Thanks to Coaching, I'm Back on Track as a Writer

I'm a writer. Writing gives me more satisfaction than anything I do. And there are things I care about, things I want to write about.

But I'm also a small business entrepreneur, a product developer. During the past several years I've been working with my team to develop an online virtual coaching system that helps people ingrain new skills and make permanent changes in behavior. That system is called ProStar Coach. I've also been heavily involved in the marketing - trying to get the word out. It has been a very satisfying project because it has the potential to help people of all ages and walks of life get stronger for the challenges of life and work.

But all this good work had a bad side effect for me. For years now, my work days were all about product development, not about writing books. The completion of the ProStar Coach project left me with all the time I needed to write, but I discovered that I no longer had the work habits of a writer. My old habits were kicking in and at the end of the day, I hadn't produced any writing.

I talked with my colleague and good friend, Meredith Bell, about this problem, and she had a suggestion. It was along the lines of "Physician, health thyself." Or, "Walk your talk."

What she was referring to is an ebook I recently wrote called Support Coaching. The book, along with nine companion videos, explains what a caring individual can do to help someone who wants to improve a skill or change a behavior pattern. The key element is coaching. The resources explain what anyone can do to support and coach a person involved in skill building, personal development or change.

What Meredith suggested is that I get an "accountability coach" to hold my feet to the fire, to do what a writer is supposed to do and actually get done what a writer should produce. An accountability coach is someone who agrees to contact you regularly and ask detailed questions to determine if you did what you said you were going to do. All successful athletic performance, weight loss and addiction recovery programs use accountability coaching. When you know you'll have to face someone who will want to see your results, it's a powerful motivator to do what you should be doing. Without accountability, it's all too easy to rationalize, make excuses and put things off.

Meredith's message: "You wrote the piece on accountability coaching. So get one. Use one."

My reply: "Will you be my accountability coach?"

She agreed, and we set up a twice-weekly phone call. I outlined what I would do and accomplish, and during the calls I emailed her the chapter I agreed to write.

It worked like magic. Before long, I had some new work habits in place and was producing chapters at a rapid rate.

The recent addition of the "Support Coaching" resources to the ProStar Coach system was a huge breakthrough, because it empowers ordinary people to do the simple things that add up to the kind of coaching a person needs to make a change. Virtual coaching is now enriched by coaching from real people. Now, anyone can be a support coach. Anyone can get the kind of coaching they need.

The resources are so important that we decided to make them available free to anyone who wants them.

They helped me. Maybe they can help you, too.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2014. Building Personal Strength .

From Texas: A Two-Step Dance That Improves Performance in the Workplace

I’ve lived in Texas just outside San Antonio for almost a decade now, and one of the cool things we enjoy here is Texas country music. Dance halls, ice houses and other venues feature live music almost every night. The tiny town of Gruene has three or four different venues, including Gruene Hall, the oldest continuously operating honky-tonk dance hall in Texas.

And yes, couples actually get on the floor and dance while the music is playing.

The dance step you see most is called the “Texas two-step.” Outside of Texas it’s known as the “country two-step.” Quick-quick slow, slow. Check it out:



You see how easy it is, and when it comes to dancing (which everyone knows is a form of foreplay) that’s how cowboys like it – easy.

When I’m not enjoying a local craft beer at a live music event, I’m probably thinking about more serious matters, such as learning and development and behavior change.

But it dawned on me recently that the difficult, all-important business of improving skills and changing behavior also involves a two-step.

At the most fundamental level, for training programs to succeed they need to be deployed in two steps - a kind of “learning and development dance,” so to speak.

Step One is feedback.

People need to know that something they’re doing is causing problems. Step One is to hold a mirror up to their behavior to help them acknowledge the issue, so they can begin doing the work to change and improve.

The unspoken assumption is that if intelligent, committed and well-intentioned managers and employees discover they need to change something, they’ll want to address it. They’ll make an effort to do so.

The assumption is that this kind of helpful feedback will empower the desired improvement.

This assumption is false.

Yes, most people are intelligent, committed and well-intentioned. But old behavior patterns have been reinforced and ingrained for years. Peoples’ brains are literally wired for the old behaviors.

So even if people want to make a conscious effort, in a fast-paced, challenging workplace old habits kick in automatically, and the conscious effort to do something differently often doesn’t happen. After several discouraging lapses, most people give up trying to change.

The only way to improve or change an ingrained behavior pattern is to rewire the brain – to stimulate the brain cells to connect in new neural pathways. This is the only approach that works. But it requires a long-term effort involving reinforcement, ongoing feedback, encouragement, and accountability.

This is the Step Two of the behavior change dance.

Most learning and development professionals and the managers they serve already understand Step One. For decades now, organizations have been using technology to help employees get the feedback they need.

The problem is, few of them understand Step Two. They don’t appreciate the kind of reinforcement, ongoing feedback, encouragement, and accountability that will give employees enough “reps” to rewire their brains. They don't appreciate how long it will take, and they don’t know if there’s a coaching technology that will support the follow-through efforts.

They do Step One. But there’s no Step Two.

So there’s no dance. And in most cases, behavior change doesn't happen.

So here I am working on my 20-ounce glass of brew, listening to Willie Nelson and watching couples dance. Yes, Willie Nelson – for real. This is Texas, man.

And the two-step is working its magic.

What most organizations don’t realize is that affordable technology support for both Step One and Step Two already exists.

20/20 Insight is the preferred feedback technology for a great many organizations worldwide. It has been making Step One easy for over 20 years now.

Strong for Performance, introduced in 2013, supports Step Two, the long-term coaching effort to ingrain automatic behavior patterns.

The learning and development dance really can happen. If you do Step One, followed by Step Two.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2014. Building Personal Strength .

Five Things Corporate Trainers Should Know - But Don't

If organizations nationwide unknowingly wasted $100 billion every year, spending it for things that don't work, that would be a big deal, wouldn't it? Worth sitting up and taking notice? I mean this is a lot of money to just pour down the drain. Wouldn't it be nice to get the hoped for benefit?

This massive loss has been happening every year for decades. The problem lies with the people who are in charge of training programs. By and large, most of them are uninformed about a few crucial facts.

1. What counts is DOING, not KNOWING.

Many trainers don’t differentiate between knowledge and behavior.

They mistakenly believe that if they explain what to do and how to do it—and even give learners some simulated practice in the classroom—then they've done their job. Based on what was presented in the classroom, learners may even agree that it’s worthwhile—a better way. Gosh, they may even later remember what was taught and be excited about doing it. Trainers assume that surely this ought to be enough to produce changed behavior and improved performance.

But KNOWING doesn't always lead to DOING. KNOWING what to do doesn't count unless people actually DO it consistently on the job. Otherwise the investment in learning and development is wasted.

2. Most DOING is triggered by HABIT, not a conscious decision.

Many trainers mistakenly believe that smart, motivated learners will decide to do what they were taught. Why wouldn't they?

The problem is, in a busy workplace this decision usually doesn't come up. Because almost everything people do comes from executing ingrained behavior patterns, skills and work habits – without thinking about them. Most of the time they don’t have time to think about what they learned in the classroom and then decide how to act. They just do things the way they've always done them—out of HABIT.

3. Habits and skills are – by definition - WIRED IN THE BRAIN.

This may sound ridiculous, but by far most trainers don't know how learning happens in the brain. Isn't that amazing? They don’t know that for a skill to take hold as a routine work habit, the brain has to become wired for it.

They don’t know that the brain cells involved in any action are stimulated to connect with each other. After many repetitions, the connections are reinforced, and physical circuits form in the brain. When the brain is wired for this action sequence, the behavior becomes easy and automatic—a HABIT. No need to think about what to do. No decision.

4. It takes a lot of REPETITION – practice – to rewire the brain cells for an improved skill or habit.

Initial attempts at performing a new skill are typically discouraging. Even after people know what to do, it’s awkward at first. Or they forget to try the new skills, get frustrated and old habits kick in. At this point, most people get discouraged and give up.

To rewire their brains for a new skill or habit, they need to persist past this discouragement. With repeated attempts, the new pattern will begin to establish as a circuit and the success rate will improve. With persistence, the new way will eventually become a habit.

5. It’s impossible to provide enough reinforcement in the classroom.

Depending on the complexity of the skill and whether old patterns stand in the way, it could take many weeks or many months of dedicated effort to make a better way of doing something an ingrained habit.

Most trainers simply haven't connected the dots about this. They think that feedback surveys and classroom training ought to be enough to change behavior. Feedback does reveal the need for improvement, and training can introduce new methods.

But ingraining a new work habit has to take place after people leave the classroom. People may want to improve and form good intentions, but nothing will change if they don’t practice what they learned in the workplace—repeatedly—until the new way becomes an automatic part of their behavior.

In other words, the necessary rewiring of the brain for improved performance takes a lot of on-the-job reinforcement. In other words, coaching—accountability, feedback, encouragement, reminders and tips about the right way to do it. Exactly the same process needs to happen when improving sports skills. To ingrain the skill, you gotta do the reps—a whole lot of reps. And this takes time.

Corporate learning and development programs almost never provide this kind of reinforcement. Why not? Well, review points 1 through 5 above. Most corporate trainers don’t understand how behavior change and performance improvement actually happen in the brain.

This means nearly $100 billion is invested every year making the learners smarter while their behavior stays the same. It's an amazing state of affairs, one that has existed for decades.

To help trainers stop this horrendous waste of precious resources, there is now an online platform for coordinating all this reinforcement, while promoting personal strengths and improved people skills. It’s called Strong for Performance.

Do you know any managers or trainers? Encourage them to check it out.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2013. Building Personal Strength .

Bill Cosby and Brain Damage - The Humor and the Horror

Bill Cosby

In 1964, when I was 19 years old, I was a sophomore at West Point. After the Army-Navy football game that year, which Army won, a perfectly lovely young woman was my date. We went to one of the historic hotels to have dinner, and in one of the banquet rooms there, Bill Cosby was scheduled to give a performance. I had heard one of his records and enjoyed it, so I talked my date into attending. You have to understand that Bill Cosby was only 27 at the time, on the front end of his brilliant career. He wasn't famous yet and he was still paying dues. I remember that only half a dozen people were sitting on folding chairs while he went through some of his favorite routines.

I loved it. But my date was turned off. "That's gross," she said. I was too young to realize that her failure to appreciate his comedy was a red flag waving at me. Fortunately, our relationship didn't go anywhere. But I always remembered that night when Bill Cosby - one of the funniest men who ever lived - performed live, only 15 feet from me.

One of my favorite Bill Cosby routines is when he talks about the frustrations of being a parent...



Maybe my date would have hated this routine, too, since it jokes about children being "brain damaged." What do you think? Gross? I think it's funny, funny, funny. Kids do sometimes behave as if their brains aren't functioning normally.

And yet real brain damage - the non-metaphorical kind - is a tragically serious matter. Brain damage is permanent in most cases, causing a variety of mental disabilities, depending on the area affected. It can even change who you are.

When a pregnant mother ingests drugs or alcohol during pregnancy, these substances can derail normal brain development, causing brain damage.

If a child plays with lead and some of it gets into the bloodstream, it can cause brain damage.

If a very high fever isn't relieved in time, it can cause brain damage.

A tumor can cause brain damage.

An injury to the brain - a blow to the head or a foreign object penetrating the brain - can cause brain damage.

A stroke can cause brain damage.

And then there's the condition that I've been writing about a lot lately. When a young person fails to exercise much critical thinking during adolescence, it causes the basic wiring of the brain area involved in critical thinking to be minimal. The result is an adult with a subpar capacity for higher-level thinking - a deficit that will limit him or her for the rest of life. It's the equivalent of permanent brain damage.

But parents and other adult mentors can do things with a young adult to turn this into a huge positive. I wrote an eBook about this, which is available free. In an article about my West Point experience, I relate that when I was at West Point, I was fortunate to be forced to do a lot of critical thinking. Also, if you're interested, I recently spoke about this topic at length in an interview...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Insights about Personal Development

David Singer

I recently had the pleasure of exchanging ideas with David Singer, author of Six Simple Rules for a Better Life, one of my favorite books on personal development. (In another article, I review this fine book.) The result of our interaction was an interview, which is presented here...

David: I’m a huge proponent of personal development. ProStar Coach is different from anything I’ve seen. How did you come up with the idea?

Denny: Several years ago there was a flurry of business books about how organizations waste $100 billion every year with learning and development programs that don’t change behavior. They blamed a lack of follow-through reinforcement and made a number of recommendations. But because none of the books explained why reinforcement is needed to change behavior and because no technology existed to support the follow-through, not much changed. So we began working on a system to enable the follow-through.

David: That’s a great idea. Whenever I speak to groups, I always start by telling them that I don’t want them to only walk out with a bunch of great ideas, but also a game plan for making changes. I give them some tools for tracking change, but the follow-through is on them. Tell me more about coaching follow-through.

Denny: Knowing isn’t the same as doing. You can know what to do but that doesn’t mean you’ll make it your habit to do it. Even a five-day training program can only convince people that there’s a better way. They learn what they should be doing, and they may even be excited about doing it. But that rarely transfers to doing it on the job.

David: Why do you think it’s so rare for people to follow through with changes?

Denny: The problem is that your behavior can be caused by three things. One is emotion. Something happens and you react strongly to it and that triggers your behavior. The second is a conscious decision. You might feel a surge of emotion, but you take time to think things through before deciding what to do next. The third is habit. Over the years, your repeated behavior has stimulated the brain cells to link together in a circuit, which automatically enables the behavior. Once the pattern is ingrained like that, you just do it without thinking about it. In a typical busy workplace, there’s not much time to think, and most behavior kicks in from habit, the way you’ve always done things.

David: So why don’t people ingrain new habits from the good things they learn in training?

Denny: It takes time to rewire the brain for a new skill or habit. No training program lasts long enough to do that. A well-intentioned employee may try the new skill at work, and that’s great. That’s what you want them to do. But because of the pressures of work, they’ll sometimes forget. And because the skill is new, their first attempts are likely to be hesitant and awkward. These shortfalls can be discouraging. Meanwhile the old habit is always there to fall back on, and that’s what people usually do. They give up and go back to what’s comfortable, even if it sometimes causes issues. I call this the “crunch point.”

David: I know that applies to personal life changes as well.

Denny: Yes. It’s like quitting smoking or changing the way you eat. People might be motivated to give a good idea a try, but they probably don’t understand that there’ll be frustration, mistakes and failures at first. They don’t appreciate that changing a behavior pattern is a journey and that progress will be slow, at best. If they don’t push past the crunch point and fight against their old habits for quite a while, they won’t repeat the new skill often enough to rewire their brains and behavior change won’t happen.

David: Changing behavior is a real challenge. I urge people to break their goals down into pieces and to make one small change each 21 days.

Denny: In ProStar Coach we also recommend you focus on one skill or strength at a time. Then it’s a matter of doing it in the real world, and then reflecting on what happened when you tried, so you learn from that experience. In ProStar Coach we call this process Focus, Action and Reflection F-A-R. It isn’t easy, as anyone who’s tried it knows. But even though behavior change is really what organizations want, they can’t afford to hire coaches for all the participants of their training programs. Maybe for some top executives, but not for everyone.

David: So that’s why you came up with ProStar Coach. Because it coaches the user, right?

Denny: Yes, we built this networking feature called the Coaching Network, which puts learners in touch with real people who care about their success. Plus there are also half a dozen other virtual coaching technologies built into the system.

David: I saw that it has a lot of content. What kinds of behavior change are you trying to achieve with that?

Denny: Good question. Actually, our content is focused in two areas: people skills and personal strengths. Personal strengths are behavior patterns that people need in order to deal with the regular adversity and challenges of work and life. For example, a sales rep can learn some good rapport-building skills. But what happens when the prospect is difficult or there are unexpected problems? The answer is, the sales rep will need to be patient, not give up, be compassionate, get creative, take initiative, and so forth. These aren’t sales skills. These are personal strengths. We’ve identified about 40 personal strengths that apply to the world of work.

David: What about the people skills?

Denny: We have content for over a dozen people skills. All the basics are covered, things like listening, dialogue, conflict resolution, and feedback. And quite a few more, including communications skills for parents and leaders. We use instructional videos to describe the best practices. Our approach was to focus mostly on the how-to in an engaging way.

David: Denny, I like the way you use your technology to get people to use the system. Can you please explain that?

Denny: To help people get into the habit of using the system, we have a 30-session introductory program that sends email tips and reminders on a daily basis. After that, we help them stay on track with weekly reminders, a program we call High Fives.

David: Excellent. Now, how can someone get ProStar Coach?

Denny: The program is available as an online service with a one-year subscription, which can be renewed. The best first step is to go to www.prostarcoach.com and find out which version would be the best fit.

David: Terrific. I hope my lifelong learner readers will check it out this great way to work on their life and work habits. Thanks for sharing this, Denny.

Denny: My pleasure, David!

Be sure to check out David's book and his website. Wonderful insights, wonderful resources! And for more information about ProStar Coach, click here.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

10 Breakthroughs in Personal Development

I was thinking about ProStar Coach today, the online virtual personal development coaching system, which has been in use for over two years now. Our vision was always to help adults get stronger for the challenges of work and life. It was as if we wanted to replace the old, cynical bumper sticker with something more realistic and empowering:

"Life is hard. And then you get stronger to get what you want."

All adults need more strength, but not all of them realize it. And not many adults know about the core strength areas, or that it's possible to exercise them. But these areas of human capability are real. They influence whether you'll achieve success and happiness, and people can intentionally become stronger.

ProStar Coach is so different from any other learning resource, because as we built it we kept our minds open and ended up incorporating an impressive number of breakthroughs in personal development. I actually wrote them down today as I was thinking about it.

1. Focused on changing behavior. Knowing what to do doesn't mean that you'll do it. So unlike most learning and development programs, ProStar Coach focuses on permanently changing behavior patters. Amazingly content-rich, it contains thousands of helpful insights, but it doesn't stop there. It coaches users to apply know-how in their lives and learn from these experiences.

2. Workouts in a virtual gym. The learning experience is a lot like working out with a personal trainer in a fitness center. You do the reps. But instead of physical strength, you work on getting stronger as a person - personal strength, relationship skills, and critical thinking skills.

3. Personal strength. It's the only learning system in the world that helps people get stronger in 40 different areas related to strong self, strong relationships, good judgment, and effective action. Learning is supported by 7 different exercise modes to accommodate personal learning style.

4. Relationship skills. Dozens of behavior-based instructional videos skip the entertainment and fluff. The videos are about one-third the usual length and are densely packed with how-to content. It's the most comprehensive set of people skill resources in one place, including related resources in other media.

5. Critical thinking skills. All the exercises use an approach that gets you to use critical thinking skills.

6. F-A-R. It uses a simple, powerful behavior change system that guides you through Focus, Action and Reflection - over and over until the new behavior is ingrained.

7. ProStar employs 6 kinds of virtual coaching...
- Coaching videos that orient the new user to the system.
- Follow-up coaching program to begin development and acquire self-development routines.
- Self-directed and self-paced F-A-R system.
- Coaching Network of real people for advice, ideas, encouragement, and accountability.
- Exercises that coach learners to apply learning and reflect on experience.
- Concierge encouragement and learning tips based on individual use of ProStar.

8. Two modes of interactive learning. You can be guided by the structure of the virtual coaching, or you can use ProStar in a self-directed "coach-free" mode. Or both simultaneously.

9. Revolutionary feedback system. Moving beyond traditional multi-source (360-degree) feedback, it's self-initiated instead of centrally managed; uses a "micro-feedback" approach to focus on a single top priority area for improvement, not dozens of ratings; and it incorporates a powerful element called "feed forward," which gathers suggestions for future action from many people. It can be used for diagnosis - finding the top issue among many possibilities. Or it can be used to check progress in a single area. It's like asking real people for their impressions and suggestions. And the technology makes gathering all this a simple, quick, anonymous process.

10. Youth-friendly. It's a learning system for adults who want to change old habits that get in the way of success - and build new ones. But ProStar was also designed to appeal to success-oriented high school and college students and people new to the workplace - to build success skills and strengths early, so they don't have to do the hard work to replace bad habits later in life.

Ten breakthroughs! I didn't realize there were so many until I forced myself to write them all down. It wasn't our goal to make ProStar Coach so different. We just wanted it to actually work to change people's behavior patterns to make them more effective in their careers, in leadership, in small business, in relationships, in parenting, and in preparing young people for success as adults.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Virtual Gym Workouts - Get Stronger As a Person

Personal strengths are behavior patterns that help you strive against adversity to do the hard things in life and work. Some examples...

Self-awareness - Honesty - Vision - Proactivity

Self-development - Integrity - Intuition - Initiative

Self-confidence - Trust - Optimism - Effort

That's a dozen personal strengths. In ProStar Coach you can work on any of these - and more than two dozen more.

People skills are behavior patterns, too -- for interacting effectively in relationships. Some examples...

Listening - Giving encouragement - Giving positive feedback - Giving constructive feedback

Giving feedforward - Guiding learning - Stimulating thinking - Coaching for accountability

Receiving feedback - Engaging in dialogue - Resolving conflicts - Encouraging ideas

That's a dozen people skills. In ProStar Coach you can work on any of these - and more than a dozen more.

You make a muscle stronger by repeatedly exercising it. You can exercise it with physical labor in the world, or you can do specific, repeated exercises in a gym.

You make a behavior pattern stronger by repeatedly exercising the behaviors in the world. Or you can get coaching to do exercises in ProStar Coach, an online virtual gym and coaching system for working on personal strengths and people skills.

A gym is a place where you use exercise resources and coaching to get stronger. A physical fitness gym is for building physical strengths for physical strength and health.

ProStar Coach is a virtual gym for exercising personal strengths to get stronger as a person to deal with the challenges of work and life, whether you're a small business owner, a parent, a manager, a student, or an individual who wants more success.

Are you the kind of person who wants to get stronger? Are you the kind of person who's willing to do the work?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from istockphoto.com)

An Idea Whose Time Has Come - Teenagers Working on Personal Development

For over 30 years my work has been focused on adult personal development - personal strengths and people skills. My company, Performance Support Systems, has published some award-winning internationally recognized assessment and development systems, all brain and behavior-based. For nearly 20 years our flagship product has been 20/20 Insight, a flexible online platform for administering customized feedback surveys. During that time it has benefited millions of people worldwide - and not just leader-managers - all the people who work around them.

And then one day, not long ago, it dawned on me.

All these people we've been helping have been playing catch-up. They were working on areas of individual behavior and performance that they should have learned a long time ago. They were busy replacing old, dysfunctional habits with new, best practices.

Where did these bad interpersonal behavior patterns come from? They certainly weren't taught them in school. No, they learned them from their families and on the street. They learned how to be and how to act and how to communicate without even knowing they were learning it. Whatever seemed to work.

And then, decades later, they discovered that many of these ways of dealing with people were making relationships difficult. They were causing problems and holding themselves back.

That's why most people end up using our services, to do the hard work of changing a hurtful behavior pattern. The old way isn't working anymore. It's causing too much pain.

So yes, it dawned on me. All these people were learning skills and strengths they should have acquired when they were young. But when they were in high school and college, these areas of ability weren't addressed. And none of the adults around them, including their parents, could guide these young people or even knew that they needed guidance.

It dawned on me that what we were helping adults learn with ProStar Coach should be made available to teenagers. Yes, no one thought about it back then, and no one is thinking about it now. No one except me and my colleagues who work with me on ProStar Coach.

It's an idea whose time has come: Teenagers need to work on personal development. They need to start now to get strong as individuals so they don't have to play catch-up later. So they don't have to experience the pain of ineffectiveness in their work and personal relationships, and then desperately try to go against the grain of lifelong habits to rewire themselves for core skills and strengths as adults.

I know, I know. This idea is really outside the box. It's so different that you're probably thinking things like: "Most teenagers won't make the effort. As soon as they hear about it they'll laugh and call it bullshit."

My answer to that is that I expect the vast majority of teens to think this way. That's what most of them have been saying about mainstream courses for over a century - about subjects like science, math and English.

You can't make kids learn. They only learn what they choose to learn. I know that.

So I'm not interested in the kids who blow off their education. I can't help them. I'm really only interested in the 15-20% of teenagers who are already internally motivated to learn.

And I mean I'm really interested. It's my next big shot at making a difference. At my age, maybe it's my last big shot. I want to help teenagers work on personal development.

Initially, I'll communicate this idea to caring parents of teens. Through them, I'll build a bridge of communication to the teens themselves.

If you're interested, please visit my new blog: Strong for Parenting. I'm known there as the "Teen Brain Guy." The teen brain - that's my focus. As for the myriad of other teen-related issues, I plan to help parents gain access to all the excellent experts out there who address the more traditional aspects of parenting teens.

I also invite you to check out my two new books for young teens - mostly middle-school kids who are beginning the perilous and momentous 12-year journey called adolescence.

Conversations with the Wise Aunt and Conversations with the Wise Uncle.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use image purchased from istockfoto.com)

I'm Being Held Accountable to Improve the Way I Work

In my company, we "eat our own dog food." Meaning, we actually use the products and services we create. We do this to get insights about how to make our stuff better. Plus, we benefit personally from doing so!

The products I'm referring to are online self-development systems based on a new technology called ProStar Coach. One of my favorite exercises is called the "Reflection Exercise." A part of the Focus-Action-Reflection behavior change cycle, the Reflection Exercise uses five "magic" questions to help someone learn from experience. The idea is to complete the exercise after taking action to improve an area of ability. Doing so can accelerate the ingraining of a new behavior pattern.

The area I'm trying to improve is the personal strength called INITIATIVE. What I'm trying to do is ingrain the work habit of starting my day by working on my top priority first, before I do anything else. I'm making this effort because most of the other things I could be doing are fun and interesting time-wasters. I'm not always successful. But today I was, and I decided to do a Reflection Exercise about it...

1. What happened...

I've been trying to establish a pattern of "hitting the ground running" each morning by attacking my top priority first, before doing anything else. I did this today and by noon I had drafted two more chapters on my book.

2. Why it happened that way...

I think the content is already in my head, and getting my fingers moving on the keyboard causes it to spill out. Plus, I've already written some good draft content about these chapters.


3. The consequences...

I made huge progress right away. I felt wonderful about it. My self-esteem and self-confidence were boosted, I could feel it.

4. How I would handle a similar situation in the future...

Keep on doing it! Plus, maybe I should try kicking off the afternoon after lunch this way, too!

5. PLANNED ACTION - My next steps...

I will try attacking a new chapter right after lunch.

After answering the questions I clicked the "Save to Learning Archive" button, then the "Request Input" button to share the exercise with my accountability coach. She usually responds with ideas or encouragement.

My accountability coach is Paula, one of my business partners. I selected her because I knew she would always call me at the appointed time and ask me if I did what I said I was going to do. It's amazing how motivating these calls are. It's like getting on the scales once a week in front of my peers at Weight Watchers.

Today was a big success, but I've stumbled in the past. The trick is to not give up, to gradually build up more successes than failures. I know that if I persist, eventually "hitting the ground running" each morning will become an unconscious habit.

And how cool that will be!

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

A Successful, Happy Life - It Takes More Than You Think

A successful, happy life. I guess everybody knows it takes more than money and beauty. Just ask Bernie Madoff and Kim Kardashian.

And guess what...It also takes a lot more than a good education and business know-how.

I try to stress this point with parents. Yes, kids need a good education. They need basic language and math skills and they need to understand how the world works. So they should pay attention in school, try to learn and get good grades, so they can get into a good university. And when they enter the workforce, they should try to learn the business from the ground up. Parents who care about their kids know this. Most of them are sacrificing like crazy to help pay for college expenses.

What most of them don't appreciate is that while it helps to get a college degree and land a good job, these aren't the magic keys that unlock the door to a happy, successful life. Parents could make all these sacrifices and years later their child's life could take a downturn. Failed careers, failed marriages, and worse...

It happens all the time.

The reason is simple. To build strong relationships and prevail against adversity, a person needs to develop skills and strengths that are almost never taught in the home or in schools. This model illustrates the areas of ability a person needs to develop:

Copyright © 2011, Performance Support Systems

Life skills - Practical and commonsense know-how, such as cooking, etiquette, using tools and machines, safety, hygiene, health, fitness, maintenance, etc.

Critical thinking skills - The ability to understand why, cause and effect, relationships, the big picture; the ability to envision future consequences, control impulses, create action plans and manage execution. Schools used to do a better job of this; now they focus more on fact memorization to pass state achievement tests.

People skills - Dozens of skills to get along with others, communicate, lead, sell, influence, etc.

Personal strengths - Dozens of behavior patterns that enable a person to do the hard things to deal with challenges and adversity, e.g., patience, perseverance, courage, composure, integrity, optimism, creativity, and many more.

Some bottom lines...

• The core areas of ability are deal-makers and deal-breakers. They matter far more than an education and business know-how.
• People don't receive development in these core areas in the classroom. And practically no parents know how to nurture them.
• Nearly everyone becomes an adult without much conscious guidance and development in the core areas.
• Some adults sense their inadequacies once they begin raising families and competing in the world of work. Some of them try to play "catch-up" in these areas. We call this "personal development." Most never do catch up.
• An outside-the-box concept: Teenagers working on personal development. Yes, it adds to their "full plate," but it's important and they can do it. Many of them are intelligent, success-driven and are working on getting smarter. Getting stronger in the core areas of ability will give them a huge edge while in school and especially when they begin facing the challenges of adult life.

This is why we developed ProStar Coach, an unprecedented online virtual coaching service. It's the world's most effective self-development system for working on core strengths.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

ProStar Coach, Teenagers, and More - Recent Interview on Blog Talk Radio

Sharon Ball

Recently I was interviewed by Sharon Ball on Blog Talk Radio. Sharon is a prominent life coach and author of the book, Reinventing Yourself Today.

She asked some interesting questions about my work. I talked about the origins of ProStar Coach, how I discovered a passion for parenting teenagers, and my new books-in-process, Conversations with the Wise Uncle and Conversations with the Wise Aunt. If you're interested in hearing our conversation, CLICK HERE or click start arrow below.

Listen to internet radio with sharonball1 on Blog Talk Radio

ENJOY!

About the books mentioned in the interview...

For girls - Conversations with the Wise Aunt


For boys - Conversations with the Wise Uncle

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

The Failure to Communicate Widens the Generation Gap

When Jason didn’t come home after baseball practice, Sandra started to wonder why. An hour later, Jason still hadn’t arrived and he hadn’t called. She called him, but Jason didn’t answer, so she left a message. Another hour passed, and it was time to start dinner. But first she called his coach. He said Jason had been a no-show at practice. When scary scenarios started rushing through her mind, she called her husband Roger, who was on his way home. “If he’s not back by the time I get there, I’ll start calling around,” he said.

Ten minutes later, the front door opened and Jason walked in. Without saying a word, he headed straight for his room. Sandra followed him, but Jason slammed the bedroom door behind him.

She shouted through the door: “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

“None of your business. Leave me alone.”

“Of course it’s my business! I had no idea where you were. Your coach said you skipped practice. I was afraid something might have happened to you.”

“Aaagh!” A loud groan came through the door. “You called Coach? What's the deal, Mom? Are you spying on me now? Can’t I have a life without you watching every move I make?”

“Please come out. You can tell me about it while I make dinner.”

“My god, can’t I have a little privacy around here? I don’t want any dinner! Go away and leave me alone!”

The anger in her son’s voice was like a physical blow. Who is this child? Where is my little boy?

Sandra had no idea how to handle this situation. Something was wrong. Maybe Jason was in trouble, but she couldn’t imagine what it could be. She felt she ought to say something, but she was literally at a loss for words. Afraid of making the situation worse, she returned to the kitchen. Feeling helpless and inadequate as a mother, she collapsed into a chair and started crying.

When Roger came home, he found Sandra in the kitchen. After listening to her tearful account, he exploded. He charged down the hall and banged on Jason’s door.

“Open the door,” he commanded.

“Leave me alone, Dad.”

“I said open the door!” His voice was loud and threatening. Jason unlocked the door, and his father rushed in and grabbed him by the arm.

“What's going on, boy? Why didn’t you go to practice? Why were you so late coming home? Where were you? What do you think gives you the right to talk to your mother that way?”

“Let go of me, Dad.”

“Answer me, I said!”

Jason tried to struggle free, but his father’s grip tightened painfully. “Nothing happened. It’s nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? You were rude to your mother. I want you to go apologize to her and tell us what the hell is going on.”

“Let go of me!” he shouted as he furiously pushed his father away. Roger lost his balance, knocking down a lamp. He found himself sitting on the floor as his son ran out the door. Before Roger could do anything about it, his son had left the house.

They called everyone who might know where he is. Around midnight, Jason called. He said he didn’t feel safe at home. Sandra begged him to come home, and he did. But they still didn’t know what was going on or how to deal with it.

Later, when everyone calmed down, a kind of truce prevailed. They found out that Jason had skipped practice to hang out with his buddies at an arcade in the mall. He was having so much fun that he lost track of time. What set him off was the way his mother seemed to make a big deal over nothing. He resented his parents trying to control his life. He felt he had a right to his privacy.

In the long run, the incident wasn’t the end of the world. Neither Sandra nor Roger ever again lost their composure when dealing with their son, but the incident changed their relationship. Some of the intimacy they once had with Jason had been lost, along with a measure of trust and respect. The classic generation gap was widened by the inability to communicate effectively.

And in the grand scheme of things, these are the good parents. But actions have consequences. and none of their actions included good communication skills. Not Sandra. Not Roger. And not Jason. These skills aren't taught in schools. In the world we live in now, very few parents get the chance to learn the kind of communication skills that would have prevented this uproar from happening.

That's why we created ProStar Coach. It has the best online system for developing communication skills you'll find anywhere. And a whole lot more.

The above excerpt was taken from my book for teen boys, Conversations with the Wise Uncle.

A similar book for teen girls - Conversations with the Wise Aunt.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from fotolia.net)

My Son, The Genius

In 1988, when my youngest son, Teller, was 17, he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with me to create a computer program that scored and generated reports for the Success Style Profile, a first-generation brain-based personality test I had created. He also did the work for the most recent version of that program, called MindFrames.

The program functioned perfectly. More importantly, I learned that we worked well together. The process of design, specification, coding, testing and debugging went smoothly. I thought of him as some kind of genius (and I still do). I was impressed with his skill, creativity, work ethic and commitment to quality.

Later, he attended Texas Tech University, majoring in computer science. But he was a self-taught programmer, and he discovered that he learned a lot more and a lot faster on his own. And he was unimpressed with some of his instructors. He eventually concluded that college was a waste of time for him. So he left Texas Tech to join my company, Performance Support Systems.

His first project was to write the program for 20/20 Insight, a breakthrough 360-degree feedback system. And the rest is history. He's been a part of our core team for over 20 years now.

His latest accomplishment is ProStar Coach, a totally new kind of online self-development system. It's been in use for over a year now, and together we're exploring new ways to expand its power.

I never foresaw that my sons would be so bright in the IT world. My other son is more of a systems guy, a Ph.D. working for a company in New York City. And I never expected that Teller and I would be so compatible as coworkers. But we are. So for me, work is fun, and life is good.

How did I ever get so lucky?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

The Three Most Important Areas of Youth Development Are Not Taught in Schools

It's amazing what you see when you step outside the box. I've been focusing on the topic of parenting teenagers for over a year now, and I've been outside the box the whole time.

Inside the box, you understand that you need to sacrifice and save money for your child's college education, urge the child to study and get good grades, get the child tutoring for how to take the SAT, and help your child get admitted to a great school. And there's nothing wrong with any of this, even if getting admitted to a great school is no guarantee at all of success in life and work.

But outside the box I've seen something else...

1. The most important thing a kid can learn when he or she is a teenager is how to think - critical thinking skills, which are handled by the pre-frontal cortex. This area of the brain is "under construction" the entire period of adolescence, which lasts 10 or 12 years. It's a time-sensitive window of brain development, during which a person's foundation for critical thinking (understanding, evaluating, analyzing, relating, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, planning and managing) is established once and for all. At the end of the period, the window closes. Following the metaphor: construct a small foundation and you are limited to building a small house on it. The key is to construct an ample foundation. This makes a huge difference in your ability to gain "brain power" as an adult.

2. The second most important thing a teenager can acquire is personal strengths. These are behavior patterns that enable a person to do the hard things to deal with the challenges of life and work. In my work, I've identified more than 40 personal strengths, such as optimism, awareness, passion, focus, courage, composure, integrity, tolerance, and many more. You can see why personal strengths are so important.

3. Finally, there are people skills - interacting with people effectively. There are dozens and dozens of people skills, although in my work I focus mainly on a couple dozen of the more high-impact ones, such as listening, resolving conflict, dialog, guiding learning, stimulating thinking, and giving feedback. Nearly everything we do in relationships and work requires interaction with people; and when these are handled badly, there are adverse consequences. 

These are the game-changers. Imagine how hard it would be to succeed in the world if a person was inept in all three areas!

By the time adolescence is over, most young people have left home and have started to make their way in the world. So prime time to start developing these areas is during the teen years.

But here's the amazing part. None of these areas of ability are taught directly in our education system. Not taught in high school. Not taught at the college level, either. No courses in critical thinking, no courses in people skills, no courses in personal strength. So how are people supposed to learn this stuff?

You don't learn it by reading about it. You learn it by doing it. All three areas - critical thinking, personal strengths and people skills - get stronger simply by exercising them repeatedly.

It's possible to pick up some of these patterns indirectly and by chance. For example, one of my colleagues told me that the most important person in her youth was her economics teacher. When I asked her why, she said, "He taught me how to think." Lucky her.

Team sports are fine opportunities to build some of the personal strengths, even though that's not high on the agenda of most coaches, who have their hands full teaching athletic skills, conditioning and winning. And a kid can get some experience with interacting with people by socializing and participating in extracurricular activities.

But these developmental opportunities are unstructured, random, spotty, and depend on luck. It's kind of like "street knowledge." Kids pick up things hit-or-miss - the good, the bad and the ugly - hanging out with their friends. It's no wonder that most people become adults with a lot of unlearning and catching up to do. Which most people never do - they just get by within the boundaries of their limitations.

Isn't it amazing that something so important is unrecognized by parents and the education system?

There's so much young teens should be told, but it almost never happens. That why I wrote these books...

Conversations with the Wise Aunt - for girls

Conversations with the Wise Uncle - for boys


Can you think of a better way to give a kid an edge in life?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased form fotolia.net)

What on Earth is ProStar Coach? - The Gym Analogy

ProStar Coach is an online virtual coaching system to help you work on people skills and personal strengths. Because it's a brand new, really different learning technology, at first some people don't get what it is. So I find it helpful to use an analogy. It's a lot like working on physical strengths in a gym.

Let me explain...

First of all, for the sake of their health, everyone needs to be physically fit. But not everyone thinks physical fitness is important. Not everyone wants to improve themselves in this way. But many people understand the benefits to their health, and they're willing to do something about it - even if they've never worked on becoming physically stronger before.

Because it is possible to improve your physical strength. It is possible to improve your health.

Now it may be enlightening to read about it, to watch a training video or to listen to the advice of an expert. But these things, by themselves, will not make you stronger.

It's not about knowledge and understanding. It's about working specific muscles. If you want to get physically stronger, you have to do the work. You have to do the repetitions.

You'll see real results, but they won't happen overnight. But if you keep coming back to the gym and if you stick to your routine for several weeks, you'll start to feel and see differences in your body.

This means the key is to make going to the gym and doing the exercises a habit. If you don't, it will be all too easy to sometimes forget, make excuses or blow it off. And if you do that, you won't get a payoff for your membership.

Sound about right? 

Well, working on the core strengths of who you are as a person works the same way...

First of all, for the sake of their success in relationships and work, everyone needs to be strong as a person. But not everyone thinks personal strengths and people skills are important. Not everyone wants to improve themselves in this way. But many people understand the benefits to their success in relationships and work, and they're willing to do something about it. Even if they've never worked on becoming stronger as a person before.

Because it is possible to improve your people skills and personal strengths. It is possible to be more successful.
Now it may be enlightening to read about it, to watch a training video or to listen to the advice of an expert. But these things, by themselves, will not make you stronger.

It's not about knowledge and understanding. It's about working specific areas of personal strength and people skills. If you want to get stronger as a person, you have to do the work. You have to do the repetitions.

You'll see real results, but they won't happen overnight. But if you keep coming back to the ProStar Coach virtual gym and if you stick to your routine for several weeks, you'll start to feel and see differences in your behavior.

This means the key is to make going to ProStar Coach and doing the exercises a habit. If you don't, it will be all too easy to sometimes forget, make excuses or blow it off. And if you do that, you won't get a payoff for your membership.

I hope this was helpful. There's more info online if you want it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Five Things People Who Strive for Success Don't Know That Can Hold Them Back

I've been studying the neuroscience related to learning and behavior change for 25 years. Along the way, I've learned some things about success that even the hard chargers don't know about - major realities that can hold them back. Here are the top five...

1. Knowing what to do doesn't mean you can do it. The reason is that most situations don't allow for reflection and conscious decision-making. For example, in the workplace things often happen so fast that your automatic habits kick in. You do what you usually do without thinking about it. The bottom line - if you want to consistently do something different - the excellent behavior you learned about - you have to first ingrain it as a habit.

2. It takes a lot of repetitions of the behavior to establish an ingrained habit. This is because habits are triggered by neural pathways, networks of brain cells related to the behavior, which are stimulated to grow together each time the behavior is repeated. Once all the brain cells are connected, the habit is ingrained. Permanently.

3. This doesn't happen quickly just because you're highly motivated. It takes time, and it isn't easy to change your way of doing something. Because the new way isn't a habit yet, you'll forget to do it. You'll react with your old habit. Or you will try, and in the early stages your effort will be unpracticed and awkward. This failure may discourage you. The disappointment you feel is what I call "the crunch point." Things have to get worse before they get better, and you may be tempted to give up on the new way and fall back on what's comfortable.

4. It's hard to do this on your own. It makes a big difference to have people who care about your success to give feedback, coaching, encouragement and accountability.

5. Even if you successfully ingrain the new habit, without personal strength and people skills your new behavior pattern may not bring you success. Adversity is a fact of life; and in nearly everything we do, we do it while interacting with people. So you've got to be strong enough to work through the challenges, and you have to be good with people. Otherwise, you won't get far.

So if you really care about getting ahead and achieving your dream, you need to take these realities seriously. Understand what personal growth involves, and follow through. Build a network of people who can help you. And while you're acquiring the knowledge and skills related to your success, don't neglect your core strengths - personal strengths and people skills.

In brief, this is the message of a new 36-page ebook, Launch Your Personal Success, which you can download free online.

I created ProStar Coach to help success-oriented people deal with these challenges. Based on more than 15 years of research and development, it's the world's first learning empowerment system. It's stimulating content and online virtual coaching support to make the hard parts of your personal development journey a lot easier.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Why I Write About Personal Strengths

Forty-five years ago, when I was a young lieutenant, I attended three months of training at the Army Ranger School, where I learned a lot of difficult combat skills. I learned how to navigate for miles in cold rain at night through dense underbrush up and down mountains in order to reach a distant objective before dawn. I learned how to lead an infantry attack while coordinating medical evacuations, artillery fire and air strikes—all at the same time. You get the picture.

I got good at it. And when I arrived in Vietnam, I was glad I had these skills. But I learned something important. Performing in combat is so adverse that none of these combat skills are worth much if you can’t be bold, keep your cool, manage your awareness, be flexible, give maximum effort, exercise judgment and yes, even show compassion. The biggest challenge was exercising these personal strengths, not the combat skills.

I’ve been intensely interested in these core strengths ever since. In April 1999 I published an article in Performance Improvement, "Strengths of Character: A New Dimension of Human Performance." The paradigm in the human resource development world at the time held that competence consisted of skills and knowledge. I made a case that a third element, which at the time I referred to as "character strength," was also a factor.

You know I’m right about this. You can have abundant knowledge, a high level of skill and strong motivation. But what if conditions turn against you? What if you encounter opposition? What if things go wrong? What if the stakes are raised and the cost of failure is multiplied? What if you’re getting pressure from stakeholders? What if office politics gets in your way? What if customers are angry about problems? What if the competition has introduced something new and powerful? What if three members of your team have left for other opportunities? What if your child is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer?

The answer is, you’ll have to do some hard things. And what you actually do will be a manifestation of who you are, at the core.

To capitalize on their personal strengths, I recommend that people do two things.

1. Consider which personal strengths are your strongest, and look for ways to use these more often in your life and work.
2. Work on making the weak areas stronger, one personal strength at a time.

I admit that even though doing these two things is crucial to personal success, following this advice is more difficult that it sounds. That's the real reason my company spent 10 years developing ProStar Coach, an online virtual coaching system to help success-oriented people work on personal strengths and people skills. It makes the behavior change process a lot like working out in a gym. But instead of building physical strength, over time people get stronger at the core of who they are. In ProStar, they do the reps! And they get behavior models, coaching, encouragement, feedback and accountability. If you're interested, right now the website is letting people try out ProStar Coach free.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

For Success-Oriented People Only - The #1 Secret to Self-Improvement

No one is perfect. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. But some people - a certain small fraction of the population - are constantly trying to become a better version of the excellent person he or she already is. These are the life-long learners of this world. Nearly all of the most successful people are life-long learners.

Are you one of these people?

You can get a new idea and you can learn a new concept from a book, a video or other media. But you can't learn a skill or change your behavior by reading a book or watching a video. You can learn what to do, but knowing is not the same as doing. Knowing what to do is only the beginning.

The real learning happens after that. To improve a skill, work habit or any behavior pattern, you have to repeat the desired behavior over and over - dozens of times. How many repetitions are needed to ingrain the new pattern - to make it a comfortable, automatic response? It depends on how complex the new behavior is.

You can accelerate your improvement by learning from each experience of applying the new behavior.  The procedure is elegantly simple:

Once you focus on changing a behavior, you apply it in the real world, then reflect on the experience. You do this by asking yourself five "magic" questions, which are explained in another post. Then repeat the action-reflection cycle over and over until the action feels natural and comfortable. When you can engage the behavior pattern correctly without thinking about it, you're done.

It's all common sense, but there are no shortcuts. It's really no different than working out in a gym - You gotta do the reps!

Of course it helps a lot to have coaching - tips, feedback, encouragement and accountability. That's why we created ProStar Coach, the online virtual coaching system for success-oriented people. If that describes you, maybe you should check it out.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

The Dark Secret of HRD - The Executive Summary

When we developed ProStar Coach, we knew we'd have some explaining to do. It's a learning empowerment technology, which means that it's so new and different that often when people see it for the first time, they aren't sure what it is or how to use it. More important, they aren't sure why they need to use it. As I said, we had some explaining to do.

I wrote "The Dark Secret of HRD" to do this explaining - to top management. There are some very important facts about skill development that executives simply don't know.
And that lack of understanding might keep them from appreciating the need for something like ProStar Coach.

Here's the "Executive Summary" that introduces the book...

The purpose of this book is to inform you about four poorly understood realities related to employee performance. The failure to acknowledge these four facts has caused organizations in the U.S. to waste nearly $100 billion every year on learning and development programs that fail to change behavior. The book explains why this horrible condition has persisted for decades, and what to do to get maximum ROI from your investment.

REALITY #1: Most of the money invested in learning and development is wasted. This is what I call the “dark secret of HRD.” Organizations that invest in training aren’t getting what they paid for. Not even close. The reason is that in the long run, what people learn about in training usually isn’t applied in the workplace. This truth has been on the street for a long time, but for various reasons the message hasn’t reached top management.

REALITY #2: At work, people usually don’t think about how to act; instead, they automatically engage ingrained work habits. In a typical workplace, there’s a lot going on and employees have a lot to think about. Under pressure, habits trump newly introduced skills. This reality is a formidable “catch-22”-- most of the time, people won’t use a newly learned skill until it’s ingrained, but they usually don’t do the work to ingrain it because it’s easier to rely on what’s already habitual.

REALITY #3: To ingrain a work habit, people have to rewire their brains—they have to apply the skill over and over until the related brain cells connect into a new neural pathway, a process that takes far more time than is available in a training program. This is the biggest reason your training programs don’t “stick,” why 8 or 9 out of 10 participants don’t improve their work habits. The most important part of training has to take place in the workplace—after classroom instruction is over. The failure to follow through with a structured program of reinforcement means most participants will return to their old work habits.

REALITY #4: Employees need people skills and personal strengths to work at their best. Even if employees apply what they learned in training, they still may not be able to give you the high level of effort you seek. The reason is that if they lack key people skills or have deficits in personal strength, they’ll act inappropriately with each other and with customers. And they won’t do the hard things when faced with challenges and adversity.

As you read through “The Dark Secret,” you’ll learn a few things you didn’t know about the brain. I’ve been studying cognitive neuroscience for over 20 years, and in this book I include a few important insights about “the learning instrument”—the human brain. It’s important to know how the brain learns new skills, habits and patterns; otherwise you won’t appreciate why you need to do what’s necessary to get people to change their behavior. Understanding how people learn is the first step to stop pouring big bucks down a hole.

But knowing these things is only the beginning and actually doesn’t make your job any easier. The commonsense remedies are daunting—which may be why few organizations have implemented them.

The book finishes on a positive note. In the final chapters I explain why and how we developed ProStar Coach, a unique online self-development service that essentially resolves the four issues that hold you back from getting the results you expect when you invest in training.

If you'd like to read the rest of the book, you can download it free online.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

ProStar Coach - The Virtual Guided Tour!

During the past year, I've alluded many times to something called ProStar Coach. It's an online virtual coaching system for people to work on people skills and personal strengths. It uses a Focus-Action-Reflection process to fully ingrain new behavior patterns.

It occurred to me today that I've never given my blog readers a detailed explanation of what it is. So I'm giving you a link to a video that explains how each area of the program works. It's like a virtual tour into the gutty-works of the system.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

And enjoy!

 
Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .