My grandmother reinforced constantly that “anything is possible”. Even now, she calls to ask why there is nothing new on my Facebook. As any admiring grandson, I honed my mind to practice seeing possibilities and thought I was pretty good at it. Yet one moment helped me realize how much we limit possibilities. I walked across fire. Stepping off the burning coals led to an ‘aha moment’ realizing that if we can walk across fire, then what else is possible? From that point forward, I approached life and projects differently. Grandma was right - anything is possible.

Lately, I feel as if I’ve walked across coals again. This year an art gallery chose to hang my photographs and I became the possibility of professional photographer. Was it possible that people would buy my art? The answer became yes when a famous Canadian painter purchased two photographs before the show even opened. And again, the ‘aha moment’ demanded the question, what else is possible?

Learning experiences open us up to possibilities. New possibilities for how we do things. And when we practice what we’ve learned, we create new possibilities for who we can be. Designing and facilitating learning experiences with highly-committed learners means I get to see new possibilities discovered by and created by participants daily. As such, it becomes easier to become a new possibility myself. For that I am eternally thankful.

Doug Bolger
Chief L(earn)ing Officer, L(earn)²

P.S. If you want to come to the next gallery show, email me at DBolger@iLearn2.com

Turning Strategy into Action

First impressions are arguably the most influential interactions we face. They dramatically affect our perception of companies, stores, restaurants, associations and most importantly people. It becomes increasingly important in today’s society to capitalize on our first impressions to ensure we get an opportunity to develop a relationship.

It’s extremely important for conference attendees’ especially first timers to have an opportunity to connect. Otherwise attendees might lose their chance at developing any form of beneficial relationship inadvertently affecting their perception of your association and its members.

We recommend providing attendees a systematic approach that enables them to build relationships and interact with arguably the most beneficial association resource, its people. An approach that ensures attendees effectively capitalize on the opportunities to build strong lasting relationships. This approach improves their capability and capacity to effectively achieve maximum short and long term benefits. Not only will they learn effective relationship building techniques but practical networking tactics germane in future business situations.

Our fun and engaging networking exercises encourage individuals to proactively interact during the session and break free from their “shell”. Their newly developed networking skills are directly applicable in every session following and translates into applicable skills to share back in the office. This also increases the percentage of returning attendees because they create lasting connections.

Our L(earn)² Open-Up at Orientation™ experience provides unique networking opportunities while simultaneously providing effective methods to build stronger relationships. Methods such as interacting with other members, choosing the most appropriate sessions to attend and what to do during breaks and cocktail sessions.

You determine which areas of focus you want your attendees to learn. Create something special so that your attendees have the best conference possible.

For more information on this experience please contact us at 416.410.6434 x25 or email DDemoe@iLearn2.com

Many organizations spend a great deal of time discussing strategy within their Executive boardrooms. Don’t get us wrong – these strategic discussions are very important. If all of your discussions about strategy are only held in executive boardrooms, executing that strategy will be a very difficult undertaking and you will likely find your organization stuck in the same spot as last year.

As minds all over the world shift to economic factors, as profit warnings are issued and sales targets are missed, having a strategy that employees believe in and are committed to becomes of vital importance. Hewitt Associates’ calls this employee engagement. The HR consulting giant, authors of The 50 Best Employers in Canada survey, defines this as the “degree of emotional and intellecutal commitment to the organization.” In other words, people committed to execution, to getting stuff done even in the most difficult economic climate. In the Hewitt survey the average employee engagement stands at over 77 percent compared to an average score of 50 percent for most employers in Canada.

One of the best ways we know of to increase employee engagement is give employees a voice and ability to contribute to organizational strategy and to the plan of execution. In L(earn)² Inspire the Future™, employees are given an opportunity to create a strategy they can fully commit to. They are given an opportunity to not only define the past and current state of the company but most importantly, engages your team in defining and creating the future of your organization. This program reinforces the employees’ joint responsibility in affecting the changes required to achieve the future state. Participants become more involved and engaged in their work – thus driving the organization forward.

What’s your organization’s employee engagement score?

For more information on L(earn)² Inspire the Future™ contact our Solutions Department at 416.410.6434 x25 or email DDemoe@iLearn2.com

You invest a lot of money in your development programs, not to mention a lot of time and the fear always seems to be – “Do They Work?”

“Can we really create lasting change or have we just organized a great day?”

Lasting change or transformation requires four elements; an awareness of where you are; an articulation of where you want to be; an acknowledgement that true transformation is a journey and most importantly a comprehensive map of how to get to your destination with concrete evidence that you are making progress on the journey.

L(earn)² is committed to developing L(earn)ing maps for organizations and our defined L(earn)ing Levels are the sign posts that illustrate an organizations progress. The Levels help define the true starting point of a company or team and define the journey that will be required to guarantee lasting transformation.

Recognition – Acknowledgment of a specific behaviour, thought pattern, or dymanic within an individual or within a team

Distinction - Awareness that alternative behaviours, thought patterns and dynamics will create alternative outcomes

Internalization – Creating an awareness or desire that alternative behaviours may be appropriate for myself or my team

Application – Testing period of new behaviours . A period where new ways of engaging may feel foreign or even uncomfortable as it is different from our standard default behaviour

Synthesis – Adoption of new behaviours as our new standard or default. This level of learning becomes the natural state

In using these five L(earn)ing levels organizations can create an accurate starting point for an employee development program and ensure that the investment in L(earn)ing is rewarded with true and lasting transformation.

2008 started with a bang for L(earn)². We packed our bags and headed to Seattle for PCMA’s Annual Meeting. As an Affinity Partner of PCMA we had the pleasure of designing eight learning experiences that focused on a wide variety of meeting management issues. Here are a few of the highlights from our experience at the conference.

L(earn)² designed a customized experience for PCMA’s Chapter Leaders that enabled them to tackle some of the associations most common challenges. It was amazing to watch as the Chapter Leaders began to find solutions to previously unsolved issues.

Next, we welcomed the first-time attendees and a few PCMA veterans to our custom designed networking orientation. This orientation was far from ordinary. Through specially designed networking exercises participants discovered how simple it really was to become close with each other and learned what the conference had to offer.

After helping first-time attendees make lasting connections we took the stage with L(earn)² Improv to Improve™. In this experience participants learned to understand the affects of emotional content and context of words. This style of listening that the participants learned assists them in conflict resolution, relationship building and even in sales.

Following the show we set sail with L(earn)² Save the Titanic™ where participant’s learned true leadership in the context of a team. They learned individual responsibility in the success of the team and the impact they have on the team’s production.

We switched things up and continued the engagement with L(earn)² Profit from Change™. Everyday our world is continuously changing and our ability to manage change affects the success of all our initiatives personally and professionally. In this experience participants learned to manage change by understanding why it happens, when it happens, and how to use any changing environment to their advantage.

As we continued to motor along towards the finish line we developed a sales training experience that was truly original. In L(earn)² Create Site Inspections That Sell™ participants discovered new and unique sales techniques that improved their ability to communicate their value propositions. By understanding customer's buying preferences this dramatically increases the likelihood of the sale.

We really enjoyed meeting the hundreds of meeting management professionals and sharing our learning philosophy. Seattle was great but New Orleans here we come!

For more information on any of the above experiences contact 416.410.6434 x25 or DDemoe@iLearn2.com

L(earn)²’s first timer orientation showed me how easy it really is to build a professional network. I really enjoyed the variety of relationship building techniques that L(earn)² taught. It provides attendees the confidence to truly interact and connect with others. Their lively and adrenalin-building approach is a great way to start any conference.

Barbara J. Parker, CMP - National Director, Meetings and Travel - Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation