The Mindtools L&D Podcast

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 discus...

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...

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 ma...

For eight years, the team here on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast (formerly The GoodPractice Podcast ) have been chatting work, performance and learning with some of the brightest minds in learning and development. This week, to celebrate the release of our 400 th episode, our friends Phil Willcox from Emotion at Work and Ady Howes from Digital Skills People have pulled together a tribute episode for u...

Digital learning content offers a scalable, always-on option to help your people build their skills and overcome workplace challenges. But often these libraries get dusty, bogged down by out-of-date content with little relevance, or hidden away in a dark corner of the intranet where no one can find them.   So in this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Virgin Money's Martin Ritchie, Digital Le...

In 'Measure of a Man', episode nine of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation , the Enterprise crew debate whether their robot companion, Data, is truly alive. More interesting for us, though, is the way they interact with artificial intelligence (AI) in general. Not just for what it tells us about how AI tools might evolve, but also for how we humans work with them. So in this specia...

We humans are social creatures. We form organic communities wherever we go, based on shared interests, passions and needs. But when we try to impose top-down learning communities on an employee population, things get more difficult. Is it possible for L&D to create a flourishing community? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Garner and Nahdia Khan are joined by Andy Lancast...

In learning and development, we typically want people to do something that they are currently not doing, or to stop doing something that they shouldn't be. One obvious approach is training, but there are in fact a broad spectrum of interventions that we can deploy. In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross and Owen are joined by Wil Procter, Strategy and Innovation Director at Na...

As professionals, we want to know if our work has had the impact we originally intended and to tell others about it. This means getting comfortable with data and crafting compelling data stories. On this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G is joined by Neil Cunningham, founder of Align | Learn | Do and author of Narratives and Numbers , to discuss practical and mindset shifts L&D can tak...

You've got a brilliant idea for the next big thing in tech and have gathered the smartest engineers and designers to build it (plus the cash to pay them). Will it end up being a success? You've got the best team to deliver it, so why wouldn't it be? Well… Gemma, Ross and Martin Gonzalez, Google's Effective Founders Project founder and author, discuss this situation on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast. W...

If you're thinking, isn't positive psychology a bit 'woo woo', and a bit like forcing yourself to take a sunny outlook, then this episode is for you. As an approach to a happier, more balanced inner and outer life, positive psychology is not woo – it has a solid scientific foundation with practical methodologies. Gemma, Ross Garner and their guest, Leadership coach Sandra Berko, discuss these very...

Adaptive courses come in many forms, but generally respond to the learner's existing knowledge and skills: thereby optimizing the time to completion. But do they improve learning outcomes?   In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross G and Owen are joined by Roy de Vries, Learning Innovator at aNewSpring , to explore the results of an experiment they ran to compare adaptive vs lin...

Timeboxing means dividing your day into 15-60 minute slots, based on your priorities, and then sticking to those slots as you dive into the business of work. If that sounds great, it is. If it sounds easy, it isn't. In this week's episode o f The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , author Marc Zao-Sanders joins Ross G to give him advice on timeboxing his life. We discuss: ·        The benefits of timeboxing;...

As learning designers, we're ultimately in the business of trying to help people build new connections in their brains. To do this effectively, we need to have a fundamental understanding of how the brain works. But how far down the neuroscience rabbit hole do we need to go?   In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross Dickie and Ross Garner are joined by Lauren Waldman, learning...

As a conversation approach and development tool, coaching is a highly effective option for everyone – not just the executive suite. Professional coaches are expensive, so how can large organisations give all of their employees the chance to be coached and for coaching conversations to be the norm? In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Gemma and Claire are joined by Mina Papakonstantinou,...

Whether you're delivering workshops, speaking at conferences, presenting to senior leaders, or even hosting L&D's favorite podcast, public speaking is a critical skill for learning professionals. So how do you develop this skill, and how do you manage your nerves when speaking publicly?   In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross D and Lara are joined by Samantha Tulloch, public...

One-off learning interventions are frequently the 'go to' solution for workplace learning teams, but we know that spaced repetition and retrieval practice are more effective. How do we get past organizational constraints that make this difficult? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Tony Manwani from People Unboxed joins Ross Dickie and Ross Garner to discuss: ·        The proble...

Throughout the first few months of this year, we've been exploring artificial intelligence for L&D. In episode 377, Donald Taylor gave us the context on the extent to which L&D pros are using AI In episode 379, Ross Steven offered advice for getting started. This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross and Owen were joined by Kacper Lodzikowski, Vice President of AI Capabilities at Pearson, to d...

Today's workplace is one where change is the norm. Learning is critical in this environment, but supporting learning isn't just about creating content .   In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , JD Dillon joins Ross Dickie a nd Ross Garner to discuss his book, The Modern Learning Ecosystem . We cover:   Why JD's book includes 'learning' in its title, even though it's not really abou...

Donald Taylor describes this year's Global Sentiment Survey as the 'unsurprising survey'. Predictably, artificial intelligence topped the table by some margin. But the results of this year's survey still tell us a lot about how L&D perceives itself and the challenges we face as a profession. In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Donald joins Ross and Owen to parse the results of th...

While there are often constraints in charity's learning budgets, it's actually this limitation that can point the way to more efficient and effective learning design and development. There's much that the corporate learning world can learn from this.  In this episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma is joined by Gill Chester, Director of Little Man Project and Ross Dickie to discuss creating l...

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? This week in The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross and Gemma are joined by Georgie Rudd, an executive coach, to discuss the trials and delights of listening. We explore: ·        reasons that we don't listen well ·        the consequences of not listening (and of lis...

We often hear that learning and development needs a 'seat at the table'. But how do we get there? How do we build credibility, tackle real issues, and demonstrate value? In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast Ross and Owen are joined by author, academic and L&D pro Dr Keith Keating to discuss: Whether L&D are changemakers or order takers How we change the perception of L&D The extent...

What does an effective workplace wellbeing strategy look like? For some organizations, it's fruit boxes and staff discounts. For consultant and author Liggy Webb, it's a holistic approach that factors in the physical, social, mental, financial, digital, environmental and spiritual health of colleagues. In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Ross and Nahdia are joined by Liggy to di...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) generally and Large Language Models (LLMs) specifically have been all the rage over the past 12 months. Should you care?   In this we ek's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast , Rosses Garner and Dickie are joined by learning strategist Ross Stevenson to discuss:   The current state of AI   The extent to which L&D pros should pay attention to ongoing developments   Ti...