Jackie Freiberg, New York Times best-selling author of Nuts!, was the keynote speaker for The Bob Pike Group's annual conference two weeks ago. Her motivational talk was on creating a brand for yourself: what do you want to be known for? The eZine had a chance to sit down with Jackie and talk about choosing to be your best.

At work, men and women use strategies in communicating with each other that the opposite sex may view negatively. Often, misunderstandings can be avoided when coworkers look beyond personalities and consider the different ways men and women communicate. Let's look at a few examples from both sides.

U.S. banks risk losing top talent if they don't start developing that talent, according to a survey released by the American Bankers Association and the Corporate Executive Board. "The study raises the question: what is being done to prepare the next generation of bank leaders?" said Doug Adamson, executive vice president of ABA's Professional Development Group, which sponsored the study. "High-performing employees have told us that in order for them to stay and be more productive, they need to be recognized as top performers and have well-defined development plans in place," he said. The survey demonstrates that banks' dependence on internal talent makes ongoing development critical to prepare employees to take on higher roles.

Doug McCallum, one of our senior training consultants, recently was awarded the Peak Performer Award by The Bob Pike Group at the company's annual conference in Minneapolis. McCallum has been with the company for more than 30 years and is a proponent for training that gets his participants involved, not zombified by lecture. "Participant-centered training focuses on the learner and makes learning active by bringing the content to life," said Becky Pike Pluth, vice president of training and development at The Bob Pike Group. "Doug has always engaged his participants and has had great success making learning memorable and enjoyable."

Today, the Pike's Peak Awards were presented to four organizations which have demonstrated wholehearted implementation of participant-centered techniques in their training. The recipients were:

Listed below are our upcoming workshop dates and locations, including our annual conference. For information, click on the workshop title.

Organizations cannot compete effectively - at least for long - without aligning their people with results. And yet the decision-making processes for optimizing the people side of the business remain rudimentary in most organizations, often amounting to little more than guesswork and gut feel. At a minimum, this state of affairs results in lost opportunities: a failure to attract, motivate, and retain a talented and diverse workforce; unnecessary escalation in health care costs; lackluster sales; or disappointing results from mergers and acquisitions. Other times, this state of decision-making can even prove fatal to an organization. The decline of Circuit City from a widely-admired company to oblivion was a quick one.

Here's an urban myth about communication that's harder to swallow than a whale. It's one of the most influential and widely quoted statistical stories around, and it goes like this: When someone speaks to us, only 7 percent of what they mean communicates itself through the words they use. But, as with most urban myths, when you chew the story over, the alarm bells of common sense start ringing.

Looking to go back to school? Despite the recession, companies are still hiring and paying those with graduate education much higher salaries than those with only undergraduate degrees. Here are some options that might look attractive...

Would you describe yourself as a workafrolic, capable of entertrainment of the highest value, greeting every problem as a delightmare? Haider Imam explains some fantastic new training terms.