Trainer Tools

I've always though that hospitals are the best example we have of a good learning organisation, and the medical profession the best example of continuous professional development, so I was keen to chat to someone who understood this field better than I did (my medical training is entirely made up of watching Grey's Anatomy) - and so I was grateful to have the opportunity to have a conversation with Dr Alex Young, a qualified surgeon and L&D entrepreneur (and marathon runner etc.). Dr Alex Young is an NHS trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, and founder of Virti. Passionate about improving human performance, he built and sold his first company whilst at university, before boot-strapping and scaling another while still training in the NHS. Virti develops immersive training tools to improve human performance in organisations around the globe. They have won a wealth of awards including being named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2021. Check out Alex's website here (with links to his social media presence and YouTube channel) and here on LinkedIn.  

In this episode John Tomlinson talks with Kushal Bose about his remarkable career and how he's used his engineering and film making background to create deep learning experiences in organisations. Kushal Bose is the CEO of teledec.com and learning & development facilitator for corporate clients. He helps companies reduce costs and improve bottom line through the art of storytelling. With advanced degrees in engineering and film production, he founded Teledec International in 1987 to create engaging training tools that combine the different techniques of cinema, explaining complex technical concepts. For 35 years Teledec has been at the leading edge of innovative training development with an impressive client list of Fortune 500 companies including: Abbot, BP, McDonald's, Philips, Northrup, Ameritech, Kraft, Cisco, Discover and many more. Their speciality is taking existing training material (PDF, Excel, AutoCad, Visio, MSWord engineering specs, job aids, etc) and publishing a seamless engaging presentation for an online audience. These presentations can be instructor led, self-paced, or blended. They excel in developing: Learning Solutions Compliance Training Technology Training Organization Development Training Sales Training Customized Training Solutions Teledec has an impressive in-house capability including subject matter expertise, video production, graphics and animation, programming, authoring, instructional design, technical writing and LMS administration.

We all make mistakes, and when we're forced to suddenly start working entirely online after a lifetime of facilitating training in training rooms, we might make a lot more of them! No problem, mistakes are learning opportunities, and so in this podcast John Tomlinson talks to Caroline Black about five mistakes she's made since the Covid pandemic and moving her learning and development sessions into the virtual world. Caroline Black is a specialist in leadership development and communication skills. She is a Fellow and Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Caroline designs and delivers bespoke online and face to face training courses, workshops and webinars. She is also a corporate event facilitator (online and face to face) and conference chair. Her clients in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Cabinet Office, The Royal Navy, ACCA and Lloyds Banking Group. Caroline is a published author of The PR Professionals handbook (Kogan Page 2014) and The PR Practitioner's Desk Top Guide (Thorogood second edition 2009). In her spare time, she runs baby namings, weddings and funerals on behalf of Humanists UK. Visit her website here or follow her on Twitter (@caroblack) or visit her profile on LinkedIn.    

In this episode, John Tomlinson talks to Mary Brunton about her experience of bringing leadership training into the virtual world as the pandemic took hold and face-to-face training was stopped. In this conversation, Mary and John share their experiences and discuss how imposter syndrome has increased with the new ways of working. Mary L Brunton MA (Hons) CIPD has been working internationally for over 20 years and in more than 30 countries. Mary has extensive professional experience of designing and delivering senior leadership training and executive coaching for teams and individuals. Clients include the UK Civil Service, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), EU institutions, the British Council, the World Bank, OECD, the Commonwealth Institute and Deutsche Bank. For over a decade Mary has been selected as an Executive Coach for the most senior grades in the UK Civil Service and has specialist expertise in promotion, resilience, branding, personal impact and public speaking. Mary is an independent consultant and the Senior Director of the successful Pilot HR Consultancy (established 2006) which delivers training, coaching and facilitation services to organisations in the UK and internationally. To contact Mary, email: marybrunton@pilothr.co.uk  

In this podcast John talks to Sunita Sehmi about how Learning and Development professionals can approach inclusion in our work, and how we can move from talking about words like "diversity" and "inclusion" to thinking about "belonging" 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 Development and Training of Adults from the UK. She also has a Masters in Human Resources, Coaching and Career Management from HEC University of Geneva. Where she wrote her Master Thesis “How does proficiency in English affect French-native professionals at work?” A qualitative research conducted in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. She is the founder of Walk The Talk, which provides tailor-made professional coaching consultancy and training. Her business background includes working with International companies in banking, finance, media, pharmaceuticals, and FMCG industries. Sunita's coaching style advances the skills and approaches needed to develop performance. Her forte is the fact that she has studied and worked in several different countries and thus her understanding and knowledge of language communication and culture is compact and solid. During her twenty-five years of international experience, Sunita's objective has always been to support people to uncover and utilise their potential and to help individuals and organizations to perform at their very best. Sunita is an accomplished speaker and business writer furthermore she has had several articles published articles in the press. She has written two books: The Power of Belonging How to Get Out of Your Own Way    

In this episode John Tomlinson talks to Lydia Hooper of Venngage about how to make great visuals for use in education and training, or more generally to communicate complex information in an engaging and effective way. Examples used during the discussion: Visuals about diversity, equity, and inclusion: https://venngage.com/blog/designing-for-diversity/ Visual about vaccine barriers: https://venngage.com/blog/vaccine-education Examples of good infographics (including relationship timeline): https://venngage.com/blog/good-infographic Other articles by Lydia on Venngage: https://venngage.com/blog/author/lydia-hooper Lydia Hooper is the information design expert at Venngage, the simple and powerful design solution for making infographics for business. She has designed and facilitated workshops for dozens of organizations including the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Association for Talent Development and the American Institute of Graphic Arts-Colorado. Her writing has been published by numerous publications including Training Journal and SAGE Publishing's MethodSpace, and she is the co-author and editor of the forthcoming Authoritative Guide to Designing Infographics. You can follow Lydia on LinkedIn.  

In this episode John Tomlinson talks to Matt Somers about his five dos and five don'ts when training managers on using a coaching style of management. Matt Somers is a coach, trainer and author. He helps managers get good at coaching and with the areas people most want coaching on: Sales, Leadership and Communication. He has been in the training and development business for most of his career, focusing on the idea of the Leader as a Coach since 1995. His training programmes, books, articles and seminars have helped hundreds of leaders achieve outstanding results through their people and teams. He has an MSc in Human Resource Development and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Working internationally, he has helped multiple high-performance organisations, including HSBC, Citigroup, Scottish & Southern Energy and Sage PLC. To get in touch or find out more, please drop an email to matt@mattsomers.com or connect on LinkedIn.    

Most leaders are not succeeding in their roles as leaders, sometimes because they're in the wrong job, and sometimes because they're not self-aware enough and so cannot manage their behaviours to improve their effectiveness. In this episode, John talks to Nancy Parsons about the work she does in coaching leaders and running leadership development programmes, and how her company has developed a suite a tools to really dig deep on self-awareness. Nancy E. Parsons is the President and CEO of CDR Companies. She is one of today’s foremost experts in combining the science of assessments with the art of developing people. As CEO and President of CDR Companies, LLC, she and her team shed new light on personality strengths, inherent risks and motivation and change performance, careers and lives. Esteemed author of two research based books including the Amazon best-seller, Women Are Creating the Glass Ceiling and Have the Power to End It, Nancy is the 2019 MEECO International Thought Leader of Distinction in Executive Coaching and continues to break barriers in her field.  In 1998, Nancy and Kimberly R. Leveridge, Ph.D, authored the break-through CDR 3-Dimensional Assessment Suite®, an ideal coaching tool for global clients. The CDR 3-D Suite measures character traits, inherent risk factors for derailment, and drivers and reward needs. Combining this scientifically-validated assessment suite with cutting-edge technology, Nancy and her team launched CDR-U Coach in July of 2020. This product is the first of its kind that provides a scalable, personalized, online coaching feedback solution based on the results of the most in-depth assessments available on the market today. Because of the rich data source, predictive results, and complex algorithms, CDR-U Coach provides an A/I type experience for users with no two users having the same feedback. Nancy works with global leaders to accelerate success by helping them identify and develop their true talent at the launching point of a coaching engagement. She provides executive coaching services for the C-Suite and leaders across all sectors, facilitates strategic executive team development sessions, and instructs custom “Authentic Leadership” and “Women in Leadership” workshops. Additionally, she instructs and leads CDR Executive Coaches’ Certification Workshops and teaches advanced coaches’ programs. She has authored countless articles and blog posts on topics ranging from diversity and inclusion in the workplace to employee retention and has presented at international, national, and regional industry conferences. In 2016, Nancy developed the architecture of “Vets Coaching Vets,” which is a philanthropic initiative helping to accelerate veterans’ success in the job market. CDR Companies has worked with more than 5 veterans’ organizations and has provided assessments, individual coaching, and training workshops for over 50 veterans. CDR Companies, LLC is certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the nation’s largest third-party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women.   Social media links Instagram: @cdrugroup Facebook LinkedIn

In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, John Tomlinson talks to Nikie Forster about how we can use LEGO in Learning and Development. Nikie Forster was convinced she was going to be a Radio One presenter from an early age, so took a less than conventional route into the world of Learning & Development. This has given her a wide range of experiences that enables her to see learning in every interaction.  Two decades later, having backed up these experiences with a plethora of professional qualifications, she is now Director and Founder of Curious Lighthouse Learning Consultancy, where she specialises in enabling Curious, Creative, and Credible training solutions for Managers, Trainers, and Entrepreneurs to enhance their performance, whether they are at the very start of their journey or experienced professionals. She often uses LEGO in her learning solutions and has created several online courses to help others do the same.   ​​​​​​​​​​Curious Lighthouse is based in Hampshire and mainly serves the south coast and worldwide virtually. Link to the main page for Nikie's Lego courses, including a freebie: ‘Introducing your Learners To LEGO’ 14-page free guide Link to the open-source Lego Serious Play guide (PDF download)

Universities and colleges like MIT are fantastic at the theory, and great at technical training, but they have traditionally been less strong on teaching their students the practical skills needed to succeed in the workplace. Mark Herschberg works with MIT as a mentor-instructor, his role is to work with students to plug this gap, teaching them essential professional skills and lessons in management and leadership. He has captured 20 years of his learning into his book, The Career Toolkit (see link below). In this podcast he talks to John about the methods they use at MIT for leadership development and other practical workplace skills, and, as a special bonus, we add the terms "firm skills" and "Schrödinger's opinion" to our vocabulary!   Mark Herschberg is the author of The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia. He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually. At MIT, he received a B.S. in Physics, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and a M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, focusing on cryptography. At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, including Techie Youth and Plant A Million Corals.  

So often L&D is about righting wrongs and filling gaps in our knowledge or skills, and OK ... yes, this has a place for specific learning needs, but when thinking more deeply about personal development, positive psychology gives us an engaging way to focus on the good stuff and build on strengths and opportunities, and not just fixing the crap stuff. In this episode, John talks to Alex Bailey about how we can use positive psychology in L&D, and especially for social learning where the focus is on learning and sharing, and not on knowledge-transfer by a know-all trainer. Alex Bailey is CEO and founder of Bailey & French, a purpose led global consulting company that is focused on humanising the World of Work. Alex is pioneering a new paradigm in psychology strengthening what’s already uniquely brilliant about individuals and teams in all types of organisations. Her work over the past 20+ years is focused on large scale cultural evolution that combines the latest evidence based research with innovative approaches to help people, teams and organisations grow.  Over the past seven years Alex has led her company to successfully expand reach and scope across the world in all industries, sectors and markets bringing her ambitious vision to life. See here for Bailey and French on Twitter, and here for Alex's profile on LinkedIn.  

John Tomlinson talks to Shirley Gaston about how we can make our online learning sessions more experiential and engaging - feels like an important intervention given the amount of PowerPointy crap there is out there! Shirley Gaston is the founder of  the experiential learning company Azesta which has been developing people for 21 years. As such, she is one of the driving forces within the company. She values openness and this quality is intrinsic to her award-winning learning programmes. It is important to her to be really approachable and, although professional, her overt friendliness is part of her style. Shirley’s passion for learning through experience has led to her working in learning and development for her entire career and also representing experiential tool maker Metalog and virtual exercise creator Gaminar in the UK. She has a first class degree in Education, a Post Graduate Certificate and Diploma in Professional Training and Development, she is a qualified coach and holds numerous psychometric qualifications. She is an absolute CPD addict and attends facilitator development programmes on an almost weekly basis as well as running the non-profit Yorkshire Trainers Development Network. Working directly with her own clients, she specialises in leadership and management, engagement, team development and coaching skills. Working with trainers, she shares her passion for programmes that fully involve the learner and incorporate active and creative review and the most possible variety. She has had several articles published particularly in the field of experiential learning and outdoor management development and is currently working on her first book on the subject. Shirley lives in Yorkshire with her partner, four children, a dog and three cats. She enjoys a range of outdoor activities, theatre, book groups and is also a Humanist wedding celebrant.      

In this episode John talks to stand-up comedian Sam Carrington about how organisations can use stand-up comedy for staff wellbeing, leadership development and running fun and engaging away days - we talk mainly in the context of remote working where issues of wellbeing, mental health and motivation are especially pertinent. Sam Carrington is a working stand-up comedian who has done over a thousand gigs, including three stints at the world famous Edinburgh Festival. He also runs Smirk Experience, a company that runs corporate training events about how to use the skills and techniques of comedy to improve your confidence, communication and leadership ... in their words, they "harness the power of comedy to transform people and businesses"   

John Tomlinson speaks to Jeff Wald about the future of work, what knowledge and skills workers will need in the future, and why he put up $10 million dollars for a prize! Jeff Wald is the Founder of Work Market, an enterprise software platform that enablescompanies to manage freelancers (acquired by ADP). Jeff has founded several othertechnology companies, including Spinback, a social sharing platform (eventually purchased by salesforce.com). Jeff began his career in finance, serving as Managing Director at activist hedge fund Barington Capital Group, a Vice President at venture capital firm GlenRock and various roles in the M&A Group at JP Morgan. Jeff is an active angel investor and startup advisor, as well as serving on numerous public and private Boards of Directors. He also formerly served as an officer in the Auxiliary Unit of the New York Police Department. Jeff is the author of The Birthday Rules and The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Jeff frequently speaks at conferences and in media on startups and labor issues. Jeff holds an MBA from Harvard University and an MS and BS from Cornell University.

In this episode I talk to author and coach Amy Lyn Durham about her approach to tackling loneliness at work through creative "magic": crearing emotional and meaningful workplace experiences Amy Lynn Durham  is a U.C. Berkeley Certified Executive Coach and Emotional Intelligence Practitioner who has spent years in the corporate world successfully managing hundreds of employees for private and publicly -traded companies. She is often referred to as a Corporate Mystic due to her unique ability of providing Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) in order to energize and transform the workplace. Links https://createmagicatwork.net/  https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/amydurhamexecutivecoaching/

In this episode John Tomlinson chats to Chris Denny about his approach to teaching attention to detail. This isn't what you might expect, it's not about to become more pedantic, or being a completer-finisher, it's about an approach to quality and thoroughness than can impact every aspect of your, and your team's, performance Chris Denny is a researcher, trainer, author, consultant, and business owner. When he is not running a business or spending time with his family, he is researching attention to detail or helping others become more detail-oriented. Chris delivers training workshops and seminars for private companies and government organizations and even does one on one coaching for high-value employees. Attention to Detail Solutions is a soft skills training company that helps individuals, companies, and organizations decrease errors, increase productivity, and improve overall quality -- beginning with the core system to improve attention to detail. His book is available here on Amazon  

This isn't just about how to do e-learning better, it's about how to use e-learning well to complement face-to-face learning and get more engaged learners, leave fewer people behind, improve learning retention, and make the job of the trainer more interesting and rewarding. In this episode Clint shared what he has learnt from developing Brainitz that we can apply to the corporate training world. If it works on teenagers, it's got to work on adults, surely! Clint Knox is a National Board Certified Teacher who’s taught grades 6-11th over the last 14 years. He is the CEO/Founder of Brainitz, an online video training tool that specializes in ease of use for the instructor and accountability for the student. Brainitz was founded out of a need in his own classroom and has now expanded into higher education and corporate training. For more information on Brainitz visit www.brainitz.com. Clint can be reached at clint@brainitz.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintknox/  

Under pressure of lockdowns and limited travel, many of us are rushing to create a decent virtual L&D offer to fill the gap. A lot of the time this is a lecture + PowerPoint slides delivered via Zoom rather than in a classroom, and that's really not good enough. In this episode of Trainer Tools, Paul Levy argues that we need to rethink the whole thingand not just transfer the old slides online. Paul Levy is a writer, facilitator and senior researcher at the University of Brighton and also an associate at Warwick Business School. He is the author of the books Digital Inferno and the Poetry of Change. He has been researching the impact of the digital realm on our personal and working lives for over fifteen years. As the world moved into lockdown over the Covid-19 outbreak, he has been working on useful ways of transitioning from physical to digital world education, as well as the blend of both. He is director of the change and transformation enabler CATS3000. He lives in Brighton in the UK.    

Three white middle-aged men chat about the importance of diversity and inclusion and how Learning and Development can help create more inclusive connected workplaces. With Rich and Ralph Brandt of RDR Group When it comes to diversity trainers, Ralph and Rich are not what you’d expect. Being white males and identical twins, they’re an anomaly. And yet, Ralph and Rich are living examples that bias can change. Growing up with a twin had its benefits — a constant playmate, a study partner, and a friend. But it was also an insular experience. Their natural tendency was to flock together as they went through life. Ralph and Rich tended to be less open to “outsiders” and as young children, anything different seemed foreign and uncomfortable. To further complicate things, growing up in the early 1960s, there were no people of colour in their schools, gender roles were tightly defined and people of other religions or sexual orientations were rarely discussed. Thankfully, a cultural revolution was coming. As they entered adulthood, Ralph and Rich attended seminary and it was there that they were met with broadening perspectives and experiences that challenged and reshaped their beliefs. From this reorienting of their views, they identified their call to make the workplace a more diverse and inclusive environment for all. Much like they experienced, Ralph and Rich believe that becoming comfortable with people who are perceived as different requires openness and a willingness to change your tendencies and habits. A much needed message not only for white males but for all cultural groups, genders and generations, the Brandts are committed to helping your organization change perspectives and understand the value of diversity and inclusion.

Introducing a new podcast about making work work: the Workplace Survival Guide, recorded pre-Covid times when the world felt a little different. My colleagues Sarah and Marietta and I are very happy to have you on board as we try and answer work related conundrums, sent to us by our listeners. Hopefully you've familiarised yourself with the agenda and are ready to take some minutes for cascading after the episode. Today...we look at meetings and discuss, when and how to speak up, when to keep schtum, and how to deal with negativity from people in meetings. Listen up for our special guest stars too! And if you like the episode, we would love it if you could leave us a review. How to speak up in a meeting and when to hold back, by Allison Shapira

In this episode John Tomlinson talks to Spencer Ayres about the future of work and what it means for L&D Spencer Ayres is an entrepreneur, product designer and educator focused on enabling people to become the best they can be through human and digital experiences. Spencer (link - https://spencerayres.com/) is Co-Founder and COO of Future Builders (Link - https://futurebuilders.co) - who's mission is to make meaningful learning as impactful and easy to access as possible, with the goal of maximising personal and professional productivity.    Prior to this Spencer has started and grown a number of startups, helped large organisations with the people side of digital transformation and was secondary school teacher for 8 years.    Whilst at the coding bootcamp school, Makers Academy, Spencer created and spun out a new company focused on creating the best Technology apprenticeship in the country. This grew from an idea to multimillions in revenue within a year and has now become the main focus for the whole company, supporting hundreds of people to change their careers whilst being paid and utilising the Apprenticeship Levy.    Whilst at Freeformers, Spencer designed and ran multiple transformation programmes across some of the biggest corporates in the country, including the Barclays Digital Eagles programme & a global digital adoption programme for 10s of thousands of HSBC staff.    Spencer is also a fellow podcast enthusiast and has recently launched his own show with Nick Himowicz - The Spen & Nick Show (link: https://anchor.fm/spenandnick) where they talk about innovation, design, learning and business.     

How we measure learning makes a big difference. The right measure can be motivational and harnessing gamification to get a virtuous circle going that reinforces learning, the wrong measures can do the opposite. They can be a costly overhead that reward the wrong behaviours, demotivate, and probably track things that don't really matter. In this episode I talk to Rich Lanchantin of Qstream about the importance of productivity/performance metrics in a company's ROI measurement of their L&D efforts. Rich sets the Qstream vision to ensure our microlearning solution delivers long term value and measurable outcomes for our enterprise customers, partners, their employees and our investors. Prior to Qstream, Rich spent 30+ years in customer success and sales leadership roles for notable life sciences and software companies. He is dedicated to listening to customer, market and internal feedback to continuously inform product, sales, services and marketing direction to fuel Qstream’s growth and customer success

In February 2020, Ulead Media invited me to speak at the L&D Summit event in Madrid. My session was about the future of L&D, and what we needed to do to stay relevant and get right into the heart of the organisation. In this talk I share six things I think we need to do to achieve that. Thanks to Ulead for inviting me.        

In this podcast Krystyna Gadd talks to Harriet Bell, Marketing Director from Emerald Publishing, about what their marketing department needs from Learning and Development. What's great about this interview (in my opinion) is that in the last section, Harriet's view exactly fits with my own about what we need to be doing: close partnerships with the business, focussing on problem area and performance opportunities, and co-creating content to fit their specific needs and circumstances. Harriet Bell has worked in academic publishing for over 20 years, and is now a Board member for Emerald Publishing which is an independent social science and humanities publisher. Harriet is responsible for global marketing and product development for Emerald at a time of exciting opportunity and change, moving towards innovative content formats to more broadly communicate research findings, supporting open science and above all looking at the role publishers can play in supporting research impact. 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 has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers. If you want to get in touch or just see some of the stuff Krys gets involved with, then you can contact her, look at her website, read her blog or view some of her short and snappy videos on YouTube.      

Stand-up comedians have to be confident storytellers who keep the attention of their audience for long periods of time, they also work hard on "finding their voice" so they know who they are when they dare to stand on stage under the lights and demand their audience's attention - so what skills and techniques do they develop to pull this off, and what can we use in L&D? Sam Carrington is a working stand-up comedian who has done over a thousand gigs, including three stints at the world famous Edinburgh Festival. He also runs Smirk Experience, a company that runs corporate training events about how to use the skills and techniques of comedy to improve your confidence, communication and leadership ... in their words, they "harness the power of comedy to transform people and businesses"   

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 in both Business Change and IT functions, being responsible for 100-150 professional delivery people at any time. She likes to take a strategic perspective and work collaboratively to bring different disciplines together to make progress. She thinks of herself as both straightforward and resilient. 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 has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers. If you want to get in touch or just see some of the stuff Krys gets involved with, then you can contact her, look at her website, read her blog or view some of her short and snappy videos on YouTube.

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 secure in various roles. Among other things, she has had overall responsibility for an IT project portfolio in Eastern Europe, accompanied by mergers from banks, optimized processes and built an aircraft. She found out what has led to success in multinational highly complex projects: PEOPLE who enjoy their work and look forward to every Monday. In 2011, Nadja changed her perspective and since then, as an independent entrepreneur, has devoted herself to the task of making organizations and teams fit for the future. Here Nadja works with both modern and proven formats and methods and serves a wide range of topics around people, work and motivation. As an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and facilitator, Nadja Petranovskaja always brings fresh, actionable impulses and courage to deal with changes – both locally on site and via digital tools in English, German and Russian. For More Shiny Eyes    

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 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 has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers. If you want to get in touch or just see some of the stuff Krys gets involved with, then you can contact her, look at her website, read her blog or view some of her short and snappy videos on YouTube.    

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 learning company Azesta which has been developing people for 16 years. As such, she is one of the driving forces within the company. She values openness and this quality is intrinsic to her learning programmes.  It is important to her to be really approachable and, although highly professional, her overt friendliness is part of her style. Shirley’s passion for learning through experience has led to her working in learning and development for her entire career and she was approached four years ago to be the sole distributor and ‘face’ of Metalog in the UK.  She has a first class degree in Education as well as a Post Graduate Certificate and Diploma in Professional Training and Development. She also holds numerous psychometric qualifications and has attended many short trainer development programmes as well as providing them herself for her own staff and associates. Working directly with her own clients, she specialises in leadership, engagement, coaching skills, sales and customer service. Working with trainers, she shares her passion for programmes that fully involve the learner and incorporate active and creative reviewing techniques. She has had several articles published particularly in the field of experiential learning and outdoor management development and is currently working on her first book on the subject. Shirley lives in Yorkshire with her partner, three small children and a cat. She enjoys a range of outdoor activities, theatre, running her book group and is also a Humanist wedding celebrant.  

Hi, now and again I release an occasional podcast about leadership.  Each episode 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. I hope you find it useful and interesting, but if not, just delete it, I won't get upset.    

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 Sedgwick of JDX Consulting, a company that has done just that: put L&D at the heart of who they are and how they succeed. Sarah Brennan, is the Global Head of Learning and Developmen at JDX Consulting Having worked as a leadership consultant to JDX since early 2016, Sarah joined the company in 2017 as the CEO of Create Edge and Global Head of L&D. Sarah has over 15 years’ experience as a trainer, facilitator, HR professional and international executive coach. Fully CIPD qualified, an NLP Master Practitioner, member of the British Psychological Society and expert in a range of psychometrics, Sarah has worked in large corporate and multinational businesses, through to public sector bodies and small not-for-profit organisations. Her vast experience, passion for the work she does and keen interest in positive psychology and neuroscience have seen Sarah successfully roll-out numerous leadership, management and graduate development programmes, work alongside multiple Boards and senior teams to offer executive coaching and strategic support. She has also run her own training and coaching business and inspires others through her public speaking engagements. She has implemented various bespoke talent identification and management approaches and played a fundamental role in the bid, tender and acquisition processes in large organisations. Since joining JDX, Sarah has successfully rebuilt the L&D function, launched a world-class global learning Academy and implemented an eLearning platform consisting of around 500 learning modules. Sarah also runs an internal executive coaching programme, a consultant-focused mentoring programme and has led on a number of culture development initiatives. Rachel Sedgwick, Learning and Development Manager at JDX Consulting Rachel has nearly 10 years of learning and development experience in a variety of sectors and is currently responsible for managing the day-to-day running of the L&D function at JDX Consulting, including team and budget management, and the production and implementation of innovative learning content across the organisation. Prior to her post at JDX, Rachel was Learning and Development Manager at Westminster Council Housing where she worked directly with the CEO and the executive leadership team. In this position Rachel built the learning and development department and team from scratch and was responsible for designing and rolling out the L&D strategy across the organisation and tying continuous learning into the existing values structure. Rachel has also held L&D roles at Google, The Racing Post, Prudential Assurance, and Cushman and Wakefield and has an array of professional certifications from The Academy of Executive Coaching, Mindgym and the TRACOM group, as well as a BA (hons) in Drama and Theatre Studies from Roehampton University.    

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 language learning at scale. Katie ensures that learners are getting the most efficient and effective educational experience possible.   Prior to this, she worked at the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language, where she served as the Principal Investigator on large-scale projects researching the efficacy of technology-mediated language training products. She has taught Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics at the graduate level at Hunter College and has facilitated numerous teacher training courses around the world.   Katie Nielson has a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Virginia and a Master of Arts in Linguistics from University College London. In 2012, Katie received her PhD in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Maryland College Park. Katie lectures and writes about all things related to language learning and educational technology, including for HR Technologist, Language Magazine, and The74. You can find her on LinkedIn, Twitter, and at the Voxy Blog. Katie Nielson has been the Chief Education Officer at Voxy, an educational technology compa

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 VP. Over the years he has coached countless employees and leaders to be more effective presenters, facilitators, and trainers. Prior to joining Turpin, he was a Project Leader for a boutique consultancy that uses live theatre to initiate the leadership development process. Prior to that, he was an actor. Greg was the 2015 President of ATD, Chicagoland Chapter. He is a frequent blogger, popular speaker, and the co-author of two books: “The Orderly Conversation: Business Presentations Redefined” and “Effective SMEs: A Trainer’s Guide for Helping Subject Matter Experts Facilitate Learning.” He is among many thought leaders who contributed to the book “Master Presenter: Lessons from the World’s Top Experts on Becoming a More Influential Speaker.” In his spare time, he works as the Executive Director of Turpin Cares, which provides food, hygiene, and comfort items to the homeless on Chicago’s south side. See here for Greg’s blog, LinkedIn profile, and Turpin Commiunication Facebook page. Dr Dale Ludwig has a Ph.D. in Communication and, prior to founding Turpin Communication in 1992, taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He started Turpin with the mission to provide the best presentation and facilitation skills training possible. Since then he has worked to do just that. In addition to being one of Turpin’s lead instructors and executive coaches, he also serves as Chief Learning Architect when tailoring learning engagements for clients. Dale is the co-author of “The Orderly Conversation: Business Presentations Redefined” and “Effective SMEs: A Trainer’s Guide to Helping Subject Matter Experts Facilitate Learning.” He also wrote the Readers’ Choice Award-winning article “Let’s Get Serious about Live, Instructor-Led Training” for Training Industry Magazine. He spends his spare time as the Board President of Turpin Cares, the philanthropic arm of Turpin Communication, where he leads efforts to supply food and comfort to those experiencing homelessness on Chicago’s south side. See here for Dale’s blog, LinkedIn profile, and Turpin Commiunication Facebook page.  

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 that creates measurable performance impact. She has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers. If you want to get in touch or just see some of the stuff Krys gets involved with, then you can contact her, look at her website, read her blog or view some of her short and snappy videos on YouTube Kevin M Yates is a Learning & Development detective and just like Sherlock Holmes, he solves mysteries. The mystery he solves is, “Did training work?” He uses facts, evidence and data to show training and learning’s impact on behavior, performance and goals. His work is global and multi-industry. He’s served in a variety of roles across training, learning and talent development which guides and informs his perspective and actions. Kevin’s guiding principle is, “Find one thing about a person’s behavior or performance you can attribute to training or learning and let that lead to the facts about impact.” Kevin is current the Learning Technology Manager at McDonald’s Visit Kevin’s website and connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

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 with other videos, training, and resources

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 creating great leadership development simulations Bjorn Billhardt is the CEO of Abilitie. Prior to founding Abilitie in 2015, Bjorn was the CEO of Enspire Learning, Inc., a custom e-learning development company he co-founded in 2001. Abilitie offers award-winning team-based leadership simulations that hone people management, business acumen, and strategic leadership skills. Abilitie’s simulations have been utilized by over 40 members of the Fortune 500 in more than 30 countries around the world. Bjorn is a recognized authority in the field of talent development and simulation design and has been a speaker at conferences such as Training, ASTD, and ISPI. Matt Confer is the VP of Strategy & Business Development at Abilitie focused on new client relationships and partnership development in the learning & development industry. Matt’s interest in the learning & development space began at Deloitte Consulting where he was a Manager in their Project Controller Practice and worked to help develop and then facilitated a brand new on boarding program for new campus hires.  

At Trainer Tools, we occasionally promote L&D industry events, books or other content that we think is of value. In this case, we're proud to be involved with the 2019 L&D Executive Summit organised by Opal Group. Learning leaders from some of the most recognizable global brands including Starbucks, Disney, Wells Fargo, Campbell’s Soup, Yale, Royal Caribbean Cruises and more – will be speaking at the 2019 Learning & Development Executive Summit at the Four Seasons Resort in Orlando, FL in February 2019. This exclusive invitation-only event is designed for C-Suite and Heads of Corporate Learning, Talent Development and Talent Management. Request an invitation or learn about sponsorship opportunities by contacting info@opalgroup.net or visiting https://opalgroup.net/conference/learning-development-2019/. Hot topics include designing for the modern learner, transforming organizational culture and building a resilient, global workforce

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 helping us understand ourselves and our own interpersonal behaviours, but also understand those of others. In this episode Garry talks about "Drivers", also known as "working styles" and this builds on the first TA series This podcast includes a promotion for the 2019 Learning and Development Executive Summit Garry Platt is an experienced training consultant with more than 30 years experience in the business. He has worked with a number of international organisations helping them to enhance their approach to training and development. Within the last 12 months he has worked with Deutsche Post DHL, Formica, Siemens, Mercedes AMG F1 Team and was the keynote speaker at the SHE Conference in Blackpool. Academically qualified to Masters Degree level in Education, Training and Development his work combines current research and study in Human Resource Development with a pragmatic and workable approach. During the last 10 years an area of specialisation has become the evaluation and return on investment analysis of training delivered in organisations. Drawing from the experience of hundreds of companies and organisations he has drawn together a large range of methods and approaches which many organisations have selected from and introduced into their own. Garry currently works for EEF and can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or email (gplatt@eef.org.uk)

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 what sits behind her big scary claims. Dr. Nanette Miner is a leadership development and workplace learning strategy consultant. She is the founder of, and Managing Consultant for, The Training Doctor; a South Carolina-based consulting firm that helps its clients to prepare today, for the organizational leadership they will need tomorrow. Clients appreciate her skill at asking relevant, timely, and often challenging questions that stimulate new thinking and help organizations to prepare for the future of work. Her focus on business goals, integrated with sound principles of adult learning, results in enhanced organizational effectiveness and astounding return on investment. She is a frequent speaker at trade conferences and corporate conventions, and an expert-guest on the topic of workforce development and millennial career-development for syndicated talk-radio shows such as America’s Workforce Radio and Inc. Radio. Her most recent book is Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills.  As a scholar-practitioner, she is has authored books on various aspects of business management, marketing and employee development, and has been published in, or quoted by Huffington Post, Fast Company, the BBC, and numerous industry and trade journals. Nanette has been passionate about business and learning since she was a youngster. She has a bachelor’s in business and marketing, a masters in human resource management and organization development, and a doctorate in adult learning theory.

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 - or digital learning - into something engaging, that people enjoyed and valued, that made a difference to real world performance. To do this, he came up the AFT model. Learn more about the AFT model in this podcast, and how it can be applied, not just in the digital world, but in any learning programme. Edan Kertis is the CEO at myQuest. He is an entrepreneur, behavioral change expert, software engineer, and the creator of the AFT learning model. Edan has dedicated his life to the quest of developing digital tools that empower people to reach their personal and professional goals. In 2012, Edan founded myQuest, a fast growing company that developed a learning and training technology which helps hundreds of companies around the world to deliver their training with outstanding results. In 2018, Edan analyzed, compiled, and sorted through all of myQuest’s user data from the last 6 years and created what is now known as the AFT learning model. The AFT learning model (Action->Feedback->Trigger) is one of the most innovative and powerful models to teach and train people online. When used correctly, the model dramatically increases engagement and completion rates as well as knowledge retention.

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 creating learning that creates measurable performance impact. She has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krys finds working with trainers an absolute joy and she constantly seeks out ways to enable trainers to cut down on preparation time, improve retention of information and accelerate the learning though their organisations. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers.  

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 Emma Shaw, an enthusiast for L&D that's all about mindset shifts - which also happens to be my own favourite part of the business. Emma Shaw discovered Learning and Development purely by accident and has had a passion for it ever since. With a very varied career within the field, she has always found one thing consistently fascinating; what makes people tick and how they evolve. As a facilitator and natural coach, Emma uses accelerated learning techniques, NLP and other creative approaches to bring out the best in people whilst creating the best learning environment possible and even sometimes challenge the status quo. She is passionate about ensuring that learning interactions really deliver results, so she is keen to always ensure a full needs analysis is done to create the right learning outcomes. That way, the learning becomes meaningful, high impact and stands out from the norm as a unique and memorable experience. Emma runs her own consultancy business in the North West and has an entrepreneurial spirit. One of her new projects is co-founding a new membership site specialising in wellbeing, mindset and successfully navigating life. Her key areas of skill within are behavioural and mindset change, sales, customer excellence and management/leadership development, as well as personal development and career coaching. You can find out more on www.espressolearning.co.uk And feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn.

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, reflected upon, and new mental models developed.The problem now is that it's not realistic to scale this level of support for a whole organisation.   Douglas Seifert, PhD is the founder and CEO of Syandus He founded Syandus 15 years ago to create a new way to learn. By combining cognitive science with game technologies, Dr. Seifert focuses on providing scalable ways to solve issues related to knowledge retention and skill acquisition. Dr. Seifert served as Principal Investigator on 8 Small Business Innovation Research awards from the National Science Foundation; this research fueled the development of the virtual immersive learning technology on which the Syandus platform is built. Syandus is now used to create customized modules for medicine, sales, leadership, and employee performance. To find out more about how Syandus works, see this link for the Syandus sales training promotional video (scroll down for the video).  

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 do I know. Paul Levy argues that today's youngsters have (or may have) a new skill set and that all the assumptions I packed into the above paragraph may be wrong. He says we should be open to the idea of embracing smartphones in the learning space and using them to enhance and share the learning. I'm not convinced ... what do you think? Paul Levy is the founder of CATS3000, a change and innovation company that helps people and organisations to realise potential and thrive. He’s worked with individuals and organisations all over the world for the last twenty years to challenge mediocrity, and to open space for change and transformation. Paul is also a senior researcher at the Centre for Research in Innovation Management at Brighton Business School in the UK. He’s the author of several books, including “Technosophy” and Digital Inferno (based on his acclaimed blog, The Digital Inferno. He is also lead facilitator with the Social Media Leadership Forum. He’s also a director of Rational Madness Theatre – an award-winning organisational theatre company that uses theatre to inspire and provoke change, transformation and innovation. He’s a facilitator, trainer, writer, thinker and collusion breaker. Paul Lives in Brighton in the UK.      

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 be really useful! Well written ones, with good descriptors of effective and ineffective behaviours, can be a great guide for superior performance and an invaluable tool in learning needs analyses and learning design. Garry Platt is an experienced training consultant with more than 30 years experience in the business. He has worked with a number of international organisations helping them to enhance their approach to training and development. Within the last 12 months he has worked with Deutsche Post DHL, Formica, Siemens, Mercedes AMG F1 Team and was the keynote speaker at the SHE Conference in Blackpool. Academically qualified to Masters Degree level in Education, Training and Development his work combines current research and study in Human Resource Development with a pragmatic and workable approach. During the last 10 years an area of specialisation has become the evaluation and return on investment analysis of training delivered in organisations. Drawing from the experience of hundreds of companies and organisations he has drawn together a large range of methods and approaches which many organisations have selected from and introduced into their own. Garry currently works for EEF and can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or email (gplatt@eef.org.uk)

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 has been training trainers since 2008, through CIPD professional programmes and her own workshops. She has published a book “50 ways to Accelerate Learning”, which expands on her “5 Secrets of Accelerated Learning” that she shared in the Training Journal article “Quick off the Mark”. Both these publications help to dispel some of the myths surrounding accelerated learning. There are 5 broad areas or “secrets” to accelerated learning, that Krys shared in a recent article called “Get up to speed” that appeared in the Training Journal in 2016. Krys finds working with trainers an absolute joy and she constantly seeks out ways to enable trainers to cut down on preparation time, improve retention of information and accelerate the learning though their organisations. Krystyna is the founder of How to Accelerate Learning and creator of The Learning Loop® a brand new and innovative way to train trainers, facilitators, subject matter experts and line managers.

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 Development and Training of Adults from the UK. She also has a Masters in Human Resources, Coaching and Career Management from HEC University of Geneva. Where she wrote her Master Thesis “How does proficiency in English affect French-native professionals at work?” A qualitative research conducted in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. She is the founder of Walk The Talk, which provides tailor-made professional coaching consultancy and training. Her business background includes working with International companies in banking, finance, media, pharmaceuticals, and FMCG industries. Sunita’s coaching style advances the skills and approaches needed to develop performance. Her forte is the fact that she has studied and worked in several different countries and thus her understanding and knowledge of language communication and culture is compact and solid. During her twenty-five years of international experience, Sunita’s objective has always been to support people to uncover and utilise their potential and to help individuals and organizations to perform at their very best. Sunita is an accomplished speaker and business writer furthermore she has had several articles published articles in the press. In her free time Sunita is a Mentor for the Richard Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship and a proud member of the School in The Cloud Team.  

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 Influence Expert– helping high achievers grow their influence to increase their impact on the world. He is currently a digital nomad- living and working in a number of European cities (and soon, India) with his wife. He is also the Founder of Young Charity Trustees, an organisation that promotes Board diversity for charities. He has previously been a charity Chief Executive, a political intern and an assistant teacher for two years in Japan. He was educated at Cambridge and Sussex Universities.

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 tells us and what value we can get from them. It's a useful technique in brainstorming in particular, but also in the facilitation of meetings and decision making, as well as part of "the humble facilitator's" approach to training and other learning workshops. Paul Levy is the founder of CATS3000, a change and innovation company that helps people and organisations to realise potential and thrive. He’s worked with individuals and organisations all over the world for the last twenty years to challenge mediocrity, and to open space for change and transformation. Paul is also a senior researcher at the Centre for Research in Innovation Management at Brighton Business School in the UK. He’s the author of several books, including “Technosophy” and Digital Inferno (based on his acclaimed blog, The Digital Inferno. He is also lead facilitator with the Social Media Leadership Forum. He’s also a director of Rational Madness Theatre – an award-winning organisational theatre company that uses theatre to inspire and provoke change, transformation and innovation. He’s a facilitator, trainer, writer, thinker and collusion breaker. Paul Lives in Brighton in the UK.      

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 a serious profession, having a more scientific approach to research and the development of theories and models would be a good thing to develop. In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast I talk to Dr Adam Le Nevez about how we might apply academic rigour to the world of L&D.

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.