Learning At Lynda

What is your learning style?

If you are visual or auditory learners, you would definitely benefit from watching videos about topics you are interested in. I was given a chance to try lynda.com for a few days as a perk from Klout and I found it very helpful. I watched videos about using the Illustrator and about an author making children's books. There are also videos about enhancing one's self to be a better person or be better at work. I like that I had the option to save the transcript of the videos so I could go over them again and take notes. I perused the app on my iPhone so I could watch videos wherever I am and especially when I was breastfeeding my little one. I like the idea of learning on-the-go.

There are over 2,000 courses that could cater to your learning needs so you could achieve your dreams. To get access to all courses, membership fees start at $25 per month. If you need to learn about, say, Photography, lynda.com has that topic, and with access to other courses, the price is affordable if you also want to learn about post-processing using Photoshop. At the end of the course, you will be given a certificate, too.


I believe that we always have room for improvement, and that is through learning constantly.

Go to lynda.com now and give it a try!

Acing the ACE

I attended a 2-day workshop organized by our company called the
Achieving
Customer service
Excellence,
which was held at our head office.

Of course, I won't come back empty handed (or rather, empty headed), things I learned in these 2 days are:

• If I were assigned to the head office forever, I will not survive! I had to wake up very early. One option is that I take two trains, the LRT1 and the MRT. The first day I tried that, I ended up sweating so much that I could almost wring out my handkerchief. Good thing I don't use make-up or else it will be all smudged and smeared, then I'll look like a depressed clown. The next day, I rode the bus. It was a nice bus, but the aisle was quite narrow and I had a hard time navigating my wide hips through it. That's not the end of the story! Going home was rather difficult, especially with the sun not shining anymore, it spells danger in my book. My taxi experience almost got a repeat performance on the first day. On the second day, it rained and walking to the MRT station was so not a blast! I felt drained when I arrived home.
• I lack enthusiasm. It seems like nothing gets me quite excited. I could say that I am a boring person. The trainer and one of my group mates gave me that assessment and I wanted to squeeze myself under one of the small desks. That's what I need to improve on at work, an enthusiasm for serving our clients. Though it is not part of my personality to be bubbly and spontaneous, I need to give life to my voice.
• Though I am a boring person, I am not entirely anti-social as I was part of a group of 4 at the workshop. For these 2 days I had lunch with them, and we talked about many things, too.
• It's challenging to be positive, but rewarding (with all the negativity in the world). The trainer said she is on her journey to being positive - through prayer and meditation. Words play an important role in this attitude improvement. With words, feelings follow, then actions. Can you replace the following words with those that give a positive energy?

Problem
Frustrated
Weakness

• Empathy is a great gift to everyone, especially to clients who come to me for help in satisfying their needs - information, products, services. It also improves relationships, and is one of the tools I could use to show others of Christ's love. I need to put myself in their shoes, as I have experienced being a customer myself.
• It's weird, but I have a hard time saying, "How may I help you?" It's a tongue-twister for me. I hope I'll be forgiven for not using it in answering the company's calls as per the telephone-answering policy.

Lessons are not really learned unless they are applied and are put into practice. After all, "practice makes permanent".

The Week Enders

It started on Friday, 25th of July, I reported not in my branch but at Renaissance Center for a training. Our company decided to enter, yet again, into the remittance business, this time as a direct agent. The last time we had WU, we were only a sub-agent, and plenty of calls were needed to be made in order to complete just one transaction.
I did not know how to get there, the HR did not even provide us with a sketch of the route going there. So my sweet hubby drove me, and one of my colleagues from Valenzuela, to the training area. It took us a while to find the place. It pays to be early, especially when we're not familiar with the destination.

Unlike some preconceived notions that trainings or seminars are boring, not so with this as handled by Mantra Media. Groups were formed and although I was not grouped with some colleagues from my cluster, it's OK. It's an opportunity to know CSA's like me from other clusters/branches. One of my group mate was my partner from way back in my orientation days.

We were bombarded with group activities that have corresponding points that would be accumulated and then there would be the prizes for the group with the most points. The trainer made the topics interesting and her tone of voice was not monotonous, which was very good. She even had fascinating stories about the experiences of other FLA's (term for the front liners facilitating WU).

On the 2nd day, there would be a creative presentation from each group as a recap of the topics discussed. Our group did not come up with any in our meeting. I just decided that we do a puppet show later that evening, since a skit would be ordinary. I made the paper dolls - I drew on a folder and then colored it. I slept at 11pm because of that.

It was worth it since it was appreciated by the trainer and some group mates said thanks, though they did not offer to pay for the materials I used. We also had an exam and I got 51/60, it was kind of disappointing for me. The latter part of the training was about the system itself and the speaker was so unlike the trainer, he just gave us info that was also fed to him. When we asked him questions, he did not know how to answer them and gave the excuse that he's not very familiar with it yet. I was thinking, train us when you yourself know how to really use the system. Maybe I'll learn more just by reading the operations manual.

We finished way earlier than the schedule and I, together with 2 colleagues, commuted to Robinsons Galleria Mall as our starting points for the next destination - home, gimmicks. After the 2 of them left, i got to hang out with a CSA from Dagupan. Both of us were waiting, she for her BF and I for my hubby. We talked about stuffs and it turned out that she may know my former "almost beau" who was also from Dagupan. Ha ha! It's a small world!

She went on ahead when her BF came since they had to travel far and I waited for my hubby. He just fetched me then we headed for the grocery in Trinoma where we first went to The Sizzling Pepper Steak for dinner. See my multiply for my review of the restaurant.