Webinars that Work by Ashleigh Stoia

March 2012

What separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to on-line learning? For example, what makes a webinar great? If you do a Google Search for the phrase “what makes a great webinar” you will literally get over 6 million results. Lots of people are talking about how to create engaging and effective webinars and online training but (with emphasis added) in my own opinion most companies fall short of coming close to achieving this goal. Most people would rather smash their thumb with a hammer (twice) while hanging pictures than sit through a 60 minute webinar. Why? Because most webinars miss the mark on the following key principles for creating engaging, impactful webinars:

KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid)

A common mistake in webinar design is trying to be too fancy. Keep your content simple. Use images and graphics to illustrate your point rather than throwing a bunch of words on the screen. Your content needs to be organized to support your overall terminal objective, compelling, yet…simple.

Be SMART!

I can’t tell you how many webinars I have attended, only to have no idea what the webinar was supposed to be about by the time all was said and done. Create SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) learning objectives, and stick to them.

ZZZZzzzzz….

Your content may be completely interesting, but your user needs a break! Create engaging interactive elements every 3 – 5 minutes.
Whether you have a fun quiz, a short video, a quick poll…give your users something to do every few minutes. Keeping the learner engaged is essential to success.

The PROOF in OUR Pudding

Here at MindSpring we are working on our new conflict webinar, Dealing With Conflict and Difficult People, available on-demand via
our website next month. We hope you will take some time to check out our promo of the webinar in a few weels, and let us know whether we have hit the mark in creating a webinar that works.

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Asheville in the Spring by Mary MacGregor

March 2012

There is no better place to have a romantic, Spring getaway than Western North Carolina!

Start with a weekend booking at one of the area’s many bed and breakfasts. The Reynolds Mansion, ranked second in the nation, is located just north of Asheville and offers 13 luxurious rooms.
www.thereynoldsmansion.com Another lovely and historic home, The Beaufort House, is a short walking distance from downtown Asheville, and is one of many B&B possibilities. www.beauforthouse.com

Continue your adventure with a session at one of the many luxurious spas in town, followed by a delicious meal. Asheville is known for spectacular and eclectic dining as a fine way to complete your day. Consider the Red Stag Grill at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Biltmore Village. www.bohemianhotelasheville.com

Or enjoy a local farm to table meal at the Corner Kitchen, also located in Biltmore Village. www.thecornerkitchen.com

Everything you need for the perfect romantic weekend in the mountains!

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Another Great Made in America Idea by Bob Collins

March 2012

On a recent business trip to China and Singapore I wore a small red-white and blue wristband connected by a metal ingot that said INDIVISIBLE. I bought it at a Starbucks here in Asheville, and was very pleased with my small purchase because the $5 would go entirely to create microloans to small business and entrepreneurs across America.

Create Jobs for the USA was conceived by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and a team of hand selected friends and associates. Knowing that 60-70% of job creation in America comes from small business, Schultz and his team figured that injecting money into this segment during a time when banks were not stepping up was a very good idea. They had an established platform to promote the wrist bands: their retail store network. To date, they have raised over 6 million dollars, and all of that has been reintroduced into the economy. Not surprisingly, Mr. Schultz is a billionaire, part of that 1% we hear so much about. It’s refreshing to see that a social conscience and love of country can inspire a wildly successful entrepreneur to launch a program, stimulating growth in the small business sector.

Starbucks in Shanghai serves up your favorite drinks just like your neighborhood Starbucks at home. You will not, however, find the wrist bands for sale. When I explained the project to the staff, they all looked away; American ingenuity is not a welcome topic. Upon arriving in Singapore, the response was markedly different. Singaporeans respect and appreciate American ingenuity. Major US companies are plentiful in Singapore, and companies like HP, Apple, Seagate, Carrier, Dow, General Dynamics, IBM, and, of course, Starbucks employ a large portion of the highly skilled workforce there. As one barista told me, “The USA is still the envy of the world. I love my new I-Phone and Bon Jovi.”

On my way to Singapore’s airport, my taxi was a brand new Chrysler 300. The cabbie said it was the most talked about new car on the Island, and it “handled like a dream.” He also thought the wrist band program was excellent because “all people who are willing, deserve the right to work.” Starbuck’s and this little $5 band remind us: United we Stand. Divided we Fall. INDIVISIBLE.

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Becoming Bigger Than the Fear by Terry Hasty

March 2012

Comedian Brian Regan said, “I’m just trying to get through the day without embarrassing myself…and it isn’t going very well.” Like all great comedians, he is so funny because we can relate to his jokes and anecdotes. As it turns out, everyday bumbles, bumps, and bruises make for good humor. Many of the stories we tell about ourselves were not that funny at the time, but in retrospect can be downright hysterical. When our feelings are hurt, however, it is not so easy to laugh about it.

Most of what we get upset about at work and in our relationships is not that big of a deal. It’s just content, just stuff, just drama. Yet, those are the things that grow roots, even tentacles, permeating much of our communication and interaction with other people. Like the Hatfields and McCoys, we sometimes have no real understanding of how the discord started, we just know that we would rather not get on the elevator with that person or work with them on a project. At home, our communication is often curt or even sarcastic, impatient, and annoyed. How do our relationships get so damaged?

Just trying to get through the day without being embarrassed is only part of it. We also try to avoid being discounted, dismissed, criticized, or condemned. In the quest for survival we develop ways to defend ourselves, to protect our egos and hearts, usually at the expense of our relationships. At home, we can turn a pair of boxers on the bathroom floor into a sure sign that we are unappreciated and unloved, and at work, we can read between the lines of a one-line email, interpreting it to be abrupt, critical, or just down-right rude. As soon as we start viewing the other person as the problem, we see ourselves as the victim. By relinquishing any responsibility for the outcomes, we simultaneously give up our power to affect what happens next. And that makes us really angry!

Instead of avoiding being hurt or focusing on the negative, choose what you want to feel, what you want to experience, what you want to happen. Then when something does go wrong at least it will be your blunder, and you will have fun telling it, even embellishing it, to others later.

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Mentoring, Cultivating Leadership by Dr. Haydn Hasty

March 2012

When I was 30 years old, a friend of mine suggested I attend a self-awareness workshop that he had enjoyed. In the market for change, I signed up for the program.
I met Tony Speed for the first time when he and his wheelchair rolled into the room. He was vice-president for a behavioral science firm in NC and was the lead facilitator for the weekend program I was attending.
From the moment I met Tony and over the course of the next 12 years, my life would be changed forever. He provided no excuses or pity for my shortcomings, false perceptions, and my deep need to rationalize my behavior due to a destructive and wounded childhood. Accepting me right where I was, he simply held me accountable…lovingly…but fiercely…as if he had a map of my soul.
As time passed and our relationship evolved, I would attend programs just to study Tony himself…his approach…the manner in which he delivered information…the language that he used to get others to deepen their understanding of themselves. In another one of my moments of uncertainty, he once responded to a question I posed that was tainted with the need for approval, by stating: “If you have to ask if you are, you’re not.”
Anyone who knew Tony knew he was a master teacher. He was a mentor of the highest caliber. And I can add to that revered list in my life: Father Franklin Martin, Father Louis Haydn, Walter Chamberlain, Dr. Ron Guillard, Bobby Richardson, Nancy Willis, and Joyce Rawlings-Davies.
The need for mentors in our personal life is crucial. The need for mentoring in our leadership development is vital. Overwhelmed and swamped in daily life without a vehicle for personal reflection from someone other than your Self will result in self-deception, plain and simple. Self-deception is the destroyer of dreams-come-true.
Hanging around an organization for 27 years doesn’t make you a mentor. Having been in charge for the last 15 years doesn’t make you a mentor. One of our newest programs, Mentoring: Cultivating Leadership, provides you the opportunity to enhance your role as a mentor and refine your abilities to guide others. Consider bringing the program to your organization or executive team. Becoming an effective leader is important. Knowing how to teach others how to become an effective leader is even more rewarding.

The need for mentors in our personal life is crucial. The need for mentoring in our leadership development is vital. Overwhelmed and swamped in daily life without a vehicle for personal reflection from someone other than your Self will result in self-deception, plain and simple. Self-deception is the destroyer of dreams-come-true.
Hanging around an organization for 27 years doesn’t make you a mentor. Having been in charge for the last 15 years doesn’t make you a mentor. One of our newest programs, Mentoring: Cultivating Leadership, provides you the opportunity to enhance your role as a mentor and refine your abilities to guide others. Consider bringing the program to your organization or executive team. Becoming an effective leader is important. Knowing how to teach others how to become an effective leader is even more rewarding.

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How did I end up here? by Haydn Hasty, Ph.d, President

December 2011

How often we have all witnessed someone behaving in such a way that we questioned their judgment. Sometimes the behavior we question is our own! And right behind the decision to do anything lies the issue of intentionality…or the lack of it. In profile after profile of individuals and groups, we continue to see intentionality as an enormous factor in reaching desired outcomes. It is so easy to see life as an act of survival, acquiring pleasure to escape pain, engaging in distraction rather than dedicating oneself to desired outcomes. Outcomes which often involve the fear, discomfort, and the possibilty of failure. So what if you are uncomfortable? Would you not trade everything you have to possess what you really want…internally and externally?
Intentionality is a major factor in creating what you really want in life. We have found over the last 20 years that there are four essential dynamics related to intentionality: trust, constructive discontent (your willingness to receive critical feedback), intentionality itself, and personal power, or your belief that you can make it happen. In addressing each of these four dynamics, there is the obvious interpretation of what each means, but then there is the not-so-obvious.
In our life experience perhaps the most challenging dilemma we face is what to choose. Choosing a path, choosing a lifestyle, choosing how to experience ourselves. As Mark Twain said, “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
Using all the understanding we have gained from our teaching careers and our work in leadership and personal development, Terry and I have created “The Intentionality and Outcomes Assessment.” It is an online assessment that provides you with a graph of those four areas of development with suggestions for addressing each of them. It then links you into a 30 minute professionally recorded audio file that goes into greater depth about the not-so-obvious aspects of intentionality. Priced at $14.95, it is a valuable individual, as well as team, exercise. Click here for more information.

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Home for the Holidays by Terry Hasty

December 2011

Get out your calender, and call Aunt Sophia. It’s time to wrangle those few hours with everyone on your family tree, dashing from here to there to enjoy jingle bells and a cup of cheer together. Gather the rum balls and the cannisters filled with chex mix to share. For some, this time of year is pure torture, an obligatory marathon doomed to result in exhaustion and crankiness. For others, it is a joyful time filled with family and friends. For all of us, there is the invitation to go home for the holidays.

Maya Angelou, one of my favorite American authors, wrote “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” I’m lucky; being with my family feels that way. I know many people do not share that experience. Then the old English teacher in me comes out, and I interpret Angelou’s line to be a metaphor for home. Rather than a physical address, I hear in her words “ache for home” a reference to that place inside each of us that finally moves into self-acceptance and appreciation. After all, no one else can give us that gift, and no one can take it away.

When I think of home for the holidays, I think of crisp, crusted apple pies and peppermint candy, of multi-colored lights on the tree and orange-red embers in the fireplace, of laughter and lazy comaraderie. Board games pulled out and cookies baked. I was so afraid of any of that changing, and so certain that somehow I could out-maneuver the passing of time and keep everyone and everythimg in a safe little bubble. Of course, that’s impossible and I found the fear was extra. New joys and losses make up the landscape of each season.

So the experience of “home” being internal becomes all the more important to explore. How do you want your home to be? What smells and textures, memories and dreams live there? How will you furnish that home in your heart? Will you allow yourself to be yourself, not questioning your worth and value?

This holiday season, take time to appreciate, accept and honor yourself. You may find you have more patience, compassion and love for those around you, too.It is, indeed, time to go home for the holidays.

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We have an App for that! by Ashleigh Stoia

October 2011

Overwhelmed by the plethora of applications that can be added to your cell phone so it can perform functions usually unrelated to making a phone call? Then keep reading! Knowing which apps will save time and which are a waste of time takes time. That’s where we come in. As important as creativity is to continuous learning and growth, it may be hard to find time to be creative when you’re always on the go. It may also seem a little daunting, since there are so many apps from which to choose.

But have no fear… in a world of mobile technology, we are always just one app away from creative learning on the go! Here are MindSpring’s TOP TEN APPS for brainstorming and idea tracking, most of which are FREE:

TED (Free): I believe in the old saying “everything old is new again.” Use TED to refresh your thinking and produce new ideas by drawing inspiration from tons of excellent videos and presentations created by people from all walks of life.
Google Search (Free): Organic searching is one of the best ways to inspire new ideas of your own. If you haven’t tried this app, you are in for a very pleasant surprise, as you can use Google Voice Search (no need to type in your search terms) and Google Googles (search using the new camera feature of the iPad). Included in this app are easy ways to access Google Apps and other Google tools.
Pandora (Free): Get inspired by great music! This app selects songs for you based upon an artist, genre, or whatever category you define.
Whack Pack ($1.99): Created by Roger van Oech, author of the bestselling books on creativity, Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. If you need some creative juice for a brainstorming session or an upcoming presentation or project, this virtual deck of flash cards will provide a method for creative thinking!
Adobe Ideas (Free): If you want to be able to sketch an idea on the go then this free app is just for you. Adobe Ideas acts as a companion app to Adobe’s suite of professional design software.
Evernote (Free): Makes writing, note taking, picture taking, and other types of recording a piece of cake. And it’s easier than Google Docs!
Idea Generator ($2.99): Comes in various versions including song, movie, chef, and fashion but the classic version is perfect for those looking for a creative spark or to overcome writer’s block or groupthink. As one blogger wrote: “This app makes non-linear thinking a snap!”
Dragon Dictation (Free): Need to send yourself or a friend a quick idea via e-mail or text message, but don’t like to use the keyboard? Use this speech-to-text app to quickly produce text you can send and share in a variety of ways. For iPhones only!
iMindMap Mobile Pro or MindMeister ($3.99 – $7.99) – Allows you to create, view, and edit mind maps online or offline, share them in various formats, and organize your creations in folders, themes, notes, and more.
Dropbox (Free): This tool makes saving and accessing files from any computer anywhere a breeze. Once you add this app to all of your computers, any file you place into your local Dropbox folder will sync across all of your computers. The hard part is just getting into the habit of putting all of your files in this folder!

What are your favorite apps and why? We would love to hear from you!

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May 26, 2012

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