2020 STATEWIDE LEARNING &
DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY TOPICS
  • Welcome Colleen Costigan, new COE Consultant
  • Use Behavioral Assessment to Drive Team Performance
  • Featured Courses in February
  • The New Lean Talent Challenge
  • Combating Implicit Bias
  • Learning Lessons: Achieving Goals
Welcome Colleen Costigan, new COE Consultant
COE is proud to announce that we have hired a new consultant!  Colleen Costigan will be starting with COE on February 10. Ed Marvez resigned from the State in late January.  Colleen will be doing the same kind of work that Ed did for us. Colleen's experience includes a Master's Degree in Organizational Communications from the University of Denver. Before starting work with the State, Colleen was a Senior Organization Development Consultant for Oracle Corporation. Join us in welcoming Colleen to working for the State of Colorado.
Use Behavioral Assessment to Drive Team Performance
The benefits received from working to create a highly effective team can be accelerated by the use of behavior assessments. The information gained through the use of assessments has often been compared to "a personal owner's manual" that explains needs and stressors in nonjudgmental terms so the person can make different behavior choices. Teams that use a behavior assessment as a team building opportunity have reported improved working relationships, better outcomes, and less stress.  These assessments help teams to develop a common understanding of behavior and develop nonjudgmental language to describe differences in behavior.  Building on the foundation of understanding that comes with the use of assessments makes it easier for teams to improve communication, processes, and make decisions faster with less conflict.

Review the Personality and Self-Awareness assessments that are available from COE.
Featured February Courses
In February, COE is offering several courses to encourage your continued learning and development. 

You can learn more about these courses , and everything else from COE on our website.

Click on each class name below to see more information about the course and available dates to register:

Courses in February 2020
Cost
Course Date
$360
02/04/2020
$0
02/05/2020
$260
02/05/2020
$0
02/06/2020
$260
02/10/2020
$0
02/11/2020
$360
02/12/2020
$0
02/18/2020
$360
02/18/2020
$360
02/19/2020
$360
02/26/2020
$500
02/28/2020
$500
02/28/2020
$400
02/28/2020
$500
02/28/202
 The New Lean Talent Challenge
2020 Governor's Talent Challenge 
S tate agencies can now purchase classes through the new Talent Challenge. Changes have been made to the program in order to make it easier for you to get the support you want. These courses are designed to give any project or team a set of resources to empower them in accomplishing the goals of their agency.
  • More options for classes: Choose from 9 vendors and more than 40 classes on Execution, Lean, Process Improvement, and Change Management.
  • Simplified registration: Registration will be through our standard Learning Management System (LMS) and we have removed the sponsor information requirement.
  • Lower prices: Classes have much lower prices and most are below $500 per person.

How to get started
There are two ways you can purchase classes through the Talent Challenge, open-enrollment and onsite classes .  

Open enrollment classes are prescheduled, and announced by COE on the LMS.  This is a great option for teams who want to send fewer than seven people to a class and/or plan to attend only one or two classes.   COE schedules the time and location, you register for the class that fits your schedule.  These classes will be scheduled at 1525 Sherman St, and other locations based on available classroom space.  
Onsite classes are purchased when you have seven or more people to attend the same class and want it scheduled at your location.  This option is best if you want to train an entire project team at the same time.  If you have a large project and/or need your team to attend multiple classes, onsite classes are for you.
The list of classes that are available for purchase, through the Talent Challenge has been posted on the COE Featured Training site .
Combating implicit bias: Your brain's defense mechanism
Submitted by: DRI Consulting, COE Training Vendor.  Authored by: Makesha Evans

Picture the scenario: A new team member who is very different from you walks into the conference room and takes a seat for your weekly team meeting. What image does the phrase "very different from you" bring to mind? Did you notice any impressions emerging about your fictitious team member? Any subtle feelings? If you're like most people, you conjured a well-defined character sauntering into the room complete with detailed backstory. Maybe you thought about how this interloper could potentially threaten the well-oiled machine that is your team. That may sound a bit dramatic, but in reality, our brains are hardwired to be wary of newcomers who don't match our "like me" criteria. The person you imagined may have been tall where you are short, overweight where you are slender, or someone who is of a different ethnicity, religion or has a disability. 
If you were wearing brain scanning equipment, there would have been a slight uptick in your amygdala's activity. Your amygdala is a primordial part of the brain responsible for triggering feelings of fear and anxiety. So, even outside of our awareness, our brains react to people who we perceive as being different from ourselves. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. What is unfamiliar to us is potentially dangerous. So, as it automatically processes millions of pieces of information the brain highlights novelties, and triggers very subtle feelings of fear and anxiety. Many of us have learned to consciously suppress these barely detectable sensations, but they lurk and can influence how we treat others. In our workplaces, this implicit bias can lead to conflict, discrimination, misunderstandings or just awkward working relationships. 
So, what can we do about it? Here are some tips...

  1. Work on becoming more aware of your feelings and reactions towards others by: 
    • Practicing mindfulness
    • Taking valid personality and work style assessments that help you to better understand yourself
    • Paying attention, and naming your biases as they emerge

2. Hire a coach. This could be a formal arrangement with a professional coach or someone who is skilled at relationships, and can hold you accountable for monitoring and addressing your biases.

 

3. Seek to listen and understand. Suspend judgment; be curious about the other person as well as respectful and empathetic.

 

4. Welcome feedback. Share with others that you are working on your biases. Ask them to give you feedback on how you are handling communication and connection with others.

5. Apologize when you get it wrong. It will inevitably happen. Say sorry for any erroneous assumptions or mistakes, and learn from them.

6. Take advantage of training. Working with others to overcome implicit or unconscious bias will help you understand diversity, cultural competence, and other related topics. 

Want to explore your implicit biases some more? Check out this survey from Harvard University's Project Implicit.
Learning Lessons:
To Achieve a Goal--RAP it
Submitted by: CPS HR Consulting, COE Training Vendor. Authored by: Terri Bianco

Strategic planning sessions often conjure feelings of dread. A team generates goals for the coming year - usually too many to accomplish. Then they enter the "groan zone" where they categorize, prioritize, and list action plans to implement the strategies. The resulting strategic plan becomes a tidy document tucked away on a shelf. Statistically, only ten percent of organizations execute their plans.   

What if you - or your team - wanted to achieve results more efficiently?  A simple tool to use is the RAP model. R stands for RESULTS; P stands for PURPOSE; and A stands for ACTION. 

The desired RESULT must be clear and specific. You can see it, feel it, and know when it's achieved. 
See the source image
Example: "Save money to go to Europe," is not a result, it is an action. The RESULT is "Trip to Europe." The result means you have done it: There you are standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

More important than identifying the result is deciding your PURPOSE. Why do you want to do this? What makes you want it? The purpose drives the action toward the result. A purpose begins with the word "To." 
  • To realize a lifetime desire to see Europe
  • To expand my knowledge of the world
  • To have interesting things to say 
  • To know I did it!
From PURPOSE it is an easy step to ACTION. The result is clear and measurable, the purpose is what drives you personally, and the action is what you need to do to get to the end goal. Actions might be researching what countries you want to see, identifying where you want to go, studying a language, and visualize being there.
  
Here's how it works. Create a table with four columns spaced as shown below. 
 
*
ACTION
RESULT
PURPOSE









In the middle column, write your RESULT.  
  • What do I really want?
  • What is my outcome; what am I after?
  • What is the specific result I'm committed to achieving? 
In the right column, identify your PURPOSE.  
  • What's driving this?
  • What made me decide to do this?
  • How will this serve me?
To the left of result, list the required ACTION . 
  • What do I need to start doing?
  • What's my action plan?
  • What are the specific action steps I can, have to, want to, need to, or absolutely must take?

**The little column to the left of ACTION is for prioritizing. Star actions that would increase the impact- the 20 percent that would yield the 80 percent.  


 

Try it. You won't be disappointed. 

That's a wrap!

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All Rights Reserved
Center for Organizational Effectiveness
Department of Personnel & Administration
Division of Human Resources
303-866-2439