The Mindtools L&D Podcast

Every responsible conversation about AI ends with the same advice: check the output. But being 'the human in the loop' is often hard, draining work, and it gets harder when everything AI produces looks like an end product. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , guest host Julie Dirksen and Claire are joined by Dr Markus Bernhardt of Endeavor Intelligence to explore the human behavio...

AI can make a rough idea look finished in seconds. That's great for productivity, but it's a real problem for anyone whose job is to judge the work. If polish, speed and thoroughness can all be generated, how do we know who actually knows their stuff? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , guest host Julie Dirksen and Cammy Bean are joined by Koreen Pagano, CEO of Talent Rewire and...

At Learning Technologies this year, Nigel Paine said AI is turning us into idiots. It was a glib line, and he admits it. But if we hand our thinking over to a chatbot and accept whatever comes back, is he wrong? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G is joined by Dr Nigel Paine, researcher, author, podcaster, broadcaster and consultant (he's a busy guy), to explore when AI ma...

Most advice on burnout focuses on workload, stress and work-life balance. But what if the real cause is the act we put on at work? And if it is, what does that mean for an industry built on improving performance? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Gemma are joined by Rabih El Khodr, keynote speaker and author of  The Way Out of Burnout , to explore where burnout reall...

AI can build a course in minutes. That should be the best news our industry has had in years. Instead, a lot of teams are skipping what really matters: working out what the problem is, and checking whether anything changed. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Cammy Bean are joined by Tim Slade, founder of The eLearning Designer's Academy, to explore how learning design...

Articulate's latest product release puts AI at the heart of it's strategy. What does this mean for learning designers? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G flies solo to react to Articulate's Articuland announcement, unpacking what Frontline, Nova, and the platform's pivot toward operational teams means for learning design. He discusses: What Articulate's new 'Frontline' an...

What research papers did you read while lounging by the pool this summer? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross D is joined by Claire and Dr Anna to review three studies that have caught our attention over the last few months. Anna's pick was Vestner and colleagues' 'A dyadic training to promote technology-related learning and development among age-diverse employees: the power...

Training one person is hard. Training 750,000 people, in more than 80 countries, spread across frontline shifts, event security and executive teams, is a different problem entirely. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Claire Gibson are joined by Brent O'Bryan, Senior Vice President of Global Training and Talent Development at Allied Universal, to explore what L&D looks...

We've been talking a lot about AI on the podcast recently. So this week, we're revisting a distinctly human episode from 2024 on the value of listening. As experts, managers or leaders, we often seek to help others by talking, talking, talking. But what if we didn't talk and just listened? In this episode , Ross D and Gemma are joined by Georgie Rudd, an executive coach, to discuss the trials and...

Every L&D team thinks everyone else has AI figured out. Almost nobody does. Ross G recently ran structured interviews with 12 Mindtools Kineo customers, spanning tech, financial services, pharmaceuticals, energy, media and more, to find out what's really happening on the ground. In this week's episode, Ross D and Cammy Bean join Ross G to discuss his findings. We cover: Why every L&D team believes...

Outside of L&D, most people and organizations see compliance training as a box that needs to be ticked, not something that can drive behavior change. Will AI make this problem better or worse? In this week's episode, Ross D and Cammy are joined by learning designer Anisha Sridhar to explore what AI is really doing to compliance training. We discussed: why the productivity argument for AI is incomp...

Online learning keeps sliding back to text and images. Authoring tools and AI course generators make content cheap, but it often looks like learning without ever asking the learner to think or choose. Games work the other way, running on decisions, feedback, and the chance to try again. Following our recent conversation with Julie Dirksen , we ask where games belong in the age of AI. In this week'...

If you're rolling out AI licenses, how do you get people to use them? For AI learning designer Emily Valencia, there are two key requirements: that people can experiment safely, and that they can share results with others. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Matt meet with Emily to discuss: What organizations get wrong about AI rollouts What effective AI adoption looks...

There are at least four factors that influence the success of AI adoption in your organization: training your people, clarity of compliance guidance, how people are rewarded, and the influence of managers. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , we're exploring the last of these. In his book, Leading with AI - How to build high performance teams with AI as your sparring partner , Jor...

As AI transforms the way work gets done, many organizations are trying to understand the skills they need today, as well as the expertise they'll need tomorrow.  In this week's episode, Cammy and Gemma are joined by skills expert Koreen Pagano to unpack the rise of skills-based organizations.  We discussed: What becoming 'skills-based' in an organization might look like  The benefits and challenge...

In the final part of our 500th anniversary 'Eras Tour' retrospective, we conclude by saying farewell to our human co-workers and embracing the technology that will ultimately destroy us all: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ross G and Dr Anna B are joined by our most frequent guest of all time, Donald H Taylor, to discuss: how AI took over Don's annual 'Global Sentiment Survey' the mindset shift that...

If the pandemic years saw the office become a 'blank space', the hybrid era gradually witnessed that space fill up again through return-to-office mandates. In this week's episode of  The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Rob Baker joins us to continue our 'Eras Tour'. We discuss: how the pandemic created an opportunity for 'job crafting', and what's changed since we've come out of lockdown whether job craft...

Ross G stays out too late. Got nothing in his brain. At least, that's what people say. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , we're joined by Heeral Gudka and Andy Lancaster to continue our 'Eras Tour', with a look back at the pandemic years. We discuss: the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on L&D, and how much of the 'new normal' we've held on to what connectedness and belonging loo...

Ten years, 500 shows, countless guests. To celebrate our anniversary, we're releasing a special four-part series looking back at the evolution of L&D. In part one, Ross G and Ross D are joined by friend-of-the-show Julie Dirksen to revisit our early years. We discuss: whether L&D has yet become 'evidence-based' dumb ideas we fall for, get over, and fall for again evidence-based orthodoxies which w...

According to Dr Tessa Forshaw, Faculty Director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Workforce Learning and Innovation Initiative, workplace learning has never been more important. It's also never been at greater risk. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Tessa joins Ross D and Matt to discuss: the role of L&D at a time when the World Economic Forum has estimated that 59%...

Our Building Better Managers research identified that employees care about having an empathetic manager, but only half reported having a manager who was fair and empathetic.  All is not lost. Empathy is a skill, and like any other skill, it can be developed. So what might that process involve? In this episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Loren Sanders joins Ross G and Gemma to discuss: the diffe...

This week, we're revisting one of our favorite episodes from last year, focusing on the role of play at work. All children play but, over time, that instinct goes away. We don't lose it, we don't forget. Instead, we get taught to stop. For author and toy designer Cas Holman, that's a problem. With a very real impact on business performance. In this episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Cas joins...

You know those people who seem to command a room with a certain gravitas? How are they doing it? In this week's episode of  The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Gemma is joined by Frankie Kemp and Ross D to explore: what presence is the difference between presence and presentation techniques to use to develop your presence. During the discussion, Frankie referenced: ' Why You Need Charisma ' (via Harvard B...

If AI is so transformative, how come it's so hard to adopt? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross G is joined by Mindtools Kineo AI Strategy Director Rodrigo Bolaños to explore: the hype surrounding AI's potential the reality experienced by many organizations how to drive AI adoption at scale. During the discussion, Ross G referenced: ' The state of AI in 2025 ' (via McKinsey)...

Last week, the Mindtools Kineo gang attended the Learning Technologies exhibition and conference, Europe's largest L&D event. And so, this week on The Mindtools L&D Podcast , Ross D, Ross G, Gemma and Matt are regrouping to discuss: our personal highlights from Learning Tech what the conference tells us about the shape of the industry the key themes that emerged over the course of the two days who...