Professional Development: The Trick

Most professional accountants remember their final exam. Even people in their eighties can tell you about the question they aced or totally blew. One memory that stuck with me was my friend Jim remarking to me as we exited the exam center, "If I ever learn anything else it will be by accident."

Well, times have changed. The accounting rules we learned may have seemed absolute and immutable at the time, but sadly that hasn't proved to be the case. I remember deciding not to specialize in tax because of the arbitrary way they could be altered by the stroke of a legislator's pen. So, what did I specialize in? Computers, where if something is three years old, it's ancient and obsolete.

About a decade ago I applied for a job. I remember thinking that the interview was going particularly well, that is until the interviewer said, "I see you got your accounting designation back in 1983. What have you done lately?" It was a fair comment. I realized that I had not paid enough attention to my skills. That propelled me to go for my specialist designation as well as a designation in project management. On the job experience is invaluable, but you have to keep up on the theory as well. Experience tells you what works. Theory tells you why.

So, I'm a big fan of continuing education for professionals. I cheered when compulsory professional development rules were introduced. The trick is to choose your courses strategically: make each course serve more than one purpose. For example,

• If you have two designations, find courses that will qualify as professional development for both.
• Try to combine professional development with an interest. If you want to be a better presenter, try giving courses instead of taking them.
• Treat each course as a networking opportunity with both the lecturer and the other students.
• Go beyond networking and look for new friends.
• Try going beyond your comfort zone and try something related but new. It may just change your career direction.
• Try to reuse your work. If you write a good essay, turn it into a presentation at the office, an article in a professional journal, or add it to your company web site or blog.

Finally, don't limit yourself to the education you have to do. Try thinking about things that you think it would be cool to learn. Don't worry whether they have any practical application, go with your gut. You'd be amazed how useful the knowledge will prove in the future.

You're Teaching - But Are They Learning?

Last night, at the dojo, John was teaching. John has a radically different way of teaching martial arts. He smiles. He cracks jokes. He took a serious Aikido exercise and called it the "Weeble Wobble" (as in "weebles wobble but they don't fall down"). He encouraged the beginners to get in close. He said that in classical martial arts training, the top students stood in the first row and the lesser students stood in the rows behind them, each learning from the row in front of them. John's comment was that some of the lesson is lost learning that way.

The Sensei of the dojo, George, has a different style. He emphasizes classical Aikido training, where students watch the master closely and "steal" his technique. But even George says that he does more verbal explanations now because some students learn better that way.

I am not comparing the two teachers to say that one has a better style than the other. Quite the opposite. You need both. You need the classical, disciplined approach AND the irreverent, fun approach. They (and others besides) will give you different prisms to view the material through. You will see and retain different things.

My favorite trainer, Kristi, had a bunch of useful techniques she had picked up along the way. She would tell her students, "All those things they taught you about cheating in high school? Forget them! In this class we cheat. Anything you need to get to the right answer is fine. Look over your neighbor's shoulder, consult your notes, ask someone or look it up in the manual." Kristi bribed the students with little chocolates. She would make them get up and stretch. She would hand out "speeding tickets", little yellow cardboard squares that a student could hold up when the trainer was going too fast or too slow. She knew that when the eyes glaze over all learning stops.

I too have done a lot of training. One day, I was complaining to my wife, a teacher, after a particularly disappointing session. She asked me to describe how I trained. She was amazed. "You mean you just stand at the front and talk?" When I protested that I also did a lot of exercises and encouraged questions, she asked, "But what if not all your students are auditory learners?"

It turns out that a lot of research has been done about learning styles since the days when I was in school. We now know that different people learning differently, emphasizing their ears, their eyes or even their fingers. My wife encouraged me to experiment with dividing the class into groups and asking them to present to each other. There's no better way to cement in a lesson than by asking someone to teach it.

So, the next time you hold a team meeting, change things up a little. Get other people to present. Change the format. Throw in a little chocolate and have some fun. Just because we're serious about what we do, doesn't mean that we have to take ourselves seriously.

Are You a Sensei (Teacher)?

In Aikido, the teacher is referred to as "Sensei" meaning literally, one who has gone before.

When he was 10, my son used to be quite good at Judo. Now that he's 15, we have been encouraging him to go back to it for physical fitness. We weren't getting anywhere, until my wife suggested that we all do it together as a family. So we signed up for Aikido (the choice being between Aikido and Kendo and I didn't feel like getting hit with a stick) at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. That is how I met Sensei Jim.

There we were, dressed in sweats in a room full of people outfitted in martial arts uniforms, made to stand at the front of the class, feeling something like a new member in the accounting department (ah, you see where I am going with this!) Anyway, as I was busy feeling like I'm too old for this kind of thing, and mixing up my left and right (although I must say that there is a satisfaction in throwing and being thrown by your son), I got a chance to observe Sensei Jim.

First, Jim led the class through some basic warm ups and stretches. Then he told the class to do a standard exercise and took us newbies (my son's term) aside and started us on rolls. As soon as he saw that we were getting it, he asked one of the other students to work with us while he taught the main class. Every ten minutes or so, he checked back looking not just at our form, but also helping the student leader with his / her teaching. In that way, he was able to teach the whole class, despite the radically different abilities of the students. At the same time he was able to improve the teaching skills of his better students. Finally, everyone received Jim's personal attention at some time during the lesson.

At that first class, I learned more than how to fall without hurting myself. It reminded me that I tend to jump in and fix things when I should really use the opportunity to teach my staff. I also tend to intervene personally when I could have delegated the task to someone who could use the opportunity to learn how to be a teacher.

How do you welcome new members to your team? How do you ensure they learn the skills they need? How do you help your team members become team leaders?

Arigato gozimashita (said to the Sensei at the end of the lesson)