Here are some take-aways from two of the workplace learning sessions at Monday’s ASTD (which we kept calling STD, as we giggled. I know, I know, we’re silly). It stands for the American Society of Training & Development.

Incidentally, on making acronyms funny — during the Royal Wedding-palooza yesterday, a Twitter trend was QILF (think about it….. okay, I’ll tell you…. It’s like MILF.)

Go Social! 

Consider setting up a company Wikipedia. Thomas Stone from element k said even the CIA has a wiki called Intelli-pedia. This got me thinking — maybe my family needs a wiki — a Coudal-ipedia!

And I learned from Wikipedia, (the mother wiki of them all), a wiki is a collaborative type document where writers can edit and add to each other’s work. Also, it says wiki is a Hawaiian word which means fast. I love the way Hawaiians have contributed to this country and our language. Mahalo, Hawaii.

Stone gave a workshop on how social and mobile learning are changing the way we train one another informally and formally. Like some companies are offering sexual harassment workshops on handheld devices and tablets. People finish their workshops much faster and on their own time when learning is offered through mobile devices and social networks.

I think we shouldn’t said call our workplace workshops training but workplace learning or leading.

Trust! 

Robert Whipple gave a presentation, “Thrive, Even in Draconian Times: Improve Trust and Transparency.” Bob said that customers really need transparency and trust. He said the need for corporate trust was even higher than the need for product satisfaction. Trust has taken a nosedive. People lack trust in bureaucracies, systems and agencies.

But not just corporately, this session helped me see how I need more trust personally. I need to be compassionate and trusting at work. This should be obvious, but somehow when we move into hyper-speed modes to get our work done, we forget to be human. Or we forget to lead from the heart as well as the head.

Bob said if you want more trust, you have to give more trust. That was one of those Aha moments!

And we did an exercise in trust at each of our tables, all 100 of us in the Marriott ballroom. How does a high level of trust or a low level trust impact our problem solving, focus, communication, customer retention, morale, and productivity in the workplace? We discovered — aha! — a high level of trust serves our corporation!

How much do we trust one another? http://thetrustambassador.com/

It was a great day… Especially because I was with my work peeps who I trust completely: Emily Miller, Margaret Wilbur, Julia Tulloch, and Marisa Villarreal.

The annual conference was held in Albany, the Hudson-Mohawk chapter of the http://hmastd.org/