The ”Smiley Sheet” Episode

Will and Matt are back after a six month hiatus. For their return, they catch up the Truth in Learning community on what they have been doing--primarily focusing on the six-month Learning Development Conference 2020, or LDC. LDC was an inaugural global event with over 300 participants. An all-digital conference with over 60 live, synchronous programs and 20+ asynchronous workshops.

In this episode our itinerant podcasters spend a few minutes talking about the passing of Roger Kaufman, a giant in the field of performance improvement. We were so lucky to have him on the show. The "I'm a Coach... Really... I Am" Episode where he and Will had a one-on-one conversation. In Will's eulogy, he mentions the recent creation of The Kaufman Center, created this year, as the custodian of Roger's legacy, a think tank dedicated to promoting Roger's Mega thinking in social value-adding projects and ideas.

Then, we spend the majority of the episode talking about the issues surrounding Smiley Sheets, or “Learner Surveys” as Will now calls them. We explore the:

• The inherent issues with Smiley Sheets
• The actual benefits of Smiley Sheets (According to Will, there are a few!)
• How to mitigate the negative effects of them
• How to use Smiley Sheets to manage expectations among the participants, the facilitators, and the stakeholders
• How to construct a decent Smiley Sheet Question
• Examples of bad questions
• Examples of how to translate a bad question into a good one
• And, more…

Will has recently been updating his book, Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form. DON'T GO BUY THIS VERSION OF THE BOOK. Will's second edition is a significant upgrade and he wants you to buy that one when it comes out.

We also (BIG NEWS) announce our next venture—The Learning Development Accelerator (LDA), the new L&D professional organization that will have a plethora of services, programs, conferences, and resources for members. Website to come.

And, of course, we end the episode with The Best and the Worst. Matt goes after the application of The Collective Intelligence.

NOTE: Matt wants to be clear, his comments on voting were irreverent and mostly sarcastic. Will wants to be clear, he sometimes knows what Matt is thinking.