Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/224037
News Executive Coaching Popularity Rises One reason that executive coaching has become popular is that it addresses and remedies the failures of traditional executive development, according to executive coaching expert Alan Weinstein. Weinstein, a Vistage International chair and professor emeritus of the Whele School of Business at Canisius College in Buffalo, provides a roadmap to improve executive coaching in his new book, "Executive Coaching and the Process of Change: A Practitioner's Guide." According to Weinstein, there are three challenges an executive coach must help a coaching client overcome: 1) Control. While it is true that success can be realized through control, it can also be inhibited by control. "This is a fertile area for remediation by executive coaching," Weinstein notes. 2) Delegation. Efective delegation frees executives to explore strategic initiatives without being saddled with the activities that are performed by associates. 3) Communication. The executive's communication style needs to be addressed both for its content and context. The major content issues relate to creating gaps and tension through information acquired from assessments and coaching sessions and then asking probing questions that help the coach to create enough tension to motivate the executive coaches to action that will reduce the tension. —More Info: www.ExecutiveCoachingandtheProcessofChange.com Leadership Development: Look to the 'Dark Side' Organizations employ multi-rater ("360") feedback for a wide array of reasons, including leadership development, succession management and performance management. But "a more fundamental challenge … is determining what to measure," notes Kate Protopapas of Pilat HR Solutions. "Consequently, organizations need to … ensure that the self-awareness fostered is as productive as possible. What is measured sends a message about what is valued." Protopapas explains that the current 360 focus is on competencies, with an emphasis on the positive. "The issue, though, is that positive aspects of behavior are not necessarily the ones that underlie leader inefectiveness. Arrogance, interpersonal quirks, Machiavellian politics or outright deviousness aren't measured in the typical 360 instrument and are thus exposed peripherally, if at all." She concludes: "Careful selection of 360 instrumentation to ensure a balanced look at both the 'bright side' and the 'dark side' of leader behavior is one way to realize even more selfrefection, personal evolution and business impact." —More info: www. pilat.com Read More About Mobile Education The e-book titled "Lessons from 35 Education Experts on Improving Learning with Mobile Technology," sponsored by Citrix, notes that education is at a tipping point. The authors believe strongly that online learning technologies can help enhance and extend the teaching and learning process and provide greater, more wide-spread access to education to students. What is needed is to develop and deliver learning solutions that will meet the evolving needs of teachers and students in this changing landscape. —More info: www. slideshare.net/DavidRogelberg/mobileeducation-27782655 8 December 2013 / January 2014 Elearning! International Students Love MOOCs Ninety-one percent of respondents rated their experience as good, very good or excellent in a post-course survey of massive open online courses (MOOCs) ofered by the University of London International Programs on the Coursera online platform. An impressive 210,000 students signed up to four courses from countries all over the world. The MOOCs took the format of video lectures, assessments based on automatically-graded multiple choice questions or peer reviews, and forums allowing the students to interact with the content, each other and course teams. Twitter chats and live video sessions were also used as part of the English Common Law MOOC. Of the 210,000 total registered students, 90,000 of them went on to participate in the courses as active students, with 8,843 completing a course in full. Due to the success of the initiative, plans are in place to complement the International Programs' existing MOOC ofering. —More info: www.coursera.org