Although our course design provides a solid stick-to-the-script foundation, we encourage certified trainers to adapt practice scenarios for their learners as needed. In fact, for Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, we’ve developed practice scenarios specific to healthcare, education, manufacturing, and government (the first three are available now under Learner Resources; the last will be available later this month).

Regardless of what course(s) you facilitate, there are ways to personalize the practical application for your company. Master Trainer Emily Gregory shared three ideas in a past article:

• Change the jargon
• Draft your own
• Respond in the moment

Here’s a refresher on each of the ideas Emily shared, along with additional ideas and insights to help you and your learners connect with the course material. You can also watch this video in which Emily shares additional thoughts.

Change the Jargon

It can be easy to get hung up on the language in a scenario or activity. We understand that it’s most effective when the language in the course matches that of your organizational culture. When reading the scenarios out loud, revise the language so it’s a fit. When your learners go through the learner guide, encourage them to make slight edits to the terminology if it will help them. Simple word changes can keep learners focused on the concepts, not the word choices.

We also know sometimes our scenarios might not parallel some experiences of your learners. That’s ok—what is the main idea of the exercise or video? Is the meaning still relevant? Guide your learners beyond the what to focus on the why and the how of the exercise.

For instance, in our Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue course, the Start with Heart lesson has a video about the importance of focusing on what you really want. In the video, CEO Greta has spent six months searching for ways to reduce costs, and employee Luke gives Greta some hard truths about recent spending on a new building and office furniture. Greta feels attacked in the moment, but she takes a moment to focus on what she really wants. She shares her need to be more open about the project she’s managing to ensure her spending doesn’t appear hypocritical, even as she asks her team for budget cuts.

You might say your employees don’t have conversations like this, or that you’re not in an office setting. But the purpose of the video is to see Greta’s intent transform in that interaction—not that it’s in an office setting.

Draft Your Own

As mentioned early, we’ve recently added industry-specific exercises and practice supplements for Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue. But what if these don’t match your learners’ situations? Or what if you’re facilitating another Crucial Learning course? Use what we’ve provided as a springboard for creating your own!

Rather than drafting from scratch, use the ideas and examples we’ve provided as a starting point. For instance, some of the education supplement examples are geared toward K–12, so if you’re in higher education, what would be a comparable or parallel scenario in that world? If you’re in hospitality, how could you adapt an office scenario to fit your workplace? As you revise, remember to keep the why top of mind. Details can shift around to match your industry, even to the point of creating new scenarios—but the core principles and purpose of the exercises should remain in place.

Don’t feel like you need to create in a vacuum, either. Tap into the certified trainer community! You can always crowdsource ideas from our Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

Respond in the Moment

Being in the moment is always a good idea—and if it seems like changing the scenarios on the spot would help your learners, go for it! You know your learners best. If changing words like portfolio to project or employee to associate in real time is going to help your learners, do that.

You can also generate practice scenarios with your learners by asking for their input. Use index cards for in-person courses or the chat window for virtual courses. Ask learners to share their own challenging conversations that relate to the example in the material. Randomly choose one of their examples and have learners practice with that scenario instead of what’s in the learner guide. It doesn’t get much more real than that!

We’re excited to share resources that will help you customize your learning. Please reach out to us with questions or issues at our Help Center. And if you’ve customized scenarios like this, we want to hear about it! Feel free to share your experience in the Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

The post Giving Practice Sessions a Personalized Touch appeared first on Crucial Learning.

How do you move from hosting disparate training events to creating an intentional learning journey for learners across the organization? Caitlin Murphy, an organizational development specialist at Franciscan Alliance, recently helped to launch the first tier of Franciscan Leadership University to guide learners through recommended courses.

Franciscan Leadership University is a three-tiered program to help team members gain skills suited to their role, regardless of whether they’re brand new or seasoned leaders.

“The idea is you can be a leader at Franciscan, and you’re growing whether you’re new or you’ve been here forever,” Murphy said. “We also include some connection with our mission and our values, which is huge for us as a mission-driven organization.”

Tier one is for new managers and focuses on foundational management skills. New leaders are automatically enrolled in the program through a learning management system (LMS). In addition to Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue and Getting Things Done®, managers take courses related to Franciscan’s software systems for finance, timekeeping, and more.

Within Tier One, Murphy said her favorite course to facilitate is GTD®.

“I’m pretty comfortable with the content, and it’s just had a huge impact on me personally,” she said. “That translates when I teach it. I really enjoy helping other people, and the GTD skills can have such a big impact on your life.”

The plan for Franciscan Leadership University goes beyond classroom content. Each course includes pre- and post-work, from surveys and evaluations to discussions with leaders. A SharePoint site provides learners with additional resources, and Murphy said they hope to add an online community to foster peer-to-peer learning and discussion.

Murphy is certified in four Crucial Learning courses—Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations for Accountability, Getting Things Done, and The Power of Habit—and she uses the resources in Trainer Zone to create a learning experience that goes beyond the classroom.

“We have the discussion guide set up in our LMS so it is automatically sent to the learner and course manager about 10 days before class—to remind them to meet and talk about their traning goals,” she said.

The program’s structure includes a six-week follow-up conversation with the course manager to see how well leaners are implementing what they’ve learned.

“At about 45 days or so, people start to feel a little wobbly—all the excitement is gone,” she said. “It’s helped learners to know that a follow-up is coming. They’ve encountered some challenges, and as their instructors we can help them address them. It also gives a chance to ask what else they want to work on. It can be hard to implement everything all at once. It’s definitely a journey.”

Plans include launching tier two, which will focus on talent management skills, engagement, retention, and career guidance. Tier three will be for higher levels of leadership and focus on strategy and mentorship—giving back and teaching newer leaders.

“We’ve paused before we develop tier two and three to get a focus group together and really look at the program,” she said. “We have competencies, but we want to look at those and say, ‘What does it look like to do that in real life, and what are your challenges for that as we develop and choose content for those things?’”

Beyond Franciscan Leadership University, Murphy offers performance consulting, where she partners with leaders to assess team issues and find solutions—and often shares ideas from her other Crucial Learning course of choice, Crucial Conversations for Accountability.

“When I first started out doing performance consulting, I didn’t really know what to do—and then it clicked as I was looking over the Crucial Conversations for Accountability content,” she said. “I realized this is basically what I’m doing. I’m helping people close gaps.”

The post Caitlin Murphy and Designing an Intentional Learning Journey appeared first on Crucial Learning.

When I facilitate, I engage the entire class in answering tough questions to get a variety of perspectives. However, last fall I had a new experience where my tried-and-true strategy yielded little more than uncomfortable silence.

During the class, a learner asked how the Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue skills work if someone is not in a position of power—or, in their words, “not white or cisgender.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

In that moment I wanted to protect the psychological safety in the room, respect the question, and offer valuable insight. However, while I did my best to validate the perspective of the learner, I wasn’t sure I had a great answer.

As I unpacked this experience after class had ended, I tapped into the collective wisdom of Crucial Learning subject matter experts whose opinions I value and discovered that this was not an uncommon question. Learners have posed questions around a variety of sensitive topics, from power differentials to gender differences and race to applying the skills in a context of neurodiversity.

So, as trainers, how do we answer those tough questions? My purpose today is not to answer such questions, but to provide some resources and ideas that will help you respond when you receive them.

The first resource I always consult is the “Trainer Resources” in the back of each Trainer Guide, which includes examples of difficult questions with thoughtful answers. Specifically, I consult the “Yeah, but” section of the trainer resources (see page 223 of the Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue Trainer Guide).

If I am not able to find the answer there, I will look at the index in the corresponding book to examine the topic in more detail from the perspective of the book authors and researchers.

Another resource I rely on is my esteemed colleagues. Likewise, you can tap into a great source of support and knowledge within the Crucial Learning Trainers groups on both Facebook and LinkedIn. In these groups, certified trainers can pose questions and get answers from fellow certified trainers, master trainers, and Crucial Learning experts.

Here’s just one insight I gained from a colleague. If we watch closely, every video in Mastering Dialogue reflects a power differential. This is no accident, for ALL Crucial Conversations bring power differentials to the surface, whether in the form of position, gender, or race, or in the form of social status, outspokenness, or ability to articulate ideas. From the first video in Get Unstuck featuring Anya and Kim to the interaction between Danor and Jeet in Explore Others’ Paths, a power differential exists. The authors of the content always say that if the skills aren’t powerful enough to hold the toughest conversations with the toughest people, then they aren’t practical for the real world.

When learners ask tough questions, we may need to focus more on helping them see the benefit of Master My Stories, inviting them to examine their beliefs that would render them powerless. Help learners challenge the stories that may impact their dialogue in situations where they feel that some dynamic exists that would render the skills useless. As we teach the Victim, Villain, Helpless stories, we teach learners to ask, “What CAN I do to move towards what I really want?” Power differentials will always exist, but that does not necessarily mean some people are powerless. We may not be able to change or influence everything in our situation, but what conversations CAN we have? What influence IS possible? Where can we start?

The feedback I received was more than valuable. It gave me not only the answer to the difficult question I had been asked, but it also gave me a new way to both hear and answer these hard questions. While Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue is not a course on diversity, equity, and inclusion, each lesson teaches us that there is a pool of shared meaning, and the aim of dialogue is to invite and allow everyone to contribute to it. In other words, everybody gets a seat at the table—regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, political viewpoint, ability, or experience. Dialogue is the goal. The skills taught in the course grant us voice. They give us power to discuss what was previously undiscussable.

For a deeper look at how Crucial Conversations skills can be leveraged as a framework to initiate and sustain conversations about race, gender, equity, and other often avoided and very necessary topics, check out our November 2023 trainer webinar, Connecting DE&I with Dialogue: Leveraging Crucial Conversations Skills for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Initiatives.

The post Responding to Questions about Power, Race, Gender, and More appeared first on Crucial Learning.

How do you continue the learning journey when your organization has trained most employees? Kara Cuzzetto offers coaching sessions and holds semiannual refresher sessions to help her team keep their Crucial Conversations® skills sharp.

Cuzzetto works as a senior continuous improvement manager in the Finance and Business Operations Division of King County, the county in Washington state that includes Seattle. King County has ingrained Crucial Conversations into its culture. All new employees attend Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue during orientation, but training doesn’t stop there.

“Crucial Conversations is part of our clarity map goals and our strategic directional—what we call our true north—and the concepts and the tools of Crucial Conversations are part of how we expect team members to show up,” Cuzzetto said. “It’s more than, ‘Oh, you need to have a Crucial Conversation with that person.’ It’s gotten to the point where it’s like, ‘Let’s role-play that. Let’s have a conversation on how you might go about having that conversation.’”

Cuzzetto seeks to keep these skills at the top of team members’ minds by hosting a virtual 90-minute refresher session every six months. She advertises the session in her weekly division newsletter for the two editions before the session, and people who sign up to attend receive a reminder email the day before. After the session, Cuzzetto sends attendees the slide deck and posts it to SharePoint for broader reference.

The refresher session builds on the entire Crucial Conversations model, focusing on the core of each module within the Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue course. Two weeks before the refresher session, Cuzzetto reviews her files and makes updates based on any questions that learners have brought up in the six months since the last refresher.

“What does it mean to be stuck, right?” she said. “We talk about that. ‘How are you not moving forward and even stuck in old patterns, tactics, and techniques you’ve used that haven’t worked?’ And then we move into asking where is your intent? ‘Are you going into the conversation to win or place blame? Are you really going in with that sense of curiosity, and how do you make sure that you’re sharing just your facts as facts and moving into your story and then genuinely asking, from a place of curiosity, how do they feel?’”

Cuzzetto seeks to make the refresher sessions as interactive as possible, using polls and role-playing, like in the course, complete with an initiator, respondent, and coach.

“The Crucial Conversations content is easy to customize and to make it very relatable to our work environments and how we show up, and we’re able to tell real-life stories around similar situations,” she said.

As for the content, Cuzzetto said she reminds her learners that the Pool of Shared Meaning is the most important piece.

“It’s about the dialogue and the conversation that happens there,” she said. “It’s the Spider-Man rule for me: ‘With great knowledge comes great responsibility.’ We are responsible for keeping that dialogue going. And so, when we recognize the conversation is going off the rails, I really try to remind them of those skills like CPR—thinking about content, pattern, or relationship and what is the right conversation to have? Is it about what’s happening now, or is it deeper?”

Equity and social justice are significant initiatives for King County, so Cuzzetto said she tailors Crucial Conversations content to meet the county’s focus on those conversations.

“It’s not just about places that your organization might be missing those conversations—it’s also about opening up for those equity questions,” she said. “We’re always looking for opportunities to use the Crucial Conversations framework to have those hard equity conversations.”

Cuzzetto said about 30 to 90 employees will attend the refresher sessions among a staff of about 200.

In addition to the group refreshers, Cuzzetto offers one-on-one coaching sessions to her course graduates. She said they know they can put an appointment on her calendar to workshop how to handle a specific situation they’re facing.

“Stakes are high,” Cuzzetto said. “We have a lot of emotions, and we might not be on the same page, so we really feel like Crucial Conversations gives all of our employees that foundation so they can move into areas where people might be feeling uncomfortable and gives them some skills and some tools to navigate those conversations with the results in mind, always thinking about what we as a team are trying to achieve.”

The post Kara Cuzzetto and Keeping Crucial Skills Top of Mind appeared first on Crucial Learning.

When I facilitate certification courses, I hear soon-to-be-trainers say something like, “Once I get to know this stuff, I’ll feel much better and do a much better job training.”

I reply, “Maybe.”

A decade ago, I partnered with a client to test an updated version of one of our courses. The client provided an audience of learners and two trainers to help us test the new course. One of the trainers had been training the course for a few years, but the other trainer had only recently been certified—she’d never actually trained it.

Her first time training the course would be training this updated version, which she’d never seen. To her credit, she didn’t hesitate to try.

So, I was sitting in the back of the room, observing this new course being tested, as the experienced trainer and novice trainer cotaught the course. The experienced trainer looked very relaxed and told lengthy stories. He was as “cool as the other side of the pillow.”

The new trainer seemed a little nervous, and she didn’t have long stories. She simply clicked through each slide and read what was on the screen. Her delivery wasn’t flowery or complicated.

I observed something that surprised the me. When the experienced trainer set up an exercise, learners looked around confused and raised their hands asking for clarification. He was consistently behind time when he handed the class off to his co-trainer. He had a lot of ideas and nuances and examples (from his years working with the content), and he wanted to impart as much as he could.

On the other hand, the new trainer simply followed the script—but people didn’t have questions, and they weren’t confused. Being a novice resulted in clarity. When she trained, the class went smoothly, and the learners had a superior experience.

I’ve seen this happen dozens of times over the past 15 years of observing and teaching trainers. And so I started giving new trainers this advice: Don’t let what you know get in the way of your people learning what they don’t know.

It turns out that a deep understanding of course content can turn into:

• Overdrawn explanations
• Excessive examples and stories
• Teaching key concepts out of order
• Slow learning pace
• Confusion rather than clarity
• Muddled ideas and watered down insights
• A presentation about you rather than for learners

We tend to vilify doubt and exalt certainty. But maybe what we need as trainers is less certainty and more fidelity to the content. After all, the skills and principles are what change lives and transform organizations. We are simply here to facilitate that.

So don’t be afraid to read the slides, especially when it comes to instructions for exercises and introductions to videos.

I’ve been fortunate to codesign our courses and draft much of what you see on the screen, and to this day I still read almost every slide verbatim when facilitating. I don’t have learners complaining that I seem robotic or scripted. They feel like things are clear! And when there’s time and opportunity to share a story or a joke or an example, I get to freelance—I get to be me, use my personality.

Let’s go back to when we knew less than we do now—not to regress, but to progress in our efforts to facilitate powerful learning experiences. Going back to simplicity may be the next step forward to greater impact.

The post Your Problem May Be that You Know Too Much appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Creating psychological safety matters in any workplace, but in the oil and gas industry, that safety can make all the difference in maintaining a physically safe workplace.

That’s where John Menzies comes in. As a certified trainer at Plains—a midstream company that sources raw products and processes them into end-user oil and gas products in the U.S. and Canada—Menzies seeks to equip everyone with the skills to speak up and have Crucial Conversations, from frontline leaders and influencers to the unionized foundational workforce.

“Our goal is to create a safe environment, where all our procedures ensure the safety of our employees, the public, the environment, and our assets,” he said.

That means creating a culture where everyone in the organization can ask questions and voice concerns, regardless of title or experience level.

“Safety means being able to say, ‘I don’t understand this’ in a meaningful way so we can have that conversation,” Menzies said. “When an employee feels safe to ask questions regardless of time in the role, and a leader makes it safe to ask questions, then there’s less of a chance a question isn’t answered.”

Menzies brings a unique skill set to Plains—he has operational experience that helps him relate to the frontline workers, plus a passion for personal development. This combination positions him well for spearheading the companywide initiative to roll out Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue to any of Plains’ more than 4,200 employees who want the training.

“I’m always grateful to have two days of someone’s life, to create the experience and event for them,” he said.

Noting the importance of the training and subsequent conversations, the company has provided space and time to train every employee in the district.

Questions and clear expectations are vital starting points for communication among Plains employees, Menzies said. He referenced Nancy Willard’s quote, “Answers are closed rooms; and questions are open doors that invite us in.”

“We want those questions,” he said. “Their headspace, their ability to be fit for duty—we support that environment where employees are not only physically fit for duty but also mentally fit for duty, where no one shows up to the job upset or thinking about a negative interaction or anything less than a meaningful interaction. If they feel safe, they’re more likely to be safe and have their mind on their task.”

Another important facet of Menzies’s Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue approach is explaining how brain chemistry changes when someone is in fight or flight—a concept that may be unfamiliar to those in his workforce.

“The brain doesn’t know if the threat is physical or emotional, and someone going into the facility for work who emotionally isn’t fit for duty puts themselves and others at risk,” he said. “You wouldn’t send someone who just got hit in the head with a baseball bat out to the facility. So don’t send someone out who’s been hit by an invisible baseball bat and expect them to perform the same way. Avoid that scenario. Do what you need to do to invite them to dialogue.”

Success comes as people are more open and willing to move from silence and engage in dialogue, Menzies said, and as decision-makers have conversations that help them make smarter decisions as a group.

“I believe that being exposed to the tools and the opportunity to practice Crucial Conversations changes people’s lives,” Menzies said. “You can’t unhear it, and you can’t unknow it. You can choose to ignore it. You can choose to fool yourself that you’re right. That’s an option you have once you know it, but you can’t unknow it.”

The post John Menzies and Creating Safety—Physical and Psychological appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Marketing may not be second nature for most learning and development professionals, but it is for Patrick Maurer. Before joining the employee development team at the City of Tempe, Maurer developed marketing acumen running his own business. He’s applied some tried-and-true techniques to promote the city’s learning and development offerings with its employees.

“Rather than doing emails, I used to mail people supplies to make s’mores and do these things that broke the mold,” he said. “People were like, ‘What in the world?’ and then they would read the thing because it was something different—the type of stuff that just pops out.”

Each December, the City of Tempe sends a glossy, full-color printed course catalog to every city employee, personalized with the employee’s name and address—“like the toy catalog you used to get,” Maurer said—showcasing the upcoming year’s employee development training opportunities. Each course gets the full-page treatment with descriptions of the course, dates, and a testimonial quote from a course graduate within the city staff. (Click here to see sample pages.)

“We were finding that people have so much email, and sometimes course information is accidentally marked read, or it gets buried in the inbox,” he said. “And we were definitely missing people.”

Maurer, who initiated and continues to lead the catalog project, said he lifts the course descriptions largely from CrucialLearning.com.

“The catalog allows people to reflect on the courses a bit more, and we get a spike in signups early on,” he said. “Once we sort of get that spike early on, we leverage referrals. The group who goes through January through March will encourage a colleague to go through those next batch of months. It’s a beautiful entry piece that is different than everything else we put out.”

Another piece of marketing prowess is in how the City of Tempe times their course offerings. Getting Things Done gets scheduled at deliberate times throughout the year—in January to align with New Year’s resolutions, around the start of the school year, and then before the holiday season—and as each session approaches, the marketing message ties into the pain point facing prospective learners.

“We’re like, ‘Hey, it’s about to get really busy, and you’re going to have so many different things going on—wouldn’t you like to have less stress?’” he said. “So that became our model for Getting Things Done, and once we had that, we started recognizing where we could place the other courses and how we could unite the message around it.”

Marketing to individuals within the organization also follows an intentional learning journey. Getting Things Done and Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue are the entry points for Crucial Learning courses, Maurer said.

“We found that when people became more able to manage their tasks, be productive, feel efficient, and not be stressed out, they felt like they had room to do other courses,” he said.

Once learners have taken one of these courses, they’ll get invited to take the other course—and about six to nine months after Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, the next invitation is to Crucial Conversations for Accountability.

“It’s sort of like, ‘Are you ready for the next piece?’” Maurer said. “What we’ve loved is that the people who come to the Crucial Learning pieces are like, ‘This is really good, this makes sense. Why have I never thought of it this way?’ We really try to space out how much learners go back to back—sort of unlocking that next step for them without giving them too much all at once. We want some gaps so that they can just apply what they’ve learned. But then when people are ready, we want to give them that next step.”

Although most courses are open enrollment for all learners at any time regardless of role, Maurer said they emphasize Crucial Conversations for Accountability for supervisors and Crucial Influence for city leadership (for now).

Maurer said periodically he and his team will run reports in their learning management system to see which employees are good candidates for upcoming courses and then email invitations to these prospective learners.

“Now we can filter in and encourage, ‘Hey, just check out this opportunity,’” he said. “‘This one’s great. It’s great to reconnect with you.’ Doing those little pieces will at least get it back on their radar so they know that there’s something else if they want it.”

The post Patrick Maurer and Marketing Mastery appeared first on Crucial Learning.

I’ve taken a different approach. To guide my desires and commitments for being better in the coming year than I was the year before, I choose a word for the year. My guess is many of you have done something similar. Some of my past words include contribute, grow, focus, become. This year, my word is discipline. In his book Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, author Ryan Holiday says, “Discipline means being disciplined in all things, especially the little things.”

I want to be more disciplined in the little things of my life. For me, that means improving my daily habits. A habit is something that starts out as choice and then becomes nearly an automatic pattern. The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, teaches the science behind habit formation with three components of the habit loop:

• The cue: the trigger or signal that initiates the habit (time of day, your environment, etc.)
• The routine: the actual behavior or action
• The reward: the signal to the brain to do the routine again (a positive outcome or satisfaction)

Once you identify the desired routine, leveraging the right cues and the right rewards helps create automaticity.

What daily habits would you like to be automatic this year? Mediation? Exercise? Journaling? Reading? Networking? Regardless of your desired habits, it will ultimately take discipline—or, in other words, willpower. As Charles Duhigg says, “Willpower isn’t just a skill, it’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.” It’s willpower that gets exhausted for many of us.

More than intelligence, wealth, or advanced academics, willpower seems to be a greater predictor of success. Understanding the habit loop will not be enough, we have to harness our willpower. We have to be more disciplined. But how? Here are five suggestions to help support your willpower.

Focus on Your WHY

People need a sense of purpose to persist in a habit change. Your why should be something personal and meaningful to you. It’s the reason why, specifically, you wish to accomplish this habit. Constantly ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”

Create a Specific Plan

Too often our resolutions are too vague. Lose weight is a great goal, but it won’t guide your behavior. You are more likely to do a routine if you make it small and specific, like adding at least 25 grams of protein to your breakfast every day. Make it small and specific enough that when the time comes to do the routine, you don’t even have to think about it. The ultimate goal is to reduce the time between the cueing and the doing.

Surround Yourself with True Friends

Friends are great. True friends are better. A true friend makes it easier to accomplish our goals, not harder. A supportive network of true friends increases our willpower.

Turn Bad Days into Good Data

As you experiment with new habits, see yourself as the scientist and the subject. Learn to see your behavior not in terms of success and failure but in terms of data you can use to improve.

Repetition is Key

We often underestimate the amount of effort required to achieve success. Changing behavior will get harder before it gets easier. Over time it will get easier—but first, we must overcome the forces (real and perceived) that keep us where we are. And that takes repetition.

If you don’t believe it can and will get easier, you will find yourself at the beginning of the curve—and that makes it far too easy to slip back to your old habits and stay where you are. Take heart from this classic Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

These five tips to increase our discipline will be key as we look to learn from the past, live in the present, and prepare for the future. Let’s make 2024 the year of impact as we make, keep, and improve our daily habits in order to accomplish our even bigger goals.

The post Being Disciplined with Daily Habits appeared first on Crucial Learning.

We spend a lot of time looking ahead to upcoming events and to-dos, so I want to pause for a moment and reflect upon all the hard work you’ve done and amazing things you’ve accomplished in 2023. It truly is a joy to work with each of you!

What were your training highlights this year? Share in the comments!

New Additions in 2023

One of the highlights this year was debuting a Trainer Spotlight feature to highlight the best practices and implementation ideas of fellow trainers. I love chatting with trainers and hearing about their experiences and unique takes on helping their audiences learn. If you haven’t read these yet, please do! Thank you to the trainers who participated:

• Caitlin Ryder and the Power of Authenticity
• April King and a Culture of Dialogue
• Alyssa Willet and Assessing Learner Confidence
• Laura Larsen and Creating Unity through Crucial Conversations
• Jeremy King and Testing a New Crucial Course
• Katrina Greene and Driving Influence
• Nicole O’Brien and Tailoring Delivery for Learner Needs
• Russell Virgin and Improving Generations through Crucial Skills

If you have a story to tell, please email me. I’d love to hear it!

Another new addition for 2023 was the annual trainer verification in Trainer Zone. This automated process helps us keep our records up to date so we can reach you with the information you need to stay current in facilitating our courses. Thank you to the 5,650-plus trainers who verified their data this year! You’ll start seeing this pop up again one year from your initial verification, beginning in January.

Trainer Numbers in 2023 (as of November 30)

• 1,272 certified trainers completed a trainer certification course.
• 309 trainers completed a Fast Track certification.
• 227 people joined our Crucial Learning Trainers Facebook group.
• 495 people joined our Crucial Learning Trainers LinkedIn group.

Lives Impacted 2023

This year we innovated our Lives Impacted recognition program with two changes. Every earner received a copy of the new edition of Crucial Influence with their reward orders. We also invited them to an exclusive Lives Impacted Live online event with Crucial Learning co-founder Joseph Grenny, where they could spend an hour asking Joseph questions and connecting with one another.

If you want to participate in Lives Impacted 2024, there’s still time! Access is earned by the previous year’s trainings—meaning that the trainings you log now will go toward your Lives Impacted status next year. Click here to log your trainings before December 31!

Lives Impacted by the Numbers

• 681 certified trainers qualified for Lives Impacted.
• 20 countries are represented by Lives Impacted earners, including Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States.
• 90 trainers earned Platinum Status (9+ trainings logged).
• 120 trainers earned Gold Status (6–8 trainings logged).
• 471 trainers earned Silver Status (3–5 trainings logged).
• 3,436 learners taught within sessions logged in Trainer Zone (so far) that will count toward 2024 Lives Impacted status.

Grant Program

Did you know that Crucial Learning has a grant program? We’ll donate learner guides to qualifying nonprofit organizations in tandem with certified and/or master trainers who donate their time and skills to facilitate.

This year 18 certified trainers facilitated pro bono grant training sessions, and we’ve sent materials to them as well as six trainers whose sessions are coming up in early 2024. If you’re interested in participating, click here to learn more and apply!

Grant Program by the Numbers

• 554 learner guides donated to nonprofit organizations through the grant program this year (includes a handful for upcoming 2024 trainings).
• $115,161 saved by nonprofits thanks to donated learner materials.
• $225,500 saved by nonprofits thanks to pro bono facilitation.
• $4,600 retail value of the 200 paperback copies of Crucial Accountability donated to The Other Side Academy
• $345,261 combined value of facilitation and materials donated to grant program recipients—which is almost $50 of value for every $1 Crucial Learning donates!

Many thanks to this year’s grant program trainers for providing Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations for Accountability, or Getting Things done to their respective nonprofits:

• Greg Miller—Frederick-Grayslake Middle School PTO (Grayslake, IL)
• Melanie Gao—Anonymous (Nashville, TN)
• Jenny Jones—Veterans Community Project (Kansas City, MO)
• Dina Austin—Home of the Sparrow (McHenry, IL)
• Sherene Walters—Master-Pieced Inc. (Lexington, KY)
• Deron Poisson—Ascend Services, Inc. (Manitowoc, WI)
• Rozlan Luck— East Birmingham Church Ministries (Birmingham, AL)
• Renée Powers— LeaderFlow Development Program (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston)
• Michelle Wood—Valley Community Church (Pleasanton, CA)
• Tina Howell—Yorkminster Presbyterian Church (Yorktown, VA)
• David Reyes—Fielder Church (Arlington, TX)
• Christine Skynar—St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center (Detroit, MI)
• Jackson Ford—Dauphin Way United Methodist Church (Mobile, AL)
• Maria Moss—Shelter from the Rain, Inc. (Savannah, GA)
• Henry Maynard—Science ATL (Decatur, GA)
• Greg Stephens—World Relief Chicagoland (Chicago, IL)
• Ken Sauby—Foster First (Yakima, WA)
• Jane Gregg—First United Methodist Church of Seattle (Seattle, WA)

Big thanks to everyone for making this year so outstanding! As our mission says:

We believe in a world where all human beings can be great at being human. We know that, with the right skills, everyone can learn to behave in ways that make their lives, their families, their organizations, and our world better. We are driven to find those crucial skills and share them with people in ways that make a difference.

That work would not be possible without the force for good you certified trainers are. Keep up the good work—here’s to a bright 2024 ahead!

The post 2023: A Year in Review appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Can teaching crucial skills create a ripple effect that changes generations? For Russell Virgin, that beautiful concept is reality. As comprehensive services deputy director for Early Learning Essentials, Russell facilitates courses for 160 employees across three Utah counties who, in turn, model and share the skills with the nearly 600 children and families with whom they work.

“If we’re serious about helping families overcome poverty and become successful and supportive parents for their kids, then there’s some real barriers for the families we’re working with,” he said.

Early Learning Essentials (formerly Mountainland Head Start) runs a federally funded Head Start program for children who come from low-income families and/or have disabilities. The program provides preschool, health, mental health, and nutrition services for children and social services for their families.

Virgin is certified in all five Crucial Learning courses, but he primarily facilitates the two Crucial Conversations courses for his entire staff, alternating between Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue and the add-on version of Crucial Conversations for Accountability. He’s taught Getting Things Done and The Power of Habit to his leadership and management teams as well, and he specifically trains family advocates in Crucial Influence.

“I love each course,” he said. “They each bring such a different set of tools to our staff. It’s such a critical set of skills to build the culture we want here.”

The challenge, Virgin said, is finding time to get everyone trained—particularly teachers, assistant teachers, and aides who can’t step away from the kids in their classrooms for days during the school year. Instead, they provide a stipend to bring them in during summer, and Virgin coaches staff through challenging conversations as needed throughout the year.

He’s also implemented monthly follow-up sessions to continue learning beyond the course.

“It just feels like a single training’s insufficient for them unless they’re really intentional about it themselves,” he said. “So we come up with practice scenarios or use some of the ones we’ve gotten from Crucial Learning, and we work through them, have people ask questions, and then practice. Each month we’re practicing different scenarios.”

Although Virgin doesn’t facilitate sessions for the families they help, he finds that arming family advocates with an understanding of the Six Sources of Influence makes a difference in how they work with their clients.

“They go into the homes of our families, and they’ll talk with them about their needs and their strengths,” Virgin said. “When they’re doing that, one of the tools we’re trying to have them use is the Crucial Influence model to work through the barriers to their major life challenges. They’ll go through the different sources of influence and talk about those crucial moments and vital behaviors and everything.”

Creating a Crucial Conversations culture benefits everyone within the organization, he said.

“My management team has learned to resolve parent concerns quickly and respectfully,” he said. “When a parent concern escalates and they speak with one of the leadership or management team members, they often feel heard and respected no matter what their concern is.”

The post Russell Virgin and Improving Generations through Crucial Skills appeared first on Crucial Learning.