Hello everyone and welcome to this episode, the LND Books One, part two of the Women Talking About Learning podcast. I'm Andrew Jacobs. This is the second part of this podcast. If you haven't listened to part one, please do go back and listen to the previous episode. In this part, our guests Hannah, Pam, Beth and Emily discuss the difficulties and doubts they encountered when writing and also share their book recommendations for us to read. So settle back, grab a drink and enjoy.
I know Hannah's talked a lot about her book writing process, especially the second one, I think, right, Hannah on LinkedIn? Yeah, very similar to you, Emily. I decided I was in a program and a mentor said that you should spend as much time promoting your book as writing your book. And I thought, oh, OK, so you should. Post on LinkedIn
every week. So so I did that starting with my first book now I wasn't as brave as you and I didn't do videos but but every Friday and I'm still doing it so it's been a couple years now my first book and my second book and anyways yeah posted every Friday some kind of update about my book so here's three covers which do you like best or I'm struggling you said earlier that you struggled with the title so here's you know four title options what combinations are
best and or even just kind of content or IP that I was thinking through and that kind of thing so yeah I think I agree, Emily, with everything you said, that the accountability, that writing in public gives you the opportunity to get feedback on what you're doing. And it means that, yeah, when it's out in the world, it's not in a vacuum, and people know about it, and there's some excitement there, which feels good, because I think, you know, as women in this virtual space here, it's
like having a baby, right? Like you work so hard on writing this, and then when it finally comes out, you're like, I don't know what it's actually going to look like. But then you want to be excited. about it and so I think having that accountability and that regular cadence, Emily, I agree, is
really helpful for that. I'm using the same process now and trying to post on LinkedIn every week or every two weeks because I thought the same thing that it would keep me accountable and actually get to the finish line even though I could do it because I did it before and this is book number two but in some ways I think I'm doing it also to help other people and maybe other women particularly out there know that it's not all easy to write a book. There's times where I'm doubting myself
and questioning whether I know anything. And I do know, and I have a lot of ego actually healthy about doing this work and I've got a company and all the things, right? But I think maybe just the older I get, the more I realize I don't know as well, that whole thing. And so I just
want to show. both sides of, yeah, I'm really proud of what I'm doing and as I'm doing it, but also that it's hard and we can do hard things and we can get over that and we can tell the real story of what it means to write behind the scenes. It's hard work. I don't know. Pam, have you thought that about just showing kind of all the things about the writing process? Yeah, it is. It is hard work. And I agree with you completely. But we also know, don't we, that most books,
most business books are written by men. And there are very few business books written by women. And so I completely agree that I that it's important for us to show the journey and show that it's possible and show that we that we can make stuff up to, you know, it doesn't, I think similar to you, Beth, in the beginning of my writing journey, I felt like I had to find science for everything, because it wasn't enough that I'd experienced it. And now, you know, I'm just more
like, well, I know this works. And Emily, you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation about the different platforms, you know, we can listen to books now we can have short form things. Has anyone started experimenting on TikTok at all? Because I'm only very early into my book
talk TikTok journey. And I have to say I'm loving it okay I'm not very good at producing the video so I have a social media producer who is amazing her name is Holly and she's excellent but what what it's helped me to do is just access that short form learning. Cause what's driving me is not book sales. Uh, you know, it's not, not necessarily being, uh, you know, a famous author. Absolutely. But what's driving me is I really believe in this stuff and I know I can help other
people to do their jobs better. I know I can. And so it's been really interesting putting those into one minute or two minute long videos, because there's so many snippets, which are a little story or a little piece of advice or when something went wrong. And I'm just loving it. It's given me such energy. So I'm trying to do not so much LinkedIn posts, but I'm What I do then post them on LinkedIn in a separate space, but I'm trying to do at least one or two TikToks a week is my
thing, and I'm enjoying it. Pam, you are a brave soul. I do short videos on LinkedIn and I have for a while, but I have not ventured into TikTok. And I guess the thought that's bubbling to the surface for me listening to you is that if we... broaden our definition of book and if we recognize we're all authors, we can be authors in different formats. So we can author newsletters, we can author books, we can author podcasts, we can
author TikTok videos. It's all about sharing our thoughts and ideas with the world and how we envision that supporting kind of learning and women. So kudos to you, Pam. I haven't taken that leap myself. I think you'd find it easy though, Hannah, because you've got so many stories. And that's what I rely on. And I don't always know. Like sometimes, some weeks, I just think, I've no idea. And then I think, I'm not going to post anything. There's no point in forcing
it. But then sometimes I think, oh, I must tell that story. And so, and I feel like that's the person, and I've had to become much more authentic, not worry about making a mistake. You know, there's lots of learning that I've had to do about it, but. I mean, apart from the fact that I'm not actually editing my own TikToks, the actual process of it has been really, and I'm sure you'd be all would be brilliant at it if you're not doing
it already. I like this point about being authentic, Pam, because I think when I was doing the video, I'm also not doing the book talk. I mean, very, very impressive. But this point about authenticity is something that can be a real challenge, but it's also a space where we should be ambassadors because when especially when I first started doing it, you know, I would try and take the video loads and loads of times thinking I don't
look good. People are going to look at me and they're going to think I wouldn't buy a book
from her. I wouldn't learn something or thinking I didn't do exactly perfect or I stumbled or any of these kinds of things and then at one point I thought enough you know part of doing this is showing that it's okay to create content and just put it out there because if you're not doing it other people are and I think it's it's really hard for women in particular not to self censor and self edit and think that things need to be perfect and therefore not put it out there
where what we need is more content from women showing it's okay to be authentic and do your first take and send it out there because you have something to share with people. So yeah, I think it's massively, massively important. 100%. I have a question, Emily, based on what you said there. So if you have to, Beth, you're already writing your next book. So maybe, I don't know if you would answer this differently or...
cite the book that you've already started. But for each of us, if we think about, if we wrote another book, what's the next book in us? And what's the book that's a little bit scary to write? Like if we're going to be authentic and true to who we are, what's the book that we could write that would maybe push us a little bit into a space that feels a bit unfamiliar? Do you have another book in you, each of you? Pam, you're nodding your head. What's yours? I'm laughing
because my... Every time I write the books, I say, I'm not going to do that again. Cause it's so hard, right? Anyway, I do have a, I'll, I'll, I'll relax and then I'll, I have another book in me, which is probably how to run a female centric business or from a female perspective. I need a better name than that because like you. Beth, like, I think probably like all of us,
we have our own businesses. And yes, so I feel like I've got some things to say about that, but actually laughing because I'm, I, as a result of all of this writing journey, and I wasn't always a writer, Emily, like you, I did a part -time creative writing degree and a master's degree. And I'm now writing a corporate murder mystery. um which is also well basically all of the trauma in a in a fictional form nice and so that's my that's you know that's also my next
book How about you guys? I have another book idea. I was going to write it second and I started and did a solo writing retreat on it and then I decided it was going to be a little bit too much work and I'm going to do this one first and then return to the other idea. But the other idea is to go and interview people that work in other fields where they also create an experience
for usually a group. you know musicians or auctioneers or clowns or you know creative folk like that and then just say how do you create that experience and what do you do in your field to do that and then what can we take from that to apply back to the world of facilitation. So that's my next idea and I've got a whole Scrivener file set up to you know got all sorts of stuff in there and it just kind of parked and waiting and who knows when I'll return but gotta finish this
one first. That sounds amazing. I love that book, that book idea, because everything we do is creating immersive experiences. Yeah. So get all of that inspiration. What a wonderful idea, Beth. Well, I mean, in a micro scale, I started to interview people and I interviewed a humanitarian clown and I put it up on my podcast. So it's there
if anyone wants to listen to it. just to listen to this man and how he's in Quebec, in Canada, and he goes into long -term care facilities and as a humanitarian, or as a therapeutic clown in that context, he's also a humanitarian clown, and to listen to the skills that he has been taught and brings, you know, in the clowning experience, which is not about laughter, ha ha, right? It's more about connecting with people.
Fascinating, fascinating to just hear it and think, well, what can we learn from that about connecting even without words or listening to the person or using body language or it's just like right you can tell i'm all excited you know because it's just fascinating to to learn from other fields and maybe Emily i'll turn it back to you because you said you were coming from the world of innovation and that's that's where it all comes from right we could be more innovative
when we look at other fields and bring it back to what we know in ours right definitely call me there Yeah, definitely. I mean, it sounds like an amazing book. One thing that I love to do outside of work is amateur musical theatre. So I've done many, many shows. And yeah, I see
it as being also an act of facilitation. This is one of the things that I talk about in the book that I think something that drew me to facilitation in the first place was that similar feeling of creating an environment where people are happy and they feel drawn into something that really speaks to them, you know. But on the book question, so two more thoughts. I mean, according to Hannah's categorisation of what's the one you're thinking about and what would be the scary option, I have
something that's come to mind for both. So on the first one, the what comes next, I have a phrase that I've been turning over in my mind for ages of workshopify your expertise. In my business, I do quite a lot of one -to -one work. Coming from a place where I was doing mostly corporate training, it's been a real joy to work with people one -on -one. And a lot of the people I work with are people who are coming from a
field of expertise. Let's say it's organizational culture or it might be branding, for example, and they haven't done it before, but now as self -employed people, they want to start running workshops and trainings for the first times for their clients and they want to understand how to workshopify their expertise and I'm helping take them through that process so that's kind of generating its own thing that I want to write
about. The scary option would be something I see coming up time and time again talking to other self -employed facilitators which is people always say, I hate sales and I can't do sales. And I really believe that sales is an act of facilitation. What puts me off from writing that book is, although I've done plenty of sales in my time, I just don't feel like I'm the expert
enough to write the book. That's me just being open and vulnerable about how that topic feels to me, which is why it would be the scary choice. But I think it's something that is... needed and necessary within the community that we all exist in. I honestly do. And Emily, when, not if, when you write that book, what a beautiful story that could come out about your own fear about, I'm not an expert, I can't write about this, but... but yes, I can and look at the confidence
and what I can share with you. So you could take your own lived experience as a way of telling that story and sharing with others who maybe are feeling a little bit like, ooh, I can't do this. So it'd be a nice path forward, I think. It'd be beautiful. I agree. I think from a... From a metacognitive perspective, like when we teach, we have to tell our students or our learners what was difficult for us when we were learning
the thing or doing the thing. And just, I think that's the reason why you have to write that book, Emily, and tell the full story about, you know, like the doubt, right? I've talked a lot about doubt and just making mistakes and all that kind of stuff. Every time I do a solo episode of my podcast, I'm trying to mine my experience and tell the hard things, right? I'm not on TikTok, but that's what I use the podcast for in some
respects, right? And just we have to tell each other the full story and we have to write those books. So if people are out there listening thinking they can't do this, like get that out of your head right now, you know, because you can, we all can. But Hannah, you didn't answer your own question, I don't think. What's your next book? You're right, you're right. Matthew caught me.
So I think, I feel like... AI is all around us and it's so disruptive, depending on your perspective, it's so disruptive where there's so much opportunity. And I think there's something there. So it's both a possible next book and something I'm afraid to write. Maybe Emily from the same perspective that I don't feel like I'm an AI expert. I'm dipping my toe into it and I'm partnering with
a colleague who is. So looking at What's learning and development, or even HR, if you want to think more broadly, what's their role in supporting organizations when they're implementing or using AI so that it can be done successfully? So in a learning context, how do you get your employees ready? for this so that they're going to be able to embrace it and see the innovation in it and not the fear in it maybe. And so it's just a
really small kernel. But like you, Pam, every time I read it, I'm like, I'm not writing another book. But it sits there at the back of your head churning, right? So yeah, I think there's something there that I'm curious about anyways that I want to scratch the surface a little bit on. So yeah. But back to the topic, what you're doing there as the author is facilitating it, aren't you? or Emily, you'd be facilitating that topic by bringing it out by not feeling like you have
to be the one who's got all the answers. Yeah, for sure. And seeing it again as that act of refining your own process, I suppose, because going back to the way that I wrote the first book, I know that writing that book about sales as an act of facilitation would make me a far better salesperson, you know, it would force me to codify, to formalize, to learn from others, to research. And I'm sure I would come out far stronger from the process. So I think I'm going
to do it. I feel inspired. And I'd love to read your book, Hannah, and yours, Beth. They sound amazing. I think too, and sorry, Emily and Pam, I can't remember which one of you said this, but was talking about, you know, most business books are written by men. And so I think if if I think of women and us as a group of women saying, what's the book that we're maybe a little bit afraid to write? If people are listening and wondering, I'm a woman, maybe I can or can't
write a book. And to maybe tip them over the edge a little bit. I think there's, you know, I know in my book writing journey, more my second than my first, but I had many moments of I'm just, I have nothing new to say. This has all been written before. Why is what I'm saying anything special? And, you know, who's going to want to read? There's, there's gobs of leadership books
on the shelves. And so, so I think the message is, is when you write a book, yeah, sure, it's on leadership or, you know, facilitating workshops or, or whatever innovation or, or, you know, teams. What we're each bringing to it is our perspective. And so because so many books are written by men, I think that we need to have more women's perspectives on all of these topics.
So I guess I, yeah, I just, I think that in that journey there's going to be a lot of self -doubt and then just turn off the social media and go for a walk and kind of reground yourself and yeah, what I have to say is important and there aren't a lot of other women maybe saying this and I want to make sure my message is shared.
Yeah, I think that's really important and I'm noticing, I don't know if it's because I'm five years older and... you know perimenopause and all that but um I'm more I'm less confident now I think writing this second book that I am the first I don't know Pam you you seem to have figured it out the other way around right but I'm I'm questioning myself more thinking well what am I talking about do I know what the hell I'm talking about is any doesn't everyone already know this
and then I keep having to say No, they don't already know this because I work with clients all the time who don't know. Right. And we know are we're we're doing something. We're putting something out in the world that people don't know and they don't have. So we need to do it. But I'm really I wouldn't say I'm struggling, but I'm noticing it a lot more that little imposter syndrome on my shoulder trying to knock me off. Right. Pam, you're right in there. Oh, my goodness.
I'm so glad you said that. No, I'm so glad you said that. Yes, I'm more. confident, maybe with what I know, but my confidence as a person is worse and worse and worse every year. And this is, you know, having done it for a long time. So you'd think it would be in the other direction. So yeah, I, I completely agree with you. And so it's something about our awareness becomes so much bigger and you realize how much you don't know. But to your point, Beth, I, there are some
re it's kind of why I'm doing the TikToks. There's some really simple fun fundamental. And I don't mean simple as in stupid, like there are some really simple, fundamental, important essences that actually people don't know and they haven't been empowered with. So I'm with you on both counts. How about you, Hannah? Yeah, like you, Beth, my second book I found much more challenging to write, which is, and you said that in your first book you interviewed a whole bunch of people
to kind of validate. That was the other reason behind me interviewing leaders was to validate. what I thought maybe I should be saying. And yeah, I had to write it. It was harder to write, so I had to write it. literally with a pencil and paper. I ended up last summer going to a bunch of cottages in Northern Ontario, which was lovely. And I'd sit at, we call them Muskoka chairs, and in the States I think they call them Adirondack chairs, but you lean back and they
have these big armrests. So I would have my notebook and pencil on one armrest and my eraser on the other armrest. And I had to do that. Yeah, it was a much more difficult book to write. I think it's because I was pushing myself. And I think, Beth, maybe like you said, yours is more of a memoir. And so that's more reflective and more personal, which is maybe pushing yourself. And so, Pam, you say you have more experience, but each year you maybe feel a little bit less confident.
I'm assuming that around this table, we all see ourselves as lifelong learners. And so when you... wear that lens or have that hat, you're always pushing yourself and pushing yourself then means there's discomfort with it. So, Emily, I don't know. I mean, you worked in the innovation space and that's a lot of pushing yourself to think differently and do stuff differently. So I don't know. I don't know if you have a perspective
on that. Yeah, I feel like when you come from that background, you feel pressure all the time to throw yourself in the deep end and also to practice what you preach. I taught people innovation skills for years. So if I don't start with the problem and the customer perspective and go through all of that kind of process, I know I'm doing
it wrong and I call myself up on it. But I was reflecting on what you all were saying about having less confidence the second time around and thinking about what that might mean for me hypothetically if I do come back and write something else, because obviously I've only written the one thing, right? I guess what my anxiety would be is that the first book journey started so organically that I didn't have to worry about self -censorship because I was just writing for
myself. I wasn't writing thinking, oh is this
good enough for someone else to read it? You know, that came later and part of me wonders coming back to it and trying to write something again if I would be able to be as uninhibited as I felt the first time it might be harder for me to get over that first hurdle because I may start writing and thinking that's not good enough whereas last time I didn't have that at all you know because it started from that place of oh well this is just this is just notes for me anyway
so it'll be interesting to see if that if that sort of plays out but I'm aware we've talked a lot about our own books one question I wanted to ask you all is what book you would recommend, I suppose, in the L &D space that everybody reads, taking aside what we've written, obviously. Well, I interviewed someone on my podcast, Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, and she's in the States, and she wrote a book called The Inclusive Language Field Guide. I hope that's the right title because I'm going
from memory, but it was a great book. We're all having to think about language. We're all having to think about language all the time now and inclusion of course, right? DEIA and she just it's a really accessible book for all of us to read and just she was fabulous to talk to just really knows her stuff and Yeah, great read inclusive
language people guide. What about others? I'm going to recommend a book that I just found so brilliant, which is, and it's not necessarily in the L &D space, but it absolutely is in the space of our work and our lives. And it's Oliver Berkman, Meditations for Mortals. So he's a journalist who has made, he's done a lot of research around efficiency and time management, but what that's turned into is a real reflection on how we use our time and our lives and how we value each
other's connection. And it's just groundbreaking from it was groundbreaking for me to read because it was all about how to prioritize what's right and what's good. And one of the key messages is there's never enough time. So think carefully about how you spend your time. It's a wonderful book. Emily, I have to The first one actually isn't out quite yet. It's a colleague of mine and he's a man, so I feel like I need to have a second book by a woman to compliment that.
But a friend and colleague of mine, Matt Cross, wrote the Subtle Shifts. and it's coming out I think later this year. So it's leadership and it's about, instead of grandiose gestures, what are the small things that leaders can do to shift their own behavior and their team's behavior and things like that. And I've read snippets of it as Matt was writing it, so I'm pretty excited
to read it when it comes out. The other one, and we were talking about when we tell stories and how it surfaces emotions and energizes people. So then from a learning perspective, perspective, they retain it. So the other book is The Power of Story by a friend and colleague, Lisa Gerber.
And so again, it's not in the learning and development space, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to take her messages and bring them into learning and development and recognizing, yeah, the power of story in terms of motivating people or helping people learn or remember. And yeah, lots of different applications, I suppose. How about you, Emily? Yeah, you're going to answer your own question? Yeah, you introduce these topics and then you hear it go round and you think, oh no, someone's
going to ask me to answer that as well. And I think what comes to mind for me is The Culture Map by Erin Myers. I don't know if any of you have read that, but I have done a lot of work with global organizations where you're facilitating experiences for people coming from all sorts
of different places. And reading that book for me was a real sort of kick yourself moment like oh man I wish I'd read this long before because when it comes to working across different cultures that's massive for creating inclusive engaging experiences for everyone you know and I feel like the book does that in a really good way thinking about these Each chapter is focused on a different element. So perception of time, for example, is one of them. Hierarchy is another
one of them. And all of those come into creating good experiences. And so I always recommend that book. I love it. I think it's a really timely and necessary read for so many people when we do work in these organizations that are so decentralized and where We're in the fortunate position now that we get to work with people from all across the world. It's amazing. But we also need to think very actively about how to do that effectively. And I think that book's a great starting point
for that sort of thing. This has been a lovely conversation. And I'm just wondering if anybody
has any kind of... Last comments or last thoughts any thread that was or a seed that was planted earlier that you want to come back to to kind of as we wrap up maybe I'm quite struck by The points that were made in the later part of the conversation about the confidence to have an opinion the confidence to learn while writing or maybe write while learning And just crystallizing some of those thoughts that you all said about perhaps going on a journey to write a book, not
because you're an expert, but to become an expert. I think that's really a fantastic thought. Thank you for that. It's really given me a little bit of a mindset shift. There's been so many good points. I think maybe it was you, Hannah, that said we could consider ourselves authors if we're authoring all sorts of different types of materials, right? It doesn't have to be just, you know, a book of 300 pages or whatever it is. It can
be TikToks. It could be podcasts. It can be... anything that is accessible to people and whatever works for them. It can be, you know, well, visual. Emily, you talked about visuals. So, you know, it's accessible to be an author in our field in whatever way works for us. So I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah, I can add something that I hope we're all feeling, which is a call to action. encouraging others if you are listening to this because you've thought, well, I'm in
L &D and maybe I've got a book in me. Just go ahead and start it. Take those first steps. Confidence is a doing thing. It's not something that we can pick up one day off the shelf and say, yes, I have confidence to do this. We build it by repeated action. So it's taking those first steps. And hopefully I speak to everyone when I say if you are writing something and you want someone to talk to who's been through it, reach out.
Everyone's nodding. I'm so glad. Imagine if you will start shaking your heads at this point. But yeah, absolutely. Go about it and remember that there's a community here to support you. How about you, Hannah? Oh, I knew you were going to come back to me and I was thinking that maybe me asking the question was going to be sufficient. Look at how we're all facilitators on this call, authors and facilitators. If I had an overall comment, I think I would just go back, Pam, to
what you said at the beginning. You said, you know, I bought all your books and you were going through it and so just the... The overlap and the synergy and the connection of this conversation I think has been beautiful. And I knew Beth at the beginning, but now I feel like I know Emily, you and Pam as well. And so grateful to have you in my network as well. And yeah, Emily, if there are listeners who want to reach out to consider us or me in your network of somebody
who you can talk to. So yeah, lovely spending this time with you. It has been lovely. Thank you. Thank you. I agree. Thanks so much. This was such a fantastic recording to be involved in and we hope these episodes will have a long tale as people come back to them. We're incredibly lucky to have Hannah, Pam, Beth and Emily sharing their knowledge in writing books within learning and development. Please do let us know what stood
out to you. A massive thank you to them for their time and you'll find all their details along with links to the subjects they spoke about in the show notes. We're back in a couple of weeks and next time it's The Data One. As always, thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.