Tuesday 9 December 2008

Free Training Resources

Trainer Bubble provides customisable training resources at what seems to be very reasonable prices. However what is exceptionally reasonable is the access they provide to free training resources. Follow the links for access to sample courses (mainly extracts not full courses), energisers, icebreakers, sample documents, quizzes, quotes and loads more.

Trainer Bubble free training resources

Disclaimer: Not a customer and no relationship with the website or company. Just happy to find good free resources being made available to trainers.


Thursday 20 November 2008

Outliers: The Story of Success

New book from Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers: The Story of Success"

The blurb states:

"A brilliant new book from the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever. He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius. Just as he did in Blink, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions and creates an entirely new model for seeing the world. Brilliant and entertaining, this is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate."

I really enjoyed his earlier books, "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" and this ones promises to be equally as thought provoking.

Malcolm Gladwell also write regulalrly on his website Gladwell.com

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Mind Apples

With all the talk about our eating habits and physical health Mind Apples wants to know if you are getting your five-a-day for your mind

Monday 7 July 2008

The Myths of Training

There are a couple of interesting articles on Trainingzone about the way in which facts, figures or statistics can be introduced in to training programmes without checks on their authenticity. Two of the most commonly used studies are exposed.

Firstly, the proposition that the retention rates for different presentation methodologies are:

10% read
20% hear
30% see
90% do

It would appear that these figures have no basis in fact.

More here

Secondly, the the oft quoted communication statistics of...

55% Body language
38% verbal
7% words

...needs to be couched in very specific terms, in particular we need to be aware that the study by Professor Albert Mehrabian identified preferences in the context of feelings. He explains that,

"this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e. like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable."

And yet in many cases these statistics are used to explain communication in a more general context.

More here

It's very hard to find the time to track down the source of every statistical reference that we use, but examples like these only serve to highlight the importance of making sure that we are aware of the limitations of the information that we quote in our training.

Saturday 5 July 2008

WELCOME TO T & D LINKS

Welcome to Flipchart Training & Development links.

This blog contains links to information and articles on Training & Development for Training and Development professionals or anyone who is interested in the area of personal development.

The aim of this blog is to provide items of interest such as links to articles, podcasts, videos, free training resources, hints and tips. I'll also post my occasional thoughts on items that have caught my attention.

Feel free to drop me a line at flipchart@gmail.com

You can also follow my Twitter posts, although these are not exclusively training related Twitter.com/flipchart