by Tara Powers
This article is about clarity of purpose for you, your team, and your business. It includes simple yet powerful steps that when discussed, analyzed, agreed upon, and written down, will provide a clear expectations and a compelling direction for 2010.
The steps outlined in this article are not confusing or difficult. However, many business owners, teams and individuals don’t do it. Why? Here are the excuses that get in the way: Read more »
by Zoe Training staff
When Tara Powers isn’t busy running her own training and development organization, she is also managing her other venture, Mama Means Business, a resource that coaches and supports “mompreneur” businesses, providing already proven resources that help women launch successful businesses FAST. In this interview, Tara gives us some insight into her passions for her career and everyday life.
Why did you become a speaker/trainer?
I organically got into training 15 years ago when I was asked to train a bunch of managers on how to understand their budget. The jolt of energy and excitement I got when I was teaching someone was enough to make me go back to school and get my master’s degree in Organizational Management. This led me into the HR field for many years where I was able to grow and build a training department. My experience has helped me to understand that I have a real opportunity to change people’s lives for the better if I can help them identify how to make small behavioral shifts that can give them fast results and big impacts on their team and company. I believe that it’s up to each of us to ask what we want to be known for, get clear on our values and vision, and make decisions that are in alignment with who we are. This is what I try to get across when I am speaking or training. Read more »
One of my favorite tools that I use when I teach college students or train Project Management, Business Analysis, or Leadership for organizations is the Team Contract.
The team contract is a document outlining agreements about how the team will work together. Team contracts contain topics such as “Commitments,” “Participation,” “Communication,” “Problem Solving,” “Decision-Making,” “Conflict Management,” “Use of Technology,” and “Meeting Guidelines.”
Looking at the group dynamics of Forming, Norming, Storming, Performing, and Adjourning, the team contract speeds up the Norming phase and helps prevent/mitigate the Storming phase, so the team can get to the Performing phase faster–making your team more efficient. Read more »
by Zoe Training staff
Starting with a strong foundation in accounting, Dan Chenoweth has a broad background in American and international business. His focus on general management issues inherent in today’s changing business environment involves organization leadership; business process analysis and improvement; project management; strategic supplier relationships; team development; and change management. In every situation, Dan helps clients take their strategy to the bottom line.
What’s your favorite topic(s) to present on? Why?
Business ethics. It is a multi-faceted, complex topic and there is no lack of “fresh/new” material! Ethics do count! They are relevant and we need to have more discussion about them in these tumultuous times. Read more »
Ten years ago I was a professor of Gender in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Almost every semester, I taught a course in Sex, Gender, and Society and several times during that course I invited a M2F post-operative transgendered person, “Terri,” to discuss transgender issues with my students. I had several conversations with Terri outside of class, and she told me about feeling like a woman trapped in the body of a man, who went through counseling, cross-dressing, hormone replacement therapy, and costly operations to become the woman she perceived herself to be. I used to joke with Terri that she was more female than I, which meant that she wore stilettos, clothes that showed her curves, and talked in a high voice, none of which I did. From Terri, I learned about being transgendered from a person, not a textbook. She told me about family, work, and personal relationship issues that she faced in her transition and about her daily decisions whether or not to tell people she encountered about her “secret.” Terri also told me about the danger and fear she lived with daily as a woman who passed, but whose secret might be revealed to someone who perceived her as a threat. As a woman and an intellectual, I was well-informed, I thought, about being transgendered. Read more »
by Zoe Training staff
Matt Baca is not only an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Colorado, he also likes to call himself a “Corporate Trainer with a Humorist Twist,” providing high-energy, highly participatory training sessions for international business students and professionals in universities and businesses spanning the globe, including Latin America, Europe, and Central and Far East Asia. Matt answers some of our interview questions about his life as a worldwide trainer.
What are your most popular presentation topics?
How to Use Humor in the Workplace, Effective Presentation Skills, Effective Writing in the Workforce, Organizational Development Strategies for SMBs, How to Create a Learning Organization, and Learning with Cases. Read more »
by Tara Powers
How many times have you spent time and money on a training program that under-delivered? Maybe you’ve heard yourself say “everyone loved the facilitator but we haven’t seen any measurable results.” The problem usually isn’t the facilitator, the learners, the topic, or the material. The problem is usually due to the learning environment prior to, during, and following the training event.
Over the past 10 years I’ve had the pleasure of training over thousands of people in various organizations across the country. I know what makes training stick and I know what doesn’t. I can recognize when there is a high probability for change and impact and when a training initiative will fail. What it boils down to is a very simple equation:
Training + Environment = Results Read more »
by Zoe Training staff
Retired from her position as Senior Instructor Emerita from the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Eleanor Hubbard, PhD, is passionate about teaching adults the varied subtopics of diversity, including gender, race/ethnicity, social class, age, and sexual orientation, with a special emphasis on workplace diversity.
What’s your favorite topic(s) to present on and why did you become a speaker/trainer?
My favorite topic to present is diversity and that is why I became a trainer. I am passionate about diversity, and I love discussions with other adults about race/ethnicity, gender/transgender, social class, age, and sexual orientation. When marginalization occurs, spaces opens up for lively, interesting, practical and sometimes even life-changing discussions. There is no room for guilt, only opportunities to change. That’s why I do it. Read more »
by Julie Miller
A survey was recently conducted in which over 1,000 professional people were asked what they were most bothered about when it came to writing. The overwhelming answer: Getting started and getting organized. Here are some tips to getting started and getting organized with any document you have to write:
1. Consider your audience first and foremost. You can be a brilliant writer but if your words do not connect with the reader, you’re (or, I should say, they are…) lost. Think who is my reader and what do they need to know (rather than, what do I want to tell them)? Keep an image of your reader in your mind’s eye. How does your reader feel or think about your topic? Read more »
by Zoe Training staff
Would you believe part of the Zoe cadre is a team of horses? According to Christina Haxton, who occasionally integrates them into her training sessions, horses are ideal teachers: they are responsive beings with acute awareness of and sensitivity to their surroundings. Like people, horses have individual personalities as well as physical abilities and limitations. And horses very accurately sense a person’s level of trust, confidence, awareness, and interpersonal skills.
In one of her team-building courses called “Lessons from the Herd,” participants have an opportunity to get in an arena with two to three horses – without having to ride them – to learn team-building skills directly from the animals. With more than 20 years of experience owning, training, and showing her own horses, Christina incorporates her management experience and expertise as a marriage and family therapist with knowledge of equine behavior to offer a unique perspective to businesses and organizations.
Following are Christina’s responses to our interview questions.
What are your most popular presentation topics?
“How to Avoid ‘Lizard Brain’ and Turn Conflict into Opportunity” and “Lessons from the Horse: The Art & Science of Building Trust with Your Herd.” Read more »
by