A father and his son are in a car accident. The father is killed and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon says, “I cannot operate, because this boy is my son.”

This popular brain teaser dates back many years, but it remains relevant today; 40 to 75 percent of people still can’t figure it out. Those who do solve it usually take a few minutes to guess that the boy’s mother is the surgeon. Even with the best of intentions, when we hear “surgeon” or “boss,” the image that pops into our minds is usually a male.

The assumption is that when people realise that biases are widespread, they will be more likely to overcome them. However, new research suggests that if we’re not careful, making people aware of bias can backfire, leading them to discriminate more rather than less.

In several experiments, Professor Michelle Duguid of Washington University in St. Louis and Professor Melissa Thomas-Hunt of the University of Virginia studied whether making people aware of bias would lessen it. They informed some participants that stereotypes were rare and told others that stereotypes were common, then asked for their perceptions of women. Those who read that stereotypes were common rated women as significantly less career-oriented and more family-oriented. Even when instructed to “try to avoid thinking about others in such a manner,” participants still viewed women more traditionally after reading that a vast majority of people held stereotypes.

Professors Duguid and Thomas-Hunt conducted a similar study and told managers that stereotypes were either common or rare. Then, asked managers to read a transcript from a job interview of a candidate described as either female or male. At the end of the interview, the candidate asked for higher compensation and a nonstandard bonus. When the managers read that many people held stereotypes, they were 28%less interested in hiring the female candidate. They also judged her as 27% less likable. The same information did not alter their judgments of male candidates.

Based on these findings, Professors Duguid and Thomas-Hunt used a new approach to prevent bias awareness from backfiring.

Rather than merely informing managers that stereotypes persisted, they added that a vast majority of people try to overcome their stereotypic preconceptions. With this adjustment, discrimination nearly vanished in their studies. After reading this message, managers were 28% more interested in working with the female candidate who negotiated assertively and judged her as 25% more likable.

When we communicate that a vast majority of people hold some biases, we need to make sure that we’re not legitimating prejudice. By reinforcing the idea that people want to conquer their biases and that there are benefits to doing so, we send a more effective message: Most people don’t want to discriminate, and you shouldn’t either.

To break down the barriers that hold women back, it’s not enough to spread awareness. If we don’t reinforce that people need — and want — to overcome their biases, we end up silently condoning the status quo.

Enberin has conducted numerous experiments on challenging leaders to action to counteract bias by practicing new behaviours. We have found that setting leaders up to be accountable to each other on progress around these experiments – starts a positive wave of ‘peer group pressure’ – which creates the reinforcement of INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP behaviours. This approach is working!

Blog Author: Maureen Frank at Emberin
Maureen Frank is the Chief Disruption Officer at Emberin which is an organization that challenges leaders and organizations to get real about inclusion and diversity. Emberin is a global leading organization in diversity and inclusion training, working with over 250 of the largest organizations in the world. Maureen comes to the world of inclusion and diversity from a strong commercial background with a focus on ROI and results. Over the last 12 years, she is proud to have mentored over 32,000 participants from all over the world through the award-winning program at Emberin. To find out more about Maureen and Emberin, visit: https://www.emberin.com

The post Inclusive Leadership – A Story about bias appeared first on OpenSesame.

Portland, Ore. — 27 May 2020 — OpenSesame, the elearning innovator, announced American Management Association (AMA) has been added to its popular OpenSesame Plus subscription to expand the leadership, management, and business skills offering. 

Global 2000 companies leverage the OpenSesame Plus subscription with over 7,500 curated courses — now including AMA’s real-world scenario-based courses — to develop learners’ leadership and soft skills.

Since 1923, organizations worldwide, including the majority of the Fortune 500 companies and most government agencies, have turned to AMA as their trusted partner in professional development and draw upon its experience to enhance skills, abilities, and knowledge with noticeable results from day one.

“For nearly a century, AMA has transformed the way business professionals think and work,” said Spencer Thornton, Senior Vice President of Curation at OpenSesame. “We are excited to add their expertise and content to the OpenSesame catalog to help organizations develop their future leaders.”

“It was critical for us to find a partner that could help us gain exposure to a large and passionate user base,” said Daniel Goeller, Learning Solutions Manager of American Management Association. “OpenSesame’s position as an industry leader and experience as a trusted adviser to their customers led us to this partnership.”

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame helps develop the world’s most productive and admired workforces. With the most comprehensive catalog of elearning courses from the world’s top publishers, we are here to help you every step of the way, from finding courses, mapping them to your core competencies, syncing them with your LMS to increasing utilization and improving your L&D programs. Not only will you have the flexibility of multiple purchasing options from OpenSesame, you’ll find it simple to use and administer your elearning courses. To learn more, visit www.opensesame.com.

About American Management Association

American Management Association (“AMA”​) is a world leader in professional development, advancing the skills of individuals and organizations to drive business success. AMA’s approach to improving performance combines experiential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career. Their online courses feature real world management and business scenarios as well as self assessments and knowledge checks for increased engagement. Furthermore, their simple and modern course design appeals to a wide range of learners seeking essential skill development.

The post OpenSesame announces partnership with the American Management Association to expand leadership, management, and business skills course library appeared first on OpenSesame.

AMA’s Total Professional Model consists of specific competencies based on the level of responsibility in the organization and one’s own career path; offering a framework for individual contributors, managers, and leaders.

• Individual Contributor: an individual who has no direct reports and manages their own workload
• Manager: an individual who manages people and/or processes
• Leader: an individual who manages and leads organizations

Within each are the four domains of professional competence: Professional Effectiveness, Relationship Management, Business Acumen, and Analytical Intelligence.

• Professional Effectiveness: the mastery of personal productivity and interpersonal skills, which enables individuals to manage themselves and collaborate with others to achieve goals.
• Relationship Management: the ability to establish and maintain professional relationships in order to lead and influence others to achieve strategic goals.
• Business Acumen: the understanding of business operations at the financial, functional, and strategic levels and the maintenance of a customer-focused approach.
• Analytical Intelligence: the application of systematic thinking, analysis, and data interpretation to create insights that support organizational objectives.

Competency frameworks can be utilized for meaningful learning solutions while also creating and curating content. Skill assessments at the individual and team level as well as 360-degree ratings that are aligned with AMA’s Total Professional Model assist solutions specialists to craft learning journeys that address the right skills at the appropriate career level. These considerations provide learners with exactly what they need, when they need it. This competency framework also enables solutions specialists to accurately and efficiently identify areas for course development and expeditiously curate content.

When creating the AMA OnDemand Training Library, AMA’s Total Professional Model was a guiding light. We created a comprehensive strategy to develop 60 new courses based on competencies throughout the individual contributor, manager, and leader levels, allowing a person to access the right content at the right level while thinking long-term.

A competency model like AMA’s Total Professional Model pays immediate and long-term dividends. It provides a method to easily classify the values and skills prized by an organization and orient learning outcomes toward them. Furthermore, it provides an efficient process of curating content and making it easily accessible. Paired with quantifiable metrics that demonstrate skill acquisition, this builds the case for learning and development’s place in the business and in the budget.

Learn more about mastering the skills that drive performance here

About the author: Dan Goeller: At the American Management Association Dan is a Learning Solutions Manager responsible for the Finance, Data Analysis, and Future Technologies portfolios of courses.  He has also led the development and marketing of 60 new eLearning courses featured here on OpenSesame. A proud alum of the Business & Workplace Education program at New York University, Dan is an avid advocate of the benefits that Learning & Development can have on the individual, group, and organization.

The post Identifying Learning Solutions with the AMA OnDemand Training Library appeared first on OpenSesame.

Investing your time and energy in a mentorship program at work not only helps employees to be their best at their current position, but it also helps develop your organization’s future leaders. Mentors help to:

• • Provide sounding boards for ideas
  • provide professional feedback
  • can help you grow your network

75% of executives say mentoring has been critical to their career development according to a survey by the American Society for Training and Development. 

Traits of a good mentor: how to be one and how to find one

Having a great mentor can have an immense positive impact on your career but how do you not just find one, but find the one that’s right for you? A tricky thing about mentoring is that it’s often informal which can make it difficult to find an entry point. 

Check out these OpenSesame courses to make the most of being a mentee and paying it forward as a great mentor: 

• • What is a Mentoring Program?
  • Creating a Successful Mentoring Relationship
  • How to Match Mentors and Mentees

OpenSesame helps companies like yours develop the world’s most developed and admired workforces. For more information on how we can help you save time, money, and curate the right courses for your training program, contact us today at info@opensesame.com. 

The post Foster talent in your organization through mentorship appeared first on OpenSesame.

There’s no doubt that the further a person crawls up the corporate ladder, they should be spending more time thinking and less time doing. It’s a very important mindset to understand that thinking is not doing nothing. It might not seem like you’re busy but it’s an essential part of a leader’s role.

We don’t need to be ‘busy’ in order to think we are progressing or accomplishing something. Have you noticed how many people’s response to “How are things going?” is simply, “Busy!”. Why isn’t it something like, “Very well, thank you”?

If you are running an organization, there will always be another meeting to attend or place to be. However, a major role of a CEO or senior manager is to think and reflect, consider and adapt. If you’re too busy to think, you probably haven’t organized your team very well. You might not be able to control everything that happens but you can choose what you give your attention to. A manager I knew took a regular one hour lunch break where they thought about their afternoon and that’s where all the planning took place.

The Strategic Thinking Institute found through their research that 44% of managers spent most of their time firefighting in cultures that rewarded reactivity and discouraged thoughtfulness. 96% of leaders said they lacked time for strategic thinking because they were too busy putting out fires.

5 Tips

So, here are five things you can do to create thinking time:

1. 1. Schedule it in your calendar – just as you would schedule a meeting. Block regular time out to be alone and think things through, reflect and consider what’s most important
   2. Start your scheduling with something manageable like 10-20 minutes. That’s surely doable. Smokers can do that regularly!
   3. Make notes of ideas that come when you are doing something else. Inspiration comes often at times when your mind is relaxed like in the shower or while driving. As soon as you can, when it’s safe and convenient, make a note to capture those thoughts and return to them during a scheduled thinking slot.
   4. You can’t force inspiration but you can reflect on what is already on your mind. You might need to stimulate thinking by reading an article, reviewing the organisational business plan or strategy or even think about your team. Who’s doing what? Who needs help? Who haven’t you spoken to lately?
   5. Think out loud. If you’re the kind of person that likes to think by sharing, then ask someone to join you. Spout ideas and brainstorm with them. Just bounce some ideas around and see what happens.

For more details check out leadership courses from LearningPlanet in the OpenSesame course catalog.

About the Author:

Derek Good has been in leadership roles for over 25 years and since 2002 has been involved in corporate training and consulting. He has won Awards for Customer Service Excellence and innovation for general education and is the author of seven books.

The post 5 ways for leaders to spend more time thinking appeared first on OpenSesame.

Pressures such as:

• • Being asked to do more with less resources at an ever-accelerating pace.
  • Coordinate the efforts of remote workers, virtual teams, and cross-functional relationships.
  • Deal with ever-changing business conditions in real time.
  • Simultaneously manage the performance and development of workers from multiple generations.

There is no doubt that what it takes to be a good manager today is far different than it was just five, 10, 15 years ago. To quote management guru Tom Peters, “If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.”

Unfortunately, many leaders are performing their roles based on outdated, 20th century practices; and, subsequently, feeling the pain of not being able to keep up the challenges of this digital age.  Proving once again the wisdom behind the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting different results.”

The time for leaders to examine their fundamental assumptions about management and figure out how to build the capabilities required to compete in 21st century is now.

Peter Drucker once said, “The very best leaders are first and foremost effective managers.” While that is as true today as it was when Drucker said it, the requirements of being “effective” have changed.

The speed, complexity and digitalization of the work environment compels managers to consider new ways to organize the work, conduct business planning, develop their talent, handle everyday change, etc.  In other words, leaders need to be open to redefine what they need to be able to do and how they should go about doing it.

Having spent years running leadership development at companies big and not-so-big, a solid strategy for tackling the development process is to approach it along three interdependent dimensions, namely…

1. 1. Education: Learn new and/or enhanced management fundamentals through formal and informal learning programs (on-line learning, workshops, webinars, etc.). Intellezy offers several great course options through OpenSesame, including the popular course series The New Fundamentals of Management to start.
   2. Experience: Learning through experience is the most powerful and sustainable approach to developing management skills (as well as careers).  Involves viewing job assignments as learning activities; integrating learning with delivering business results. Best accomplished in partnership with a leader’s manager to assist in planning, execution and measuring results.
   3. Coach/Mentors: Development requires planning, action, reflection and feedback to truly make a difference and provide sustainable results. Having a coach and/or mentor are proven to provide the best results over time as well as creating a basis for maintaining a positive approach to learning.

Collectively, these three approaches can provide leaders with a learning strategy to develop the skills required to execute against their business plan while enhancing the performance and development of their employees.  

About the author: Brian Powers is an instructor at Intellezy. His background as a global executive, OD consultant, Senior Fellow at The Conference Board, and teacher at Suffolk University, enables him to synthesize best practice with relevant and practical research to deliver programs and outcomes that map to client’s business plans.

The post Developing 21st Century Management Capabilities appeared first on OpenSesame.