In this episode, Krystyna Gadd talks to change management expert Alison Kelly from Hitachi Capital about the future of work and L&D, and how Learning and Development can get closer to the business and provide better support Alison Kelly has led a range of large scale change programmes in a number of different businesses, often focusing on organisational re-structure, changes to business processes, systems and locations. She enjoys building and leading high-performing, loyal teams and has done so...
Nov 30, 2019•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast A discussion with Nadja Petranovskaja about the value of the training room in creating shiny eyes (motivation, confidence etc.) and having no agenda for the workshop so we follow their path, not yours Nadja Petranovskaja has more than 20 years of experience as a psychologist. After completing her studies in Hamburg, the native Russian gained international experience as a consultant, project manager, and manager in numerous industries. Specializing in change management and motivation, Nadja feels...
Oct 31, 2019•37 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Krystyna Gadd takes over the interview seat and talks to Janet Barr from Cap Gemini about what the business wants and needs from learning and development. Janet Barr is the Technical Director for Capgemini but also an executive architect with over 25 years IT experience. She has a solid technical engineering background and has a key interest in problem solving, while using her business experience. She has been with Capgemini since 2000 Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on acc...
Sep 30, 2019•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast I am re-releasing some older episodes that had really useful content, although I might be a bit crap - but it's only the third I recorded! In this one, I talk to Shirley Gaston of Azesta about how to keep learners engaged throughout the training event. This is Shirley's specialist subject, something she's been passionate about for years, In the podcast she outlines three different approaches for ensuring the delegates on the course stay engaged. Shirley Gaston is the founder of the experiential ...
Aug 31, 2019•33 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast Hi, now and again I release an occasional podcast about leadership. Some of this will be looking at leaders in the real world and discussing what we can learn from their successes and failures. It's not political, but it discusses political leaders, both past and present, but focuses on their leadership behaviours and not their politics. This first episode looks at the top three things that Theresa May got wrong, and here is a link to the written version of this content on my blog: The End of Ma...
Jul 31, 2019•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of organisations espouse the value of "learning", some even have it as an official "value" and have fancy posters to inspire people to learn, but few really live it, putting learning at the centre of what they do. Service industries succeed (or fail) almost entirely on the knowledge, skills, and behaviours of their people, so their ability to learn - and therefore improve performance - throughout their whole career is even more important. In this podcast I chat to Sarah Brennan and Rachel ...
Jun 30, 2019•49 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast In this month's podcast, I talk to Dr Katie Nielson about the role of language learning in organisations and the impact it can have on the motivation and the bottom line. We look at how to create great language programmes, the science of language learning, and how to understand the ROI. For the past seven years, Dr. Katie Nielson has been the Chief Education Officer at Voxy , an educational technology company focused on helping global teams improve careers and performance through personalized la...
May 31, 2019•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this month's podcast, we talk to communications experts Dale Ludwig and Greg Owen-Boger of Turpin Communications about their leadership development work, and how they work with leaders to train and coach them on improving their "executive presence" Greg Owen-Boger is the Vice President of Turpin Communication , a business communication training company in Chicago. He started with Turpin as a cameraman in 1995 and quickly moved on to instructor/coach, project manager, account manager, and now ...
Apr 30, 2019•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode I speak to Kevin M Yates and Krystyna Gadd about how learning and development needs to align itself to business needs and focus on performance improvement – using data, or “facts” as Kevin calls them – if we, and our Learning and Development brothers and sisters, are to thrive and make a real difference! Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on accelerated learning and its application in the UK. As an engineer in a former life, it has shaped her thinking towards creating learning ...
Mar 31, 2019•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode I talk to Jeff Long about some simple tips that make a big difference to improving how you record videos for learning Since 2003 Jeff Long has worked with companies, organizations, and entrepreneurs to help them create engaging online courses, dynamic training videos, and flexible websites. He specializes in creating online courses and his superpower is helping you create effective online course videos. His website and podcast can be found at https://onlinecoursecoach.com along w...
Feb 28, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Leadership development is a big topic, it cannot be reduced to a series of bullet points stuck on PowerPoint slides. If we are to develop great leaders, we need patience, and we need to provide impactful experiences and create learning spaces where leaders can work with colleagues to learn, reflect, and grow. Simulations can be an enjoyable and effective part of that ... if they are well-designed! In this podcast we talk to Bjorn Billhardt and Matt Confer who share their top five tips to creatin...
Jan 31, 2019•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I welcome back Garry Platt to continue discussions on his specialist subject: Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis, or TA, is a theory of how humans interact with each other - its main application being to help understand human behaviour and communication: each interaction between people being called a "transaction". It was developed by Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne and has been a tool in the trainer and coach toolbox for many years in h...
Nov 30, 2018•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr Nanette Miner believes that many companies risk going out of business within the next fifteen years because they have failed to train people to be leaders. She works with organisations to help them plan for the long-term, investing in their people to build business acumen and thinking skills, so once they reach leadership positions, they are in a position to guide the organisation successfully. In this podcast, I chat with Nanette about her thinking, the learning pathways she recommends and w...
Oct 31, 2018•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast How many stories do you have of crappy e-learning that is designed to tick boxes rather than improve knowledge or, perish the thought, improve performance? Most e-learning packages I have done work best as anesthetics, putting me to sleep in an instant, and putting me off e-learning for life. That's the problem, bad e-learning doesn't just fail to as a learning experience, it scars learners so that they never want to engage the medium ever again! Edan Kertis made it his quest to make e-learning ...
Sep 30, 2018•45 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, I continue discussing the "Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning" with Krystyna Gadd, focusing on the last of the five secrets which is about understanding how the brain learns. We don't go too deep into the neuroscience of learning, it's more about simple techniques to adopt to increase the likelihood of retention. Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on accelerated learning and its application in the UK. As an engineer in a former life, it has shaped her thinking towards creati...
Aug 31, 2018•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Knowledge and skills are not even half the battle when it comes to getting lasting performance improvement. People not only need to know what to do and how to do it, they need to have the confidence to do it, the judgement to know when to do it, and the dedication to break old habits, overcome self-limiting beliefs, and construct new - more helpful - mental models. Only then will we consistently see people taking the great leaps forward that we - and they - aspire to. In this podcast, I chat to ...
Jun 30, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast We learn new skills through repetition. When we repeat actions with the intention of getting better, we call this practice. It works, but it's laborious, and without guidance can lead to bad habits, poor technique, and - most often - failure. That means lower confidence, lower performance, and self-limiting beliefs. As learning professionals we can improve the effectiveness of this process by providing the right knowledge and structure, and then through coaching as skills are practised, reflecte...
May 31, 2018•47 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast Let me be honest, I am biased. I hate smartphones in the training room. If I deliver a learning event, I am trying to create a space where learning can happen safely. It's social, it's inclusive, it's active, it's fun, it is - I hope - challenging and valuable (I hope so, because it's costly!) ... and this requires a level of participation and engagement from the learners, and - because we're people in the same space - a level of courtesy ... but then I'm not one of the Millennial types, so what...
Apr 30, 2018•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Garry is back, this time to talk about his approach to using competences in learning and development. I would guess that competences are not used that much in your organisation, and if they are, they are only dragged out for performance reviews and little else. Even then, if my experience is anything to go by, they probably don't really drive workplace behaviour or performance improvement, and maybe they feel more like a tick-box exercise that HR make you do. It needn't be thus. Competences can ...
Mar 31, 2018•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, I continue discussing the "Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning" with Krystyna Gadd. We're up to the fourth secret which is about the importance of the environment. This isn't just the physical environment, but also the social and emotional environments. Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on accelerated learning and its application in the UK. As an engineer in a former life, it has shaped her thinking towards creating learning that creates measurable performance impact. She ha...
Feb 28, 2018•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast I talk to Sunita Sehmi about being an inclusive facilitator, and also about how we can deal with sensitive topics like diversity, both as facilitators but also as a learning topic in itself. Sunita Sehmi is a Certified Executive Coach, Consultant, Speaker and Trainer. She is of Indian origin and was born in London before moving to Geneva in 1992. She has a Psychology degree, specializing in Occupational and Developmental Psychology and a Post Graduate certification in the Develop...
Feb 03, 2018•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of my favourite conversations for a while was with beer-lover and influence expert Alex Swallow. Influence is a perennial topic in the professional world, and most of us are in roles where we not only need to help others be influential, but we need to be influential ourselves. In this podcast, I ramble on to Alex Swallow about what makes people influential, what we can do to be more influential and what we can do in workshops about influence to make them more meaningful. Alex Swallow is The ...
Nov 30, 2017•53 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast Paul said he wanted to talk about "involution". I had no idea what he meant, but I was willing to along with it because Paul Levy tends to have interesting things to talk about. Involution means the opposite of evolution. If evolution is about the fittest surviving, about decisions being taken by those who show up, about rewarding winners, then involution is about taking the time to look at those ideas and content that didn't make it, those people who aren't there ... and reflecting on what that...
Oct 31, 2017•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of learning and development content is generic off-the-shelf stuff, built on shaky foundations and of variable value. Many mainstay models and theories that pepper workplace learning are not robust, not subject to the rigours of research and peer critique, and often not supported by evidence. This doesn't mean they're useless: they're not. They have pragmatic value in that they work sufficiently well to survive and are often good conversation starters, but if we want the L&D business to be...
Sep 30, 2017•42 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast This is from 2015 too, and a deceptively useful model for having skillful conversations in facilitated sessions, coaching or even real life! In this Trainer Tools Essentials episode, I talk to Catherine Thomson about David Kantor's theory of Structural Dynamics. In the podcast, Catherine explains how this theory of communication is applied to conversations in training and coaching. Catherine Thomson is founder of The Houston Exchange and is also an Associate Consultant within the People and Orga...
Sep 02, 2017•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Essentials Mix are those TT podcasts that have had the biggest impact on me over the years, the ones I've learnt the most from and become a better L&D professional. In this one (with a bit of director's commentary breaking in), Paul Levy talks about the facilitator's role in challenging mediocrity (i.e. anything less than potential), even at the expense of becoming unpopular! Paul Levy is the founder of CATS3000 , a change and innovation company that helps people and organisations to realise...
Jul 15, 2017•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast A while ago Krystyna Gadd presented her Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning and after that we decided to break it down to discuss each of the five "secrets" in a lot more detail. In this podcast we look at the third golden nugget of essential advice "design with variety in mind". We discuss various models you can use to ensure workshops are designed with variety, including David Meier's accelerated learning cycle as an overall structure, and many others. Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on ...
May 31, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, Garry Platt gives the ubiquitous learning styles theory (or theories) a jolly good kicking and talks through research that calls into question their validity and usefulness (to put it politely). I stopped using learning styles to structure learning workshops some years ago, mainly because I continually tweaked things and replaced things that worked less well with things that worked better, and this meant, quite unintentionally, learning styles fell b...
Apr 30, 2017•37 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Quite a while ago, I received a mail from a listener asking the following questions: I guess many of your audience are freelance so it would be an interesting topic to discuss how they learn from or get community feeling when working alone. How do you trust your own internal feedback when all your clients think you're great (but you only have a happy sheet). In an organisation how do you champion best practice when the culture is content with chalk and talk? We recorded something that touches on...
Mar 31, 2017•56 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast A few months ago we chatted with Krystyna Gadd about her Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning , and then we talked about the first of those secrets in What's your objective . In this latest podcast we drill down into the second secret: be a facilitator and not a trainer. This is about moving away from being the font of all knowledge, the sage on the stage, to being a guide on the side who is in charge of creating an environment and ensuring an engaging process so that learning happens. Krystyna ...
Feb 28, 2017•45 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast 
