Two in one thread? He’s here all week folks, remember to try the fish!

I mentioned this thread to my girlfriend last night and she pointed me towards a podcast at The Happiness Lab that specifically dealt with positive thinking/attitdues and how damaging they can be: https://www.happinesslab.fm/season-1-episodes/dont-accentuate-the-positive

Now, vested interest… She’s recommended this podcast to me in the past and it triggered me in a huge way. Not because the host is American or lectures at Yale, but because the way that statements were being made and accepted as fact without either context or stats to back them up. I think it was the episode about Ariana Huffington and sleep. Anyway, I don’t like the podcast, but this might be relevant.

FWIW, I would write. pleasant and carefully worded e-mail to your HR saying that you do not think this speaker was a good choice for the company. But then, I dislike that kind of bullshit and have also lost family to cancer. No amount of positive thinking was going to cure my dad’s liver cancer. Medicine nearly did, but the cancer won in the end.

@Cougar Are you here all week? Is the steak good?

(-:

Oddly enough,

I was at a steakhouse last night, and I’m away all week as of about an hour’s time.

Agreed, we had ditzy girls trying to yank out the safety pin, whilst simultaneously squeezing the trigger, trapping said pin in a clamp

I see you haven’t attended the Sexism and 21st Century Thinking Course.

😀

That’s interesting, thank you – I’d be interested to know if it was better in any way other than just not having to have a night away from home. 🙂 We’ve had to do the same, but it’s finding what works – breakout rooms don’t really work for us as we find a few people do all the work and the rest sit back quietly. Engagement is definitely the trickiest thing, I think – easy to see if people are engaged face to face, less easy remotely. We used to just ask questions and people would answer via chat, but exactly the same problem as breakout rooms, as soon as one person started answering, the rest would leave them to it. We use Zoom polls now and wait until everyone’s answered, which is a bit better. But it’s IT training for new starters – in the training room, they all get to follow along and replicate what the trainer is doing, but now they just have to watch what we’re doing. After 11 hours of that over three days, they must be borderline brain dead, no matter how sparkling and effervescent the trainer…

I’ve wondered about using WalkMe in the past for this sort of thing (but never made it to pricing – as when they don’t tell you that upfront I know its going to be high!) – dumping loads of info on people is not a great way for it to sink in and be easy to recall when they need it.

I’ve seen some good training going on during lockdown. 1. they expect your camera on so they can see you are engaged; 2. they pick people to ask questions to – just the same as you might in the room; 3. they set ground rules on asking questions (e.g. everyone is on mute till they “raise hand” and the trainer unmutes them) to stop the inevitable mouthy gobshites!; 4. One of my colleagues had to submit question papers throughout the training which proved they were paying attention – he said it made a big difference knowing at the end of each 40 min session he’d get given questions and 20 mins to submit with a “pass mark” required. They were just google forms.

I’ve also seen some god awful training. Last week I left a session more confused than when I went in, and having since worked through with other people who did it we are 90% sure our pre-course understanding was correct in the first place! I believe I might be the only person who left “very clear” feedback as nobody wants to be rude about a person who is more “senior” than them… That particular training would have been just as bad in real life.