17Dec 2008 by Melanie Wass No Comments

Season’s Greetings

General
It's that time of the year. No wonder they call it the 'silly season'. Everyone is frantically getting their jobs done before heading off on a break; racing to the shops for Christmas fare and gifts; and remembering all those people they lost touch with during the year. If we lost touch with you during the year, forgive us. We'll make it one of our New Year Resolutions to do better at keeping in touch! As you head off for the crazy time we call Christmas, keep a thought in mind for those less fortunate. Be grateful for what you do have, even if your world is looking uncertain. Commit to taking more responsibility and control in 2009. Enjoy your Season and may all good things occur for you. Thank…
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30Oct 2008 by Melanie Wass No Comments

Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and Mentoring
Chris Brooks and I led a lively facilitated discussion last night at AITD's NSW professional development evening. It was inspiring to hear the level of knowledge and experience in the room. Lots of bright ideas and tons of interpretations, views and ongoing questions. One of the pervading issues revolved around trying to tease coaching and mentoring apart.  Perhaps one of the great learnings from the evening were: coaching and mentoring are about the learner, not what we call the initiative fundamentally we still need a needs analysis to identify the issue and the best approach mentoring involves coaching conversations and coaching may use mentoring there are more similarities than differences each organisation needs to contextualise their own definition of coaching and mentoring coaching and mentoring need a structure and process…
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20Oct 2008 by Melanie Wass No Comments

Learning and Quality

Learning
On a networking site I belong to there was a great question recently so I thought I'd post the question as well as one of the top answers. Q Anyone with experience applying quality principles to the learning process? Looking for ideas on how quality can be used to reduce time, waste and variability in how people learn. What I'm looking for are more specific examples such as used Kaizen to reduce classroom time by 20%. Used six sigma to measure learning outcomes. Used lean principles ... (more…)
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10Oct 2008 by Melanie Wass No Comments

Action Learning

Learning
In my role as President of the NSW Division of the Australian Institute of Training & Development, I am involved in the wide array of learning that takes lace in the adult world, especially at work. I stumbled upon this short paper by Bob Dick and have reproduced it here as it makes quite clear what Action Learning / Research is about. It's an area which is gaining favour these days especially after the visit by Michael Marquardt.  (more…)
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03Oct 2008 by Melanie Wass No Comments

Success is …

Personal Development
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful” Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965 Medical Missionary, Theologian, Musician, and Philosopher “Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure” Earl Wilson, 1907- Newspaper columnist “The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear” Brian Tracy Trainer, Speaker, Author, Businessman “Successful people are successful because they form the habits of doing those things that failures don't like to do” Albert Gray
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