Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2008 - (Page 41) 10 QUESTIONS WITH MARK MYETTE 1 What’s most important to a learning professional — classroom/training experience or business experience? 5 6 7 8 What are the most pressing issues on your professional plate now? That’s a loaded question in many ways. I guess the initial answer is it depends. If I’m a customer-facing person, getting that person in the classroom is more challenging. Their learning happens on the job in real time. The real-time training, informal training, is probably the best way to go. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any classroom training for them, because we do that. But if I’m speaking to a different population, such as our sales executives or solutions consultants, people who could take several days to concentrate on a subject, the classroom is very valuable if it’s structured properly. One of the things we do is whenever we do a formal instructor-led event we make sure we have coaches or fieldbased managers who will be in the room to add context or to assist us. Adding value and being viewed as what I like to call relevant. What we adopted earlier this year was turning the word relevant into an acronym that got everyone on the team focused on results. Being Relevant: Results, Excellent, Learning, Engaged, Valued, Assured, Networked, Technical. So the pressing issue is really being able to add value to the business. What’s the most challenging aspect of your job? 2 3 What’s your favorite training methodology? Really living and demonstrating the RELEVANT factor. In the training profession, a lot of it’s about credibility, whether it’s internal or external. If you’re viewed as credible, and you’re viewed as providing a value to the organization, when things get tight and businesses need to compress budgets, if you can’t justify it, it’s going to go away. So being able to justify what you do and the value you bring is very, very critical. What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job? Preferred is definitely instructor-led, however, due to budget and availability and life issues, it’s not a realistic approach for everyone to go through classrooms. Informal learning is the most realistic approach. So probably my preferred methodology would be a blended, on-demand approach. Watching others succeed, whether it’s a new salesperson that in a short period of time became successful or very successful and part if it was the type of on-boarding they received. Watching folks like that being successful is very gratifying. What’s your most memorable training experience, good or bad? Do you find the time to continue your own professional development? Failing. It wasn’t so much in the context of instructor-led, being in the classroom, but I would bundle training experience to include life experience in the field. When I was sales manager and I was taking one of my sales people on a sales call, the call didn’t go the way I thought it would go. I failed miserably. In some ways it was not a good thing, but in some ways it was because I was able to demonstrate how not to do something. It didn’t cost my sales person anything, but it gave them experience. People probably don’t want to think about an experience when they failed, but in reality it’s probably the most beneficial as long as you can call a time out and learn from it. Yes. Every day! I am a morning person. I get up anywhere from 3:30 or 4 in the morning and drive to a fitness center near where I work, do my necessary hours of workout, then I go into the office and read every e-mail, review material that’s relevant to my job, that’s important for me to know. Everyday I try to be a sponge as much as I can and take stuff in. If it’s useful for me, I usually end up forwarding it on, or forward on key nuggets, to people I think would benefit from knowing the same thing. Literally every day I try to spend sometime absorbing information. 4 Who would you consider your most valuable role model? 9 Any recommendations for folks out there – books, partners, resources, etc.? From a standpoint of a personal mentor, I was blessed when I was in college to have someone take me under his wing and get very involved in what he was doing. It was an attorney who was very politically active in the Massachusetts area. He was able to provide me in his own way guidance on where I should consider going in my career as well as how I should deal with people, interact with people. He was a wonderful role model. Unfortunately he was killed in a car crash shortly after I graduated from college. That was pretty sad but I was blessed from the fact that I was able to observe him and learn from him. From a training standpoint, even though we don’t have a formal mentorship, Elliott Masie, his insight and his depth that he provides in the training industry by asking questions by throwing things out is something that I’ve always admired in him. There’s a book called “The Oz Principle,” which was written by Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman. It seems basic, but what it does is formalizes in a positive way how people can hold themselves and others accountable. It level-sets everybody on how they establish goals. That’s been a really good resource recently that I’m now evangelizing through the organization. The other, keeping with the profession, the ASTD online book store is great, especially when they talk about the guides and the toolkits they sell. I’m usually open to getting calls or emails from sales people. I love to meet with sales people also or consultants in the field. Usually they have the latest trends or they have good insight. If readers want to connect with me, I can be reached at mark.myette@pb.com and www.linkedin.com/in/markmyette 10 If someone wants to follow in my professional footsteps, I’d tell them to be sure to… Do it for no other reason other than to make a positive difference. Be a sponge – never stop learning. Be driven to serve. Be interested in others. Be a team player. Play nice in the sandbox of life and work. Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2008 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ 41 http://www.linkedin.com/in/markmyette http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ
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