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We are going to start with the Sharon Ridings
who is the National Training Manager
at the Environmental Protection Agency
and then Tom Klein who is the Chief of the
Leadership and Occupational Development Division
at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives at Department of Justice
and his colleague Bill Beamish who is the
Program Manager at the Leadership Institute at ATF.
So without further ado we will start with Sharon.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for joining us today.
I am going to talk a little bit about EPA's objectives
and setting people up for success
and building capacity for leadership,
formal leadership roles in the agency.
So we will start with some of the things
that we have been very passionate about.
We have been working with
strategic workforce planning group
and our human capital folks in the agencies
to identify what are some of the core competencies
that are absolutely necessary for success in setting people up
for stepping into formal leadership roles.
And so we realize that, as it says here, our nation's future
and our future success of individual organizations
actually depends on the leaders that we develop today.
It's building that capacity base.
Top talent looks for organizations
that will actually provide them with ability to
engage in leadership, training
and also the flexibility in building their careers
which is really important, especially with the new folks
coming out of colleges and universities today.
We are looking at leadership development
and it gets a lot of attention these days.
We have a lot of people in the baby boomer group
that are retiring, and we are seeing more and more of that
and we want to make sure that we do have enough people
in the ranks to move up and fill that important role
as front line supervisors, team leaders
and managers in the organization.
Alright, so I broke this down
very simply into the what, why, how.
So the what is that the Environmental Protection Agency
is not like any other organization
and like many organizations.
We are a very high science organization.
Technical background is important to what we do,
in protecting human health and the environment.
But we also realize that the core competencies,
the skills that are necessary to be a leader
in an organization are the same across the board.
So we partner with OPM
in using the executive core qualifications
and helping us to fill positions in the agency.
We want to make sure that we prepare individuals up ahead.
We haven't done a really good job of that in the past.
We recognize that and we are taking a lot of steps
to fill the gaps there and we we want to make sure
that our employees focus on building those
capacity and the skills that are necessary
to help them be successful in the agency.
Many of us are looking for
the right people for the right jobs at the right time
and we are also looking for
the right type of development opportunities
at the right time for the right reasons
and so we are looking at all the technology
that's available to us.
The different types of activities that we can engage in
and they come in so many different forms these days.
Looking to identify those skill gaps,
not just across the agency,
but more particularly for the individuals.
We are looking at this very differently
than we did in the past.
Generally people built development programs.
Everyone goes through the same exact development program
and so we are looking at there is going to be
some cores competencies that are going to be need to be
addressed by everyone,
but there are also some core competencies
that are very specific to the individual,
depending upon their experience
and the type of development activities
they have experienced in the past.
We partner with again our
strategic workforce planning group,
our policy group and the human capital efforts
that are going on in the agency,
the regions and our major laboratories
to make sure that we have core programs across the agency.
Our first end,
and the foundation work that we did several years back
was developing a two-day supervisory training program,
a pre-supervisory training program,
called stepping up the supervision.
Pretty common name, but depends on
what's inside that program that makes them come alive.
We review the EPA leadership model.
We recognize that everyone is a leader in the organization.
So we need to know what are the core functions
in the organization that they are responsible for,
whether it's leadership management
or task and the center wall of that is team skills,
making sure that those core competencies that help us
to build collaborative efforts across the agency,
internally and externally are readily available.
We talk about the different types of roles
of leadership in an organization.
Not everyone wants to be a formal supervisor.
So we know that there are team leaders and senior specialist
and project managers and project officers
that need those same core of skills to be leaders
in whatever project they are working on.
We review the core competency model,
so they are familiar what competencies really are.
We define them clearly for them,
so that they have an understanding of
how they can help them to be successful
and the real center piece of this program
is the 360 assessment.
So they are asking for good feedback from their supervisor,
their colleagues and peers and their customers to find out
what is the perception of their skill level
with other individuals
that they engage in on a regular basis.
The feedback instrument that we use is,
I liken it to peeling away from an onion,
we look at the big picture
and then take it all the way down
to the sub-core competencies that help support
the functions whether it's management leadership
or task in their daily work.
So they really can focus in,
zoom in on those core competencies
that are going to help them be successful.
We talk about emotional intelligence
and how important it is to be aware of
how centered you are
and making sure that you bring that passion to the table,
but also the passion doesn't get in the way of you
being successful in working with others.
We develop action plans
and help them by sending them back to their organizations
working with their training officers
and training coordinators to build good solid plans
that fit their particular needs.
And we talk about mentoring and shadowing and coaching
and finding which of those three or if all three of those
are going to be help to be successful
and this particular programs marries beautifully
with our successful leaders program
which is our one-year mandatory supervisory training program
which takes them from this level to the next.
And so we want to make sure
again that we're building capacity throughout.
We have a new leadership and professional development
rotation program that came online,
this would be our third year running.
It allows high potential GS13 through 15s
to engage on a 120-day development activity.
These development activities are brought to the table
by the regions and the major program officers
offering a leadership role for that 120 days
to help individuals identify whether or not
leadership is really for them
and it's not a large amount of time,
but it's just enough for them to get a taste of it.
We assign them first hand front line supervisory duties.
They have a senior leader that they shadow
and talk to throughout that 120 days
so that they can understand what is going to take
for them to move up and then mentors assigned
throughout that 120 days.
When they come back to the organization,
one of the things that we are doing
is a lot of follow up and measurement.
So we will go back to them after that time
to a level one evaluation to determine
whether or not they really felt that
they got enough information out of that 120 days
to help themselves move forward and then 90 days after that,
we are doing a level three evaluation to see
if they have been able to use any of the information
that they were able to glean out of that experience
to help them to build a new action plan for themselves,
a new IDP.
So this is something that's growing
and again it's only third year,
so we are looking at how do we tweak this program
to make it even more successful.
We offer two different types of situational leadership programs
that we link into this process.
We use a blended learning approach.
We have online access for these individuals.
They will do a situational self leadership first,
to identify what they need to do individually to be successful,
leading themselves forward,
which has three one on one coaching situations
attached to that and then they will go later on
through the situational front line leadership class
which also has three one-on-one coaching sessions
and has a performance management attachment assessment to it.
So they can see, if their teams leaders especially,
how are they doing in working one-on-one with their employees,
are they providing them enough guidance.
And so when they move into that front line supervisory position,
they are able to see what they still need to work on.
So it's gradually increasing
their skill and ability to move forward.
Carrier path planning; we offer a two days session.
We talk a lot about career fit.
Not everyone wants to be a supervisor.
A lot of people want to be promoted
because they want the next level,
especially as we move towards retirement,
we want to make sure we get our High three.
So it's important to everyone,
but if it's not the right career fit,
if supervision is not the right thing for them,
it can damage the organization,
themselves and the individuals that they work with.
So we want to make sure it's the right job
for the right person at the right time.
Core values are also very important.
Most of the programs that we offer at EPA,
we talk about core values
and how important it is to align them,
not only with the organization
but those individuals that they work with
and the work that they perform.
We have a couple of interest assessments
because to make sure we have,
again, a lot of the very high technical scientists
that work in the agency that want to move up,
but working one-on-one with individuals
could be difficult and so we want to help them
to make sure that they make the right transition
for the right reason.
Networking is also very important in the organization,
especially as it's building mentors, coaches
and looking for the right people to help them
to build those skills, again.
Visioning and then developing action planning;
action planning is very important
to make sure that they are constantly looking,
re-valuating it and finding
the right development opportunities for them.
Again we offer coaching internally and externally.
We have several coaches around the country
that work with our front line employees
and then we also offer,
we have to two contracts with external vendors
for coaching services which we use on a regular basis,
not only for our seniors managers
and our front line supervisors,
but also our front line employees.
We want to make sure that recognize that coaching
is one of the least sought after,
but one of the most powerful learning activities
that you can engage in.
We have formal and informal mentoring programs.
Some of the organizations have formal programs
so they match individuals,
but we also encourage people to find just in time mentors
to help them to identify competencies and skills
that somebody else has that's really impressive
that they want to tap into
and then we also have the online learning
which we are marketing more and more to get people engaged in
taking those challenge courses
that will help them to look just in time
for information that will help them in any situation.
So when...
stepping up the supervision is offered all across the country,
twice in headquarters annually
and in the laboratories and regions upon request.
As the leadership and professional development
rotation program is once a year announcement,
the 24 detail assignments are put forward.
People are selected for those assignments
and they run through the entire year
and they go for 120 days within that period of time.
Career path planning; again,
those are offered twice a year as is
situational leadership programs,
both of them, and then of course the other learning activities
are offered all the time across the board
for any of the employees that are interested.
The information that you see on the slide now is the information
that we give to our employees when they are looking at
the stepping up the supervision program
and having them think thoroughly through the process
of being a leader in the organization.
We have had many people who have take this course
and have walked away and said,
you know, maybe I don't want to be a supervisor
and that's okay, because we are hoping that
we give them enough information for them to process it
and figure out what it is
they really want to do with their careers.
So I think I have some information here
on finding the right 360 assessment tool for you.
I think one of the most important things is making sure
that the 360 has the core competencies
that you want to measure,
that if nothing else that's what you want to focus on
and making sure that it takes it down
to the lowest level possible.
So for example if it's communications,
you want to make sure you measuring listening
and body language and writing skills
and so all of those sub-core competencies that are included,
making sure that it comes in multiple format so that people,
they learn differently, they see things differently,
so you have charts and written information.
The nice thing about some of the 360s that are out there,
they have some support documentation.
So it helps them by giving them tools and tips
on what they can do in each of those competency areas
to help them improve and making sure that
there is workbooks that follow up and follow through,
so people can read through it later,
after they leave the feedback session
so that they have something to work from.
So these are just a few tips on some of the things that we did.
We actually looked through about 14 different 360s
before we settled on the one we are using.
So at this point I will take any questions you have
or we can take questions at the end.
Okay, yes, Julie?
They do, thank you Julie.
What happens is, we announce the program.
Each program office, there are 12 in headquarters
and we have 10 field officers
and each one of them will have their own competition
within their own sub-organizations
and then they put forward that one name
and then they in turn will go out
and look at the different assignments that are available
and then interview because we want to make sure
that they have the right selection,
so that they get the best experience
during that time period.
Okay.
Anybody else?
So I am going to step down and let my colleague take over.
Thanks a lot Sharon.
Let me start by just thanking Julie Brill
and [inaudible] for giving us this opportunity
to come and address everybody on some of the components of
ATF's Leadership Institute.
Just to give you a little background on ATF;
ATF is a federal law enforcement organization
within the Department of Justice.
We have about 5000 employees that are spread out nationwide
and 25 different field divisions as well a headquarter workforce.
In addition, our mission is basically to enforce
the firearms, explosives, alcohol and tobacco laws
and we regulate the firearms and explosives industries.
In terms of our, specifically the training area
is a separate organizational unit
within the organization,
and basically the program that I am going to talk about
and Bill was going to talk about is
under our Leadership Institute.
So I wanted to share with you the mission statement of our
Leadership Institute which is basically
the Leadership Institute is a comprehensive integrated program
for identifying, developing and sustaining
high performing leaders.
It serves ATF's current and aspiring leaders.
The Leadership Institute encompasses
a wide variety of activities which include
classroom training, technology based training,
developmental assignments and mentoring programs.
These diverse activities have a common goal,
high performing leaders throughout ATF.
Now the Leadership Institute has really been in business
for about six or seven years now
and for the most part in the beginning phases,
we were really concentrating on supervisor and above
in terms of the products and services
that the Leadership Institute provided.
But we always knew that an area that we were missing
and that we really needed to tackle was
folks before they got into supervision
to begin to introduce the leadership development day one
and to begin to nurture these folks along
so that if and when they did decide that
they wanted to get into supervision,
they would already be well prepared
and if they didn't want to get into supervision
and wanted to continue to just be individual contributors
or team leaders, that kind of thing,
they would still have some
strong leadership skills to work from.
So with that in mind, we really designed
what we coined as the Aspiring Leaders Program
which has five different components to it.
Bill is going to talk in a minute about
the stepping up to leadership program
which is our program for GS 9 through 12 employees
and we decided to basically start there,
but we have a number of other components
that are part of this overall program.
We have put in place the second component
which is the management guidelines
for developing others which is essentially
a document and guidance
to our managers and supervisors on their responsibilities
in terms of developing their employees
and guidance on how they can best go about doing that.
The leadership enhancement program
is the third component of the Aspiring Leaders Program.
That we plan to launch for the end of this fiscal year.
It's basically a program for our GS 13 and 14 non supervisors.
It's one-year development program
and then we are also going to be building out
number four and number five,
which is our self development leadership training
which is going to be basically tapping people
from entry level on, on up through the supervisory ranks
with a lot of different self development tools
whether it's online training, books,
these kinds of things that will layout for folks
to give them an opportunity and will tie to competencies
so that they can use those to develop at their own pace.
And then lastly, we want to make sure that
we are building our leadership component
into our academy for our new agents
and our new industry operations investigators
as well as our administrative people
who come through the on boarding process.
So those are really the five different components
that we're building out as part of our
Aspiring Leaders program.
The stepping up to leadership program is the one
that we are going to focus on today.
That was really designed all during last year
and we launched it in November of this year,
so it's about 6 months in
and like I said it's for GS9 through GS 12.
Basically, Bill was our lead designer for that,
Bill Beamish and he is going to explain
the program to you, but it was...
his charge was to build this thing on the cheap,
because we don't have a lot of money
and we wanted to target all of our folks across the country,
so we knew that we weren't going to be able to do
have a lot of classroom based training,
where we were going to incur a lot of travel cost
and those kind of things.
So that we knew that we are going to have to
tap in technology and a lot of distance types of learning,
and so that was kind of Bill's marching orders
in developing the program.
The other thing that we wanted to make sure
that we did was we wanted to make sure
that we tied it to the competencies that seemed to be
showing up through like the FCAT and some of the
other tools or some of the other tools that we have been using.
We kind of got aggregate data on that
and tried to focus the curriculum
along the lines of those competencies and then lastly,
we wanted to get buy-in and also ensure that
we were meeting our customer needs,
so we put together a design team
that worked with our training folks to actually design
this program so that we could,
like I said, make sure that we got buy-in
and also meet their needs.
So Bill basically lead a program, a project team,
a design team that was made up from
a variety of different folks from variety of different levels
across the agency in building this program.
So again this is a pilot program.
It started in November.
We are evaluating it as we go.
I know we won't hit the mark right on the money
the first time, but I think we are doing
some really good things with it.
It's a great program because it's no cost
and it's all about technology,
so I am going to turn it over to Bill
and let him explain the details.
Thank you.
Thank you Tom.
Actually I needed to talk a little bit about
the title of the program.
It was Stepping up to Supervision
except we are supervisors,
we are people that wanted to be supervisors
we are scared of that title so we called it
Stepping up to Leadership.
Now, seriously we do have a little emphasis on our program
on leadership skills as opposed to succession planning.
So the program does not necessarily promote
or even discuss career progression
into supervisory positions.
The participants are exposed to that, but essentially,
they are there to develop leadership skills
and many of them have leadership skills in their community,
in their church and other organizations.
So it's kind of a broad program, as well as specific one
for the needs of our future leaders of ATF.
What I am going to do is kind of walk through
the program description with you
talk a little bit about the technologies that we were using.
I would like to cover the monthly training session,
just so that you have an idea how that works.
I will talk a little bit about what we have learned so far,
you know, just in terms of the technology
and then we can wrap up with your questions
although I would like to encourage
any one on the web to send your questions in now.
I am more than happy to kind of stop
and some of this is going get very specific,
you might have questions as we go.
So feel free to ask those as we are going along.
First as far as the program description;
this program was basically developed
as a 12-month program for aspiring leaders
of the GS 9 through 12 levels as Tom said.
The basics of the program is for non-supervisors
and it consists of a quite a lot of specific components
which include formal course work
and we are getting that accomplished through our
LMS using SkillSoft courses primarily for online learning.
We also have some ATF specific custom courses that we are using
that are very effective and they were built-in house.
Participants also take a self assessment
as part of this program
and what happened in terms of the special agents at ATF
is some years ago there was a comprehensive personnel study
that validated and developed a competency model for leadership
across all levels at ATF from first line supervisor
through executive and that model is
what we use as part of our self-assessment.
So we kind of draw from that model and they will take
a self assessment before the program and then at the end.
Participants are also asked to complete
a developmental assignment
and I will talk more about that in a minute
and they also completed activities
such as reading self study,
information interviews with current supervisors
and other kinds of activities along the way,
and we will talk more about that as we kind of get into this.
At ATF, we have 17 competencies for leadership
and for this program,
we focus onto six that you see on your screen here.
Relation awareness,
plan, organize and prioritize team working,
collaboration, decisiveness,
self management and integrity and ethics,
and those six were specifically decided on
by the curriculum team that Tom talked about as a high need,
but also we looked at the FCATM results,
the most recent at the time of developing the program
and these seem to be areas that were very important to develop.
So although the program will allow each person
to develop in any skill where they are weak,
the actual core curriculum that we train on
month-to-month really focuses on these six.
So that's kind of how that works.
We also wanted to develop their opportunity
to look at other competencies,
so what happens in the assessment process,
is they are scored on all 17.
If they are weak on two or three that they want
to get into that's where they build their
individual development plan
and that's all in conjunction with their supervisor.
What also we are doing here in terms of the program is,
in the second half of the program, beginning in July,
we are going to be working on strengths based leadership,
we will be looking at the gallop organization book
on strengths based leadership
and we are kind of flipping things
from going to where are you weak in your competencies
to where are you strong in common leadership competencies
and how you might want to develop those,
because you can have an impact in the workplace.
So we are going to do strength based as a book study,
but we will still meet monthly and do those sessions that way.
There is a lot requirements for the program,
a lot of things they have to do.
We started off with a 90-minute orientation, this was on the web
and we invited the supervisors
to also attend with their employees
because it gave them an opportunity
to understand their responsibilities
and why they are important in terms of
the program role and help develop that employee.
After the orientation, we conducted the assessments,
these are paper based,
although we are looking now at using our LMS
and building that in to the LMS
so they could take them online, but those assessments,
again are on the ATF Leadership competencies.
They then meet with their supervisor, develop an IDP,
so they can focus in on where they want to grow.
We decided to recommend in terms of our program information that
they only focus on three or four or up to four competencies,
because obviously as you can all imagine if there were 15...
weak in 15 areas, and it's a 12-month program,
they are not going to get there.
So we asked them to really focus on a few of those.
We asked them to develop a learning activity
what I have called a structured learning experience
that they have to complete
and in this case this is anything,
when you really think of a typical developmental assignment
or formal detail,
this is really anything up to 30 days.
It's not quite as formal as a detail,
but it might be an office assignment.
We have had people in our curriculum team
develop specific templates
that we have handed out to our participants on such things
as working in the office of Public and Government Affairs
or working in terms of gun show
or other kinds of very specific and applicable areas
so that they had some ideas
what they could do as a work experience.
And key to this is that we have a plan
that they fill out with the supervisor
and on that plan they have to identify
the competency they are targeting.
So you know, I am going to coordinate a gun show
or do something or I am going to work for
Public Government Affairs on a public service announcement,
those are fine things, but they need to target specifically
why am I doing that,
you know, is it for collaboration,
is it for oral communication,
is it to improve organizational awareness.
So those were kind of new things we did.
Just to get more specific on that,
there are also readings assigned in the program
and I think I talked about that book.
At the end of the program and for this class
that's going to be happening October 2010.
That program graduates in about
60 days after the end of that graduation,
each participant will send us a program impact paper
which is a self reflection on what they learned,
what they got out of the program,
what they think they may have improved on,
things they actually see on their job
that their supervisor sees
and that will be really the last piece they have to turn into us,
that will get them their formal certification of completion.
So again if you got questions
that was like the most unexciting part of the program,
so I went through it quickly, but
if you have questions let me know.
As far as leveraging technology,
I want to talk about a little bit about this.
As Tom said, we had low budget on this.
We had about $1000 for the 12-month program
and we got under that $750 for the books.
So we did pretty good on that.
We are obviously,
depending upon how you want to measure training cost,
we are using time and personnel time
and that type of thing,
but a lot of this comes first from our SkillSoft courses,
and we did on that and
I would encourage agencies to think too about doing this is,
first we work with the vendor to identify
which online courses would match up best
with each leadership competency.
So if it's organizational awareness, personnel programs,
collaboration teamwork, they really cross walked for us
what they thought the course fit best.
Then the curriculum team sent those titles out to their field
and office workers to have them test the course
just to find out is this realistic,
it's not a government course, but is it helpful,
that worked somewhat,
I will talk more about that in lessons learned,
but at least it helped us make sure
these course were most relevant.
[Cross talk]
We are also using, I think a lot of you and your LMS's
have GetAbstract or books 24X7.
So with the LMS we have the GetAbstract as a tool.
In this program if you don't know about GetAbstract,
they are the five page book summaries
of the current business books.
They allow you to really get to the detail
and the application of the book,
what does it mean how is it used.
It's a really good discussion starter.
What we did for our program, again, thinking more about
how people can develop outside of the monthly training session,
was to work with GetAbstract and we went through their titles and
identified abstracts related to each of the competencies.
So when they get unto our LMS
and they sign in to get abstract,
they will see a tab that says ATF leadership competencies
and of course this is for all levels of leadership at ATF,
and they can pick for example, self management
and then up pops that book from Goldman
about emotional intelligence
and other books related to that.
So that's something that we are working with,
so far we have gotten pretty good feedback on that.
Book 24X7 is also recommended as a tool .
We didn't cross walk all the leadership competencies,
but they do have access to the full library, so that's how.
As far as the conferencing side and instant messaging,
what we do, like many of you,
we have chosen a vendor for the web conferencing.
We use Adobe Connect,
although I think we are going to transition to Centra
in a couple of months
and we use that for the presentation
of the monthly training sessions.
We also use something called Secure Chat
which is instant messaging system
that's available through our network to our employees.
It's really good for the subgroups
or when the breakout group start,
working on questions I have assigned to them.
They just meet when they want to.
They can archive their discussion
and it's pretty much like any instant messaging service
that you are probably familiar with.
So it's just available for them.
They can set a room up and they can set the room permanent
so they have a complete track of the team conversations,
and that's one way.
I think about a third of the class does that.
Some of them have been just been using email
and again it's nationwide,
so some of them have used telephone conferences
or other things, but
that's kind of what they are doing as far as that.
What I would like to do next is to talk a little bit about
lessons learned I guess
and I want to talk about what really happens here,
but first let me go to the little out of order,
monthly discussion process.
[Cross Talk]
It's a fairly detailed structure
when we do the monthly training sessions,
it starts before each meeting with each team assigned
and each team member assigned online learning course
through the LMS to take before the training.
We have discussion leaders
designated for each of the teams.
I have got five teams running right now
with about 25 participants.
The team leaders receive a question that I send,
which actually asks them to apply the course to ATF
and to ATF leadership issues.
So there might be a core saying
where have you seen it in example
of a leader under pressure increasing their awareness
how they are coming across in a crisis,
so those would be areas where they are going to learn about
emotional intelligence
and they are going to apply to a situation on the job,
so that we can talk about it.
That's one big part of it.
After that they sent me a team report
and again this is all before our monthly training session
on that team report I get to find out
who attended their team meeting.
I find out what the notes are they want to present,
so I could develop the slide show.
I find out who is going to be the speaker,
we have encouraged in terms of developmental skills
that we rotate speakers across teams.
So I get that information, just sort of logistics
and then we actually hold the session
and everyone is required to participate
in the monthly session.
As far as the format and this is a little bit new
as Tom said this is a new program,
so a third of way into it on April 20,
I held a web conference with all of our participants.
As a feedback session, we talked about tools,
we talked about technology,
we talked about how are the courses,
we talked about how the supervisors talking with them
about their developmental assignments,
kind of went through the whole program as a result,
I found that even though the course work got everybody
on the same plain field or level field,
they wanted more concrete information at the get go.
So what I know that's different
in terms of our monthly training sessions
actually from last month beginning
with the emotional intelligence
is I start off with a mini lecture,
using a five to seven minute presentation.
This is what emotional intelligence is.
This is how it relates to the competency.
This is how it relates to the organization
and just give them all some of the terms
and the glossary so that everyone kind of knows
what we are talking about.
After that then we go to the team presentations,
again we have one speaker per team.
I usually just flip through and go one team at a time,
then bridge it out to the class for other comments.
An interesting part about that feedback was I was giving,
the first four months, I was giving
a different question to every team
and then when I held the feedback session, they said,
you know I want to know how the other teams think
about this question.
So that's good for me.
I don't want to do five questions every sessions.
So I am doing like, a couple questions
and then having multiple teams address those.
So that was one thing I thought was kind of interesting is that.
At the end of the program I will talk a little bit
about the next competency coming up
and then at the very end,
all participants have an opportunity
to download documents which I have kind of developed,
not developed, I found that are resources.
For example, they get the organizational chart for ATF
or they get a best practices on how to run a meeting,
but PDF documents,
Word documents I have those basically uploaded
and at the end of the session they are able to download those.
In that way they can get more into the weeds on a topic
if they have a real high interest to do so.
So that's a monthly process that we do these discussions
and I would say it's usually about an hour and a half,
yes we have a question.
We have a question from the audience.
The question is what tools being used for assessment
of the competencies.
Right, good question.
What we did with this one,
because we had a personal research consultant
develop and validate a leadership model at ATF,
we already have the definition
of each of those 17 competencies.
So rather than kind of go out
and get something off the self in terms of assessment tool
and this was a great direction or
Tom's guidance is what I did,
is I went back to the original study
and I broke up the definitions of each of the competencies,
and put them on kind of a lighter scale,
how would you rate yourself on this one to seven
and we would break out not just oral communication,
we talk about public speaking,
we talk about negotiation, comfort resolutions.
So we would really break it down into the bits.
They were already defined in that competency
and sorry I don't have a white board here,
but I could tell you we basically ask them
to average a score for each competency.
If they had a four or lower,
then they need to work on that competency
and obviously if they are on eight, or nine,
on a nine point scales then they are good, good to go.
We did use our own tool, that was already done,
that research was done. So were lucky for that.
Any other questions?
Okay then I am going to kind of go into the lessons learned.
Some of this stuff I was so excited about
I already started talking about it,
but they are a few things that I am learning
after running about six of these monthly training sessions.
We were not able, in terms of budgets,
we could not hold a face-to-face session for the orientation.
As I said, we did that through the web.
I would encourage agencies that can accomplish that especially
when you are doing an online community as we are,
to try and do the initial face-to-face
and the reason for that is
the supervisors have a very important role.
We had I think about half the supervisors attend
which isn't bad,
but we know we want 70% to 80% to show up,
but in a face-to-face,
I think we could have got more into logistics,
like how do I turn this in or
how developed does this have to be
or you know the kind of questions
they really get once they open up their supervisor's guide
to running the program.
So we definitely encourage that for agencies
that are looking into it,
but it also just gives you that chemistry
face-to-face to start things off well.
Extended time for preparation;
that's just a matter of online learning.
I have taught privately for University of Phoenix online
and it's a lot more work than classroom based instruction.
It's same thing with the web.
So there is a certain time to allow for that.
It's a very formal process as many of you know
and you have got to develop your slides in advance
and your teaching points and have it all ready to go.
I talked a little bit, I already covered the lecture part
that we were doing.
As far as the technical issues, we are having
in terms of recording some complications on how to do that.
We are changing web systems right now,
so we haven't really recorded or archived these sessions.
This one for example that OPM is doing today
is going to be a great way to capture it for agencies
and personnel that couldn't attend.
We are trying to do that
we are looking forward to enter the budgeting with the program
getting headsets out, so that each of the discussion leaders
when they present that could be recorded.
My presentation on the telephone conference can be recorded
and we will have a whole archive
in sync with the web presentation.
So we are looking at doing that.
I mean, we know there is a high value there.
In our case, because of the mission work at ATF,
you know I have handful of special agents
and they get called up... when they call them out,
it's happened to a couple times,
as one agent so she was not able to attend the session,
so it would be nice if she could maybe just click on archive
and pick that up,
so definitely something we are looking forward to doing.
Training space, it's always an issues.
I think you know for most of my participants,
they can get through the program session,
but a few of them, they work in cube city
and they may put a sign out that says,
web training or learning in progress
and that doesn't matter people who walk right in on them,
and then we get that noise on the phone.
Yeah ideally you would have a dedicated classroom
for people at headquarters
that they can perhaps attend in a quieter way.
As far as team dynamics, I have kind of noticed
somethings developing with our team.
On the good side, they really like the idea of the teamwork
and the presentations and coming together as a class.
On the down side, well couple of teams,
I noticed in the last session
they really were not as prepared.
They didn't send me a team report,
they didn't really know who was presenting.
So you know like anyone else, you got to react to that.
So now I no longer send the questions
to the discussion leader,
I send them to the whole team
and I am also going to switch team members in July,
because there are feedback session.
So they want to kind of learn about other people at ATF,
part of the skill is collaboration
and these are all future leaders
who will work together so we will mix the teams up in July,
so the second half of the program
they have a new team to work with.
So that I think covers a lot of the specifics
in terms of the stepping up to leadership program
and myself and especially Tom in terms of talking about
all the other aspiring leaders
and more of umbrella programs we have for leadership
are open for questions, if you have any?
It doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on the email,
but I do have a question that's coming from EPA for EPA
and they wanted to know who is the vendor
for Stepping up to Supervision?
We actually facilitate that internally.
That's written by EPA for EPA,
but it can certainly be shared with other organizations
because it's very general and about 90% of it is very general,
10% of it is very specific to EPA,
but we have EPA facilitators internally.
They have all been supervisors,
so they can speak to being a leader in the organization
and some of the challenges
and some of the opportunities as well.
So that's a nice thing about writing in house.
Okay anything else?
Okay. Thank you.
Alright, well thank you so much Sharon and Tom and Bill.
As I mentioned this is inaugural of webcast for a series
we are planning around leadership development.
There was a lot of discussion on our list serve
and it's a great way to learn from others.
Certainly EPA has stellar set of programs that we can learn from
and everybody was going to reach out to Sharon,
so this was a good way to capture it in one conversation
and I am certainly taking a nugget about
$1000 training program,
it's something I think many of us can learn from.
So thank you very much.
This will be available in the future.
We will have it on our OPM YouTube channel
this will also allow new people who enter the field.
We can appoint them to these best practices as well.
So the next one will be in June
and it will focus on new supervisor training
we will also do some 13 through 15 training in the future
and then some executive development.
So we are planning these about once a month,
so stay tuned, thank you very much.