The Mindtools L&D Podcast

In organizations, learning-oriented ‘online communities’ often bring to mind empty forums and unused Yammer groups. But what does a vibrant community of practice look like? And how do you go about building one online? In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross D and Ross G are joined by Anamaria Dorgo, founder of L&D Shakers and Head of Community at Butter, to discuss: ·       the benefits of online communities of practice ·       how to build and maintain online communities ·       how to measure the impact of online communities ·       what all of this looks like in an organizational context   You can find out more about L&D Shakers here. During the show, Anamaria referenced Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner's work on communities of practice. In his trademark style, Ross G equated online communities to pornography, recalling Justice Potter Stewart’s famous line - ‘I know it when I see it.’ He also mentioned the ‘Success Case Method’, which we discussed in a previous episode. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross G recommended Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull. Anamaria encouraged listeners to check out Katherine Zhou’s ethical design toolkit. And Ross D talked about pushing some eggs through a sieve after watching an episode of The Bear. For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: ·       Ross Dickie ·       Ross Garner ·       Anamaria Dorgo

The Mind Tools L&D Podcast usually focuses on how L&D can help colleagues develop in their careers – but we’re not the only industry with an interest in education. Some of the world’s most exciting tech companies, including Google, Meta and Amazon, use education as a tool to help their customers develop new skills and encourage longer term adoption. In this week’s show, Ross G and Nahdia speak to Intellum’s Lizzi Shaw and Gusto’s Jaclyn Anku to discover:   why marketing teams invest in customer education how they define the business outcomes they want to achieve   how they measure the impact of their programs. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Nahdia discussed the ‘Systemic Design Framework’ from the Design Council. Jaclyn discussed the career of Simone Biles. And Ross discussed an episode of The Listening Service, which covered ‘Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams’. To find out more about the Intellum LMS, see intellum.com. To find out more about Gusto’s approach to customer education, read or watch the case study. Gusto are at gusto.com, For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  You can find Will at: worklearning.com If you listened to this episode at all (we had doubts), please do drop a quick note to Ross, just to let him know: rgarner@mindtools.com. Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: Ross Garner Nahdia Khan Lizzi Shaw Jaclyn Anku

Have you ever found a learning technology that you were convinced was going to transform your organization, only to have your IT team act as a blocker? Maybe they were being difficult, but maybe you just hadn't involved them early enough? In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Jon Baxter, founder of Baxter Thompson Associates, joins Ross Garner and Owen to share the benefits of strategic partnering. We discuss: The concerns that IT colleagues have when asked to implement a new technology The need to prioritize initiatives beyond 'what L&D want to achieve' How to partner with IT teams to deliver results. During the discussion, Jon referenced the failure of the UK air traffic system. In 'What I Learned This Week', Owen discussed the Artefact app. And Ross discussed All The Words Ran Free, the debut poetry collection from his wife Amy. Check it out on Amazon. For more from Jon, visit strategicdigitalbusinesspartner.com The competency model and organizational partner maturity sheet, that Jon referenced, are available at:sdbp.institute/r/WOs For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work. Connect with our speakers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: Ross Garner Owen Ferguson Jon Baxter

This year, at the ATD Conference in San Diego, friend-of-the-show Will Thalheimer asked Ross G what he was working on. Ross replied: ‘Well, how much do you know about Mind Tools?’ To whit Will said: ‘I hardly know anything.’ This astounded Ross. Will has been on our show multiple times, and Ross feels like he talks endlessly about Mind Tools and what Mind Tools does. And so Will offered to host this one-off deep dive into who we are, and what we do. We hope you enjoy it! We explore: what the core ‘Mind Tools’ product and platform are for how Ross’s Custom development team approach client challenges quickfire questions to make you think, then argue. For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  You can find Will at: worklearning.com If you listened to this episode at all (we had doubts), please do drop a quick note to Ross, just to let him know: rgarner@mindtools.com. Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: Ross Garner Owen Ferguson Will Thalheimer

Exploring the benefits of creativity in coaching and personal development, discussing techniques like collage coaching. Delving into the therapeutic effects of creative practices on growth mindset and emotional well-being. Discovering strategies for managing pressure and finding joy in small moments.

The podcast discusses the challenges of measuring productivity in knowledge work. It explores different approaches to measuring productivity in different contexts. The hosts also talk about the decline of Wirecutter and the impact of AI in HR. The chapter on Walkme introduces their solution to protect IT departments from shadow AI and explains how they help companies overcome software paralysis.

What do we mean by ‘evidence-based leadership development’? Development of evidence-based leaders? Or an evidence-based approach to leadership development? Well, both. In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Nahdia are joined by Helen Bailey, Head of Learning and Development at Strategi Solutions, to discuss: ·       what ‘evidence-based’ leadership development looks like ·       what we mean by ‘evidence’ ·       how to measure leadership. During the discussion, Helen referenced the Centre for Evidence Based Management. For more on this topic, see: Beech, D.2018. Effective Leadership in Uncertain Times. Wisbech, UK: Cambridge Leadership Development. Also Michelle Parry-Slater’s book, The Learning and Development Handbook, and Michelle Ockers’ interview with Laura Overton for the Learning Uncut podcast. For more from Helen, check out strategisolutions.co.uk In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Helen referenced the CIPD Learning Work Survey Report 2023 and Evidence Based Practice Factsheet. For an excellent intro to scaffolding in a digital learning context, see: Shapiro, A. M. (2008). Hypermedia design as learner scaffolding. Educational technology research and development, 56, 29-44. This paper is behind a paywall, so you can also see this advice from Wiley. Ross discussed realistic AI avatars from HeyGen. For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  You can also contact rgarner@mindtools.com. And finally, Ross promised some case studies of the kind of work that Mind Tools do. You can find these at: mindtoolsbusiness.com/case-studies Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: ·       Ross Garner ·       Nahdia Khan ·       Helen Bailey

Many organisations are accused of not doing enough to support marginalised groups. But even those who do try to make a difference often end up accused of hypocrisy. Is it safer to stay quiet than to talk about equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) at work? In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Nahdia are joined by Heeral Gudka, founder of Convergent, to discuss: ·        the evolution of ED&I ·        the risks both of speaking up and staying quiet ·        the need for alignment between external messaging and internal reality. During the discussion, Ross and Nahdia both referenced our episodes with Margaret Greenberg and Gina Greenlee, authors of The Business of Race. See: ·        279 — Why work is the ideal place to talk about race ·        298 — How can L&D promote an anti-racist workplace? Ross also mentioned the book Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross and Heeral discussed Zoom’s decision to mandate a return to the office. The article from The Economist that Nahdia referenced was ‘The working-from-home illusion fades’. For more from Heeral, visit Convergent. There you’ll find out more about her journey from the insurance sector to where she is now: curating 6 to 18 month learning journeys and providing pragmatic consultancy and support to senior leadership teams, People teams and HR directors. You can also find her on Linkedin, where she discusses a pragmatic and commercial approach And for the Mindtools listeners, Heeral has a special gift. Fill in this form to be sent Convergent's guide on Inclusive HR Policies and Practices (usually £4.99, but free to the first 20 people who use the link). For more from Mind Tools, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  You can also contact rgarner@mindtools.com. Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: ·        Ross Garner ·        Nahdia Khan ·        Heeral Gudka

The podcast discusses the controversial idea that most employees are not interested in L&D. They explore the importance of practical outcomes over theoretical aspects in learning, challenges faced by L&D departments, and the need to showcase tangible impacts. The episode also touches on trust in institutions, weekly learning reflections, and discounted theater tickets in London.

How do L&D leaders decide where to spend their time? Who gets access to their budget? How do we deal with those colleagues where we have to say: 'No, that's not a priority'. In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G is chatting L&D governance with a panel of L&D pros: From Phoenix Group, Carl Akintola-Davies; from Mitie, Dolly Ogundimu and Marc Harvey; and, from Merlin Entertainments, James Clemence. We discuss: How to prioritize inbound requests and seek out opportunities How to work with business stakeholders to shape their needs How to measure the value that L&D teams bring to their organizations. During the discussion, a recurring refrain was the word ‘boondoggle’. We also referenced learner surveys. For more on this, see our episode with Dr Will Thalheimer. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Carl discussed a paper on ‘zombie leadership’ from Professor Alex Haslam. It’s not published yet, but you can get some insight into the topic in this video. Dolly discussed the value of benchmarking. Marc discussed work from the NeuroLeadership Institute. For more from Merlin Entertainments, check out their: YouTube channel Instagram Podcast For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  You can also contact rgarner@mindtools.com. Connect with our speakers  If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers: Ross Garner Carl Akintola-Davies Dolly Ogundimu Marc Harvey James Clemence