Leading Learning Podcast

If you’re leading a learning business right now, you’re almost certainly navigating uncertainty—political, economic, technological. It can be hard to know how to lead well, plan strategically, and stay responsive without burning out. Our guest in this Leading Learning Podcast episode, number 457, is someone who has spent years helping association leaders. Seth Kahan is the founder of Visionary Lea...

What will it take to keep your learning business relevant and thriving in 2030? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele unpack seven strategic shifts that are reshaping continuing education—from personalization and AI to credentials and commoditization and more. You’ll come away with ideas to apply now and questions to help you think more strategically...

Udemy, Coursera, and edX are part of the competitive landscape your learning business operates in, so it’s valuable to understand how your learners might view your catalog in light of the catalogs of Big Learning providers. This episode, number 455, features a conversation with Dhawal Shah, founder and CEO of Class Central, which Dhawal describes as a Tripadvisor for online education. Class Centra...

This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 454, is the second installment in a two-part look at how learning businesses can best navigate uncertainty. Co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss five practice levers: pulse monitoring, scenario planning, revenue model innovation, ecosystem partnerships, and tech awareness. These levers can help you translate the four habitsets discussed...

If one thing is certain these days, it’s that uncertainty is top of mind for many leaders. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 453, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss four habitsets that can help learning businesses navigate uncertain times: informed agility, strategic foresight, stakeholder intimacy, and portfolio thinking. Show notes and a downloadable transcript ar...

Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss the powerful and sometimes limiting role of credit (CE, CME, CLE, CPE, etc.) and subject matter experts (SMEs) in learning businesses. Both are mainstays, but they can restrict innovation, often unintentionally. This episode unpacks how credit and SMEs function as enablers and as limiters—and what learning businesses can do to n...

Drawing on their own experience and insights from experts like Richard Rumelt, Roger Martin, and Michael Porter, Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele look at the importance of coherence and posit that strategic coherence occurs when a learning business’s choices and actions reinforce each other in the service of its strategy. They unpack what coherence means, how to spot w...

Flexibility is an essential skill for those leading learning businesses. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 450, we talk with Kevin Eikenberry about flexible leadership. Kevin Eikenberry is chief potential officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group and an author, most recently of Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence . The conversation covers three pill...

This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast looks at why and how learning businesses can and should segment their audience—what it looks like in practice and how it can lead to more engagement, better learning outcomes, and, yes, better business results. If you’re already segmenting learners, the episode will provide food for thought and an opportunity to reassess your approach. If you’re new to...

In physics, momentum is the product of a body’s mass and velocity. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele define strategic momentum as the product of an initiative’s strategic weight and its execution speed, and they discuss why momentum matters, common barriers to maintaining momentum, and strategies for creating and maintaining momentum. Show notes...

Because good strategy is organic and responsive, it needs to be revisited periodically. There are predictable, recurring whens that are be natural times for you to reassess your strategy, like the start of a new budget year. There are also less predictable whens that are important times to revisit strategy, like a global pandemic or government policy changes. While it’s easier to plan for revisiti...

For learning businesses, bringing in revenue is an essential function. Revenue is what keeps the organization going and delivering on its mission, whether that mission is solely focused on learning and training or whether it’s a broader mission tied to improving a field, industry, or profession. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele offer five ways t...

Culture, mindset, money—these are big and important concepts for any learning business. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 445, we talk with Erin Pressley about all three. Erin Pressley is senior vice president of education, training, and events at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Erin describes herself as being passionate about serving NRECA’s members and...

Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele share four actionable ideas grounded in survey data collected by Leading Learning and informed by their experience with and observation of learning businesses and the global market for continuing education, professional development, and other lifelong learning. All four ideas tie to the common theme of resourcefulness—Cobb and Steele’s watchword for lea...

Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele share key data points from Leading Learning’s latest year-end survey of learning businesses. They cover top strategic goals and the strategic drivers behind those goals, trends and issues impacting strategy, challenges with maintaining or growing enrollments and registrations, barriers to innovation in education offerings, and top areas of investment fo...

Innovation is an aspiration of many organizations, including learning businesses. This episode, number 442, features a conversation with Mary Byers. Mary is an author, speaker, facilitator, consultant, CEO coach, and mastermind facilitator, and she’s deeply knowledgeable about innovation. Mary wrote Race for Relevance: Five Radical Changes for Associations , and her work focuses on helping organiz...

A learning business must understand learning theory and put that theory into practice if it is to create offerings that result in positive change and impact. This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 441, features a conversation with instructional psychologist Dr. Ruth Colvin Clark and co-host Celisa Steele. Ruth has spent her spent her career translating academic research into practica...

In Leading Learning Podcast episode 440, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele share the questions and topics probed in Leading Learning’s annual survey on learning businesses—questions and topics that can provide a solid basis for strategy conversations in your learning business. Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode440 .

COVID changed how we live and work in many ways. One example is the increased need for remote communication and for managing and leading hybrid teams. Wayne Turmel is part of the Kevin Eikenberry Group, and he and Kevin co-wrote The Long-Distance Leader , originally published in 2018, with a revised edition out in 2024. Wayne’s work focuses on remote and virtual communication in the evolving workp...

Effort contributes to lasting, durable learning, which means learning businesses have a responsibility to expect learners to put in effort and an incentive to support them in doing so. Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss the role of effort in learning and how learning businesses can scaffold effort in this episode, number 438. Show notes and a downloadable transcr...

Content marketing at its core is educational. It’s about raising awareness not only of a brand but of that brand’s ability to help and to act as a partner. For many learning businesses, content marketing is the start of the learner journey and the way they establish both expertise and trust with prospective learners. Deirdre Reid is a writer, a content marketer, and the publisher of Association Br...

Impact is a theme we circle back to again and again on the Leading Learning Podcast because we believe that any learning business needs to create impact for the learners and other stakeholders it serves. And measurement and evaluation are critical for knowing if we’re creating impact and for showing that impact. Dr. Alaina Szlachta is author of the book Measurement and Evaluation on a Shoestring ....

If the goal of so much professional learning is improving the skills and abilities of learners on the job, then why put theory and methods before practice opportunities? That question gets at the core of reflective practice-based learning, which is an approach that emphasizes practice before theory. Annasofie Wædeled-Møller, a learning and development expert, is passionate about helping educators...

As parents, as partners, as colleagues, as professionals, people are constantly being asked for some of their time, and learning businesses are part of the clamor for people’s time. Learning requires time, yet many people feel they don’t have enough of it. How do learning businesses secure a share of people’s limited time, and how can they help learners make the most of the time they do invest? In...

Amrit Ahluwalia is executive director of Continuing Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, where he’s focused on growing Western’s professional and continuing education reputation and approach to match the reputation and approach the institution already brings to its research and undergraduate programing. Before joining Western, Amrit founded The EvoLLLution, and he ran the publ...