Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #83
Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #83
Training isn't always the answer, but sometimes it really is.
As you might expect, I think a lot about training and development. It’s, like, my job.
This week, I rediscovered a couple of pieces I wrote last year about what training can do:
In both of those, I argue that if you want to recruit and retain top talent, you must invest in growing the people who work for you.
I was also reminded that there are some things the best training and development resources cannot fix.
6 Problems L&D Can't "Out-train"
Especially this one from that article:
1). A manager who will not give feedback or provide coaching. Yes, we can train managers how to conduct these activities. But I have been involved in too many discussions where this is not the case. Instead, the request for training is a workaround for those reporting to this leader who aren't getting the leadership they need from that person. Training can't replace a manager who will not have these conversations with their team members.
Yeah, you can’t outsource managing your people to the training department. That’s not how this works.
On to this week’s thought-provoking things!
Careers and the Workplace
Even Younger Employees Come In With a Skills Gap:
When you hire people right out of college, you will still need to train them on the current technology.
Random acts of kindness: 15 ideas for the workplace - I mean, why not? We could all use a little more kindness, right?
I think about this next topic a lot. We have so many meetings where the sole purpose seems to be updating information that could be done in 10 different collaboration apps instead. (Forget “this meeting could have been an email,” now this meeting could have been a Teams chat, a Slack message thread, or even a Google Doc.) - What to know about async communication in remote work?
Something I wrote a few years ago after hearing the story about the importance of writing and communication skills - Theo Epstein Works in Baseball Because He Could Write.
Online Life
Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
I learned that the factors harming our attention are not all immediately obvious. I had been focused on tech at first, but in fact the causes range very widely – from the food we eat to the air we breathe, from the hours we work to the hours we no longer sleep.
Ed Zitron’s newsletter this week focused on Silicon Valley and tech financing. Still, this quote rang true - “If tech wants to change its image, it has to recognize the amount of special treatment it’s received both in society and the media.”
Legal, Privacy, and Security
Less Data is (even) More Than Ever - Peter Sloane is just getting started on the topic of managing large volumes of data, so you might want to stay tuned to the blog.
I would worry about this too - It’s Game Over on Vocal Deepfakes:
"Real recordings will be called fake and fake recordings will be leaked as purportedly real. I don’t think the general population is prepared for this, and I worry that news media organizations aren’t either."
Mental Health in the Workplace
Speaking of our stolen attention - 5 Ways Multitasking Is Bad for Your Mental Health (and 4 Things to Do Instead) - We have all become multi-taskers at work or home. Realistically, our focus bounces back and forth between multiple things we aren't doing well.
The workforce well-being imperative:
We believe that three factors have an outsized impact on well-being in today’s work environment: leadership behaviors at all levels, from a direct supervisor to the C-suite; how the organization and jobs are designed; and the ways of working across organizational levels. We call these “work determinants of well-being.”
Thanks for reading, and here’s hoping that it’s a fine weekend where you are to spend some time not multitasking.