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B&P: How did you get into training?
Joanne: I am one of the few people who has been in training all their lives. I first started teaching children to swim when I was in high school. What I have taught has changed over the years. Over the past 13 years I have been teaching project management and over the last six years my emphasis has been on teaching the people skills necessary to implement projects.
B&P: What do you enjoy most about training?
Joanne: To me the thrill of training is in knowing I have made a difference in someone's life. I enjoy hearing from class participants years later that what they learned in my class was a turning point in their life or made a difference in their performance at work.
B&P: How did your relationship with Front Runner start?
Joanne: I first learned of Front Runner through Computer Trainers Network about 10 -12 years ago.
B&P: Your bio says that you incorporate MBTI into your project management training. How did you decide to start doing that?
Joanne: There are some project managers that always get better project results than others even though they all seem to have a clear vision of the project and use the same project management processes and tools. The key reason those project managers get better results is they have strong people skills in addition to excellent project management processes.
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Three of the key competencies of strong people skills are:
- Understanding yourself
- Understanding others
- Communicating to others
The MBTI workshop enables participants to develop these skills. MBTI workshop participants learn their own type and learn to identify the types of others. They gain the capacity to manage people interactions better through improved communication. Participants engage in exercises to increase their self-awareness and develop different ways to communicate with others.
B&P: Who would benefit most from learning to use MBTI?
Joanne: Anyone who wants to increase their self-awareness and improve their communications with others.
B&P: What's the biggest challenge people face when learning to use MBTI?
Joanne: Learning how to communicate more effectively with others requires changes in behaviour. This does not happen overnight. It takes approximately three weeks of practice before a change in behaviour becomes a new habit.
B&P: What do you suggest for meeting this challenge?
Joanne: During the class each person is asked to make an action plan of what they want to work on after the class. The participants are encouraged to form a partnership with someone in the class. The partners encourage each other through e-mail and phone to keep practicing their new skill.
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B&P: How can people coming to learn to use MBTI get the most from training?
Joanne: Participants will take an online MBTI before the class. They are encouraged to take this at least three days before the class. This gives the facilitator time to review the results and plan the exercises for the class.
B&P: What new uses for MBTI do you expect to see in the future?
Joanne: As we work more and more on virtual teams it becomes more important to have excellent communication skills. I envision virtual teams taking the MBTI workshop via video web meetings and learning how to communicate through the written word more effectively with others.
B&P: Thanks for speaking with us.
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