For many people this time of year represents a frenzy of activity. With fiscal-year time crunches and tax preparation, not to mention new business, it’s all we can do to keep up! But it always pays to make time for learning, and this month there’s a fantastic selection of free webinars to support you in your quest for excellence. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-learning, process improvement, or performance improvement. The series will explore issues such as business practices, niches, legalities and insurance, and networking. Session 1, Starting Your Own Practice, is about the three sides of a successful consulting practice and the often undervalued role the business side plays in being profitable and sustainable. You will learn the importance of using business acumen to support your practice expertise.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: First-Time Leaders: Leverage Leadership Insights to Accelerate Success(Free for ASTD members)

“If only I had known then what I know now about leadership.” Most people become good leaders only after stumbling through new situations, making mistakes, and learning from them. If you attend this webcast you will benefit from several lifetimes of leadership insights, learning from others' mistakes and positive experiences to cut out a lot of stumbling and pain and accelerate your success as first-time leaders.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Pushing and Pulling: Winning the Learning Tug-of-War

In order to work together so everyone in a business community is well informed, sometimes we need to push information out and sometimes we need to pull it in. Social networking and learning typically involve sharing vital information and hoping our colleagues pull. Wouldn’t it be great if we could push and also validate that the pull occurred? Let’s talk about how to play this game of informational tug-of-war and ensure everyone’s a winner.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: CLOs and Training Leaders: When Design Really Matters, Picking Our Battles

If you’re a CLO or training leader, you realize there are times when your clients are just checking-the-box, and a death by PowerPoint is what they want. Part of being a leader is having a track record for results—and knowing which battles to pick. This means you can identify projects, initiatives, and curricula that really must deliver results. And you can develop sponsors who value the investment and are open to collaborating on a genuine training solution. This session looks at strategies and tactics for driving retention, reinforcement, and transfer of learning. At the macro level the session addresses the organization and the change-management tasks that must be tackled. Using a different lens we will look at the micro level and explore tactical and tools such as e-learning, social media, and m-learning that can help drive retention and transfer of learning.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Benefits of Virtual Onboarding (Free for ASTD members)

Effective onboarding is critical to ensuring that new hires are quickly acclimated to your company culture, trained, and ready for success. Today’s onboarding programs, however, face new and difficult challenges posed by a geographically dispersed, multigenerational workforce. In this webcast, Tom Masotto, vice president of product management at ON24, will discuss how virtual onboarding environments can be used to:

• Train your global new hires at a significantly lower cost.

• More effectively assimilate new employees into your culture.

• Provide ongoing training, networking, coaching, and mentorship.

• Tailor your communication to multigenerational differences.

Thursday, April 10, 2014, 6AM – 7AM PST: BEST Webcast Series: Enabling Next Gen Learning Systems and Practices at Tata Consultancy Services (Free for ASTD members)

India's largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is growing at a rapid pace, and its learning and development team is ready to take on the challenge. Hear how TCS structured real-life situations to re-imagine the four streams of the learning ecosystem. You will also learn how TCS institutionalized virtual learning to provide a personalized learning experience through Next Gen learning practices.

Thursday, April 10, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Nurturing Emerging Talent

A 2012 report by Deloitte identified eight trends in human capital that will have the most business impact over the next 18 to 24 months. One of the trends identified was the development of next-generation leaders. Identifying and nurturing emerging talent increases the availability of experienced, capable employees prepared to drive future growth. Alan Fine will explore the fundamentals of a high-performance environment, and the basic activities that create empowerment, accountability, and trust for managers and the emerging talent they lead. You will discover the three elements at the heart of high performance and will learn how to recognize and address obstacles that are getting in the way. Finally, you will explore a simple and reliable process that reduces interference, creates focus, and unblocks performance breakthroughs.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How Change Gets Stuck (Free for ASTD members)

The path to implementing change in an organization isn’t always smooth. On the way, you run into frequent speed bumps, wrong way signs, and even concrete barriers. These road hazards on the way to change are obstacles that prevent you from moving forward. Despite your best intentions, you and your change initiative can get stuck. In this webcast, you will learn the warning signs that your change initiative is stalled, and identify some of the root causes that may be preventing the organization from making progress. We will also discuss what you can do to get unstuck, and how to avoid getting stuck in the first place. Bring your challenges and your experience to this interactive session where we’ll uncover the common obstacles to organizational change.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Highlights and Trends for Human Resources Systems

Trish McFarlane, Brandon Hall Group's Vice President Human Resources Practice and Principal Analyst, will present statistics on what drives HR system decisions, mobile solutions in the HR systems, key findings on why organizations change HR systems, and key practices in implementation. In addition, Brandon Hall Group Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke will present additional trends and highlight exclusive resources available to members of Brandon Hall Group through its Member Center. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on the importance of specific features that drive HR system decisions.

• Statistics around the impact of mobile solutions in HR systems.

• Key findings on why organizations change HR systems.

• Key practices in implementation.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Busting Myths, Facing Facts about HTML5 (Free for ASTD members)

HTML5? You’ve heard of it. It’s the most widely accepted standard for delivering high-quality, media-rich content on multiple devices. And yet there are ambiguities and misconceptions about what HTML5 can really do for your bottom line. Dig a little deeper and you hit issues concerning cost and complexity. What are the answers? In this webcast you will learn:

• What HTML5 is and its importance to content portability.

• The key benefits of having learning content in the HTML5 format.

• The process of developing and converting content.

• The metrics and standards to determine efforts for conversion and development.

• The common pitfalls to watch for during the development /conversion process.

Thursday, April 17, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST Creating Interactive Videos from Really Boring Talking Heads, Lectures, and Demo Videos

Most videos in training and elearning are talking heads, lecture-type presentations, or demonstrations of a product or process. Case in point: your training director suddenly decides that it is good for the CEO to present an idea. Or your company has a library of videos that can be repurposed for training. They are costly and took a long time to produce, hence the need to be “put to good use.” In this webinar, Ray Jimenez will discuss these topics:

• What do you do with really boring lecture and demo type videos? How do you make them engaging?

• What do you look for in a video, and how do you find opportunities to add interactions?

• What are the steps to augment your videos with interactions like discovery exercises, games, test exercises, and activities to improve retention and recall?

• If you are to start from scratch, how do you plan to create a new video and make sure they are provided interactive components?

• How do you cut costs, increase the speed, and increase the quality of your videos?

Thursday, April 17, 2014, 11AM  – 12PM PST: More Than Just "Click Next": Creating Innovative and Interactive E-Learning (Free for ASTD members)

Years ago, e-learning development was a complicated process requiring a full team of professionals. Rapid e-learning development tools changed all this. Now a single instructional designer can take on a project from start to finish. While these tools reduce costs and trim timelines, this sometimes comes at a cost to the final product. When the tools aren’t pushed beyond the basics of what they can do, we often end up with the dull “Click Next” e-learning that people dread taking. This means we need to use these tools differently for them to be effective. Attend this live, interactive webinar to:

• Learn what makes an e-learning experience engaging and interactive in the first place.

• Discover new ways to design innovative learning experiences with e-learning tools.

• Determine which e-learning features you should (and shouldn’t) use to increase interactivity.

• Know when e-learning isn’t the right tool for the job.

Friday, April 18, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Frontline Leadership (Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is based on the ASTD research report: Frontline Leadership: Developing Tomorrow's Executives. The purpose of this report is to gain insight on training and development practices that are aimed at frontline leaders so that professionals can change and improve their processes in assisting frontline leaders to be successful. This study, produced in collaboration with the ASTD Forum, is based on the analysis of 513 learning professionals from various sectors and organizational cultures. Presented by Sarah Matney, senior curriculum designer and consultant at Ingersoll Rand University, this webcast will discuss Ingersoll Rand's journey in creating their frontline leadership development program, which has trained over 1,850 leaders across the globe and in a myriad of industries.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST Innovative Intelligence: The Art and Practice of Leading Sustainable Innovation in Your Organization

A decade’s worth of executive surveys on innovation highlight a significant gap between what leaders say they want and what their organizations deliver. Over 80 percent of leaders surveyed believe innovation is important for their future success, but fewer than 30 percent are satisfied with their current level of innovation. So why, despite all the talking, have leaders not given innovation the attention it requires? This presentation explores the following questions:

• What is the innovation gap and its root causes?

• What are the three core principles for sustainable innovation?

• What is the systematic approach to innovative thinking that leaders utilize to gain insight and discover innovative solutions to complex issues?

Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Business Leader's Bottom Line: Aligning Learning With Organizational Needs (Free for ASTD members)

Business leaders are under tremendous pressure to account for the performance of their division. “Supporting” business functions like workplace learning, however, are not held to the same scrutiny as operational business functions. Leaders typically view supporting functions as budgetary “black holes,” unable to prove direct contributions to business results. This is no longer the case. Leaders expect supporting functions to contribute to organizational objectives. This webinar identifies how to get your leaders to value workplace learning and how to make it a valued business partner. You will learn how to:

• Address the secrets business leaders believe about learning investments.

• Answer your leader’s questions that validate “learning” effectiveness.

• Discover how business leaders actually position learning in the workplace.

• Learn what leaders mean when they say, "return on learning investment.” (It’s not what you think.)

Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 10AM  – 11AM PST: 10 Big Data Insights for HR & Training

Big data is not just for the IT department.  What are some of the insights we can gather from big data that will affect how you plan your HR and Learning Strategy?  How do you set up your learning initiatives to contribute to additional insights on performance in your organization?  Join a conversation with award-winning authors and learning thought leaders Karie Willyerd and Heather Maitre as they explore specific ideas on how to use big data today. 

Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results (Free for ASTD members)

Effective leaders must find ways to enhance people’s level of engagement, commitment, and support, especially in the difficult periods all organizations experience at one time or another. Engaged employees work with passion and feel connected and loyal to their organization. This yields higher productivity, sales, and results. This can be accomplished through the practice of Grateful LeadershipTM. Learning takeaways for attendees:

• Understand the need for Grateful Leadership to create a culture of appreciation in the workplace and overcome the barriers to using acknowledgment.

• Demonstrate the language and subtleties of authentic and heartfelt acknowledgement behaviour so that people can and will practice and use them immediately following the webinar.

• Describe how to coach teams, managers, and other corporate stakeholders in how to use Grateful Leadership to produce breakthrough results.

Thursday, April 24, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Actions Louder than Words: 6 Steps to Improved eLearning Activities

There’s much frustration with the limited range of interactivity found in eLearning programs. Arbitrary multiple-choice and true-and-false questions, even when masquerading under flashy game-like interfaces, fail to engage learners’ attention. Worse yet, they usually fail to teach. Too often designers feel bound by the limits of actions available to the learner—senseless button clicking, random dragging, confusing entries. But, even working within the constraints of low-level authoring tools, it is possible to design eLearning activities that will engage, motivate, and captivate the learner’s imagination and enhance post-training performance. In this session, Ethan Edwards will present six simple and easily achievable transformations to make your eLearning interactions more impactful.

Monday, April 28, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leading Change Courageously (ASTD Subscriber Content)

This webcast uses data from interviews with 60 executives in 14 Fortune Global organizations to highlight eight actions that matter in leading successful organizational change. The presentation suggests that a key leadership action involves integrating learning into change—courageously.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Street-Level Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience

Since the early days of “creativity training” and “problem solving,” brain research has vastly enriched our understanding of human mental process. New research findings with very practical, down-to-earth applications may well revolutionize our  understanding of the ways people think, learn, and perform. Functions like social intelligence, emotional intelligence, practical intelligence, cognitive preference, neuro-leadership, design psychology, and subliminal impacts of colour, language, and narrative are opening up new ways to approach teaching, learning, and development. According to Karl Albrecht, training is actually “applied cognitive neuroscience, and all learning professionals are aspiring neuroscientists." Albrecht will discuss the components of applied cognitive neuroscience; their implications for human development; and how to apply them in your work, career, and personal life.