Skip to main content

This Week's Thank You: The Person Who Says Yes

Yes by Kai Friis on Flickr CC BY NC SA

In my role as a trainer, I push people. I push them to think differently. To develop new skill sets and try new tools. To do things that aren't always comfortable. It's so easy to stay where it's nice and warm and everyone smiles politely at us. As a natural introvert, there are days when a life of monotonous data entry sounds about perfect. But ask any teacher, any parent or any boss who encouraged someone to try something new. That's when you see growth. That's when you see potential. Oftentimes, that's when the fun begins.

The training program I oversee has a number of knowledge-based quizzes and courses to make sure everyone has similar levels of content understanding. Boring, but necessary. It also has a number of opportunities for my co-workers to step away from their inbox and try something brand new. These are my favorite. I never know what I'm going to get.

One of these opportunities is called The More You Know presentations, a hat-tip to my Saturday mornings as an 80s kid. For their job, most of the presentations my co-workers do are through a webinar or a phone call and rarely face to face. The More You Know presentations give them an opportunity to work on their live audience presentation skills. The employee gets to choose the topic of the presentation and they have to present to their peers for five to 10 minutes. They have to provide some kind of visual, from a slide deck to a backpack full of survival gear, as one of our presenters used to teach us how to live in the wilderness for seven days.

These presentations have become a favorite not only of mine, but also of our entire department. It allows us to learn about our co-workers as well as how the Marvel ecosystem works or what board games we should add to family game night.

We do these presentations once a month. Last month, I had a schedule mishap and needed to find someone to fill a slot quickly. One of our newest account managers volunteered. She admitted this wasn't something she enjoyed doing, but she wanted more practice so she could get better. She put together a great presentation about her home country that she emigrated from when she was still in elementary school. I knew she was nervous because she instant messaged me a few times earlier that day with last-minute questions. But she did a great job. And she brought food native to her home country. Success.

The fact that she said yes, that she even volunteered for something she wasn't comfortable with, speaks volumes. She knew she wanted to get better at presenting and took the opportunity.

Thank you, Dika, for saying yes.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Infographic: Presentation Tools for Sharing an Idea

I put together this infographic as part of an internal training program I do for our account managers each month called "What in the EdTech". The account managers selected topics from a list of about 20 that they wanted to learn about. This is the fourth in the series, and after this one, we'll do another survey to see what else they want to learn about. Previous sessions included: Khan Academy ( and their results ), Gamification/Game-based Learning and 3D Printing .
Post a Comment
Read more

Unchosen: The Graduation Invite

Sometimes I'm really bad at predicting which design a customer is going to choose. And that leaves me with some of my favorite designs unclaimed. I'm going to start highlighting some unclaimed designs here in the blog, as well as some of my favorite designs that were chosen. I'm pretty proud of my concoctions, and I want to show them off! I've been doing a lot of invitations lately, and they are a lot of fun. I'm sticking to the small, intimate parties (no Bridezillas here, please) like bachelorette and graduation parties. My customers have great ideas for themed parties and you just can't find invitations at Target for the "She Got Knocked Up" baby shower. Okay, I haven't done that one yet, but I bet it would be a blast! This unchosen design came from a recent graduation party invitation. The soon-to-be alma mater's colors were green and gold, and the graduate is a big fan of pink. That's where the color scheme came from. Because it was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding Out How Similar We All Really Are

Story by Rossyyume Flickr CC BY NC ND I love stories. Especially people's stories. The stories they've created. The stories that created them. Stories were a big part of why I majored in Journalism. It was an excuse to listen to people tell their stories. As a 19-year-old soon-to-be Journalism student, my goal was to live in a tiny apartment with five cats and interview interesting people all day. And while it's probably best for everyone -- including the cats -- that the career muses didn't send me down that path, I am still drawn to the experiences of others and how they share those memories and ideas. It's fascinating to me that we now have so many ways to tell stories -- ours and others. So many ways to document our lives, the lives of the people we know and the people we pretend to be. With each story comes a chance to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. In doing so, we get a little more understanding of how similar we all are. Here are a few ...
Post a Comment
Read more