and other organisations, based in the UK and overseas, across a wide range of business and professional sectors, with a strong focus on financial services. The team handles sensitive and complex issues across the spectrum of the employment relationship. The group has specialist expertise concerning immigration issues and works closely with the firm’s pension and employee benefit teams. The team is highly regarded for its experienced, discreet and practical approach.

King’s HRM Learning Board is a world leader in providing effective and meaningful links between academia and the HR community. It provides a focus for mutually beneficial and productive long-term partnerships, bringing together academic experts and key leaders and professionals from industry and government. The Learning Board is a conduit to the latest global thinking, research, and learning in organisational analysis and HR management. It also enables access to the unique talent pool of academics, researchers and HRM students at King’s.

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        Published in the Association for Experiential Education “Horizon” Newsletter

By Tim Walther, M.S.

 As Experiential Training and Development practitioners, we all understand and value the importance of “soft skills” training. This synopsis provides an overview of Emotional Intelligence as it relates to Experiential Training and Development.

Experiential Training and Development (ETD) practitioners understand and value the importance of “soft skills” training.  As practitioners, we intuitively know that experiential methods develop these skills, often very quickly.  However, by their very definition, “soft skills” are hard to measure.  Without such measures, we as trainers lack the data to develop business model for selling such trainings to skeptical front line managers, human resource directors, and other key corporate decision makers.  “Where is my return on investment?” is what you know they are thinking. 

                One excellent measure of soft skills that has emerged in today’s training and development research  is emotional intelligence (EI). EI research provides the ETD practitioner an opportunity for assessing areas of ETD programming and tracking the results.  Detailed in leading publications, including the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, and recognized by training and development experts world wide, EI has literally redefined what it takes to be effective in the workplace.

                What is Emotional Intelligence?  There are two primary models that have surfaced in the realm of EI: the Goleman model and the BarOn Model.  Goleman’s model identifies four strategic areas: awareness of self (emotionally); awareness of others’ emotional states; management of self; and management of other’s emotional states. Dr. Reuven Baron defines EI as “an array of personal, emotional and social competencies and skills that influence one’s abilities to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures.”  A competency may be defined as a personal trait or set of habits that lead to more effective or superior job performance.   BarOn has identified EI competency areas, each with sub-constructs, to include  intra-personal, interpersonal, stress management, adaptability and mood competencies.

 Today’s business is unlike the previous decades.  Everything happens in real-time.  Other factors that have emerged in today’s business world include globalization, technology, speed, competition, decreased organizational hierarchy, a shift from management to leadership and employee retention challenges.  Businesses today now require innovative training and development solutions that not only impact the bottom line, but provide valuable employee incentive as well.   While technical competency and cognitive ability are important for today’s business person to be successful, it simply isn’t enough anymore.  It is simply an occupational hurdle – an expectation that today’s corporate professional already has these skills and abilities.  Where research is showing a big difference is in identifying those professionals with low EI and high EI.  And everywhere that research has been conducted, the professionals with higher EI are running circles a round those without strong emotional competencies.

                Fortunately, it has been shown that EI, unlike IQ, can be learned.  Furthermore, research indicates that experiential training is a particularly effective method for developing EI.  Properly designed and ongoing EBTD training and development focused on developing specific EI competencies will have valued, lasting impact.

                How is EI Measured? The BarOn EQ-i is  a current measure of choice for emotional intelligence.

Normed on over 60,000 people in thirty countries, the EQ-i is a paper and pencil test that has 133 brief items and a 5-point Likert response set.  It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.  The test has been used to predict successful job performers, including Air Force recruiters, district managers in a large automotive corporation, middle manager insurance sales persons, non-college educated successful businesspersons, and upper level financial consultants for one of the Big 6 consulting firms, as well as aggressive behavior in the police force.  Employees who are selected using the BarOn EQ-I show greater productivity, reduced turnover and consistently out perform their co-workers. (EQ-I Technical Manual, Baron, 1999).

For the ETD practitioner of the future, Emotion Intelligence assessment tools and training and development applications certainly deserve attention.  Focusing soft skill development toward specific EI competencies can lead to great advances in demonstrating the efficacy of ETD programming.  At last, we may have the answers we have been looking for, and a process for addressing those age-old questions of the efficacy of soft skill training.  For more information on the emotional intelligence assessment and training, contact Grand Dynamics at info@granddynamics.com

Tim Walther, M.S. is the President of Grand Dynamics, Inc., a training and development company specializing in corporate retreats, business consulting and health and wellness services. Grand Dynamics is based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Tim holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Business Psychology and a Masters in Experiential Education focused on organizational development and leadership applications. Grand Dynamics provides a variety of services incorporating the use of Emotional Intelligence as a platform for increasing personal and professional performance for individuals, teams and organizations. For more information, you can contact Tim Walther at tim@granddynamics.com or call 307-733-1989.

This article was published in the Association for Experiential Education Newsletter, Horizon, Fall 2002.

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