On the Leading Learning Podcast, sometimes we get to talk with someone whose thinking and research have deeply influenced our work and lives. Such is the case with Ellen J. Langer, AKA the mother of mindfulness. Dr. Langer was the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard, where she is still professor of psychology. The recipient of three Distinguished Scientists awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Liberty Science Genius Award, Dr. Langer wrote the international bestseller Mindfulness, as well as The Power of Mindful Learning, Counterclockwise, On Becoming an Artist, and, most recently, The Mindful Body. In this episode, co-host Celisa Steele talks with return guest Dr. Langer about what mindfulness is (hint—it’s not meditation), the ubiquity of uncertainty, mind-body unity, and attention to variability. They also discuss mindful contagion and how our perception (of time, of ability) changes what we’re capable of.  Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode373.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are important goals for any business, including learning businesses. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, DEI gained ground, but many initiatives, unfortunately, have faltered or been cut completely in the years since. Our guest in this episode is Miranda McKie, founder and CEO of McKie Consultants, a strategic consulting firm focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion and inclusive product design. Miranda believes in the need for evidence-based, long-term-goal-oriented DEI initiatives. She talks with Leading Learning Podcast co-host Jeff Cobb about the role of data in DEI, how some familiarity with data analytics is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for many jobs, and why we need to think about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the same way we approach climate change. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode372. We are grateful to our sponsor for this episode, WBT Systems. *** TopClass LMS provides the tools for you to become the preferred provider in your market, delivering value to learners at every stage of their working life. WBT Systems’ award-winning learning system enables delivery of impactful continuing education, professional development, and certification programs. The TopClass LMS team supports learning businesses in using integrated learning technology to gain greater understanding of learners’ needs and behaviors, to enhance engagement, to aid recruitment and retention, and to create and grow non-dues revenue streams. WBT Systems will work with you to truly understand your preferences, needs, and challenges to ensure that your experience with TopClass LMS is as easy and problem-free as possible. Visit leadinglearning.com/topclass to learn how to generate value and growth for your learning business and to request a demo.

Business models are a key part of the strategy of any business. But, in our experience, learning businesses often take a set-it-and-forget-it approach to business models. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, we make the argument for why you should regularly revisit your business model. We also discuss the four key facets that are part of any business model: those are who you charge, what you charge for, how much you charge, and who you share costs or profits with. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode371. We are grateful to our sponsor for this episode, WBT Systems. *** TopClass LMS provides the tools for you to become the preferred provider in your market, delivering value to learners at every stage of their working life. WBT Systems’ award-winning learning system enables delivery of impactful continuing education, professional development, and certification programs. The TopClass LMS team supports learning businesses in using integrated learning technology to gain greater understanding of learners’ needs and behaviors, to enhance engagement, to aid recruitment and retention, and to create and grow non-dues revenue streams. WBT Systems will work with you to truly understand your preferences, needs, and challenges to ensure that your experience with TopClass LMS is as easy and problem-free as possible. Visit leadinglearning.com/topclass to learn how to generate value and growth for your learning business and to request a demo.

There are three goals at the heart of almost all learning businesses: reach, revenue, and impact. Generating revenue is essential in helping learning businesses reach the right audience and make an impact. In this episode, co-host Celisa Steele delves into the topic of revenue with Brent Keltner. Brent began his career as a PhD social scientist and spent 10 years conducting qualitative research interviews at Stanford University and the RAND Corporation. He’s now president of Winaltyics, a go-to-market and sales acceleration consultancy, and author of The Revenue Acceleration Playbook.  Brent and Celisa delve into what it means to design an authentic buyer journey, the importance of aligning and organizing content around value, personalizing buyer value, capturing the customer voice, and how to get effective social proof and testimonials, all with the ultimate goal of accelerating revenue for your learning business. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode370. We are grateful to our sponsor for this episode, WBT Systems. *** TopClass LMS provides the tools for you to become the preferred provider in your market, delivering value to learners at every stage of their working life. WBT Systems’ award-winning learning system enables delivery of impactful continuing education, professional development, and certification programs. The TopClass LMS team supports learning businesses in using integrated learning technology to gain greater understanding of learners’ needs and behaviors, to enhance engagement, to aid recruitment and retention, and to create and grow non-dues revenue streams. WBT Systems will work with you to truly understand your preferences, needs, and challenges to ensure that your experience with TopClass LMS is as easy and problem-free as possible. Visit leadinglearning.com/topclass to learn how to generate value and growth for your learning business and to request a demo.

Learning ecosystems, learning engineering, learning in the flow of life and work—these could be a list of top buzzwords. But each has gained attention for a reason. Each is important in the design and delivery of effective lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development, and each gets its due in this episode, which features a conversation with Sae Schatz. Sae formerly served as director of the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, and she was there when she first came on the Leading Learning Podcast. Though she no longer directs ADL, she continues to work at the intersection of human cognition and learning, technology, and data and is founder and CEO of the Knowledge Forge, which helps advance organizations through human performance and learning. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele and return guest Sae Schatz talk about learning in the flow of life and work, with Sae sharing insights from her work in Ukraine. Sae also shares her vision of how learning experience design, learning ecosystems, and learning engineering fit together to help organizations create and deliver effective products. Along the way, they touch on data analytics, competency-based learning, verifiable credentials, distributed identities, integration, privacy, artificial intelligence, and more. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode369. We are grateful to our sponsor for this episode, WBT Systems. *** TopClass LMS provides the tools for you to become the preferred provider in your market, delivering value to learners at every stage of their working life. WBT Systems’ award-winning learning system enables delivery of impactful continuing education, professional development, and certification programs. The TopClass LMS team supports learning businesses in using integrated learning technology to gain greater understanding of learners’ needs and behaviors, to enhance engagement, to aid recruitment and retention, and to create and grow non-dues revenue streams. WBT Systems will work with you to truly understand your preferences, needs, and challenges to ensure that your experience with TopClass LMS is as easy and problem-free as possible. Visit leadinglearning.com/topclass to learn how to generate value and growth for your learning business and to request a demo.

Innovation is crucial to the continued success of any organization, and that’s arguably truer for learning businesses than it is for many other types of organizations because of their focus on external learners and the field, industry, or profession those learners serve. In this episode, we unpack that assertion while also breaking innovation down. Innovation isn’t monolithic and uniform. Rather innovation is variable and nuanced, and that’s what we want look at, with an eye specifically to external innovation in the context of learning businesses. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode368.

Managing content well and communicating effectively with audiences are two key competencies needed by a learning business that wants to thrive, and taxonomies and metadata can play an important role in both. Stephanie Lemieux is an information management consultant specializing in taxonomies and metadata. Educated as a librarian, Stephanie is now president and principal consultant at Dovecot Studio, which helps organizations optimize the way they structure and manage their mission-critical content. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Stephanie about what taxonomies are and the negotiation that has to take place between an organization and its audience to create an effective taxonomy. They also discuss the role of taxonomy in search, findability, integration, analytics, and personalization, and they talk about how content has gotten more targeted and more granular in Stephanie’s years of work. They also touch on artificial intelligence and how AI and machine learning can both benefit from and contribute to tagging and taxonomies. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode367.

Empathy is essential to both learner-centered design and effective leadership, and empathy with doubly disadvantaged individuals, like Black women, can be that much more important—and rare. L. Michelle Smith is a certified executive and personal coach whose work is informed by positive psychology and neuroscience. She’s the author of three books, including Yes Please! 7 Ways to Say I’m Entitled to the C-Suite. L. Michelle’s specialty is moving women and women of color to the C suite and E suite. She focuses on both professional and personal success, working with women so they can lead organizations they love while also living the lives they want. In this episode, co-host Celisa Steele and L. Michelle Smith talk about the difficulty women of color and women in general face in the workplace because of microaggressive behaviors and gender biases. They also touch on intrinsic motivation, positive emotions like gratitude and amusement, demographic changes to the workforce, the importance of sponsorship and mentorship, and the role of empathy both when leading and when designing learning. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode366.

Travel can serve as a field laboratory for learning. Whether a trip is short or long, near or far, done alone or with others, travel offers an opportunity to learn. In this episode, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss the pre, during, and post phases that make up both travel and learning experiences; feelings of belonging and othering that can arise; and the value of learning business professionals reflecting on their own experiences to help them design better and more empathetically for others. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode365.

If we had to pick just one thing as the key to the success of a learning business, we would argue for the learning experiences offered because those learning experiences are at the core of what learning businesses do. In order to offer effective learning experiences, we need a solid understanding of adult learning theory. Although many of learning business professionals are already familiar adult learning theory, there can be tremendous value in taking time to periodically revisit it. In this redux episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb examine three principles of adult learning theory and the implications each has on designing, developing, and delivering meaningful learning experiences. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode364.