Recently, a colleague made a statement that I love and thought I would explore that with you. She tells her teams, “Don’t make the same mistakes, make new ones.” This resonated with me for several reasons.

First, she gave her team members permission to explore, be creative, and make mistakes at work. If you are never wrong, never fail, or never make a mistake, then you aren’t pushing yourself and growing personally. The same goes with work. If you have never worked on a project or initiative which has had trouble or has not succeeded 100%, then you haven’t stretched yourself. Anyone who has worked on larger initiatives or more complex projects has had problems, even failures. Not everything succeeds. What we want to do is take control where possible and avoid those issues or problems which can be properly managed, minimizing the occurrences of problems or failures that are beyond our control.

Second, this statement emphasizes the rule to avoid repeating past mistakes. How do we avoid making the mistakes that have been made before? By reviewing lessons learned and familiarizing ourselves with the problems and issues that prior similar projects have had. We can also interview our SMEs (subject matter experts), those who have been involved with similar initiatives in the past. They have a wealth of information if we make the effort to talk to them and ask the right questions. I would suggest that when you initiate a discussion with a SME that you are prepared with the right questions to gather the information you need.

Another way to avoid making the same mistakes is to involve SMEs in the project or initiative. We cannot do all of our work alone; unfortunately many managers or project managers believe they are supposed to. That is not true. Involve your team, talk to SMEs inside and outside your team as well as outside your organization where possible, use all the resources you have. If at first blush you don’t think you have many resources or help, think about it some more. With some thought, you’ll probably realize you have access to more sources of information and knowledge than you think. Be proactive. I’ll bet you know of managers or project managers who are able to gather intelligence better than others. Emulate them.

In closing, keep this phrase in mind when managing your own work as well as other people. Be the role model you need to be.

How have you helped yourself or your team stretch beyond the comfortable while avoiding making the same mistakes?

Maybe you’ve heard the advice to “fake it ‘til you make it”. Well I’d like to expand on that saying.

Do you ever find yourself angry with something or someone and need a way to change your mood? If you are upset, sad, or experiencing a negative emotion that needs to go away, just smile. You may feel silly but your brain cannot handle the crossed signals coming into it. Your mind is clearly upset but your face is smiling. Within a few minutes, your mood will lighten, and you will find yourself able to deal with that difficult person in a rational way rather than emotionally and negatively.

I once worked for a telemarketing firm. “Smile and dial” they would tell us while we worked toward our goal of 200 calls an hour. If you smile while talking on the phone, that positive emotion comes through in your voice and the person on the other end will pick up on that. Do this especially if you are upset or dreading the conversation.

As covered in Whole Living Magazine, researchers at Northwestern University found that simply putting your body in certain positions triggers hormonal changes. Positioning your body in a posture of power to act more confidently raises levels of testosterone, a hormone which makes us take action, while also reducing cortisol, a stress hormone. This includes both sitting and standing positions, such as sitting with your hands behind your head and one ankle on the other knee or walking with your eyes focused straight ahead and head held high. Using this knowledge wisely can help you boost your performance at work and in life.

If you are working on a task or problem and just want to give up, give yourself the ability to be more persistent by crossing your arms. Your brain will pay attention to the body language more than your inner negative voices wanting you to quit.

You can also sit up straight or stand tall to boost your confidence. What I have found to work well is to sit or stand tall and talk with assuredness on what I DO know. That helps overcome nervous energy when making a big presentation or negotiating with a tough negotiator, such as your boss or customer. I’m not suggesting that we all become the cocky and annoying person who acts all-knowing and over-confident, sometimes due to lack of awareness and sometimes to cover a lack of knowledge and/or possible insecurity. I don’t want anyone acting like they know everything when they don’t.

Your mom may have used this technique when she put her hands on her hips to stand firm and make a point. At that point, you knew she was not budging.

Another interesting trick is to nod your head to increase positive feelings. Your body language reflects your inner state, so if you are feeling positive when talking, you may start to nod your head. It also turns out that if consciously nod your head while talking, you will feel more positive. It works in both directions.

If you don’t quite know what to say and want to encourage the other person to provide more information and continue to speak, you can either put your chin in your hand in a thoughtful pose or lightly stroke your chin. If you also nod your head at the same time, you encourage the other person to continue speaking and to agree.  This will help you gather more information and collect your thoughts before responding. Again, not only are you encouraging the other person to participate, you are convincing yourself to act reflectively when you need it.

I hope these tips help when you find yourself in a difficult, negative or uncomfortable situation.

How have you applied any of these body language techniques? If you have not used this trick, how can you apply it?

When I learned of an opportunity to sit in on a major NASA project review as a “fly on the wall,” I jumped at it. This seemed like a great way to learn about the new Kepler project. Kepler is a special purpose mission in the NASA Discovery Program, with an objective that the project’s principal investigator William Boruki says is to “explore the skies for terrestrial-like planetary systems around other stars, in order to answer one of the most enduring questions humans have asked throughout history: Are there others like us in the universe?”

Fly-on-the-wall was an experiment in knowledge sharing, offering project practitioners an opportunity to learn from observing good project-related meeting processes as they occurred in real time. This idea surfaced after several senior project managers commented that they had little, if any, training or experience in holding reviews, making presentations, holding team kick-off meetings, or in many other project management activities until they “had to do one.” A common refrain was, “I’d never even seen one!”

To participate as a fly began an interesting and revealing odyssey for me, watching and listening to peer review presentations and discussions from the Kepler-Ground Segment development team to other NASA and contractor managers. These were the key players who would decide how the project would be structured and who would establish a preliminary schedule for this portion of the project.

Now operating in space, Kepler was a joint project between two NASA Centers. Mission control and overall data management were the responsibility of the Ames Research Center, and the telescope and the launch portion were to be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The primary instrument of Kepler is a specialized one-meter diameter photometer telescope, positioned in Earth’s orbit to “stare” for four years at a small portion of the night sky, containing over 100,000 stars similar to our sun, and to capture images of Earth-like planets rotating around them. This peer review of the project’s ground segment portion emphasized that Kepler was not a large, complicated project.

I was impressed that the meetings started on time, stayed on time, and even finished a little ahead of schedule, despite a lot of active discussion about the control and management techniques to be employed in the project and who had what responsibility. No fewer than eight separate functional organizations with integral roles in the project attended the meeting, from across three continents including North America. And this was said to not be a complex mission! My hat went off to the Kepler project team for their thoroughness, professionalism and ability to stick to the purpose of the meeting. Some useful tips that I picked up as an observing fly for future use in meetings include:

1. INTRODUCTIONS: Not introducing everyone in the room; only the key players at the main table. Other important contributors, who gave parts of the presentation or contributed to the discussions when appropriate, introduced themselves. Some of these people were high-level representatives who did not seem to mind their secondary roles in the meeting.
2. PURPOSE: Clearly stating the purpose of the meeting at the beginning and, even more important, clearly stating what the meeting “was not” about. This set the stage for efficiency and minimized distracting comments. A facilitator kept the meeting moving along but never “squashed” anyone who had a relevant comment or contribution.
3. OMBUDSMAN: Assigning a key member at the table as an ombudsman with a strong enough personality to cut off discussion when it would be part of a later presentation (not relevant now), or to end comments that contributed little (those who love their own voice) or when it would be more appropriate for an off-line conversation (those who can’t let go but just-might have something important to say). This process worked well and was conducted in a polite, professional manner.
4. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: A particularly useful chart on one wall, referred to often during the meeting, showed a roles and responsibilities matrix with the key organizations involved in the project, listed across the top as column headings, and the project functional elements as role headings down the left-most column. The row-column intersections in the matrix clearly identified the organization responsible for each of the functions, removing much confusion that might otherwise have occurred.

I believe fly-on-the-wall is an extremely simple but valuable knowledge-sharing technique, easily duplicated in any organization. Tips from observers in well-run meetings can be shared with project managers and teams, and have high potential for encouraging an outcome of project success.

In what ways do you think the  fly-on-the-wall technique can help your projects?

How is learning delivered in your organization? Would you say it’s “pushed” (often used with “down” or “out”) or does it follow a “pull” model in which team members access it at will? Either way, your learning department is working hard to make sure that training is available as needed to support the business, and that’s a good thing. Furthermore, the best in class organizations are doing both, providing just in time training to meet immediate needs and optional offerings to advance knowledge and skills.

Organizations that follow a “push” only model are going to rapidly fall behind the curve and will soon find themselves lagging behind the competition. In the current business environment, companies need to have innovative, forward thinking leaders and requires a culture that fosters experimentation, exploration and critical thinking. Your organization can certainly hire for those skills but it’s an expensive model to support and you might be better served growing talent from within the organization.

Compliance often drives a “push” model of learning. In organizations with a high need for safety, security, internal accountability and regulatory compliance, training reflects the need to ensure that employees are certified for legal reasons. Historically, this follows a traditional model of education. Primary and secondary schools modeled the factory model of the industrial revolution, demanding homogenized groups and standardized levels.

Instead, I propose to maximize the effectiveness of learning in your organization you should be looking at three categories of training:

1.  Compliance Training. We’ll call this “Mission Critical”, training that meets regulatory compliance or is necessary to keep the wheels on the bus. In my experience, things like food safety, OSHA training, information security, Patriot Act and, for front line employees, training required for cash management, point of sale, and inventory management. In some organizations, ethics courses and diversity training fall into this category based on the culture. These types of courses fit well into the “push” model and are considered ticket to entry into the organization.

2.  Development Training. Let’s call this “Nuts and Bolts” training. This set of courseware advances the knowledge and skills of the organization in various functions. Content areas in this curriculum cover topics like leadership, project management, merchandising, human resources management, real estate development, logistics and customer relations. These courses can be developed in house or outsourced and may be linked to university or certification programs for transferable credits. By delivering this content you raise the knowledge and skill level of your people which increases the bench strength and long term survivability of your team. These courses fall into both “push” and “pull” categories. Learners engage the content as needed for their own development and growth in the organization but managers can always prescribe a course of learning to help move employees along or ensure accurate execution.

3.  Personal Training. This is the “Bells and Whistles” content. This is my catch all bucket for anything else that people want for their own learning plan. These courses support personal development and fill in the gaps to improve personal performance. Courses on time management, communication and organizational skills or experiences and roles that provide experience through trial and error. These should be primarily “pull” programs; employees self-identify areas of improvement and seek out learning opportunities to enhance their performance. In some cases, managers may prescribe specific courses or experiences based on need.

A solid learning program should have all three kinds of content, delivered via various modalities. Some sessions are best served through classroom sessions (in person or virtual classes) while others might be online courses, self-study documents, or peer sharing networks. Having a menu of content and delivery options provides access to the necessary training for success.

How is training structured in your organization? Is all training served up through a “push” model, a “pull model” or a combination of both? What do you find to be the most effective way to ensure employees are receiving the content they need, when they need it?

While listening to podcasts and reading articles that I enjoy, I thought that if we all share our favorite business blogs and podcasts, we might find a few gems to brighten our weeks. Below are some suggestions. What are your favorite podcasts?

From Vicki:

The podcasts I enjoy listening to are:

• Get it Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More podcast by Stever Robbins provides good tips for professionals.

• TED Talks – available in hi-def video or audio only, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Topics include business, environment, technology, engineering, science.  The podcast can be found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/tedtalks_video.

• To The Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) by PRI and Wisconsin Public Radio. I have subscribed to this podcast for years, both through audible.com as well as directly from their site. I am a fan of this show, its wide (huge) variety of topics, and its excellent interviewers. I have enjoyed shows on topics I would never have thought about or taken the time to look into.

From Rob :

I admit to not listening to many podcasts as I tend to be more of a visual learner. I enjoy a series by RSA called RSAnimate.  You can find them on YouTube for free here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rsa+animate&aq=0&oq=rsa

RSA creates videos from audio tracks of famous authors talking about their works and matches it up to video of an artist sketching the concepts. Fun and educational for the auditory and visual learner. It includes summaries from Daniel Pink (Drive), Sir Ken Robinson (on education), and many other thought leaders. It’s fascinating to listen to the summaries while the artist expresses the content visually.

As you may have heard, PMI changed the exam on August 31, 2011 by 30%. This was driven by a change in the Role Delineation Study and was designed to make the exam better reflect the updated skills needed and used by project managers. If you started studying to take the PMP® exam using the 4^th edition of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) and couldn’t take the exam before the change, what do you do?

First, don’t panic. Yes, the exam changed 30%. However, some of that is due to a classification adjustment of where different skills fall. Some of it is driven by how scores will be compiled and reported back. In other words, more of it is driven by administration and less of it due to content change from a practical perspective. That is good news, both for those who took the exam by August 30^th and for those taking the exam on or after August 31^st.

We have reached a point in the project management profession where it is sophisticated enough to be defined fairly well. Yes, we will tweak our standard to keep it current and relevant, but overall, the techniques we will use to successfully define and complete projects and to lead our teams are fairly well defined and will remain the same.  This is a compliment to the work that our profession has accomplished over the years and the work PMI has done to capture and document those best practices.

In my opinion, the biggest impact to those taking the exam immediately following the change on August 31^st is that for 4-6 weeks, your score will not be provided immediately. In my opinion, this is to allow time to collect exam results, verify that the exam is fair and test the new exam process. PMI will notify you when your results are available at pmi.org, probably around mid-October. There you will learn whether you passed or not. 

If you are planning to take the exam shortly after August 31, know in advance that you will not know your pass-fail status. If you are OK with that, great. If not, you may choose to wait to take the exam until mid-October.

In summary, don’t panic. If you were able to take the exam by August 30^th, great. If not, that’s fine too. The bigger change will come after the 5^th edition PMBOK® Guide is issued Dec 31, 2012. I strongly suggest that if you have begun studying under the 4^th edition PMBOK® Guide, that you take the exam before it reflects the 5^th edition PMBOK® Guide. While changes to the 5^th edition will not be as extensive as those made in the 4^th edition and while many (most) of the definitions, techniques and best practices you are studying now should remain intact with the 5^th edition, there will still be new names, terms, processes, etc. in the 5^th edition to learn. Together, the changes made in the 5^th edition will most likely be greater than the 30% change in the exam experienced on August 31, 2011. Therefore, if you have started studying, set a goal to take the exam under the 4^th edition PMBOK® Guide if at all possible.

How do we increase the longevity of a learning solution? In Part 1 of this series, I challenged the learning organization to examine some basics in their processes and create more effective solutions. In Part 2 of this series I challenged the learner to take a more active role in the learning experience and to share the new found knowledge and skill with the team. However, an effective learning intervention relies on three elements: the solution, the learners and the environment to which the learners will return. In this post, Part 3 of 3, I’m going to examine the environment into which the learner returns and the person responsible for that environment: the manager.

1. Be Laser Focused

As a manager, your people are constantly looking for opportunities to learn and develop themselves. Whether they state it in their development plans (as mandated by HR) or keep it rolling in their subconscious we all want to be the best at something. Your job is to help them get there while being laser focused on the goals of the organization and how your team contributes to those goals. There is rarely warm, fuzzy time to send folks away to training when you have reports to create, products to manufacture, clients to satisfy and budgets to meet. It is critical, therefore, to do two things:

1. Be constantly aware of the goals of the organization and how your team contributes to meeting those goals.
2. Grow your people in ways that help contribute to those ends.

Tune in to the potential you see in your employees and their own goals and align their needs to the business. Look for ways to give them opportunities to be better and contribute in a way that makes your team and the organization better. Does this sound self-serving? It shouldn’t. Think about organizations that rely on employees to be highly focused, demand constant improvement and have high standards for how success is measured. How about NBA basketball teams? As I write this, the NBA finals are underway. Consider how those organizations view talent development, even in their star players.

2. Get Help From Experts

Your organization probably has a training team just waiting to help you be more successful. Granted they may feel understaffed and can’t offer all the classes you want or need. But they are experts in the field of learning and can probably offer you options for informal methods of helping your people grow without formal classes or courseware. They can probably help you set up mentoring sessions, job shadowing, special projects, provide learning resources and draft objectives and outcomes that you can use to demonstrate the power of learning and the impact on your work group.

Don’t be fooled in to thinking that learning only happens at a learning event. Some of the best learning comes from actually working at something new and different. It might mean you need some coaching on how to help your people process and get the most from the experience. That’s ok; you are a learner too.

3. You Don’t Have To Be The Expert

One of the hardest parts of moving up the management ladder is change. You were probably promoted because you were the fastest developer, the most accurate auditor, the most analytical financier, or the most profitable salesperson. Your promotion has taken you from those ranks, and now you process reports, communicate goals and track budgets. You’ve stopped doing the work and started leading the work. It was great when you were still the expert, but times change. New hires have better info, faster tools, new ideas and different perspectives.

Again, that’s ok.

Part of leading is knowing when to turn over decision making to the team. Let them be the experts. Be a learner yourself and have your people demonstrate what they know and what they’ve learned so you can be better at leading and showing off how great your team is. Work to understand what they bring to the table and they will continue to want to grow and develop to be better. When you create an environment in which employees have the confidence to stay informed and look for improvements all the time, you build a stronger, more effective team that gets results. The team that gets results looks good and makes you look like the leader you want to be.

When you create the right atmosphere for learning you foster a team that seeks constant improvement, that shares knowledge, and that strives for success. To be effective, learning can’t be something that is done to you, or to your employees. Learning must be something that teams embrace and leverage for competitive advantage. What do you think? How are you leveraging the art of learning in your work group? What do you do well to foster learning and what obstacles do you face that derail the process?

Note: This is Part 2 of 3. Read Part 1 here.

How do we increase the longevity of a learning solution? In Part 1 of this series, I challenged the learning organization to examine some basics in their processes and create more effective solutions. However, an effective learning intervention relies on three elements: the solution, the learners and the environment to which the learners will return.

In this post, part 2 of 3, I’m going to challenge all of us to rethink how we as learners should prepare for the learning and apply what we take from our learning experiences. I’m going to challenge you to think about your own behavior and re-invent yourself as a learner.

Prepare Yourself

As learners we have an obligation to show that the investment of time and resources has a payoff. That’s right, I said obligation. We also have to own our development plan and look for ways to incorporate what we learn into our daily activities.

1. One critical element is knowing how we best learn and apply information. Are you a visual learner? Be prepared to create mind maps and take notes as images of what you see. Learn best by listening? Maybe you want to record the session to listen to later. If you are a kinesthetic learner, keep a small squishy ball handy to fiddle with and be an active note taker. Armed with some basic knowledge regarding how you best process new information can help you plan ways to apply new information and get the most from the experience.
2. Learning is not an event, so quit thinking about it that way. As learners we owe some due diligence to the process. In your favorite journaling tool (notebook, binder, Outlook) jot down some thoughts on why you have enrolled in the learning experience, what you hope to gain, how it benefits your current work, and how it might improve your performance. What knowledge or experience do you have that relates to the topic? When you enter the learning with your own point of view you engage in the content as an active participant rather than a passive one.

Enjoy the Experience

Think about the learning experience as a chance to reinvent yourself. How often do you have the chance to try and fail without repercussions (not a good example if you are engaged in food or workplace safety training mind you)? A quality learning experience should give you the opportunity to explore the content, roll it around your mind and apply it to build skills in a safe environment.

Close the Loop on the Experience

Once the session is over, it’s time to start applying and sharing what you learned. Here are some things you can do to add permanence to your new knowledge.

1. Take your new knowledge and skills and purposefully apply them to the work. One basic tenet of adult learning is that we learn by applying our prior experiences to new information.
2. Blog about your experience or share it with the team over lunch.
3. Build a new process map and post it in your work space as a visual reminder.
4. Involve your manager or peer group.
5. Ask others for input. Ask others to respond to what you have learned and give them a chance to weigh in. When we broaden the experience pool by involving others we come to a more robust understanding of the content.
6. Plan your own follow-up. Most of use some type of software that allows us to plan to-do items and create checklists. Create some personal items and schedule them 30, 60 and 90 days out. Schedule time with yourself to check in on your progress. Think about what you recall and what you have used.
7. Consider previous challenges and obstacles. How could you have used your new found knowledge and skills to overcome them?

The learning activity itself is rarely the magic bullet that fixes everything. It can be a very powerful experience that adds to your productivity and effectiveness if you participate in the right activities and take an active role in your own experience.

What do you think? How are you owning your learning experiences and making them practical and powerful?

I’ve worked in several organizations supporting schools, restaurants and retailers, and in every one the question is always, “How do we make the learning stick?” In schools, the goal is to make sure students can remember the information to be prepared for college level work or at least to be productive members of society. In business, the goal is to be prepared for challenges in the work place. I’m going to tackle this topic over the next three blog posts: first, what should learning departments do to impart knowledge; second, what should learners do to enhance their retention; and finally, what should managers do to reinforce learning.

1. Build a Better Mousetrap

Learning organizations spend countless hours figuring out the best way for people to learn new knowledge and behaviors that will drive the success of the business. Unfortunately, many organizations get stuck in a rut and find it difficult to break out of their routine of delivering training the same way, time and time again. They produce job aids that look the same or more booklets in a series. The problem isn’t one of creating an internal brand; the problem is that given the available resources it is often easier to use an existing model than to branch out into new territory. For example, the job aid created to help new employees navigate the company intranet is not necessarily the best template to use for other skills.

2. Start With the End in Mind

It doesn’t matter if you are training project management or selling skills, the same set of rules apply to create highly effective training materials.

1. Identify the behavior that you desire and ask what the person needs to know to perform.
2. Design tools that present that information in a way that appeals to multiple learning styles.
3. Provide learners a chance to process the information and try it out through problem solving or experimentation.

This is a very high level look at the tasks of designing the right training tool and there are many steps in between.

3. Provide a Total Solution

You may have an elegant solution in mind but to really serve the organization you should look at the whole performance picture. What obstacles keep people from performing? Are their barriers in terms of time, technology, or other resources? Is the desired behavior currently being rewarded or is it unknowingly punished? For example, while working for a retailer we identified that employees rarely moved onto the sales floor to provide service or suggestively sell. The operations team came to us wanting more “Selling Skills” training. As part of our review of the performance we gave the operations team feedback that the highest priority in the store was placed on “reducing the wait time in line” and customers often became agitated if employees on the floor didn’t open a new register. So along with training materials we also recommended a dedicated floor person and staffing solutions that would keep them on the sales floor helping customers. We also recommended making a change to the Mystery Shopper questions such that on peak nights, the presence of a floor person was a critical success measurement.

4. Don’t Get Caught in a Rut

Learning organizations often go back to the well of ideas when presented with a new challenge. There is comfort and stability in using the tried and true methods: they are easy to use and modify; they are familiar to management and to the end users; and they have proven effectiveness. As long as you have sound success measures in place and you can prove the value of the training, there is no concern. But if you do find yourself in a rut and you seem to be training and retraining the same skills, you should consider challenging yourself and your learning team to develop some new ideas or exploring new spaces.

Reflect on the solutions you have provided your organization in recent months. Do they target the desired behavior or did other non-relevant info sneak in? Are there other factors contributing to poor performance besides lack of training? Are you delivering a hammer because in the past you created great hammers so you keep modifying the hammer design? You fix these things in your organization and in the next post I’ll look at how learners can enhance their own learning experience after they’ve received your elegant solutions.

If you are preparing to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) examination, I have an idea I would like to share.

You have probably been told the best way to prepare for the exam is to take as many practice exams as possible. I could not agree more. Because of the nature of the PMP examine, the wording of the questions can be very confusing. The Project Management Institute (PMI) also includes wordy questions; correct answers, but to another question; impossible questions, etc. The exam is a challenge even if you know all the material. It is as if you have to know the material AND understand how to read the questions and decipher the code.

I have taught PMP Exam preparation courses for some years now. I recently had a student who had an approach to taking the test that I thought was very creative. It could be that this idea has been around for some time and I have never heard of it. If so, I guess I’m the last one to hear about it, part of the 10% that never gets the word and when they do hear about it, they feel like they need a dunce hat. If this tip is not widely known and I come across as a genius, I’ll never tell that Bryan in my Washington, DC class, came up with the idea.

Here is the deal: when I take a multiple choice test, I do a certain amount of cogitation and guessing. When I’m done with the test and look over the answers, if I get the question correct, I breeze quickly past that question and focus on the questions that I answered incorrectly. Well folks, I’m here to tell you that not all the questions I got correct were because I knew the correct answers. Yes, I guessed. However, because I got the question correct on the practice test, I never reviewed the material that the question was referring to. We both know that this is a recepe for disaster later on. Therefore, the approach I suggest to the small minority of those who guess on questions is as follows. Take paper and write down the number of questions that you have on the test. At the top of the paper, write this scale:

                        Confidence Level 
  1 = Don’t have a clue what the answers is.
  2 = Kind-of think I might have heard the terms before somewhere.
  3 = Know most of the words and definitions of the terms.
  4 = Pretty sure I know what they are asking about and think I know the answer.
  5 = Nailed that one, piece of cake, I wish they were all this easy.

As you answer the questions and write down the alpha character that is associated with the answer you have chosen, also write down the confidence level number associated with the above description.

As you go back through and grade your answers you will now be reminded if you guessed or knew the answer to the question. If you got the answer correct but guessed at the answer, you will know to brush up on the subject. Additionally, you could add up the values of all the questions and divide by the number of questions and get a good idea how confident you were taking the test.

Let me hear from you. If you try this approach and it works for you, let me know, it will make me feel good and feel like I contributed to my profession, which by-the-way is part of the Code of Ethics. If you have already heard of this approach, let me know and I’ll not mention it again and embarrass myself.

Good Luck!