Let’s talk about your professional development.  As L&D faculty, how are your needs different from practitioners in the field? How are you staying current on industry trends, advances in technology and software applications, and new teaching and facilitation techniques to apply in the classroom?  Share what’s working for you—and where you’re getting your professional development needs met—with your peers ! Leave your comments below and read what others are sharing. Is ASTD providing the professional development opportunities you need to grow and stay current with these ne ..read more

Training students in leadership skills is a challenging undertaking, especially in an undergraduate course when students are not yet pursuing careers. Theoretical concepts, models, ideas, and examples are only half the learning equation. The other half is facilitating students’ internalization of leadership skills in the artificial setting of a classroom. Focus on people Leading means engaging people. I center student attention on people, not leadership and management per se—behaviors, feelings, differences, self-awareness, communication, interaction, and so forth. In the course, students expe ..read more

Wanted: HRD practitioner willing to participate in a 1 hour interview with a current HRD student. Details: First-semester master’s degree student at State University of New York at Buffalo State pursuing a M.S Adult Education with a Specialization in Human Resource Development is looking to interview an HRD practitioner. Assignment: Interview should be face-to-face (or Skype) and last about an hour. No Phone interviews. Questions may include: how you got into the HRD field, advice you would give to new practitioners, methods and techniques you use to facilitate learning, and pros and cons of ..read more

Colorado State University Global Campus (CSU-Global) is currently seeking content experts to design online graduate courses in knowledge areas directly aligned to the ASTD Certification Institute's Certified Professional in Learning and Performance Certification (CPLP).  A 12-credit, 4 course specialization in the Master's program is being developed to better prepare graduates to enter and excel in the training and development field. We are seeking qualified candidates to write the courses for this new specialization. Colorado State University Global Campus is a fully accredited, 100% onl ..read more

Organizational Behavior (OB) is about people in organizations and it covers a wide spectrum of human conduct. Because everyone is part of an organization while in the workplace (and everyplace else), it is incumbent on us to explore the roots of our understanding and know-how of behavior in organizations. I have been involved with organizational behavior my entire professional career—variously called, organizational development (OD), organizational effectiveness (OE), organizational psychology, organizational change, leadership development, and group and team dynamics. My wife, Ellen has been ..read more

As instructors of organizational behavior (OB) courses essential to student leadership development, we ought to afford students “indelible” learning experiences that will remain with them long after they leave the confines of the classroom and move into positions of responsibility. One such project that I have used has been to require graduate-level engineering management students to conduct interviews with their leaders and then write term papers about what they learned. Project overview The purpose of the project was to have students demonstrate an understanding of what they had learned in t ..read more

I was reminded again this week just about the importance of maintaining and protecting your professional brand—especially via social media.  As I was perusing the random and endless chatter on Facebook, I ran across a post from an acquaintance that I met during my undergrad work.  He was complaining about how difficult his undergraduate finance classes were and about how he needed “something or someone to sit down with me and literally hold my hand throughout the rest of these few months of college!”  Naturally, I felt a little concerned by the post.  Why was he having such ..read more

I have a confession to make. I’m an airplane talker. Unless I’m extremely tired, when I walk on the plane, I look for an aisle seat next to someone who looks like they’re willing to chat. My strategy is two-fold. One, I am a control freak who gets really nervous when I fly. So, talking to people helps ease the anxiety of not self-piloting the Boeing 737. Two, the reason why I’ve accomplished so much in my young life is a direct result of the networking that I’ve done. There’s so much truth to the phrase “It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who knows you!” During my last trip from Atla ..read more

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life (along with a full-time work and school load), there are weeks that I find it extremely difficult to find something to blog about. What’s even more interesting is that this problem doesn’t just affect bloggers. It affects any of us who must create new and fresh material for our respective organizations—either in practice or in academia. While our brains may be overloaded and unable to retrieve brilliant topics to inspire the masses or meet the requirements of a term paper, there’s always something going on in our world that can provide the much neede ..read more

As faculty charged with teaching organizational behavior, leadership and organizational change, our obligation goes far beyond the academic.  In my view, we have an obligation to train graduate students in the art and practice of leadership.  While we have no direct authority or influence on what they do within their own organizations, I believe that we can impact them effectively by teaching inner-personal change—something that all effective leaders must do.  Bob Quinn wrote an entire book about this entitled, Deep Change.   I wrote a short article for T+D which was p ..read more