Missed goal
June 18th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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Never Give Up


 So, here we are; the first half of 2013 is almost over.  Can you believe it?  The relentless march of time is simply staggering.  But here is the question:  how are you doing with those New Year’s Resolutions?  Have you made headway?  Have you given up?  Have you forgotten what they even were?

The key to achieving goals is to set the right ones and then to focus on achieving them. 

If you have not made the headway you hoped ask yourself:

  • Perhaps I set too many goals? 
  • Perhaps I didn’t care as much as I thought? 
  • Did I have the right support in place for the when the going got tough?
  • Did I have the right structures set up to accommodate my behaviors?
  • How did I hold myself accountable for doing what I said I would do?
  • Did unforeseen obstacles stop me?

It is not too late.  If you are sad or frustrated, you can get back on the horse.  Choose the one thing you wish you’d succeeded at, and give it another go.  ONE THING.  Only one.  Get a buddy to help you. Make the time for it. Tell on yourself so everyone holds you accountable.  Craft a plan for obstacles. Never give up.

Han at Hands On
June 13th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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Bad Bosses – What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Smarter


My daughter has a wonderful job teaching music to babies and toddlers.  She taught herself to play 7 instruments to get the job, so plays 10 total.  The job is the perfect “day job” for her, a professional singer songwriter because she loves music and babies. She is insanely good at it, I know because I have sat in on her classes and my face hurt afterwards from grinning like an idiot.  Her babies absolutely adore her, and you can see how much they learn over time. The moms and nannies love her and sign up for more classes because of her.

The catch?  She has a terrible boss.  Let’s call him Max. How is Max terrible?

  1. Max never gives positive feedback.  The only feedback he gives is negative and he makes it mean and personal. There are no systems in place for his teachers to continue to develop themselves or incentive for them to seek feedback.
  2. The policy is that if a baby is clearly sick the baby should not come to class, and of course the same goes for teachers.  The whole class session is filled with passing out instruments; no one wants the teacher spreading a vile cold or strep throat.  But when my daughter has to call in sick her boss is mean about it. He has no back – up systems for substitutes so every time someone is sick he has a crisis on his hands.
  3. Every single one of his teachers works for his business as a “day job” to support themselves as they pursue dreams of making a living as professional musicians or getting graduate degrees.  Instead of facing this reality, Max tells his teachers that he wants them to work only for him.  When his teachers get great opportunities to have a gig or a tour he holds it against them instead of building the right network of teachers and leveraging the reality.

Do you hear the theme?  It isn’t so much that Max is a jerk, even though that is kind of true.  It is that he has not set up the right systems for his business to run easily.  Everything is a drag, a crisis, a misfortune.  My daughter is a bright kid, the thing that drives her crazy isn’t that Max isn’t very nice; it is that he isn’t very smart.  She tells me how she would solve Max’s business problems and in the process is acquiring quite the business mind.

But ultimately what I know for sure is that she is learning at least as much from having a not nice, not smart boss as she would having a great boss.

cliff 2
June 5th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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Making the Leap from Management to Leadership


Sitting down with your boss and your coach to discuss your own development plan can be daunting prospect, but for a new client recently it was a delight.  The client, let’s call her Betsy, is technically excellent and is having a hard time “getting out the weeds” as she says. This means rising above the day to day detail to let her people use their own judgment, develop them and  freeing Betsy up to think strategically about the future, and develop her organizational network. The boss, let’s call him James, is an incredibly positive and supportive boss and a tremendous communicator.  He was full of encouragement for Betsy to take the next step, and offered extremely valuable advice based on his own experience making the same transition years ago.

“I was worried that if my people didn’t need me every minute of every day that I wasn’t valuable anymore.  I was afraid that people might point at me and say “what is that guy doing?”

This is such a common fear, and maybe the number one obstacle to making the leap between constant “management” and actual leadership.  Ken Blanchard says that “the test of your leadership is not what happens when you’re there, but what happens when you’re not there.”  I look forward to teaching the client Situational Leadership II so that she can be comfortable delegating where appropriate.  And then we can work on creating her future as a senior leader in the organization.

ASTD 2013
May 29th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
1 Comment »

Leadership For All!


We had our own booth at this year’s ASTD Conference (American Society for Training and Development). There were about 8,000 workplace learning and development professionals from more than 70 countries coming together for speeches and a huge Exposition.  It was a big job and we met a lot of wonderful people who are really interested in our solution to leadership development for large crowds and a dispersed workforce, Blanchard Certified! Of course when you work the booth you don’t get to attend sessions, so I spent the whole 3 days asking anyone who attended a session to tell me what they learned.  What fun! Probably the biggest piece of wisdom came from Leigh Strohn, one of our sales associates, who got to hear a panel session Leading in a Worldwide Market with Marshall Goldsmith, Edward Reilly, our very own Ken Blanchard and Stephen MR Covey.

 One question was about how to keep the workforce growing professionally and learning, the endless quest.  Stephen MR Covey said that to ensure that learning and development is successful you have to have three things in place:

1)   You must connect leadership development to the key strategies in your organization

2)   You must give people a common language

3)   You must ensure leadership development is a process and not an event.

 We couldn’t have said it better.  In fact we took all three of these extremely important factors into consideration when we built Blanchard Certified.

 1)   We launch all groups going through Blanchard Certified with Impact Maps which show the direct connection between you and your role, the results that your department or business unit generates, and the strategic goals of your company.

2)   We teach people about Temperament, which is a simple (but not simplistic) way to understand how they operate and how that is different from how others operate, why it matters and what to do about it.  We also teach the tried and true Situational Leadership II™ Model which provides a common language for setting goals and getting things done across the organization.

3)   Blanchard Certified is a series of lessons that occur over time – at the participants’ convenience.  Participants come together to discuss content they have learned and how they are applying it. 

Please forgive the shameless self promotion, but it is thrilling to know that we are providing this great solution at a price that democratizes leadership development.  Leadership for All!

 

 

 

May 22nd, 2013
by Tiffany Adams
1 Comment »

Blanchard Certified at ASTD 2013


I’ll admit it. I am not a fan of trade shows. I do not pack early, I do not get all excited,  nor do I count down the days.

However. Even me, being the trade show skeptic that I am, had a great time at the national ASTD conference this year. We just went to market with our online leadership development solution about a year and a half ago, this was our first time being grown up, having a booth of our own and even a client dinner.

I also realized that because I work virtually and do not get to interact face to face with clients or colleagues, that this is a time to enjoy and cherish getting to know them more. So I thought I’d share a little bit of us with you, because at the end of the day our clients partner with us because of us.

A good looking booth and our great tech guy Scott Foster out of our Kansas City office holding down the fort.

Okay, so we (I mean I, I mean we) may have some hero worship even internally because Ken Blanchard is a guy who walks the talk, practices what he preaches, and whatever other cliche you need to use to understand that he is the walking definition of “authentic.”

Our clients agree.

It was standing room only at Scott Blanchard‘s presentation on Employee Work Passion.

The voices you hear on your voicemail or our phone conversations translate into some pretty tough women here at Blanchard Certified.

And the whole thing scales down to this:

And you know, at the end of the day, you can’t close down a trade show and successful relationship building without a Ken Blanchard dance party.

You haven’t gotten enough yet? Me either. Especially the part where Ken and Margie are dancing together.

This is the group of people I get to work with everyday and I am really proud of that. I am proud of who we are, what we are building, and the trust that our clients put in us. It is a special thing.

Thanks for letting us share!

 

Enjoying the nature
May 20th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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Do The Hard Stuff First


I have been talking a lot about brain function lately, because I have been learning about it, but also because it is so critical for leaders and knowledge workers to take good care of their brains.  In a recent post I talked about Baumeister’s work and noted how  important it is to make desicions or do the stuff that is going to require serious brain power first - while you are fresh, fueled and rested.  This came in from a colleague who heard me speak on this topic – I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

So you know how you are telling people to do the things that are the hardest first … I have a story to share.

We have a nonprofit that we started as the vision of our daughter last year in 2012 – Taxes forms are due May 15th – since Jan 1, 2013 I have been stressing about that process … we are a startup so we aren’t hiring someone to do it … each month with intent to do it … I found something else to focus on.  The day I sat down to do them this weekend I was pleasantly surprised to learn that if we took in under 50K in the year (which we had done just under 30K) we could go online and do a e-postcard.  There were 7 questions, my name our website our tax id and a box or two to check and we were done.  I think it took me 3 mins!  I laughed so hard!!! I had lost sleep on many nights because I didn’t want to do the task … yuck and what if I did it wrong and the responsibility for the nonprofit etc.  So you were in my head … Do the hard things first … we might be surprised as to how easy they are and then we can get them out of the way!

Just wanted to share (also I have a new treasurer that will just take care of it for me in the years to come – so I am really good to go now!)  Thanks for the teaching and now that I have had this experience – I will be doing the hard stuff first moving forward – hopefully as a daily practice!

Photo: Big Stock

Phone Pix -December 2012b 035
May 13th, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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Go To Bed


At a certain point in my life, 24 years ago,  I worked at night as a musical theatre actress, revving my engine for most of the afternoon to prepare for what was essentially a two hour athletic endurance test that started at 8 pm sharp.  It took a couple of hours for my heart rate to return to normal and it was customary for me to start winding down at around midnight, and be ready for bed at about 1 am.  Now this was all fine and well because I could usually sleep late the next day, or at least nap if I needed, because my entire life revolved around my job.

And then my daughter was born. 

Now, all newborns wake at night to eat, and Hannah was no exception. But Hannah also had some kind of internal clock that made her wake up for the day at 5:30 am.  There was no getting around it, she was up.  And so was I.  I took some time off from work when she was really little, but her Dad was also an actor and would come home from work at around 11 and expect us to have some quality time until his regular 1 am bedtime.  You can imagine that after about 4 months of 5 ish hours of interrupted sleep a night I was pretty much brain dead.  The amazing thing is that with going back to work, another baby and just…life; I kept it up for about seven years.  The researchers tell us that that sleep deprivation causes the brain to behave the same way as it would when impaired by alcohol.  I wonder just how much more I might have accomplished those years if I had actually ever slept.  The brain desperately needs sleep – there are chemical processes that happen at hour 7 and 8 of sleep that are essential to optimal functioning.  Listen to James Mass, sleep specialist,  on the topic here – basically everything you need to know about why to get your sleep and getting the best night’s sleep.

What are you doing at night instead going to bed?  Sitting in front of a screen?  Worst thing you could do, your brain interprets screen light as sun and thinks it is time to be alert.  Watching  TV?  Cut it out.  If you want to be thin, healthy, smart, creative and make the best decisions go to bed.

So my friends, this is the final post in the review of the work by Dr. Dan Siegel and David Rock called the Healthy Mind Platter.  The 7 areas to consider:

Sleep Time, Connecting Time, Down Time, Play Time, Focus Time, Time In and Physical Time -

 as you create the most brain friendly lifestyle you could possibly have.

May 8th, 2013
by Tiffany Adams
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Increasing Leadership Confidence at Ted’s Montana Grill


We love our Blanchard Certified clients. We also love when our clients share with us feedback on how using Blanchard Certified works. The clip above was sent to us from Ted’s Montana Grill‘s newsletter.

Increasing Awareness and Excitement Around Achieved Goals:

It was good to see the results at the restaurant when we implemented the one-on-ones and the goal sheets for the Team Members. While all the goals were not achieved, the awareness level was increased, and the excitement level from the Team Members when they achieved the goals was great. ~ John

Improving Confidence Levels in Leadership Styles:

I definitely feel this reinforced a lot of my ideas revolving around Team Building. By being able to amplify what people are good at, and isolate challenges and give those challenges the attention and development they deserve, I’ve been a more effective leader. My confidence levels in my own leadership styles have improved, and I feel more comfortable than I did previously. ~ Tyler

We are proud to be their partner and proud to have played a role in bringing together teams as they grow together and achieve their goals together. Making people and organizations great is what we love to do.

May 8th, 2013
by Tiffany Adams
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Bridging the Gap Between Becoming a Manager and Being Trained As One


FACT: The average age of managers when they first receive leadership training is 42. Yet, the average age when they become managers is 33.

FACT: Less than ten percent of employees under the age of 30 are provided the opportunity to participate in leadership development. (Source: Jack Zenger)

FACT: More people have mobile telephones around the world than have access to a flush toilet, according to the United Nations.

FACT: Investment in learning is becoming a priority and the shift of learning delivery is trending toward self-paced e-learning, according to recent research from International Data Corporation (IDC) reported by Chief Learning Officer.

Investing in those managers and future leaders now, as opposed to after they have been on the job for ten years, is finally a scalable and affordable possibility with Blanchard Certified™, a Cloud-based leadership development program. Blanchard Certified™ is an online leadership development solution inspired by leadership guru Ken Blanchard that makes practical leadership training immediately applicable to the day-to-day job.

With the release of Blanchard Certified™ 5.0, leadership development content is more available to those who need it most, in a self-paced e-learning format that is as portable as your favorite mobile device. The interface is interactive, easier to use, and ready to take on the go with iPad and tablet compatibility. Learners still experience the same powerful leadership development content proven to be effective over 33 years in training and development. Learners are also able to take key concepts from the online “classroom” to apply to both personal and organizational goals. Key new features based on client feedback include:

  • Enhanced quality, menu and navigation improvements making it easier than ever to get around
  • Strengthened content with state of the art instructional design
  • Less text, more automated motion graphics, and click to learn activities
  • More interactivity that allows users to learn while doing, keeping engagement and learning retention high
  • iPad compatible lessons and tools for users on the go
  • Improved discussion board to build community and facilitate conversations about learning

“The vision of Blanchard Certified is to make our phenomenal Blanchard content accessible, affordable, relevant and fun!” said Madeleine Homan Blanchard, co-founder. “Annual Reports like to claim that people are TRULY the most valuable asset to your organization. Proving the statement made in every Annual Report is now a scalable and affordable possibility.”

If you’d like more information on this topic, or to learn more about Blanchard Certified 5.0 please visit on our website or our Contact Us page for a guided tour.

About Blanchard Certified: Blanchard Certified has leveraged proven technology and content that enables anyone, from business leaders to individual contributors, to connect their operational and strategic vision to daily actions with trackable results. For the first time, not only is this time-proven content scalable and affordable, but we can take learning from the virtual classroom and connect it to operational bottom-line results. Inspired by Ken Blanchard. Powered by CD2 Learning.

Join the Blanchard Certified conversation on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter @blanchardcert, or like us on Facebook.

Note to editors: Trademarks and registered trademarks referenced herein remain the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact:
Tiffany Adams, Director of Marketing
Blanchard Certified
Tadams@blanchardcertified.com 
Phone: 402-261-8587

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
May 2nd, 2013
by Madeleine Blanchard
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The Real Reason to Exercise


What would you do if you heard that there was one simple thing you could do that would make you smarter, more creative and less likely to have senior moments in the future?  You would do it right?  OK.  Ready?  Here it is.  Exercise.  Move your butt.  Lift a weight.  Get your heart rate up.  Sweat.  There is simply no question that getting some exercise is critical to brain function.  There are studies upon studies showing that exercise makes you smarter, more creative, a better problem solver and is the number one dementia prevention measure.  One study with overweight kids which added a half hour of physical activity to the school programs showed a noticeable improvement in executive function and  grades. Another study with older participants showed that regular walking and lifting weights resulted in a marked improvement in memory function. Experts aren’t exactly clear about how much exercise or even what kind is best, but they are all agreed that some is better than none, and that our brains benefit when we challenge our bodies.  An expert answers some basic questions in a recent NY Times article. So if you can’t make yourself get out of the desk chair, out of your car or off the couch because you want to look better and fit into your closet full of clothes, do it for your brain.

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