Managers and HR professionals concerned with developing leaders are inundated with leadership development theories, models, concepts and courses – Situational Leadership, Servant Leadership, and the Leadership Lessons of everyone from Attila the Hun to Jack Welch, to name but a few.

One of the better leadership models to emerge in the last few years is “Integral Leadership” based on the work of Ken Wilber.

Integral leadership emphasizes working with both the objective, exterior, subjective, and interior aspects of individuals and organizations. Most leadership development programs focus primarily on the objective, exterior factors involved in the situation, for example: behaviors, skills, strategies, structures, and processes. An integral approach combines a focus on the external, observable factors with an equal focus on interior factors such as thinking, feeling, and values – at both the individual and organizational levels.

Integral Leadership considers four dimensions: Interior, Exterior, Individual, and Organizational. These four dimensions give us one of the best known tools known to management training – a four quadrant model. Here is how it plays out with the Integral Leadership:

It seems pretty obvious to say it, but effective leadership development must take account of all four quadrants. Most traditional leadership models, however, tend to focus either internally (e.g. emotional intelligence) or externally (e.g. situational leadership) and fail to integrate the two perspectives.

By not taking an integral approach to leadership development you risk misalignment between the four quadrants. If the internal and external landscapes are not aligned at the individual level, for example, you risk developing leaders who have learned some of the skills and behaviors of leadership but may not have the maturity and self awareness that leaders need to be effective in the long term. Similarly, if you have leaders who are not aligned with the organizational culture, systems, or strategies, how effective can they be?

At Aspen OD we use the Integral Leadership model as one of our key analytical and design tools when helping organizations to develop their leadership programs. We have found that a well designed leadership development curriculum must take account of all four quadrants to be successful.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that producing an effective e-learning module is a matter of juicing up a snappy PowerPoint presentation – you and your learners are likely to be disappointed with the results!

This article is designed to help e-learning designers and developers create, develop, and deploy effective on-line learning content and outlines some best practices to help get you the results you are looking for.

1. Make It Engaging

   It is critical that learning content (whether e-learning, classroom, or blended) be designed to engage the learners and facilitate their interaction with the material. If the learners’ interest is not maintained, they will tune out—wasting precious time off the job and leading to poor memory retention. The learner needs to be involved through hands-on, participatory and experiential activities such as simulations and case studies. Engaging the learner also means that the e-learning should be fun or entertaining so that learners want to pay attention.

2. Use Relevant Examples

   Adult learners are more motivated by practical, readily-applicable content than abstract theory and concepts. For content to be most valuable, it needs to relate to the learners’ world, including their industry, company and, most importantly, their job. Content should be relevant to the circumstances and aspirations of the students themselves. A way to make e-Learning more job-relevant is to design manager involvement and coaching into or after the course to provide on-the-job reinforcement. This improves e-learning effectiveness and retention.

3. Involve Experts

   Content is more credible and accurate if it involves thought leaders or subject matter experts (SMEs) in the design of the e-learning content. SMEs have deep knowledge, skills or experience related to a topic. SME’s involvement can include writing content themselves or sharing their information with designers. Such experts are expected to not only know the subject but be able to implement it and relate their experience or “first-or second-hand anecdotes” to show how the skills and knowledge being covered can be effectively utilized to achieve desired outcomes.

4. Use Reliable Information

   Use well-researched materials with reliable conclusions. Research based content is captivating, meaningful and accurate. To create it, eLearning developers should prioritize their efforts to ensure that learners can interact with research based materials and are able to relate it to their work.

5. Use blended methods if possible to accommodate different learning styles

   E-learning can be combined with classroom based or on-the-job training to reinforce the learning. Each of us has a preferred learning style–the style in which we can learn most efficiently. That style is often defined using these three dimensions:

   • Active or Reflective? Active learners attain understanding by doing or applying information. Reflective learners like to think things through before doing.
   • Sensing or Intuitive? Sensing learners like facts, are rule-oriented, and feel comfortable with repetition and routine. Intuitive learners are more interested in the relationships between facts, resent repetition, and like to innovate.
   • Visual or Verbal? Visual learners are more likely to retain what they see. Verbal learners remember words–spoken or written.

   Most adult learners fall somewhere in the middle on all three dimensions. The challenge is to create learning experiences that will work for a wide range of adult learners. A way to do this is to incorporate a variety of instructional strategies into the course design. For example, you may wish to present “how-to” information in written form for the verbal learners, as well as streaming video demonstrations for the visual learners.

6. Use creativity or innovation in design

   When evaluating the effectiveness of creativity and innovation in design of e-learning, a yes answer to all of the following questions is evidence of a high quality well designed instructional design e-learning program:

   • Does the program immediately capture attention when it is run?
   • Does the training program explain its relevance to learners? Does it answer the student’s question, “What’s in it for me?”
   • Are learning objectives presented near the beginning of each lesson?
   • Are learning objectives specific and observable?
   • Is the presentation of content made interesting with a variety of media or through an engaging treatment?
   • Does the program provide a variety of interactive exercises beyond simple multiple-choice questions?
   • Are learners given the opportunity for frequent practice?
   • Does the program include a post-test or other assessments?

7. Create easy-to-use support materials

   Consider the support materials that should be provided for reference and as a reminder to the learners once they have completed the on-line module. This may be provided as downloadable material from the on-line learning module itself or a reference to a web site to access downloadable material may be provided.

According to the article “Clear Expectations Can Prevent Incivility, Experts Say” on SHrM, “Research shows that rudeness and incivility in the workplace—the type of behavior that doesn’t quite reach the level of bullying or harassment—creates a wide range of spillover effects. Training, clear expectations and accountability can help.”

The authors of the recent research, Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, of the University of Southern California and the Thunderbird School of Global Management, respectively, note that “the cost of employee incivility can be measured by analyzing turnover and commitment rates, productivity levels, and the estimated number of work hours lost because of negative interactions.”

The article goes on to define “incivility” in the workplace, which ranges from talking down to people to excluding people from meetings, and stresses the importance of employee training. A great way to ensure employees are informed of the organization’s policies and procedures regarding incivility in the workplace is to create an employee handbook. An employee handbook details the company’s policies and procedures surrounding the manner in which managers and subordinates alike are supposed to treat each other. Another way to foster a culture that promotes civility within the workplace is to provide training on topics ranging from conflict management to fair and equal management practices.

Though the research mentioned above has only recently been published by the distinguished scholars, the theories they have successfully helped to measure and quantify have certainly been observed in the past. Organizations have provided employee handbooks and traditional classroom training surrounding code of conduct for many years now. However, with the advent of new technology, there are new ways to combat “toxic” behavior in the workplace. Take our new product, Learning @…, for example. Learning @… is an online learning portal that combines great features such as the traditional employee handbook and training programs, but puts them into an interactive web application that employees can access any time they have an internet connection (and lets face it, that’s pretty much all the time).

So for all the managers out there, make sure to properly train and inform all of your employees about the dangers of incivility in the workplace, no matter what tools you use to do it. Step up, be a leader, and help make your company a success!

I just read a great article on the SHrM website that discusses the need to engage employees in career development conversations, especially in these troubled economic times. Please take a look at the full article here: http://shrm.org/hrdisciplines/orgempdev/articles/pages/careerconversationtips.aspx

The author of the article, Caela Farren, Ph.D., states the following reasons why career conversations are still important: “We are living in tumultuous economic times. Job loss, corporate restructure, and worrisome finances are taking a toll on career plans. Strategies and tactics continue to change rapidly in organizations, which affects career options directly. The workforce is far more diverse—multicultural, multigenerational, global, technically diverse.”

This is a very poignant and acute assessment, but it does not account for another scenario. Eventually the economy is going to begin roaring full steam ahead and break our of the doldrums that have thus far slowed it for the past two years. We are already beginning to see signs that some of the new economic policies enacted by the Obama administration are pointing us in the right direction. (This is certainly an arguable point, but I’m inclined to be a hopeful optimist!). With this in mind, it is important to have your employees on a viable and rewarding career track so that when the economic landscape corrects itself, employees do not jump ship from what they believe to be a dead end job.

Now is the time to have serious career conversations with your employees and create personal development plans that will provide goals for employees to work toward. Keeping your organization’s talent on board when the economy is back in full swing will help you to meet future business demands.

Post personal development plan information on a bulletin board (or on your Learning @… web application – hint, hint ) and help your dedicated employees succeed. Trust me, it will benefit your organization greatly!

There have been two recent articles in the news regarding employees use of social media in the work place. The first was posted on techcrunch.com and mashable.com and claims that 8% of the companies polled by ProofPoint, an internet security firm, have fired an employee due to their misuse of some of the most popular social networking sites, such as: Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Plurk, etc. (read the article here: mashable). The other was posted on the Society for Human Resources Management (SHrM) website, and was titled: Twitter with Care: Web 2.0 Usage Offers Few Second Chances. Similarly, the author notes that misuse of these popular sites can land employees in the proverbial hot water with their organizations (read the article here: SHrM).

Now some people may think that the appropriate course of action is to go home and erase every social media account they own. This might be a tad drastic. The lesson to be learned from these articles is to use social media, but make sure you do so in a responsible way. As organizations catch up with the rest of the world, regarding social media, they will surely become savvier at detecting your activities in the digital world. So the next time you decide to rip your boss a new one via your Facebook status, take a step back and think to yourself, “Is there any chance that he/she will see this?” There is a good shot that the answer is, YES!

For all the HR managers out there, it might be a good idea to make a clear statement in the company’s employee handbook that outlines the organization’s policies and attitude toward social media. Including social media as an aspect of the company’s policies and procedures should make employees think twice about posting inappropriate material.