Award Winners Named During 2012 Annual Training Conference

The best of the best in participant-centered training were recognized during The Bob Pike Group's annual training and learning conference in Bloomington recently.

Each year, it is our great pleasure to choose members of the training community who share our passion and conviction about the effectiveness of participant-centered training and recognize them. We do this with The Pike's Peak Performance Award, our International Licensee of the Year award, and the Peak Performer award.

The Pike's Peak award is a formal recognition of trainers or organizations who have transformed their training by implementing participant-centered, results-based techniques championed by Bob Pike. These techniques involve participants in their own learning instead of relying on an instructor-led, lecture-based format. The award recipients have demonstrated improved retention and training transfer in their sessions by implementing these methods as well as an increased tie-in to business objectives. Award winners are nominated by colleagues, other learning professionals or The Bob Pike Group training consultants.

This year, Jiffy Lube International and Alcon Labs were named 2012 Pike's Peak Performance Award winners. 

JLI

JLI's training function for 20,000 employees began its award-winning climb back in 2004 as it changed from videos and manuals to computer-based and now web-based training. "When I first got into training, I took classes from a number of companies to learn presentation skills. By far the best was from The Bob Pike Group, and ever since, I have gone back for help in training my people and for help in developing instructor-led training presentations and now virtual instructor-led training course development and delivery," said Ken Barber, JLI manager of learning and development. 

From left are Bob Pike, Jazheel Santiago, Scott Enebo, Ayako Nakamura, Ken Barber, Becky Pluth, Bryant Loving and Keith Baudin

Interactions in the instructor-led training are a key reflection of the training Jiffy Lube has valued from The Bob Pike Group. "When I came into this position in July 2006, I knew that I wanted to adopt the Bob Pike philosophy of adult learning and participant-learning experiences," Barber said. Since Barber came on board with Jiffy Lube, all field training personnel now go through BPG's Boot Camp Plus or Boot Camp and Business Presentation Skills "so everybody is on the same page as far as what we expect, how we want to conduct training," Barber said. "In addition to that, a couple of years ago, Becky Pluth audited all of our instructor-led training [ILT] courses and gave us pointers on how to improve our PowerPoint presentations and how to further improve the interactive experience for the student. As a result, at this point in time, we have a 4.94 out of 5.00 overall level 1 evaluation rating from our students. We feel that it's been extremely helpful in helping us get to a world class status."

JLU has won numerous awards for its training, both in the automotive and training industries. JLU is a certified training provider with ASE and can now offerseven hours of college credit with ACE accreditation for its courses. It has also been a recipient of Training magazine's Top 125 awards for two years in a row, with a special achievement award this year for outstanding initiative. The work that Pluth did on our ILT content, the PowerPoints, the delivery, "That was just one of the things we did as part of our self-improvement process," Barber said. "We know that contributed to that special recognition. Only five companies received that award this year."

Another key factor for their awards was the ability to tie training into key business metrics. JLU could "correlate our improvement from customer service scores for six consecutive years, [and show that] ticket averages are 18 percent above industry average and have improved for six consecutive years," Barber said.

Alcon Labs

In 2009, Jazheel Santiago of Alcon Labs, the eye health care division of Novartis, became "one of those trainers." For her first presentation, she read every one of the 45 PowerPoint slides while the trainees' eyes glazed over. 

However, in 2010, Santiago participated in a Train-the-Trainer Boot Camp where walking into the classroom had her entering a new world. Many of her senses were engaged when she saw the unique table settings, touched the soft kinesthetic toys, smelled the markers, but most of all heard ways to energize training and have learners participate in their own learning.

Then, in her own classrooms, "I began making simple changes such as setting the tables the way Priscilla [Shumway] taught me, using more colors, drawing window panes of a product mechanism of action while the class was run by another peer and hanging them on the walls during the whole class; I saw that during the breaks [learners] approached the drawings and some of them copied the design in their notebooks," Santiago said. Then, "I thought, 'It's time to take the next step' and I made the students construct their own window panes and mind maps to find the real meaning of what they were learning. The results were amazing!"

The results of her training transformation have resulted in a three-step sales process that has helped sales representatives become more effective.

International Licensee of the Year

Dynamic Human Capital was named The Bob Pike Group International Licensee of the Year for 2012. Ayako Nakamura accepted the award.

Nakamura was certified in the Bob Pike Group Train-the-Trainer Boot Camp in 2007. Now, five years later, she has trained over 1,200 others in the participant-centered methods. She also worked to get two of Bob Pike's books translated into Japanese: the groundbreaking Creative Training Techniques Handbook and The Fun Minute Manager.

During the luncheon to celebrate DHC's achievement, Nakamura shared one example of how the interactive training methods have contributed to corporate bottom lines through increased retention. During one particular technical training using traditional lecture methods, only 12 percent of the learners who needed to utilize the technical process for their jobs could remember three of the four points they had heard. However, Nakamura shared, after using creative training methods and incorporating appropriate gestures, retention increased to 82 percent of the learners remembering three points.

In the last year, Nakamura has more than doubled her annual sales for Bob Pike programs and she is now working toward her master trainer certification in two programs. 

Bob Pike Group Peak Performer

The Peak Performer award is presented to The Bob Pike Group training consultant who has the highest average presentation evaluations for workshops for the year. This year, with an average score of 4.96 out of a 5.00 scale, the recipient was Scott Enebo.

"Scott has grown exponentially over the years, always doing a good job," said Becky Pluth, vice president of training and development at The Bob Pike Group. "This year he came out on top!"

Enebo, a champion of participant-centered and interactive training, uses his passion and fun-loving attitude to create a welcoming atmosphere where his participants can feel comfortable fully engaging in the learning material while making active decisions on how to implement the information back on the job. "These things combine to make Scott effective in the classroom as he provides valuable tools for the learners," Pluth said.

Do you know of an individual, department or company that has made efforts and great progress in implementing interactive training? Nominate them for a Pike's Peak performance award! Click here for the form.

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