In this issue, you'll see how you can navigate the first three months of a new role and look at three HTML elements you can use to mark up changes in documents. Then you'll see some strategies you can use to create a better experience for people who might not be excited about learning what you have to teach.

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Navigating Your First 90 Days.

When you join a new team, you want to put your best foot forward and make a good impression, but you also want to set yourself up for long-term success. I've built two teams from scratch over the last 5 years, and every new member has asked me how they can be successful in their first few months. Here's what I advise my new team members to do as they get up to speed, and this is the advice I've followed at almost every place I've joined.

Meet people and build relationships

This is one of the most important things you can do in a new role, especially at a remote company. Work with your manager to find out who you should talk with outside your team and schedule a time to chat with them. Find out about their role, how they might work with you, and what they'd like to see from you. Then, ask them if there's someone else you should talk to.

Make a map of the organization. As you're in meetings and you meet more people, discover who the leaders are in the organization. There are the obvious ones that have the titles, but there are other leaders, too. The more meetings you attend and observe, the more you'll discover who these influential people are.

Then, start building relationships with people you will work with. These people will become your allies as you tackle challenges in your role. You'll need to ask people for feedback, help, or input, and you'll want to build a good relationship with them. This also means figuring out how you can help them. Don't offer unsolicited advice early on, but let them know you're willing to help them if they need it.

Learn organizational context

When you're new, you'll have a lot of questions. You'll also see things you think you could fix and processes you disagree with. But when you're new to a role, you want to figure out why things are the way they are and who put them that way. The last thing you want to do is come off like a know-it-all, or worse, tell someone that a process is terrible, only to discover that this person was the one who put it in place.

We've all had to compromise to get things done. Work hard in your first 90 days to discover the context for why things are the way they are and what compromises people made. Don't try to make changes right away until you understand the lay of the land.

Learn the product, and learn who's responsible for parts of the product. Learn how your work relates to the rest of the company. Figure out where the money gets made and where money gets lost. Are you in a part of the company that generates revenue, or are you in a cost center? You'll need to know these things to do your best work later; knowing how your work contributes to revenue and company success will make it easier to make a case for promotions or raises.

Figure out processes

People will cut you a ton of slack in your first 90 days. They know you'll need help to understand how things work. Take advantage of that by asking lots of questions to figure out as many company processes as possible, even if you don't think they're relevant right now.

Take lots of notes about these processes, and ask clarifying questions to ensure you understand them. Set up any access you've been given right away so you're ready to use it when needed. You want to avoid a situation where you're asking for access to something you were told about during your onboarding six months from now. I've been at many places where the company decided on a tool, but some employees just never logged in, and they were scrambling when they needed access.

Make sure you know how to find your company holidays, how to take PTO, and how your benefits work.

Understand how your company communicates. Do they use email? Slack? Teams? Notion? Confluence? SharePoint? A folder of Google Docs?

Make sure you know how to schedule meetings and understand what calendar and virtual meeting tools they use. And make sure you know how to schedule meetings with your manager and senior leadership. Sometimes, they have assistants to manage their calendars.

Try to get hands-on with the tools and processes you use daily. If your team uses a different project tracking system than you're used to, invest in learning it well. If they use a different branching strategy with Git, ask lots of questions and practice it independently.

And, of course, be sure you know how your company tracks projects and how your manager measures your work.

A good onboarding plan will outline many of these things for you, but if your company doesn't have a plan for you, use these items to build your own list.

Don't expect to be great at your role right away

You might not feel you're going as fast as you could, not contributing enough right away, or being held back from using your experience. Go easy on yourself. Yes, you were hired for your past experience and future potential, but your company understands that you won't reach that potential for several months because you have so much context and process to understand. I wrote about the dangers of applying a playbook to a new job; you need time to adapt your experience so you can apply it to the new environment.

You may have noticed a common theme throughout the advice: to ask questions. Sometimes, people new to a team feel that asking questions shows a lack of confidence. On the contrary, asking questions shows curiosity and a willingness to grow in the role, and your new manager will love to see that. People will get concerned if you start plowing ahead and acting like a know-it-all.

In your first 90 days, prioritize relationships with others and learn the core functions of your role and organization. People will expect that you'll need help, so use this time to learn and ask questions to figure out how to apply what you know to your new role.

Describe Changes with Appropriate HTML Elements

HTML is designed to describe the content on a page. CSS is designed to control how that content looks by using the descriptions you place in the HTML. For example, you have the <p> tag to signify that the content is a paragraph, and you have tags for different headings. Web browsers have a default style sheet that controls the space between paragraphs and the size of headings. You're supposed to pick the appropriate tag that describes the content and then use CSS to make it look the way you want. Don't like the size of that <h1> tag? Don't use a <p> tag; use the <h1> tag and change the CSS.

HTML doesn't always have an element that describes things, so you'll find people using <span> for things like in-line highlighting or strikethroughs.

But HTML is ever-evolving, and there are some elements that you might not know about.

• mark lets you denote that the enclosed text is marked for highlighting or reference.
• ins lets you denote text that's been added to a document.
• del lets you denote text that's been removed.

Using the <mark> tag and some CSS, you have a clear way to highlight keywords in learning materials. Using the <ins> and <del> tags gives you a clear way to show changes in a document, like when rendering a source code diff or rendering change-tracking in a shared document.

Here's an example of these tags in use:

<p>
  This text is <mark>highlighted</mark>. 
  This is a <del>good</del><ins>great</ins> way to denote
  changes.
</p>

That's much nicer than using <span> tags with classes.

As with all other tags, your browser's default stylesheet will control how the text renders, but you can override them with your own styles.

The ins and del elements support two attributes:

• cite: A URL to a citation that explains the change
• datetime: The date and time of the change.

These let you further describe the change in more detail.

You probably won't add these tags to documents directly, but you can add them programmatically to interactive documents or generate them from other languages like Markdown.

Before you reach for a div or span, see if there's a more appropriate element. HTML is changing all the time.

Motivating Reluctant Learners

You've created a workshop or a learning pathway you're excited about. You found the topic so interesting that you poured months into creating the right exercises, assessments, and learning materials that give people a great experience. But did you remember to think about how you'll motivate people to learn what you're teaching?

Many people who moved into teaching roles were once great students who loved to learn. They were "good at school." Unfortunately, many people aren't excited about learning for several reasons. Here are just a handful of reasons:

• They may not have had a home life that encouraged education, or they may not have had access to quality instruction that would foster an interest in learning.
• They may have struggled in certain subjects due to ineffective teaching strategies, resulting in poor grades that decreased motivation.
• They may associate "learning" with "school," which may bring up some bad memories.
• They may even resent learning after a lifetime of "forced learning." This is especially true of people who have to keep up various certifications.

The people in your session come from all kinds of backgrounds and environments, and you cannot assume that everyone is there because they want to learn. In fact, some people might have even been told they must attend the session you're facilitating. For example, many companies have mandatory compliance training, and no matter how much effort the facilitators pour into it, the attendees view it as yet another company mandate they have to check off their list.

So, how do you deal with this?

First, foster a growth mindset in your learning environment. Encourage learners to view challenges as opportunities to grow rather than insurmountable obstacles. This approach can help reduce anxiety around learning and increase motivation. Your learners may believe that intelligence and ability are fixed traits. Work to assure them that what you're asking them to do is possible and that you're there to guide them. Reinforce this throughout the environment from time to time on an individual basis if you identify a learner who's shutting down.

Set clear, achievable goals to give your learners a sense of accomplishment and progress. Break down the material into smaller, manageable segments and celebrate achievements at the end of each milestone so they see lots of frequent progress. Don't go overboard; you don't want to patronize your learners with content like "Congratulations! You completed this tutorial!", but you do want to provide them a chance to demonstrate understanding and see their progress. A short quiz that doesn't affect any grade or certification works well for this because it's private and low-risk.

Tie everything you introduce to real-life situations that your audience can relate to. People are more likely to be engaged if they see the practical application of what they are learning. Show how your learners can directly apply the skills or knowledge in real-world scenarios. This will mean extra work for you because you'll have to tailor the experience to your audience. If you're delivering training for a bank, use examples relevant to their work rather than generic examples that seem irrelevant.

Create an environment where learners feel comfortable asking questions and making mistakes. A supportive atmosphere can encourage participation and make learning more enjoyable. You'll have a hard time getting someone to admit they don't understand something if you ask publicly because people don't want to admit they don't understand something in front of their peers or managers. Provide methods for them to ask questions privately, even in a live environment. And don't let the handful of excited learners dominate your environment. Encourage them to let others speak.

If you're teaching in person, think about how you set up the physical learning environment. The "traditional classroom setup" can make some people uncomfortable, especially those who had bad experiences with those environments. Instead of rows of tables with everyone facing forward, set up your teaching station in a different location and organize the tables into collaborative pods. See if you can get the learners to move things around themselves so they feel ownership over their learning environment. And if you can't move things, change how you use the environment. Move around when you lecture or provide instruction instead of teaching from the front. Or be informal. Sit among your learners as you talk with them. Teach from the back of the room so they have to turn around to face you. The goal is to make the environment feel more comfortable and engaging.

You can and should encourage group activities and discussions. Learners can benefit from each other's experiences and perspectives, fostering a more inclusive and engaging learning environment. But again, be mindful of dominant voices and quiet voices. "Think, pair, share" is a fantastic approach to this. Give each person five minutes to think of an answer. Ask them to share with a person next to them. Then, have volunteers share their thoughts with the group. This moderates those who think on their feet and dominate conversations while allowing those who need more time to formulate thoughts a chance to participate.

Learning happens through feedback, and you should provide lots of it. Make sure your feedback is specific, constructive, and aimed at guiding learners on how to improve. Criticism demotivates learners. Instead of "This is incorrect," identify the parts that need improvement and present them while pointing out the correct parts. Be sure to explain why things need improvement, too. Tie it back to real-world examples.

Finally, let your own natural enthusiasm show through. You're excited about the topic, and you're excited to help others understand it better. People will connect with you and feed off of your enthusiasm.

Sometimes, your audience just isn't going to be as excited about a topic as you are. Part of your job as an educator is to help them learn what they need to learn, and these strategies can help break down some of the barriers you might encounter.

Parting Thoughts

As you head into January, think about these questions:

1. What was the worst learning experience you've had? What made it that way, and what could the facilitator have done to improve it? Would anything you learned here have made it better for you?
2. What do you do when starting a new job? What's something you wish you had done during your last onboarding?
3. What's the difference between the del and the s elements?

Thanks for reading. See you in January!

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