In this episode, Celisa Steele talks with training industry veteran - and TrainingIndustry founder and CEO - Doug Harward about how the industry has - or hasn't - changed over recent decades and the major challenges and opportunities facing learning businesses now. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode123.  Highlighted Resource – 10 Things You Must Do When Starting Your Training Company by Doug Harward.  Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.

Nasos Papadopoulos, founder of MetaLearn, a Web destination for learning about learning, is a university lecturer and online course author who is passionate about helping others master their own learning. His work, including his course Make Me A MetaLearner, gives people the necessary tools and techniques to become an effective lifelong learner. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Nasos about what metalearning is and why it’s important as well as reflections and advice related to his own experience as a learner, podcaster, and course author. Full show notes at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode122/ Highlighted Resource – Nasos Papadopoulos’ MetaLearn YouTube channel - features dozens of brief videos covering topics ranging from how to learn from famous figures like Elon Musk, Marie Curie and Charles Darwin to how to leverage important learning techniques like spaced practice, reflection, and elaboration. This is a great resource to help you boost your own learning – and also a great resource to share with the learners you serve. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff discuss how to get at what potential learning customers actually want – versus what they need – by exploring four key areas of gathering and assessing data including: understanding your demand dynamics, assessing behavior (not preferences), identifying key value factors, and gauging commitment and conversion ­(not interest). Full Show Notes Give us a Review Highlighted Resource – Market Insight Matrix – a free Tagoras tool that lays out a framework for continually monitoring and assessing your market over time. It’s a great complement to the discussion in this episode about identifying the “wants” as opposed to just the needs in your market. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.  

Tracy King, founder of InspirEd and Aaron Wolowiec, founder of Event Garde, are both experts in learning design and they recently joined forces to help answer this complex question. Their research and findings related to the topic are captured in the e-book they co-authored, Engaging Learners: A Guide To Successfully Designing Engaging Learning. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Tracy and Aaron about the topic of learner engagement—including what it is and, just as importantly, what it isn’t—how to prime learners for engagement, and the importance of “constructing” learning experiences versus “manufacturing” them. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode120  Highlighted Resource  – Engaging Learners: A Guide To Successfully Designing Engaging Learning – an e-book by Tracy King and Aaron Wolowiec. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.

In this episode, Celisa Steele talks with Jennifer Abrams about hard conversations and the multigenerational workplace, including the impact each of these have on both leading and learning. Jennifer Abrams is an expert in overcoming these challenges and has written various books including, Having Hard Conversations, The Multigenerational Workplace : Communicate, Collaborate, and Create Community, and Hard Conversations Unpacked : The Whos, the Whens, and the What-Ifs. She’s also a communications expert, a designer of professional development, a speaker, and, with a few e-courses under her belt, an entrepreneurial subject matter expert (eSME)—if that term is new to you or you need a refresher, see our related post about the rise of the eSME. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode119.  Highlighted Resource – “Unpacking Hard Conversations” – (second video on page) – a Webinar by Jennifer Abrams which offers an in-depth look at the topics she covers in her book, Hard Conversations Unpacked : The Whos, the Whens, and the What-Ifs. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff discuss the importance of having a learning business strategy and the three core elements it should be built around—a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and a set of coherent actions. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode118. Highlighted Resources – (both are referenced in this discussion of strategy): Learning Business Maturity Model™– a free resource designed specifically to help learning businesses of any size reach their full maturity. Association Learning + Technology report - based on a survey of a broad range of trade and professional associations, it provides the most comprehensive insights currently available on the use of technology to enhance and enable education in the association sector. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.  

What do effective leaders have in common? Perhaps it’s their ability to lead from within or to successfully navigate through times of uncertainty and adversity. Sarah Levitt, creator of the Making Magnificent Project™, is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and author, who works with leaders to optimize their talents and strengths and drive exceptional business outcomes. In her recent book, Magnificent Leadership, she shares the stories of a diverse group of leadership exemplars and how they were able to transform and transcend circumstance in order to achieve greatness. In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Sarah about her definition of leadership, commonalities between leaders that emerged from her book, as well as the essential relationship between leading and learning. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode117  Highlighted Resource – Sarah Levitt’s, Making Magnificence podcast – here you can access recordings of some of the many interviews with leaders that she conducted for her book. These include people like Brad Wilson, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and Dana Born, who was a Brigadier General in the US Air Force and is now a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com.  

In this episode, Jeff Cobb talks with Dr. William Clements, Vice President and Dean of the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies at Norwich University about what Norwich is doing to meet the needs of learners, how technology has impacted the continuing education and learning landscape, as well as what they’re doing related to the creation of partnerships with professional organizations. Highlighted Resource - excerpts from Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Joseph Aoun (a book that Bill Clements mentions during this interview). Aoun is the president of Northeastern University and he offers some great perspectives and insights on the role of education in a world where artificial intelligence and robotics are playing a quickly increasing role. Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode116.  

You can have the most inspiring vision in the world, a powerful mission, and a great strategy, but if you don’t have the capacity for executing, none of those things really matters very much. In this episode, Jeff and Celisa discuss why understanding capacity, and more importantly, building capacity, is one of the most critical activities an organization can pursue. They also offer seven recommendations any learning business can embrace for building capacity (none of which involve hiring more people).  Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode115.  Thank you to Blue Sky eLearn, sponsor of the Leading Learning podcast for the first quarter of 2018. Blue Sky is the maker of the Path learning management system, an award-winning, cloud-based learning solution that empowers your organization to maximize its message. Blue Sky also provides a range of virtual event and instructional services to help you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience. To find out more about Blue Sky eLearn and everything it offers, visit http://www.blueskyelearn.com. Highlighted Resource: The Capacity Continuum, insights into how to understand and impact the process of capacity building across individuals, organizations, and communities.

This episode of Leading Learning features a full replay of "Facing - and Embracing - the Future of Learning," a session at the Surge 2017 virtual summit. In the session, Amanda Beckner (Avixa, formerly Infocomm International), Josh Goldman (Ohio Society of CPAs), Celisa Steele (Tagoras/Leading Learning), and Jeff Cobb (Tagoras/Leading Learning) explore key trends in the rapidly evolving market for lifelong learning and their implications for trade and professional associations. They discuss how technology is transforming areas like workforce and career development and the role approaches like microlearning and microcredentialing will play in association business models going forward. Listen in to get big, but actionable ideas for taking your learning programs into the future. Full show notes available at http://www.leadinglearning.com/episode114. Thank you to the Founding Sponsors of the ReviewMyLMS site. We feel like the ability to get high quality, dependable reviews from peer organizations has been a gap in the association and broader learning business market for a long time, so we are really excited to know that it will soon be filled with support from the following companies: Community Brands Digitell NextThought WebCourseworks Highlighted Resources   Association Virtual Events – a free Tagoras report that draws on data from more than 100 associations to help you understand the emerging role of virtual events in the association sector.  The AssociationSuccess eBook for “Facing – and Embracing – the Future of Learning.”