What are the benefits of podcasts for learning? How does L&D respond to people leaving the profession? Should we get rid of email? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G is joined by Anna and Ross D to answer your questions! During the discussion, Ross D referenced our post ' If your podcast isn't available on mobile, does it make a sound? ', and Cal Newport's Deep Work . Ross G referenced the AI 2027 forecast. He also discussed (and wrote about ) Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke's r...
Apr 21, 2025•42 min•Ep. 441
What drives your delegation decisions? Is it what's best for the business? Is it what's best for your team member? Is it what's best for you? In this week's edition of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G, Ross D and Dr Anna discuss: Why managers sometimes delegate tasks that they know are too difficult How the organization's culture shapes those decisions How to help managers delegate better. The paper we discussed throughout this podcast was: Maas, V. S., & Shi, B. (2023). The effects of target ...
Apr 15, 2025•37 min•Ep. 440
Many organizations treat 'inclusion' and 'wellbeing' as separate issues, but Dr Serena Huang - author of The Inclusion Equation - argues that the two are intrinsically linked. And, that data is how you can make better decisions about how to make a positive impact on both. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Serena joins Ross G and Dr Anna to discuss: Why these two areas are inseparable Why data in this space isn't as 'unmeasurable' as it seems Two approaches to data gathering t...
Apr 08, 2025•45 min•Ep. 439
We might think that what makes our team culture great (or awful) is different from what supports our learning and development. Are they so different, though? In this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Gemma are joined by L&D professional turned Culture Manager , Lois Ratcliff e to discuss: what ‘culture’ is and how it gets measured; what it takes to have a good feedback culture; the features of a learning culture. Lois refers to the three layers of organisational culture pr...
Apr 01, 2025•40 min•Ep. 438
Digital learning content offers a scalable, always-on option to help your people build their skills and overcome workplace challenges. But often these libraries get dusty, bogged down by out-of-date content with little relevance, or hidden away in a dark corner of the intranet where no one can find them. So in this episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Virgin Money’s Martin Ritchie, Digital Learning Manager, joins Ross Garner and Lara to share : H ow Virgin Money raise awareness of their Mind T...
Mar 25, 2025•40 min•Ep. 437
Most organizations offer some kind of content library to help their people develop. But how much content is too much? How do you give your people choice, without overloading them? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Ross D are joined by Rosemary Hoskins (formerly of AstraZeneca), to discuss: Why are extensive content libraries a problem (as well as a solution) for organizations? What mechanisms help people find the right content, at the right time? Does it matter if ...
Mar 18, 2025•38 min•Ep. 436
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence once again topped the results of Donald Taylor’s Global Sentiment Survey. Almost every other option on the survey lost vote-share this year, with the exception of the ‘value trio ’ . So, what do these findings tell us about the state of L&D, and how the profession is evolving? In t his week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Don joined Ross D and Ross G for our annual breakdown of the survey’s results. We discuss: what the Global Sentiment Survey is ...
Mar 11, 2025•41 min•Ep. 435
It’s ‘Bring Your Paper to Work’ day at Mindtools Towers, as Ross G, Ross D and Dr Anna each take turns to share an academic study that they think has key insights for L&D professionals. We discuss: The impact of AI on critical thinking, as investigated in: Lee, H. P. H., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025). The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowled...
Mar 04, 2025•44 min•Ep. 434
The World Economic Forum’s recent ‘Future of Jobs’ report positioned ‘AI and big data’ and ‘technological literacy’ as skills that will become increasingly important over the next five years. But what do these skills look like in practice? What do we mean when we talk about ‘AI literacy’? In t his week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Anna are joined by Erica Werneman Root, legal consultant and co-founder of Knowledge Bridge, to discuss: what ‘AI literacy’ means in different c...
Feb 25, 2025•40 min•Ep. 433
In last week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , we explored sales enablement from the perspective of sales and marketing teams. But where do product teams fit in? Beyond building products, what role do these teams play in generating revenue? For the second instalment in our two-part series on sales enablement , Ross D and Lara are once again joined by Darren Bezani , Chief Salecologist at Salecology , to discuss: why it’s important to involve product teams in sales enablement; the behavior...
Feb 18, 2025•31 min•Ep. 432
All sales training is sales enablement, but not all sales enablement is sales training. In this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross Dickie and Lara are joined by Darren Be zani , Chief Salecologist at Salecology , to discuss: what ‘sales enablement’ means, and why it’s intentionally broader in scope than sales training; what sales enablement is designed to achieve, beyond increased sales ; the role of managers in sales enablement. To learn more about Darren’s work, head to salecol...
Feb 11, 2025•31 min•Ep. 431
Those of who work in learning and development like to think we're in the business of behavior change . But w e often don't have an in-depth understanding of what current behaviors are , or how to change them. In this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner is joined by Ross Dickie and Dr Anna Barnett to discuss: methods for understanding behavior ; digital learning methods for changing behavior ; methods for measuring change. During the discussion, Ross Garner described the Dun...
Feb 04, 2025•42 min•Ep. 430
The National Trust is Europe’s largest conservation charity, established 130 years ago to look after the UK’s nature, beauty and history . Its leaders have diverse areas of focus, from protecting woodland to managing properties – and even running a gold mine! In this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Ross D find out just how the Trust develops these leaders, with Development Specialist Carole Thelwall-Jones. We discuss: how a leader needs to think ‘to be’ lists, rather tha...
Jan 28, 2025•37 min•Ep. 429
Author, podcaster and award-winning filmmaker Topaz Adizes specializes in creating deeper human connections. So, in this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , he joins Ross Garner and Owen for an in-depth chat about: how to formulate questions to build understanding ; how better conversations help us partner with our clients and stakeholders ; t he benefits of online and in-person conversations . In ‘What I Learned This Week ’, Ross discussed the growing capabilities of ‘Large Behavior M...
Jan 21, 2025•49 min•Ep. 428
At last year’s Learning Technologies Awards, Mindtools and South Western Railway won Gold in the ‘Best use of blended learning – commercial sector’ category. In this week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast for 2025, Ross D and Claire are joined by Becky Eason, Leadership Delivery Manager at South Western Railway, to discuss: The context in which the program was developed, and the problems it was designed to solve; How we used focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and a valid and reliable...
Jan 14, 2025•33 min•Ep. 427
Do remote and hybrid managers need different skills to those who work in-person? If so, what are those skills and how do we develop them? In this first episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast for 2025, Ross Dickie and Ross Garner are joined by return guest Gary Cookson, author of Making Hybrid Working Work. We discuss: The ‘sensory loss’ that takes place when managers move to a hybrid environment The digital signals that help managers understand their teams Strategies for building hybrid management...
Jan 07, 2025•41 min•Ep. 426
Another year, another Christmas Special! We've scraped the barrel of festive ideas and selected Love Actually , the "greatest Christmas movie of all time", as the unfortunate premise of this year's audio horrorshow. In this edition, Ross G will be asking questions that are very loosely based on the Richard Curtis classic, with answers from Ross D, Anna and Owen. Including: In Love Actually , grumpy husband Alan Rickman gets into trouble when he buys a necklace for a woman who isn't his wife. If ...
Dec 17, 2024•39 min•Ep. 425
When your team are faced with a crisis, you want them to be prepared. But how do you build those capabilities when crises are rare, and you hope they never occur? In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Owen explore the use of simulations to build capability. We’re joined by Chris Peschanel, who ran crisis management at Bayer Pharmaceuticals for 12 years, and by Phil Willcox from St8 of Play. We discuss: · why simulations are the best approach for developing real-world ...
Dec 10, 2024•47 min•Ep. 424
Hello listeners! No new episode this week, but we wanted to revisit this 2018 classic with Dom Price, from Atlassian. It'll help you think about whether the habits and behaviors that have helped you navigate the world to this point, are still useful today. Regular show notes below. --- In the early stages of our careers we learn how to do our jobs, manage office politics and earn promotion. But those habits and behaviours that initially help us advance can become a burden. We end up in meetings ...
Dec 03, 2024•38 min•Ep. 423
As Ben Betts wrote in a recent blog post, ‘the LMS is the first point of entry to learning; the front-of-house of our industry.’ While that front-of-house may look a little different now than it did twenty years ago, and despite the oft-repeated claim that the LMS is dying, it remains the default gateway to digital learning in organizations. But are things about to change? To answer that question and others, Ben joins Ross D and Owen on this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast to discus...
Nov 26, 2024•51 min•Ep. 422
How can we help managers demonstrate care for their teams, while maintaining high standards of accountability and performance? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Dr Anna Barnett are joined by Joris Merks-Benjaminsen, Managing Without Power , to discuss: why nice managers can still provide mediocre management how managers can balance care for their teams with high levels of performance and how to build better managers. For more from Joris, visit managingwithoutpower...
Nov 19, 2024•40 min•Ep. 421
Are you an over-committing over-achiever? In Toxic Productivity , author Israa Nasir argues that you can only maintain that approach to productivity for so long. Eventually you’ll burn out, exhausted by all those ‘time management hacks’ that organizations (like Mind Tools!) keep suggesting. So this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Israa joins Ross Dickie and Ross Garner to offer an alternative approach. We discuss: how toxic productivity manifests in our lives how getting rewarded for our pr...
Nov 12, 2024•34 min
Learning measurement is difficult, complex, and expensive. Or is it? In Measurement and Evaluation on a Shoestring , Dr Alaina Szlachta applies a Build-Borrow-Buy approach to learning measurement, and joins The Mind Tools L&D Podcast this week to share her insights with Ross Dickie and Owen. We discuss: the importance of asking the right questions how to bake measurement into your programs what ‘Build ’, ‘Borrow’ and ‘Buy’ look like in practice . Find out more abo ut Measurement and Evaluation o...
Nov 05, 2024•40 min•Ep. 419
Measuring management capability is intrinsically complex. Unlike sales training , where you have sales, or customer-service training , where you have CSAT scores, management doesn’t have a built-in metric we can use to quantify learning impact. So, what’s the solution? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Dickie is joined by Owen and Anna to discuss our new ‘Manager Skills Assessment’ — a scientific diagnostic that managers and their organizations can use to evaluate their capability. ...
Oct 29, 2024•33 min•Ep. 418
If you work in learning and development, you probably get some direction from your senior leadership team about what to focus on and how much to spend. But, once you get into the details, you have lots of room to play. In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Chief Learning Officer Marc Steven Ramos joins Ross Garner and Ross Dickie to discuss: · the strengths and weaknesses of different genAI tools · whether tools like ChatGPT are living up to the hype · how L&D can start experime...
Oct 22, 2024•39 min•Ep. 417
In Power to the Middle , McKinsey consultants Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock and Emily Field argue that the ‘middle manager’ is key to organizational success. Long maligned (often by McKinsey), the manager is in fact responsible for delivering objectives, addressing underperformance, building trusting relationships, and resolving team conflicts. In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner, Ross Dick and Nahdia Khan discuss: · why managers are so important · the role of ‘ma...
Oct 15, 2024•42 min•Ep. 416
This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner and Ross Dickie are joined by Kathryn Hume, strategic workforce planning and L&D consultant, and author of the book Learn, Solve, Thrive . In the book, Kath argues that learners have a responsibility for managing their own learning and outlines strategies that anyone can adopt to make that process easier. We discuss: · why we can’t ‘wait around for someone to teach us’ · some of the difficulties we experience when we try to learn · the relati...
Oct 08, 2024•40 min•Ep. 415
It’s been three years since the first edition of The Learning and Development Handbook by Michelle Parry-Slater was published. In that time, a global pandemic, rise of AI, and shift to remote working, have transformed how we work. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Michelle returns to the show to discuss the second edition of her book with Ross G. We discuss: what has changed (and what hasn’t) since the first edition was published the evolving role of the modern learning professional whet...
Oct 01, 2024•36 min•Ep. 414
This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner and Ross Dickie are re-visiting their L&D mailbag to answer your questions. We discuss: What is L&D actually doing well with Large Language Models ? (via Gill Chester ) What’s the top 3 least likely L&D jobs to be replaced by AI? (via Alan Hiddleston) How can learning teams partner better with the rest of the org? ( via Sarah Danzl) What has been the most popular content on MindTools this year, and why...? ( via Adam Lacey) What lessons from ...
Sep 24, 2024•38 min•Ep. 413
Hey listeners! No new episode this week, but we wanted to revisit this 2022 classic with Jane Bozarth because we thought it paired nicely with the latest edition of our L&D Dispatch newsletter. Do check out the newsletter Ross G discussed on our L&D Dispatch page, ' Four papers that will make you laugh (then make you think) '. Regular show notes below. --- In learning science, there are certain ideas that have leapt the fences of academia and seeped into the public consciousness. Often, these id...
Sep 17, 2024•44 min•Ep. 412
