Last week, I wrote a friend of mine an email for her birthday. I started thinking about how long we had been friends…over 32 years! I met her when we moved to Texas when I was just a little kid. My sister and I walked around in our neighborhood and asked if there were any little kids to play with at each house. We met Krista on our second day in Texas.
Over the years, we developed a strong friendship with Krista and her parents. We had so much fun on our adventures, along with getting in trouble, too. Despite those times when we were grounded after getting in trouble, my family and I still look back down memory lane at the fond times we spent together.
My sister and I were very shy at the beginning of our friendship with Krista. It took some courage, some faith, and sometimes the benefit of the doubt in those early days of our friendship. Thankfully, we had many, many laughs mixed in, which definitely helped us solidify our relationship over the years.
In light of the reflections on my long-term friendship with Krista, I think about my business relationships through Versitas. I am so blessed with several clients that we have developed great relationships with over the years. It has been nice to watch the relationship with these clients bloom over time.
I find it very rewarding to be able to go back to do a class and to get to visit with students I’ve helped in a previous class. I love hearing about how they are using the skills that they learned in a prior training session to work more effectively. Getting to see the results of my labor really makes my day!
From a trainer’s perspective, it is great to have these long-term relationships with clients. It tells me that they like what we are doing in training and that they realize how important training is to their corporation.
Of course, every client has to start out as a new client. We enjoy every class that we do, even if it is just a one-time session. Don’t get me wrong…I love meeting new people and working with new corporations and individuals. I like the diversity and change that comes with new clients.
I’m thankful that at Versitas I get to work with a great mix of new clients and long-term clients. It is great to watch the development from a new client to into a strong training partnership over time.
I was reading an article recently by Jeanne Meister discussing trends in corporate learning. She tracks trends in learning at different private and public corporations and institutions. I am always trying to find out more information about learning and trends in the corporate sector, which is how I ran across her article.
Well, it is almost half way through January. Have you kept your New Year’s resolutions? Statistics show that many of us have already failed in keeping our resolutions. I’ve enlisted the help of my husband (a.k.a. healthnut) to help me stay on track with working out on our elliptical trainer here at home. He’s a great encourager and accountability partner. 
I’ve been researching Office 2010 lately. Based on my first impression, I’m pretty excited about adopting it when it is released in the first half of 2010. As a trainer for Versitas, I can see so many fun ways to integrate the new elements into a great “new features” class.
This past week, I did a customized 1-on-1 deskside training class on specific topics in Microsoft Excel, Visio, and Project. It had been a while since I’d done training on Visio and Project. As we went over the individual’s questions, I was reminded of what great tools Project and Visio are. (Note: Versitas doesn’t sell any of these products, so these are just my personal thoughts on the software.)
As I was recently reflecting on Thanksgiving and the holiday season, I made a list of all of my blessings. (Amazingly, I don’t think of training all day every day!) Making my list took longer than I expected. There were so many blessings! I actually do this daily on a smaller scale, too. I think of three things that I am grateful for each day. About five years ago, a friend and I started emailing these three things to each other every day. What a difference it makes in my daily outlook! 
As 2009 is rapidly coming to a close, I know many companies are evaluating 2009 and planning their budgets for 2010. This year has been a rough one in terms of the economy. However, it looks like we are having some good indicators that we are at least beginning the recovery process. Some companies cut back on training budgets for 2009. As a proponent for training (as if you can’t tell from my blog posts) I have been thinking lately about how to encourage organizations to add that training component back to their budgets for 2010.
After talking with a couple of people last week about one-to-one training, I realized that some people do not know how useful this type of training is. After almost every one-to-one (sometimes called deskside) training session I’ve done for the first time with someone, they tell me how much they wish they had known about that type of training long ago! I guess that since I’ve been doing this type of training for years, I figured that everyone was aware of customized one-on-one deskside training. That’s what I get for assuming…
In my reading, I ran across a great quote that really got me to thinking about training and its costs/benefits. The article was by a workshop facilitator who said something that I had heard before but was glad to be reminded of again. Her statement was, “What if you train them and they leave? What if you don’t and they stay?” 
When some organizations think about providing training for their employees, they sometimes worry about the logistics of having the training on-site. What they usually find out is that they needn’t have worried at all. You don’t need to have a dedicated training room to have a successful training class on-site. The training room setup can prove to be very simple.
