When you think about it, you need your employees more than they need you . Your success relies on your employees working effectively under your management. The more you are aware of their issues, the better you can address them. Listening and responding is a core leadership skill. Sometimes leaders talk to much and fail to listen. To get feedback, you must ask for it, be open to it and respond effectively.

Profiles Checkpoint 360 Feedback System provides leaders with feedback from those who observe their performance: their direct supervisor, employees and peers. A powerful professional management development tool, the Checkpoint 360 provides the basis for planning and executing a program for professional growth.

The Checkpoint 360 Feedback System provides different perspectives on leadership characteristics. It gives leaders more specific, job-related information about their performance. With the self-knowledge drawn from this instrument comes the opportunity for:

• Performance improvement
• Identification of training needs
• Improved skills - leadership,goal setting, interpersonal and organizational
• Increased leadership accountability

Using this type of feedback, you now have an opportunity to clarify issues and misunderstandings and make positive changes. It gives you the feedback you need to manage effectively. The Checkpoint 360 positively impacts your individual growth and the organization's success.

The solution they found was an engaging game-style simulation called "Tango", created by Celemi, the Sweden-based learning design company. Rather than sit and listen to corporate executives explain cash flow and its impact on the company's financial performance, the regional executives rolled up their sleeves, formed teams and spent the next two days competing for customers, projects and even skilled employees.
"It takes solid working capital performance to run a successful service business," explains Mr. Cahill. "Each of our five regions is managed as an independent business with profit and loss responsibility. It's important that the people don't take financial matters lightly and think that someone else is keeping track of the money."

Celemi's Tango was selected, in part,because it is a pre-packaged simulation that could be customized to meet Emerson's specific needs. "For the simulation, we formed eight teams but ran them as a region to mirror our actual business," notes Mr. Cahill. "We asked the teams to manage inventory and cash flow, and had competitions to see which team could generate the most cash flow and profits. The simulation helped the participants see exactly how they could influence cash flow through inventory, payables and receivables."

Ed Walsh, a General Manger for Emerson, describes the Tango experience as unique. "It gives you a clear understanding of how each segment of the business impacts overall business performance. I've never been through any other training course that covered this much information in such a meaningful way." Since the meeting the Instrument & Valve Division has improved inventory turnover by 9% which is , according to Mr. Cahill, "a significant milestone."
Mr. Cahill say he is especially impressed with celemi's learning products. " I think Celemi has a unique type of intellectual property. It's easy to see the practical application of everything you are learning.

• Read a book?
• Watch a video?
• Hire a motivational speaker?
• Attend a seminar?
• Try a few role-plays?
• Practice with an expert coach under realistic working conditions until you achieved fluency?

Here's why. When it comes to soft skills, companies and the trainers they employ almost never do any training at all. What they do instead is education. "Soft-skills training" is mostly a myth. The reason it doesn't work is because it doesn't happen

Training vs Education
There is a great deal of difference between training and education. Educating is not the same as training. Knowledge isn't power. Competence is power. Power is the ability to create a desired effect. Creating desired effect is "performance".
To educate is to increase intellectual awareness of a subject. To train is to make someone proficient at the execution of a given task. Many wonderful things can be said about education, but education doesn't cause competence. Only training does.