In case you’ve missed it, 2023 has become the year when automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) started displacing cognitive and creative work. Chat-GPT, DALL-E and other tools are becoming ubiquitous, so this week we’re asking how L&D and HR should respond. To answer this question, Owen and Ross D are joined on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast by Ashley Recanati , author of AI Battle Royale: How to Protect Your Job from Disruption in the 4th Industrial Revolution . We discuss: where the lessons o...
Apr 25, 2023•47 min•Ep 341•Transcript available on Metacast In an uncomfortable first for The Mind Tools L&D Podcast team, we’re handing over this week’s hosting duties to friend-of-the-show Mat t Pleger , Organizational Development Consultant at UMass Memorial Health. Matt ha s been a long-time client of Ross G’s, and this time HE’S asking the questions. Owen, Ross G and Ross D discuss: how we got started in L&D what we’ve gained from doing the podcast our L&D ‘hot takes’ (something we believe about L&D that is provocative and maybe has some truth to it...
Apr 18, 2023•44 min•Ep 340•Transcript available on Metacast Used effectively, video can be the most emotive part of a learning experience. So how do you get it right? In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Gemma are joined by Samson Owolabi, Creative Director at Bearded Fellows, to discuss: what ‘high-impact video’ means in a learning context how to go about designing videos that will resonate with your audience how to overcome common challenges in the creative process You can find out more about Bearded Fellows on their website: bear...
Apr 11, 2023•33 min•Ep 339•Transcript available on Metacast Does everyone have a book in them? How hard it is to take an idea to publication? In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , authors Andy Lancaster, Nelson Sivalingam, Michelle Parry-Slater and Gary Cookson join Ross G to share their experiences. We discuss: · why they wanted to write a book in the first place · how to get started · advice for overcoming the stress of a deadline. Andy’s book is Driving Performance Through Learning. Nelson’s is Learning at Speed . Michelle’s is The Learning ...
Apr 04, 2023•46 min•Ep 338•Transcript available on Metacast The opportunities we have access to in life are shaped by ou r background, our environmen t and our networks . It i s difficult to create equitable organizations if a single homogenous group are making most of the decisions. In Reverse Mentoring: Removing Barriers and Building Belonging in the Workplace , coach and author Patrice Go rdon describes how connecting senior decision-makers with more junior mentors can help them understand one another. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Patrice...
Mar 28, 2023•42 min•Ep 337•Transcript available on Metacast Learner surveys get a hard wrap: at best they’re a waste of time, at worst they actually mislead us. But what if we just did them well? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and Ross G are joined by Dr Will Thalheimer to discuss the second edition of Performance-Focused Learner Surveys – a book so exciting that Will wrote it twice! We discuss: why most learner surveys suck, despite L&D pros insisting they want to evaluate learning how to create effective questions that give you actiona...
Mar 21, 2023•44 min•Ep 336•Transcript available on Metacast Can we improve our workplace performance through learning outside of work ? Are there benefits to this? How might we go about it? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and Ross Garner are joined by David Hayden and Steve George , authors of ' Adjacent Learning' to discuss the possibilities and practicalities of learning elsewhere . We cover: what adjacent learning is how we can learn purposefully from other places how can we reflect on what we know and do outside of work t hat will hel...
Mar 14, 2023•35 min•Ep 335•Transcript available on Metacast What do business leaders think about L&D? What do they expect? What’s the reality for L&D? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma is joined by Nahdia and Anna to discuss our latest Leadership report – Turning pressures into opportunities . We cover: · what questions we asked · the headline takeaways from this year’s report · the practical implications. To read the report in full, download it from our Research reports site: mindtoolsbusiness.com/research-and-reports/turning-pressures-int...
Mar 07, 2023•39 min•Ep 334•Transcript available on Metacast What are L&D practitioners excited about in 2023? Is it the rise of artificial intelligence? Or is it the Metaverse? What about skills-based talent management? Or learning analytics? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross D is joined by Donald Taylor to discuss the results of the Global Sentiment Survey 2023. We cover: · what the GSS is (and what it isn’t) · the headline takeaways from this year’s survey · regional differences in the data If you’re interested in reviewing the results of ...
Feb 28, 2023•39 min•Ep 333•Transcript available on Metacast How do you pick from the hundreds of platforms out there? What questions might you ask to refine your options? If you’re looking for a learning platform, then you’ve got quite the decision to make! Not only is the market huge and complicated, but it can also be an expensive purchase. Help is at hand this week in The Mind Tools L&D Podcast. Ross G and Gemma are joined by EdTech Consultant Stella Lee, an expert in navigating the decision process. We explore: · key questions to answer before you go...
Feb 21, 2023•42 min•Ep 332•Transcript available on Metacast What do employees and managers care about in 2023? How do we keep them feeling happy, interested and safe? A new report from Reward Gateway offers six human-centred strategies to build strong, resilient teams. So, this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Owen are joined by Chief People Officer Nebel Crowhurst to discuss their findings. We explore: · - whether it’s important that your manager ‘cares’ about you · - the role of mental, physical and wellbeing support in engaging employee...
Feb 14, 2023•38 min•Ep 331•Transcript available on Metacast Ten years ago, Henry Stewart wrote The Happy Manifesto , outlining 10 principles for happier workplaces. Among them: Make your people feel good; Be open and transparent; Celebrate mistakes. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Henry joins Gemma and Ross G the relevance of these principles in 2023. Spoiler: They’re even more important. We discuss: how the workplace has evolved the emergence of ‘self-managing organisations’ the factors that stop leaders creating a happy workplace. During the ...
Feb 07, 2023•37 min•Ep 330•Transcript available on Metacast With inflation high, and high profile redundancies hitting the headlines, L&D is once again under pressure to demonstrate the value it offers and to have an impact in our organisations. So what can you do if your budget is slashed? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , David James shares his experiences of managing the L&D team at The Walt Disney Company during the 2008 financial crisis. David is the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning and host of The Learning & Development Podcast, and jo...
Jan 31, 2023•37 min•Ep 329•Transcript available on Metacast Last week on the show we had James McLuckie join us to share his advice for winning an award, and this week - as we're approaching Oscars season - we thought we'd host our own award show: where the nominees haven't entered, the winners don't get anything, and the only criteria is what we think was interesting or cool in 2022. So, in this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G, Gemma, Nahdia and Owen are going to reveal their winners from the following shortlists: Book of the Year The Bus...
Jan 24, 2023•37 min•Ep 328•Transcript available on Metacast Industry awards offer a chance to reflect on your work, raise your profile and win some prestige, but they also take a lot of work. So if you’re going to enter, you want to maximise the chances of winning. In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , former co-host James McLuckie of MAPAL joins Ross G and Ross D to share his insights and entrant and judge. We discuss: how the process works advice for structuring your submission how to deliver a persuasive presentation. If you’re interested in...
Jan 17, 2023•38 min•Ep 327•Transcript available on Metacast In January, many of us like to take stock, reflect on the last twelve months, and make plans for the year ahead. In this spirit, we’re kicking off 2023 with a few early insights from our Learning Performance Benchmark. On the podcast this week, Ross D is joined by Gent Ahmetaj and Anna Barnett from our Insights team to discuss the state of the profession, and what this means for L&D practitioners. We cover: what the Learning Performance Benchmark is, and the value benchmarking offers organizatio...
Jan 10, 2023•42 min•Ep 326•Transcript available on Metacast Back by popular demand (ish), the Mind Tools L&D Podcast team are wrapping up this year with a tenuous spin on festive favourite Home Alone ! This time it isn’t Macaulay Culkin getting left behind: it’s Ross G, Ross D, Nahdia and Owen! What would WE do if left for Christmas in the L&D department of a large organisation? When our colleagues return, what will they find? We discuss: the laughs we’d share if we could get hold of IT admin privileges how stock photography haunts us still the benefits ...
Dec 20, 2022•35 min•Ep 325•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we'll be chatting about the common jargon used in the Learning and Development field. We'll break down these phrases and explain what they mean, so you can understand and use them in your own L&D conversations. Here are some of the phrases we'll be covering: Blended learning: This refers to a combination of different learning methods, such as online courses, face-to-face training, and e-learning modules. Microlearning: This is the use of short, focused learning sessions to help ...
Dec 13, 2022•43 min•Ep 324•Transcript available on Metacast ‘Big data’ promised us an end to uncertainty, but we realise now that this is a myth. Uncertainty will always remain, and intuition can help us navigate it. That’s the claim of Oded Netzer, one of the authors of Decisions Over Decimals: Striking the Balance Between Intuition and Information . On this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Oded joins Ross G and Ross D to discuss: Why looking for a ‘perfect’ answer isn’t helpful How ‘quantitative intuition’ (QI) can help us make decisions ...
Dec 06, 2022•43 min•Ep 323•Transcript available on Metacast This October saw cities across Scotland play host to the first ever ‘Scottish Games Week’, a nationwide event featuring a conference, an education symposium, and awards show. What lessons from that event can the organisers share with the L&D community? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and Sam are joined by organisers Brian Baglow and Julie Drybrough to discuss: the elements of a good ‘learning’ game; some of the problems that come when we design games with an explicitly ‘learning’...
Nov 29, 2022•43 min•Ep 322•Transcript available on Metacast At Mind Tools, we pride ourselves on our ability to create visually rich learning experiences that drive performance. Often, these experiences will include a mix of video, audio, and illustration. But why do these things matter? And how do they serve the outcomes we define with our clients? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross D is joined by Tracey, Claire and Alison to discuss the use of multimedia in learning design. We cover: the role of multimedia in effective learning design creat...
Nov 22, 2022•40 min•Ep 321•Transcript available on Metacast In learning science, there are certain ideas that have leapt the fences of academia and seeped into the public consciousness. Often, these ideas gain traction because they feel intuitively true. But what does the data say? And how should we apply these ideas as learning professionals? This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner and Ross Dickie are joined by Jane Bozarth, Director of Research for the Learning Guild, to discuss three research papers that challenge the received wisdom. We...
Nov 15, 2022•42 min•Ep 320•Transcript available on Metacast In the UK, 84% of workers who had to work from home because of the Coronavirus pandemic have said they plan to continue working at home, at least some of the time, in the future. That poses a problem to those of us responsible for workplace learning. This week on The Mind Tools Podcast , Ross G and Ross D are joined by Phill Miller, Managing Director of Open LMS, to explore solutions. We discuss: The impact that a shift to hybrid and remote working has had on L&D professionals The advantages of ...
Nov 08, 2022•43 min•Ep 319•Transcript available on Metacast Here at Mind Tools Towers, we love podcasts. We’ve produced our own for six years! But what role do they have to play in workplace learning? This week on The Mind Tools Podcast , Ross G and Owen are joined by Adam Lacey from podcasts-for-learning-provider Assemble You. We discuss: The evolution of podcasts as a technology and as a market The solutions that now exist to organisational security barriers Workplace learning contexts where podcasts are ideal. In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Owen discu...
Nov 01, 2022•44 min•Ep 318•Transcript available on Metacast Once upon a midnight dreary, Ross G pondered, weak and weary Whether Ross D might consider him a dry and awful bore— If he proposed some gentle chatting, sprinkled with some caveating, A pod with almost no formatting, on an essay he’d adored. “’Tis about unity of effect in learning design,” he muttered, “by Edgar Allan Poe— Only this and nothing more.” We discuss: why we are dedicating our Halloween Special to the application of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Philosophy of Composition’ to modern-day learnin...
Oct 25, 2022•40 min•Ep 317•Transcript available on Metacast As learning professionals, we can rely on people always needing support to do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. We can also rely on the hows, whats, whens, and wheres of that support changing. It's up to us to make sure we have the skills, knowledge and attitude to keep pace with changes in learning science, technology and learner demands. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and her teammates in the learning experience team are joined by digital learning designer and ...
Oct 18, 2022•40 min•Ep 316•Transcript available on Metacast English is the world’s lingua franca, but the 400 million native-English speakers are a minority compared to the 2 billion people who learned English in a classroom. With these numbers, it’s no surprise that most people speak English ‘badly’. The problem is that, when people speak with a strange accent, pronounce words wrong, or use unusual grammar, we form an impression of their intelligence and capability that has nothing to do with their actual abilities. So this week on The Mind Tools L&D Po...
Oct 11, 2022•41 min•Ep 315•Transcript available on Metacast How do you set your projects up for success? Does the SME and learning designer relationship really follow the buddy cop movie trope? In this episode of the Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Claire, Sean, Tracey and Ross G share their experiences of working with SMEs and their insights into what makes a great working relationship. We discussed: How to build a solid learning designer and SME relationship Ways to engage SMEs effectively The power of positive challenge In WILTW, Sean shared some facts linke...
Oct 03, 2022•37 min•Ep 314•Transcript available on Metacast How is it possible to learn faster than external world changes? What do we need to do to purposefully protect ourselves against irrelevance? Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and Ross G are joined by author of Learning at Speed , Nelson Sivalingam, to discuss how organisations, L&D teams and individuals can upskill and reskill efficiently. We discussed: What learning at speed means The barriers to learning at speed How we can overcome those challenges Nelson’s book, Learning at Speed, is available ...
Sep 27, 2022•42 min•Ep 313•Transcript available on Metacast Our brain is a ‘prediction machine’ that responds to and interprets reality based on what we expect. This is the claim of science writer David Robson and, this week on The Mind Tools Podcast , Ross G, Owen and Nahdia plan to exceed your expectations by discussing it in our book club. We discuss: examples of the ‘expectation effect’ in action the strengths and weaknesses of Robson’s argument how we can experiment, personally, with managing our expectations. During the discussion, Ross referenced ...
Sep 20, 2022•38 min•Ep 312•Transcript available on Metacast 
