Training Games

I don't often get excited about new products (if I did I'd be exhausted, I'm getting fantastic new products every day) but this one has really tickled me. Though sometimes I am wary of US products perhaps not quite hitting the mark with the UK or European market, I think these absolutely will.

Trainers have their favourite games, don't they? You get the 'tried and trusted' attitude, but what if you are going in to a client again and again? There's only so many times they'll wear the same activity, or a variation on it, or maybe even they are such a good client that all your games get used up!

So when I received Tom Heck's 3 DVD set of training games I was delighted to find not only lots of games on each DVD, but simple, clear instructions and timings/space requirements. Many of the games are suitable for young people too, so this is a great resource for teachers as well as trainers (which is handy as we have a new Teachers section on the website).

If I can work out how to do it (and with Tom's consent of course) I'll see if I can include a sample on here.

If you are looking for some new ideas for training games, warm ups, icebreakers etc, then check it out on the CT website. I would love for someone to buy the Training Games here and give me feedback.

Beware the scammers

Have you been phoned and told 'your advert has been published on (then something nice and emotive, like a child protection wallchart or diary) and your payment is now due'?

The old statistic that 50% of businesses will pay an invoice without challenging it has led, in the past, to many scammers making a tidy fortune out of corporate 'system' ... invoices being paid just because they were received. I don't think that statistic holds true today.

Now, however, the scammers are getting more creative. I had a call the other day about a wallchart that my colleague had advertised in. Oh no they hadn't! No one in my organisation would have placed an ad on a wallchart (a personal pet hate of mine anyway, sorry Chambers of Commerce!), or in a diary, or anywhere else that wasn't strictly industry related.

Then I saw a thread on the UKBusinessForum ... exactly this subject! The part that particularly caught my attention, and prompted my posting on here, was a useful site called Adscams. Mind you, Adscams do warn us to watch out for 'rouge' scammers. I didn't know they came in different colours.

Better resources are to visit industry related or Government sites, such as CAP or the Trading Standards Office who are, in fact, promoting a Scams Awareness month for February.

Any business, small or large, can fall prey to scammers, so I have no compunction whatsoever in dedicating a post on this blog to warning others about the potential traps that the increasingly clever scammers lay.

Trainer dating - whatever next!

When we launched http://www.trainerdate.com/ last month, we had a mixed reaction. Overall the response was positive with a great 'click through' (people visiting the site) and some really nice emails back too.

One or two people were less happy, feeling that offering a dating site was inappropriate. We felt there was no conflict of interest or anything inappropriate in offering this service. We were even very specific that our contacts would only every get one mailing about the site.

But what about internet dating on the whole? We hear nightmare stories abductions, deception, fraud...

Well the internet is a medium open to abuse like any other, but let's face it, 'happy ever after' stories aren't really what 'sell' the news. So we only ever hear the 'dark side'. Here's an example of one of the happier stories:

I used to work in a hospital. One of the staff nurses was divorced and had young children. She found it hard to go out and meet people (other than colleagues). She joined an internet dating site and rapidly made friends. She could go on line and leave messages or chat with people who shared unusual shift hours as she did, or who had the same problems with managing young children and a job, like she did. She met a nice man on the site. He was widowed and had kids too. Her first visit with him was chaperoned. They met a few times and found they got on very well. Last I heard, they were happily married!

One of my friends that I have known for over 30 years split from her husband five years ago. She now has a boyfriend that shares her love of walking and he has introduced her to the joys of motorbiking. Not something she may have taken up on her own, but now she has driven through France and Spain and they have a great time when they get together, even though they live 120 miles apart.

Every day millions of people make friends on the internet, through forums, dating sites and other social networking sites.

Trainerdate is aimed at professionals who share a common interest. Internet dating is, potentially, a great medium for the single trainer. An independent trainer's life can often involve lots of travelling, perhaps even different 'employer' every week. The internet can be a good place to meet people and make new friends. Just be careful and follow sensible internet safety rules (there's a useful article on the Onlindatingmagazine site).

If you have any questions about Trainerdate.com (or our partner site, www.teacherdate.co.uk), you are welcome to email us. Have I signed up? I'm not telling...

Happy Valentine's Day

Leaders are Readers

At a conference a few weekends ago, the jazzy speaker (the VP of an American networking company) said 'leaders are readers'. He talked about how in his 29 mile commute to work along one of the busiest highways in LA, he would have audio books on in his car.

He was an excellent speaker and the company he runs (Xocai)- with his family - very successful. During the conference, which was about network marketing, he continued to return to the theme that leaders are readers. Today I received a newsletter from an NLP training company, and their opener was a quotation from Mark L Fox:

“Rich men tend to have large libraries… Poor men tend to have large… TV’s"

I love reading and also find audio books extremely handy for long car journeys. I have listened to Max Maltz on Psycho-Cybernetics (forerunner of NLP in many ways) and listened to many of Chris Cardell's marekting CDs too.

If you don't have the time to read a book, consider the time you spend in the car and, if you can find it, buy an audio book. Leaders are readers, but they are listeners too.

One for the girls?

I recently came across coach and author Lynette Allen. She has written three books:

Behind with the marking and plagued by nits(for teachers)

Behind with the mortgage and living off plastic (for women)

Behind with the laundry and living off chocolate (for women)

What brilliant titles! And she is running a great site that focuses on women and their skills too (http://www.pinkexpertise.co.uk She has identified a niche market and gone for it, full swing!

I have, of course, a vested interest in mentioning Lynette. I sell her books on Complete Trainer and she has been kind enough to feature me on her site.

But it brings me back to this concept of approaching business/training/development for women differently to men. There was a hugely active thread on the UKBusinessForum about whether women should have separate business initiatives with varying reponses from 'Yes, we have different needs', to 'no, I don't want to be treated any differently to men' right up to 'why should women get all the breaks?'.

And it is a question worth examination. Should we have separate training for women? For people of a particular religion, or sexual orientation, or taste in music?

There are boundaries, and these boundaries are being set not by society but by behaviour. There are certainly examples where training or interaction with people should be separated out. I am sure a room full of men would rather not be taught how to examine for testicular cancer by a woman, likewise a room full of women not be taught self-examination for breast cancer by a man. OK, obvious choices, but very clear examples.

We embrace diversity! It is what makes this planet so hugely successful. Keith Patching, formerly a Director at Cranfield School of Management, says:

"Even though we recognise that people who are different from ourselves can be hard to understand or value, we have made great strides in learning tolerance and understanding. Attitudes to ethnicity, religion, gender, age and sexual orientation have changed, supported by legislation that makes it illegal to discriminate against people on these grounds. Many enlightened organisations devote a significant amount of attention to inclusion – the means of ensuring that each individual can feel and be included irrespective of whether he or she is a member of any kind of minority.

There is still more to be done to deal with conflicts that may emerge as a result of diversity, but progress is being made."

Back to the issue of training just for women. Should we have it? Yes, it has a place, just as books aimed at women and clothes designed for women have their place too.

Copyright is sexy!

For reasons which will remain obscure, I attended a two day training programme at the Music Publishers Association in London this week. One of the main subjects, unsurprisingly, was copyright.

With the digital age causing a complete revolution in the copying of music, how do writers retain their intellectual property and get paid for the hard work they did in writing and creating a song or music?

Almost every presentation, from the PRS, MPA, MusicUK and from international publishers, focused on this issue of copyright. And the issues that face the music industry surely face other industries too (including training) as books turn into ebooks, models and resources become easily available on websites and can be shared amongst people very easily. There has been a huge issue in the US with a major search engine scanning books and making them available on line - with no payment to the authors! (Oh yes, and Myspace are not interested in paying any royalties whatsoever...)

'Copyright is sexy' said Florian, from UK Music (the lobbying body which brings together all the disparate parts of the music business to present a single voice to Government. Feargul Sharkey's mostly). Sexy? How is copyright sexy? Well, I guess it's whatever turns you on as they say, but copyright is certainly intriguing.


Richard Taylor, a copyright lawyer with Michael Simkins, explained the first time copyright law appeared - in 1709. Printers were copying other people's books and works, paying no royalty to the original authors or to the first printers. So, a law was passed regarding the 'right to copy'.

Unauthorised copying has been an issue for centuries. But one speaker at our conference was our Devil's advocate. He described how music customers (he didn't like the word users, said it made music listeners and consumers sound like druggies) have a completely different attitude. They believe music should be easily accessible, free and that paying additionally for using something more than once is wrong.

If you pay for a CD of a band, you have in fact just paid a single licence to use that CD. You have not paid to have any copies made, so loading it on to your computer, MP3 player or phone is illegal. Now, if you uploaded that material on to the internet and made it available to others - that is in fact criminal.

As more and more material becomes available in digital format, then this problem of unauthorised copying (which is turning the music industry on its head) is going to spread. Whether it's an audio CD of sales training, or the downloadable materials of a training programme - if you have received them in digital format, then copying and distributing them (even for your own use) is easy! And abuse of copyright equally so.

Asserting copyright is not difficult. As soon as you have completed an original work (music, writing, etc) you own it. Proving ownership is slightly more complex. They still recommend that you post something to yourself in a registered envelope; by so doing you establish a date of creation (and in the rare cases where copyright is contested, the date can be a crucial factor).

Needless to say the issues of copyright are a minefield but something you must consider in your professional capacity. Is the material you are using yours to use freely? Are you infringing anyone's copyright? Have you sought appropriate permissions for materials?

Have you scanned something out of a book? Copied something verbatim from the internet to include in your programme? Have you used a questionnaire or assessment tool that you don't know where it came from? Remember, ignorance is often used as an excuse, but legally it is no defence.

And what about protecting your own intellectual property? Have you written a book, programme or article that is your copyright and is in digital format? If so, think carefully about how you can protect your rights.

As I think I have mentioned, copyright is a complex issue. If you have any doubts about what you are using, then check it - especially if you are going into a large organisation. They will want to know that anything you are providing has appropriate copyright licences or they too may be liable for any prosecutions arising from copyright infringement.

The immediate concern is that this would add costs to your training and potentially lose you business. But those concerns must be balanced with the implications of you getting prosecuted for breaching copyright.

Copyright is sexy? I say copyright is scary! But as a composer of original works (literary and musical) I darn well want my rights protected! Wouldn't you?

Snow Day!

A little frivolity, the Herts countryside and the road into Ware.

For lots more pictures of the quaint market town of Ware in the snow, visit my Flickr site.