Take 5 as Manager's Toolkit

Using Take 5

Managers play many roles… while you may not yet realize it, one of your most powerful and rewarding could be as Chief Learning Leader. But how does one find the time to support learning and professional development when things get hectic? Enter our new five-minute learning tool, Take 5. Used creatively, Take 5 is a ready-made manager’s toolkit for professional development. Here’s the why, how, when and where to make this new tool work for you.

Why: Developing your people is not only an important part of performance management it is critical to retaining and rewarding top talent, facilitating engagement, and ultimately for creating a healthier and more productive and collaborative work environment. “Micro-learning” is the future of workplace learning and Take 5 can help you deliver material in new less labor intensive “bite sized” formats that are more easily integrated into your normal workflow.

How: Weekly posts correspond to five professional development areas:

Take 5 for Your Future: Helps staff identify career goals and plan for the future.

Take 5 for Your Performance: Helps build important core skills.

Take 5 for Your Wellbeing: Helps with work-life balance, wellness and improve the work day.

Take 5 for Your Community: Helps with connection, community and campus climate.

Take 5 for Reflection: Provides an opportunity to reflect on your values, dreams and professional aspirations.

Each professional development area is identified at the bottom of the big orange 5 logo (at the top of individual posts).

When: The five professional development area topics repeat every five weeks with a new corresponding post every Monday morning (until June 30, 2017). This means that a full library of 52 Take 5 posts in the 5 professional development areas will be available to mine as you like for the next year and beyond.

Where: Although Take 5 is written for individual use, content can be incorporated into a number of managerial activities. For example,

You may also use the managerial prompts that accompany individual posts to evaluate your own goals and priorities. The “Future of Work” link at the sidebar may also generate some thinking about future skills, goals and opportunities (this section designed especially for millennials). Take 5 “Takeaways” are also mini “to-do” assignments for individuals and groups.

Take 5 is just beginning. You have another 41 posts to look forward to over the next year. Hopefully you will consider this your new professional development library and a tool to support your efforts to create engaged, learning-focused and adaptive individuals and teams.