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 understanding behavior ; digital learning methods for changing behavior ; methods for measuring change. During the discussion, Ross Garner described the Dunning...
Feb 04, 2025•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Owen are diving into their L&D mailbag to answer your questions. We discuss: · Will there be more or less opportunity to make a meaningful living in L&D over the next five years? (via JD Dillon) · If we think of L&D as a product, what would you sunset and what would the top three candidates look like for development? (via Sean Brown) · What's more important to a Learning strategy and approach... Speed or Efficacy? (via Marc Steven Ramos) · Wha...
Sep 10, 2024•40 min•Ep 411•Transcript available on Metacast This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , we're putting the ‘people’ back into People Development and the ‘human’ back into ‘Human Resources, as we explore Natal Dank's book Agile L&D. Natal is the co-owner and director of PXO Culture, a consultancy firm on a mission to make HR, culture and change about humans. And her book, Agile L&D , is a follow-up to Agile HR . We discuss: Problems with a ‘traditional’ approach to L&D Tools and methods for prioritizing and organizing workloads Whether ‘agile...
Sep 03, 2024•50 min•Ep 410•Transcript available on Metacast Technical professionals have a high level of expertise, but translating that expertise for non-technical colleagues isn’t alway s straightforward. Whether you’re an engineer, a resea r cher , or even an L&D professional, how can you communicate in a way th at resonates with you r audience? This week on the Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Owen are joined by Neil Thompson, founder of Teach The Geek, to discuss: why good communication skills are important for technical professionals; the specif...
Aug 27, 2024•34 min•Ep 409•Transcript available on Metacast This week we’re revisiting an old adage: The employer who says, ‘What if we train our people and they leave?’ And the trainer who says, ‘What if we don't and they stay?’ As Talent Development Manager for Kew Green Hotels, Clare Sheppard knows all about this. She’s responsible for helping those who want to stay progress in their careers, while giving those who leave a great experience that they can carry with them into their next role. We discuss: · the types of colleague who fall into the ‘Early...
Aug 20, 2024•36 min•Ep 408•Transcript available on Metacast Last week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Owen explored how the 70:20:10 model is being applied by three L&D Practitioners: Ceri Sharples, Cath Addis, and Carl Akintola-Davis. Today, we wanted to follow up on some of the challenges posed during that discussion with The 70:20:10 Institute’s Charles Jennings. What does it really mean to 'integrate learning into the workflow', and how does 70:20:10 move us towards a performance focus? We discuss: · Where the numbers ‘70’, ‘20’ and ‘10’ c...
Aug 13, 2024•52 min•Ep 407•Transcript available on Metacast Depending how you count it, 70:20:10 is almost 40 years old. The model provides a high-level outline of how we learn at work: 10% through formal learning, 20% through working with others, 70% through doing the work. The numbers get criticised, but this insight is widely accepted: Most of what we learn does not come from formal training. But how then should L&D practitioners apply the model to the work that they do? Is it still a useful concept after all this time? In the first of this two-part s...
Aug 06, 2024•45 min•Ep 406•Transcript available on Metacast A summer holiday holds the potential for distraction-free reading. With that in mind, in this week’s episode our podcast team suggest books that hold lessons for L&D practitioners. Which might you take on holiday this summer? Book list Right Kind of Wrong. Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive (2023) by Amy Edmondson www.amazon.co.uk/Right-Kind-Wrong-Learning-Thrive Counter-Intelligence: What the secret world can teach us about problem-solving and creativity (2024) by Robert Hannigan https...
Jul 30, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast According to a recent study from Ipsos, and commissioned by Amazon, 86% of respondents said that career development is essential, very or fairly important to them. But, in our experience, it tends to become a lot less important when the day-to-day demands of work crop up. So, in this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , return guest Neil John Cunningham from Align Learn Do joins Ross G to ask why this is, and what to do about it. We discuss: How to build the credibility of your L&D fun...
Jul 23, 2024•32 min•Ep 404•Transcript available on Metacast In part three of our #B uilding B etter M anagers series, Ross Garner and Nahdia Khan are joined for one last time by Dr Anna Barnett from the Mind Tools Insights team. If you’ve been listening along recently, we’ve already covered the capabilities that make a ‘good’ manager, and how we can develop them. In this week’s episode, we’re looking at how we support more experienced managers. We discuss: The long-term impact of early management training D ifferences (and similarities) between new and e...
Jul 16, 2024•45 min•Ep 403•Transcript available on Metacast Last week, we kicked off our three-part #BuildingBetterManagers series with an overview of the 12 capabilities that we know make a difference to performance. Now we’re asking: How do we help managers build those capabilities? To answer this question, Ross G and Ross D are joined once again by Dr Anna Barnett, from the Mind Tools Insights team, to discuss her recommendations from our latest report: ‘Building Better Managers’. We discuss: Evidence-based approaches to improving manager capability H...
Jul 09, 2024•39 min•Ep 402•Transcript available on Metacast What does good management look like? What skills and capabilities does a manager need? Are you a good manager? In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson are joined by Dr Anna Barnett, from our own in-house Insights team, to discuss the findings of our latest report: ‘Building Better Managers’. In the first of three episodes exploring how we can improve management capability for our people and organizations, we discuss: · How we define a ‘good’ manager ·...
Jul 02, 2024•45 min•Ep 401•Transcript available on Metacast 
