Training Book Reviews

Make Talent Your Business: How Exceptional Managers Develop People While Getting Results By Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie Coyle. 2011: Published by Berrett-Kohler, 210 pages.

According to recent research, when most leaders are asked about the status of their employee development program, they are likely to express that it sits squarely in the “top 5” for importance, but shakes out to the bottom, both in investment and returns. How can we all realize better results in our employee development efforts, regardless of industry or company size?  Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie Coyle have given us a new way to consider this often overwhelming area that falls in the laps of HR managers, department managers and executives.  In their new title, Make Talent Your Business: How Exceptional Managers Develop People While Getting Results, Axelrod and Coyle guide us through a new process for employee development, which resulted from their combined 40+ years of experience and an extensive research project, where they enlisted over 100 representatives from companies of all sizes to gather information and find solutions for all of us.

And what is the underlying takeaway?  Use the work itself as a development tool. 

In the authors’ words, “Are we saying that the one thing that matters most is done the least? Yes. We believe that a major reason that using the work itself as a development tool is so rare is that managers simply don’t know how to package together work and development or how to put themselves in the picture every day to support development.” How can you make every day a development day?  Use these four approaches:

1. Tuck development into work
2. Create the right stretch
3. Seize development moments
4. Leverage team learning

The authors take readers through each approach and show us how to integrate them into every work day.  Although these approaches in themselves are worth putting to work right away, this book gets kudos for adding “toolkits” into each concept, giving leaders actual discussion guides for implementing the tasks within each approach.  They also show us ways to increase the value of many tools typically supplied by organizations, such as a 360-degree feedback tool and mandated number of classroom training hours per year.

Finally, have you considered which of your employees need to develop political skills or have you addressed the psychological side of development? It’s all covered here.

Reviewed by Marcia Young

By Jane Bozarth, Ed.D. 2010: Published by Pfeiffer, 192 pages.

In  Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning, author Jane Bozarth shows readers not only how to increase the impact of training programs but also how to broaden their influence beyond the classroom. If you thought printed handouts offered added value to your courses, you’ll be blown away by all the ways in which you can use social media to make the courses you teach reach your attendees where they spend their time every single day, not just on training day, and that place is in the world of social media.

The author walks us through the main social media outlets:

•         Twitter
•         Facebook
•         Blogs
•         Wikis
•         Other Tools

Within each section, Ms. Bozarth gives us the big picture, including how to view each particular tool, its advantages and disadvantages, getting started using it, pre-work tasks, and in-class uses. However, what experienced trainers will find most enlightening are the sections on formative and summative evaluation and post-class work, which further extends the life of the training.

Not ready to jump into all of the social media tools? This book will still become your most valued partner in offering innovative training programs. You can read the overview of each tool and then decide which one you use to get your feet wet. How about a blog post to stimulate discussion on what was learned in class or a tweet that reinforces learning with quick quotes or terms that encapsulate the main ideas in the course that employees attended yesterday?

Everyone is looking for employee development options that offer higher impact while keeping costs down. Whether you are a trainer, training manager or CLO, once you read Social Media for Trainers, your mind will reel with the possibilities. As a trainer, you will be able to offer value-added training programs that likely surpass your competitors’ services.  As a training manager, you will have new tools for assessing prospective vendors. As a CLO, you will be able to lead your organization to new training and development excellence by helping multiple departments integrate social media tools into their employee learning cycle.

This book conveys groundbreaking ideas in a conversational style that will allow anyone to integrate social media into training, regardless of their technical skills. It is bound to become part of the new canon, opening up all of us to new possibilities.

Reviewed by Marcia Young

By Henry L. Thompson. 2010: Jossey-Bass Publishing, 336 pages.

“At first I thought I was reading a neurological text, until I realized he was establishing a foundation for those who would become practitioners, learners, and trainers.”   ~   Jim Beeler, book reviewer

Dr. Thompson offered a completely new look at stress and its relationship to the workforce.  I started reading The Stress Effect with a curious eye toward the relationship between stress and decisions in the title.  Dr. Thompson delivers on his title, and then some.

The Stress Effect targets leadership and draws on decision making examples provided by leaders in stressful times.  Dr. Thompson points toward the fallacy of thinking a great response in one situation would “be a one size fits all” leader.  He leads the reader through the connections between stress and decision making, and the relationships between emotional intelligence and stress.

The first half of The Stress Effect draws the reader into the workings of the brain.  At first I thought I was reading a neurological text, until I realized he was establishing a foundation for those who would become practitioners, learners, and trainers.  Having read more “clinical” versions on brain interactivity, I noted his writing was more toned down.  He wasn’t opening my head for me to see, he was opening my eyes to my head.  He built his case slowly, methodically, and purposefully to provide practitioners the tools necessary to continue building their own stress programs.

Nearly mid-way through his book, Dr. Thompson shifts gears from relationships of subjects to relationships between the subject and preparation for responding to stress.  I certainly appreciated the offers for preparation.  It was not long before I understood more about previous practices and real life events in my life.

While The Stress Effect is timely, the lessons from Dr. Thompson are timeless.  The reader soon learns stress is not an either/or condition, it is a “level of” condition.  As Dr. Abraham Maslow pointed out in his Hierarchy of Needs, any one of our needs creates stress to some degree, but not necessarily the same degree or with the same effect.  A level of stress in one areas can impact other areas, depending on its severity.  It is the leader who needs to understand stressful situations, how to respond to or lead people through stressful times and events, and the consequences for both solutions and chronic conditions.

As his final chapter, Dr. Thompson offers the Seven Best Practices.  His ARSENAL provides readers a glimpse of practices to reduce, resolve, or remove stress. There are ways to reduce stress through practice, planning, and processes.  ARSENAL provides the reader tools and ideas to overcome many of life and workplace stressors.

At first thought, I looked at The Stress Effect as purely organizational or business.  While those are his target audience, I submit that he provides readers with a span to cover all phases of life.   His analogies, examples, and connection with life are easily transferable to both the CEO and the mother faced with a household emergency, from the pastor serving his congregation to the fireman responding to a call, and from the child reacting to bad grades to the teacher’s response.

I highly recommend The Stress Effect.  Dr. Thompson’s approach is on target for practitioners, trainers, educators, and students of emotional intelligence.  Understanding stress, the effect on both decisions and personnel, the consequences on the entire organization, and resulting effects on customers, economics, and service are critical.  While many debate the recovery of the recent global downturn, the world will not soon recover completely.  Stress remains in nearly every household, in every organization, and in every mind.  It is one of those things we know has happened or will happen, but with The Stress Effect we will have an ARSENAL to at least address the situation before more dumb decisions are made.

Reviewed by Jim Beeler

By Linda Honold. 2001:  Davies-Black Publishing, 208 pages.

NOTE: This review is adapted from one that originally appeared in Training Magazine in 2001.

Here’s one with a twist: a book that tells us not how to become better trainers, but how to develop better learners. In Developing Employees Who Love to Learn, Linda Honold shows how any organization can implement a successful learning system that will improve employee performance and keep the business competitive. Honold makes a strong case for investing in such an endeavor as she enumerates the benefits to the organization: The approach will help to attract high-quality employees (already inclined toward continually developing themselves) and thus create and retain a strong, resilient workforce. A symbiotic relationship will develop as individuals gain in tangibles, such as enhanced employment security, employability and increased wages, as well as in personal satisfaction and job enrichment. Another benefit: Imagine a workplace full of employees who embrace learning and want to develop new skills!

The first half of the book shows how to lay the foundation and create a system for supporting workplace learning. The second half is devoted to specific, explicit descriptions of assorted learning activities, their objectives, the learning styles for which they are appropriate. Similar in format to published designs for structured learning experiences (such as the Games Trainers Play series), many of these will be familiar to the seasoned trainer. Honold puts them into a different context, however, showing how they can be adapted from their typical use in formal training programs to instead create other, more generalized learning opportunities. The professional interested in repositioning training efforts, recharging existing programs, or building a training program from the ground up will find an invaluable and encouraging resource.

The book is nearing 10 years old now, and in the age of rising interest in social and informal learning some content may seem dated. But readers who can see the bigger picture — developing learners who love to learn, and understanding how that fits into the new learning landscape — should find this a worthwhile read. Still in print and available from Amazon and elsewhere.

Reviewed by Jane Bozarth

By Karen Lawson. 2006: Published by Pfeiffer, 336 pages.

The Trainer’s Handbook: Here’s an old standby, updated for its 2nd edition. I receive piles of ‘trainer toolkit’ books, many of them quite good, but none as thorough as Lawson’s on the crucial and oft-ignored issue: Are you cut out for this? Too many trainers get into—or get put into—training for the wrong reasons. Lawson’s extensive checklists and questionnaires ask the trainer to engage in some real reflection about preferences, style, focus, and, yes, motives.

Updates for this edition include ideas for accommodating disabilities and for tailoring to the needs of the newer generations. I disagree with some of her views on the limits of e-learning, and the implicit message that somehow even the worst classroom instruction is superior to great online training. Most of the new crop of training handbooks include a token chapter on “distance” training; Lawson’s expertise is in the classroom, and I’d have preferred that she refer readers to other sources here rather than take it on herself.

Otherwise, the book is a soup-to-nuts field guide, addressing everything from writing objectives to writing on flip charts. The book is essentially a compilation of truly useful tools, including guidelines for creating a comprehensive instructional plan–as opposed to a lesson plan– and a clean, concise chart for matching methods to desired outcomes. There’s also coverage of the training basics, from room set-up to presentation skills to the basics of evaluation. While it is most useful to novice trainers, it’s a nice review for vets, too.

Reviewed by Jane Bozarth. Portion of review originally appeared in Training Magazine.