In the first episode of season 6 of The Business of Learning, we spoke with Kristin Davis, CPTM, training supervisor for the Wake County Government, Lauren Harris, CPTM, assistant director of training and development at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Amber Hancharick, CPTM, education and training manager at Northwest Bank, to learn what it takes to manage a high-performing training function in 2023.
Tune in to learn more on:
- How the training manager job role has evolved in recent years.
- The skills learning leaders need to manage training in 2023.
- How to mitigate burnout and prioritize your well-being as a busy training manager.
Listen now:
Additional Resources:
- Trends 2023: Managing Training for a Changing Workplace
- [Infographic] Leading the Training Function: Tips From the Trenches
- How To Create – and Stick To – a Professional Development Plan
To learn more about the CPTM credential, download the program brochure below:
The transcript for this episode follows:
Voiceover:
Welcome to The Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
Hi, welcome back to The Business of Learning for the first episode of season 6. I’m Sarah Gallo, senior editor here at Training Industry.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
I’m Michele Eggleston-Schwartz, editor-in-chief at Training Industry. Today’s episode is brought to you by the Certified Professional in Training Management Program.
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The Certified Professional and Training Management Credential or CPTM is designed to convey the essential competencies you need to manage a training organization. When you become a CPTM, you gain access to alumni resources like monthly peer round tables, and a full registration to the Training Industry conference and expo. If you start today, you can earn the CPTM credential in as little as two months. To learn more, visit cptm.trainingindustry.com.
Sarah Gallo:
As we record this episode in January, 2023, businesses across industries are preparing for the year’s inevitable challenges and opportunities for innovation and growth, and many organizations are looking to the learning function to lead the way by delivering training that’s aligned with key business goals. To learn what it takes to lead the training function in today’s new world of work, we’re speaking with Kristen Davis, a certified professional in training, management and training supervisor for the Wake County Government. Lauren Harris, a certified professional in training management and assistant director of training and development at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Amber Hancharick, a certified professional in training, management and education and training manager at Northwest Bank. Kristen, Lauren, and Amber, welcome to the podcast.
Lauren Harris:
Thanks for having us.
Kristen Davis:
Thank you.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
Yes, welcome. To get things started today, could you each share your own goals and priorities for training and development in 2023?
Lauren Harris:
Sure. I don’t mind getting us started. I think probably … we’ll see, I’m very interested to hear what others have to say, but I would guess I align with a lot of folks. We definitely have a big focus on health and wellness after going through the big push of the pandemic and the lockdown. We’re prioritizing mental health and wellbeing above all else, which I’m very excited about. That’s a great goal for us to be thinking through. Then of course, I don’t think anybody can be ignoring kind of retention and engagement challenges. We’re really focusing that on the hybrid space. We’re definitely adopting a hybrid forward model at our university, so how we keep our employees engaged in the hybrid space, both remote in person and hybrid and then retaining during whatever’s happening, the great resignation, the great reshuffle, the great reprioritization, all of those pieces that we’ve heard out there and then there’s never been a higher need for supervisor support. I think we’re still deep, deep, deep in supervisor training. Those are kind of our three pillars, our health and wellness, retention and engagement and hybrid and then supervisor training.
Kristen Davis:
Here at Wake County Government, we also are looking at some of the same things. We are encountering that issue with retaining talent, which we have a quarterly meeting that we have with other counties within our state and they are encountering some of the same issues. We now have a initiative to focus on mental health. It just started this year, this month to be as exact. We now have leave for two days for mental health or just to be on wellness, to focus on your wellness. In addition to that, for training initiatives, not only are we looking at now that we have a hybrid model for how staff work, we actually transitioned back to training completely in person for new hires, which is kind of different when you’re trying to attract talent in a environment where a lot of places have gone hybrid for this. This has been very interesting in the last few months to switch over to that format. In addition to that, we have another initiative that’s going on throughout our division where we are focusing on the culture of our entire division, which is around 2,000 employees. We’re looking at how to engage each one of the employees and make sure that they’re connected and that will help to retain talent and push out other ideas of how we can be more inclusive, which of course last year, at the end of the year we went through our DEI initiative and now we’re focusing on culture as a whole. There is a big project that is going to be year long where we’re actually using, and you’ve probably heard of this book before, but first break all the rules. We’re taking that and actually starting our own mountain climb to attain the summit. All of that is encompassing in all of the different training initiatives that are going on throughout our agency and even within my department as well.
Amber Hancharick:
Very similar to Lauren and Kristen, we have a lot of focus on our retention and hiring strategies. Subsequently, it’s led to a lot of discussions about onboarding of new employees and like Kristen, we actually have in-person onboarding for our retail team members. That’s actually a big initiative that our group is going through is we’re changing how we onboard our new hires and we’re increasing the amount of time that they’re going to be with us from one week to two weeks. Additionally, we did a big culture initiative last year, but continuing to weave that messaging and those pillars through everything that we do as a training department, it continues to be so critical. Then coaching, helping to empower all of our employees to help coach each other and coach the organization up continue to be big themes for us in 2023.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
That’s great. Thank you all for sharing. Those challenges are definitely areas I know that we’re seeing at here Training Industry and from our audience. Also interested to hear if you would kind of share any specific plans or initiatives you have in place to help achieve your training goals this year.
Lauren Harris:
From an organizational standpoint, our university has recently created an entire health and wellness department. It used to be housed in student affairs being a higher education institution, and now it’s actually housed in our chief operating officer, our CFO, kind of our strategic area. It has oversight for the entire university now, so including not just student but also staff and faculty health and wellness. So that’s been a big shift for us, which is great. Kind of taking it from a micro lens and moving it to more of a macro oversight. I’m really excited to see what that organization pushes out. That department was newly created at the end of 2022, so they’re really just starting to get their wheels on, starting to put some planning together and we should see some big things from them in 2023. We’re also really trying to just keep up to date with the newest research as it’s coming out around hybrid effectiveness.
One of the biggest shifts I know is our kind of old school thinking of management by walking around to really management by objectives. How do we continue to achieve the goals of the organization through hybrid, through remote when people are not sitting next to us or when we’re not in a shared space? We’re trying to develop courses that allow our supervisors to be really effective at not only engaging our employees remotely and in a hybrid space, but also making sure that we’re still being really mindful about achieving our goals. Then we have a really robust suite of solutions for supervisor training as one of our initiatives. What we’re doing now is we’re really trying to capture and package that into almost like a supervisor academy, if you will, where we’re kind of really trying to create a coordinated way for our supervisors to get better integrated to all of the different courses that we have.
Right now it’s kind of a menu style, so it’s like choose what your own path. We’re trying to put a little bit more structure to that so that our supervisors, which we have about 3,000 supervisors, about 10,000 employees at CU, so they have a little bit more of just kind of a pathway for how to engage in their own learning and development and to really help us be the best that we can.
Kristen Davis:
That actually encompasses a lot of what we’re doing as well with the culture change and the initiative to get employees more engaged in their learning, and in their wellbeing as a whole within the agency. With the big rollout of this culture thing that we’re going to be doing over the next year, because it’s one every quarter. We have a camp every quarter that we’re going through and it’s a lot of planning that goes into that initiative. We’ve been working on that for the last, I feel like the last five months. It might not have been that long, but it felt that way. In addition to that, on the hybrid training, even though we don’t train new hires in a hybrid environment, we do train all the refresher training in a hybrid environment, and that has been challenging in trying to make sure that we get the most latest technology that will work for cloud computing and working through teams or Adobe Connect. That has been a challenge where we’ve tried to plan and then we run into the whole supply chain issue where we can’t get the technology that we need in a timely fashion and most things that we need takes about six months to get here, and if we just asked for it in October, well it’ll be probably about April or June before we see it. It makes a little difficult to have some people in a training room, some people in a conference room and then somebody else that’s at home. We are still trying to plan for those bigger initiatives and see how we can actually engage everybody through those different spaces. The planning portion has gone well. It’s just the supply chain and technology issues that factor in. We do have a robust plan in place. We have to submit ours at the beginning of the year, so ours just went in for a lot of the training initiatives that we have coming up for this year.
Amber Hancharick:
I feel very blessed in our organization that we have an enterprise project management office, and so a lot of time as industry or organization-wide projects are taking place, they’re bringing in the players early on. We’re not getting the, “Hey, we need you to train a big rollout at the last minute.” We’re usually involved early on, which makes planning and strategically looking at our year and making sure we have the resources available. It’s really a fantastic advantage. Some of the other things that we’re doing to achieve our onboarding goals, to achieve our hiring and retention, really looking at metrics and are we achieving what as an organization we set out to do? What does that turnover look like? Are new hires staying? Now we’re really starting to talk to other departments is what’s the rate of return on a new employee? How long do we need them to be here with us when we’ve paid off that initial investment? Then once they pass that threshold, how do we continue to develop them and how do we take the knowledge they have? So it’s a really exciting time to be in this field because there’s so many opportunities. Kristen mentioned some of the technology struggles that’s real, the ability to buy the equipment. We need to quickly adjust to all of the things that are changing the webcams, the lights to make sure you can see your presenters. Does everybody have access to microphones? Can they hear? Can they have speakers? Things as simple as do we have their undivided attention while they’re in our training sessions? Because I can tell you that’s our number one struggle is that when they’re hybrid or remote, they don’t necessarily feel as engaged even though we’re trying really hard to include them and they’re getting interrupted by their surroundings. How are we constantly managing this? I don’t have a great answer of how we’re going to achieve that goal, but I’m sure that with all of the leaders out there, we will come up with solutions, but that’ll just continue to be a challenge that we’re working through.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, it’s definitely a very, very real challenge, but sounds like you all have some great plans in place and we know that planning is super important from a strategic alignment perspective, especially as we’re at the beginning of a year here, but we also know that plans change and things change and shift. With that in mind, what skills do today’s learning leaders need to really keep pace as things change in their organizations and how can they develop those skills?
Lauren Harris:
I think you mentioned this actually Sarah at the beginning for the intro. I think really being able to take the business goals, articulate those into skills and competencies, and then train the employees up on those, that still is the ultimate, I think, competency that a learning leader could develop to be really successful at their job. After that component of being able to kind of dissect it, then it’s almost agile instructional design. It’s like, okay, then how do we either buy something off the shelf that we know that’s going to serve that solution or build it in house? We know building in-house takes a lot more time, so building up those instructional design competencies in order to be able to then actually put that planted action can be really helpful. One that I struggle with myself that I’m constantly trying to tap into, it’s just not a natural strength for me, so it’s something I have to work a little bit harder at is really trying to develop that futurist mindset, almost that prediction mindset. What is the automation going to drive for us? What’s that going to mean? Where are these skills going to become irrelevant and then new skills are going to become more relevant? Really trying to think into the future, what’s coming up, how we can translate that down the pipeline and be a little bit more proactive. Those are some components I think about as it relates to kind of skills and competencies for leaders.
Kristen Davis:
Piggybacking off of what Lauren said, I think that is going to play a lot into being able to make a lot of this happen is that one of the big things is change management because with so many things happening so fast in a rapidly changing environment, both within working environments and even outside in society itself, you have to be able to change on a dime and be able to effectively communicate it. Although others may not get on board as easily, be able to get that buy-in. That’s very important. In addition to the instructional design, that goes into a lot of play, especially if you have hybrid learning environments and there’s going to be technology struggles. Being able to develop guides and videos and different things that will help the user from whatever level that they come in at, be able to tackle those issues with support to be able to learn. Those two things are big as well as just as we all know, you have to have the time to be able to put some professional development for yourself, and for others if you are leading someone. It does help to stay on top of that research that might be out there because in those kind of libraries, they’re very dynamic, so things come in and you’re able to pay attention to it a whole lot quicker. Then of course, having memberships with organizations like SHRM and ATD, that helps out as well with the videos and all the different resources that they make available helps to keep a sharp edge in leading in development.
Amber Hancharick:
I think critical thinking and the ability to ask good questions is really a skillset that a lot of people undervalue, but are we looking at what we’re doing and are we asking the right questions? Did this work? How are other people doing this? What’s the worst thing that can happen? What’s the best thing that can happen? How can we improve this? What happens if we don’t train? What happens if we overtrain? Really looking at situations from all angles to understand the big picture. I think sometimes we just get stuck in this rut of like, we have to do this without understanding the why, but really digging down to be able to explain, here’s why we’re training you, here’s why we’re investing in this skill or taking you out of your role to learn this because it’s going to help you grow, but it’s also going to help the organization grow and it’s going to be impactful. Are we laying that groundwork? Additionally, I think the ability to connect and to understand others and their perspectives is where that’s coming from. Why is this significant to you as a line leader, but why is this significant to your frontline employee? How are we buying in together? Then to walk in other people’s shoes and really make sure that we’re conveying that message that’s appropriate for the entire audience. Finally, I don’t know if you would consider confidence a skill, but at this point in my career and my age I do, but being confident in where you stand and what you believe in and knowing that you’re not perfect, you’re going to make mistakes. That’s what we do. We’re learning leaders, we make mistakes and we learn from them. So knowing that every day we’re putting our best foot forward and being optimistic that that’s really the best thing that we’re doing. We’re all trying our best in this day, in this time, and I think those skills just help you keep overcoming any hurdle that comes in your way.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
Definitely. I completely agree, Amber, about confidence as a skill, definitely one that we’ve been seeing grow and importance and it’s so necessary. Really all the skills you’ve shared are incredibly important. Especially as we’ve seen over the past few years, the role of the training manager has evolved completely to keep pace with change. I’m interested to hear what do you think are the most critical responsibilities of training managers today?
Lauren Harris:
I really like what Amber was sharing too around critical thinking. I would like to build on that and thinking about just positioning ourselves as thought leaders where executives, senior level leaders really come to us to bounce ideas off of, to get our input. I love what Amber was saying too, that they’re brought in at the conversations at the beginning. I think being able to build your influence abilities to show up in those spaces and have dialogue and brainstorm together can be really critical so that your business leaders are leaning on you to help make some of those critical decisions for what is best for the organization. That’s one that I would add.
Kristen Davis:
Absolutely. Having that voice, using that voice is very critical. Also making sure that you do have that seat at that table to put those ideas out there because sometimes they don’t even realize that we’re there for that purpose, that we are internal consultants for them, that we can help them in any way possible for whatever initiative or idea or thought or new plan that they have coming forward that is going to be a very critical responsibility. Also, making sure that those reportings, the reports that they want, the return on investment, any kind of data that they want is accessible to them. That is a critical responsibility where we show the value of what we do in training is beyond we brought in your new person and we got them ready to go and we set them free and they’re doing great, but what does that look like?
Actually being able to start transferring that into dollars, that’s something that was just thrown into my lap a few months ago and it’s actually been very interesting and it’s been critical in being able to say, “Hey, this is the impact that we’re making and you have this amount of turnaround or turnover, and so we need more staff because this number of staff has to wait x number of weeks before they can even get into a training class.” Being able to show them the return on the investment, the turnover, the loss of money that is going on with that, and the hiring decisions, which is again that planning to that voice that you have, it helps to say, “Hey, this is what we’re getting when you bring them, you are hiring for this skill set or you’re not hiring for this skillset and this is impacting the company in this way.” Data is a big, big critical responsibility.
Amber Hancharick :
I agree with both Lauren and Kristen. I think essentially we become storytellers. We’re telling about our craft and all the possibilities that are out there, and we’re getting our executives to buy into what we’re doing and this vision of all things that are possible. There’s also some risk to reaching that all things are possible level because we’re talking about maybe doing something that’s unconventional or not tried and we’re not sure if it’s going to work. What happens if it doesn’t? How are we going to quickly pivot and be flexible and come up with a new plan? It ties into this whole growth mindset of am I willing to tell a story? Am I willing to have the conviction to stand behind it, to take the risk to try it, and then to adjust whatever I need to keep growing. I think the skills that we need and the responsibilities just continue to evolve. If you ask me in six months from now, I think I’m going to have a different answer.
Lauren Harris:
One more I’ll add to is, this is kind of a joke paradigm I’m on right now is we have to get choosier about what we choose to do. I almost think our discernment of as a critical competency now as far as I always joke we hire really brilliant people to work at our organization. Brilliant people bring great ideas, and I don’t like to talk in absolutes too often, but this is one time when I will. We never have enough resources, time, money, or people that execute on all the great ideas that we can generate. Being able to discern through and filter through all those fantastic ideas to really get down to what is the most critical, it’s going to be the best for the organization to put their energy behind, I think that’s another piece that I struggle with a lot that I help others try and think through that I try to coach myself to think through too. Getting choosy about what we choose to do.
Amber Hancharick:
Well, and I’m going to chime in off you. It’s okay to say “no” to something. Not everything needs to be trained. Are we able to your point, discern this is a coaching conversation or this isn’t a training need verses this is just great, let’s train everybody. No, there really has to be that discernment, but you also need that freedom to get ideas and hear people say, what if we could do this? Okay, what if, but back to the critical thinking, how are we going to execute on this? How are we going to make this happen? Is it cost effective? There is that responsibility is a learning leader that comes in, but also balancing that line of wanting that feedback and wanting people to share and be excited about being part of this learning process.
Sarah Gallo:
Leading the learning function is definitely not easy and it’s a tall order, especially when you take a step back and remember that learning leaders also need time for their own professional development and penciling that time in for your own training and development can be really difficult when your job is focused on developing others. I’m interested to hear what advice do you have for our listeners who are really struggling to prioritize their own development?
Lauren Harris:
I loved what Kristen was saying earlier, so I’m going to build on that and I will say micro-learning for me, and I think that’s what Kristen was talking about too. I love, one, being able to consume content from quality companies, so know where my insight’s coming from, know where the research’s coming from, not wasting my time on “junk research” if you will. We have a LinkedIn Learning subscription at my organization, [and] we also have Skillsoft. Some of my other go-tos [are] the Center for Creative Leadership, Training Industry, all of these organizations that I know that are doing robust research that are putting out the best-in-class research around learning, that’s what I’m tapping into. Then it’s just an article here, a five minute video there. It’s in between meetings. I still facilitate a lot as a learning leader too, so I’m boots-on-the-ground and leading along with my team who’s facilitating.
I think the facilitation really helps me build my own professional development, too. So getting really skilled in some of these skills that we are asking others to build, I get to practice them all the time. Being the facilitator I think comes with that extra benefit of being able to practice it. I think about one of our signature programs at CU is Crucial Conversations. Well, I’ve built a really good capacity to engage in crucial conversations because I get to teach that all the time. I’m constantly thinking about that language. So those are some of the ways that I invest in my own professional development.
Kristen Davis:
Same here. The micro-learning is definitely a big part of it, especially when you’re on the go constantly and as we all know, pulled in 50 directions except the one direction that you wanted to go in on certain days. Yes, micro-learning is very important using all the resources that are available. Training Industry has been a big help for me in getting buy-in from my manager on different things that we need to be able to develop, not just myself, but also the people that work for me that are the trainers with the boots on the ground and having them to have the time because unfortunately they’re not even getting a day in between classes at this moment. It’s been a lot to say, okay, giving people the time to structure their own day.
As well the same thing that I have to do is making time for myself on my schedule using Outlook as our email system that we’re using right now and having it to actually go in there and just schedule focus time on my calendar whether I wanted it there or not, which of course I can delete it if I want to, but actually utilizing it because it stops everybody from being able to ping me and I see the ping right away in teams. It’s helpful to say to myself, “Okay, today I have 30 minutes, not a lot of time for micro learning, of course, let’s go look at an article. Let’s go do this.” That helps tremendously in getting that time in. Then even with Skillsoft, the way that our division has it set up right now, wherever, so often once a week I get an email that says, “Hey, have you done your 15 minutes of learning this week?” Those kind of things just kind of remind you, “Hey, I need to do something for me so that I can sharpen my saw and I’ll be able to get back in there.”
Then another fun thing that has happened within, not the department I’m in, but the actual county that I work for as a whole is now we actually have a network of all the different training trainers that work within Wake County government. Not just what I’m doing, but what all the other trainers are doing. We all get together once a month and just have a great time talking about strategies and then bringing in someone from outside agencies to come in and talk about the newest thing that they’ve learned, doing training in different types of companies and agencies, not even similar to what we do. And it’s been very helpful and it just started up, but even that helps quickly get some learning in when you may not have the time to do so.
Amber:
I love that concept, Kristen, of the lunch and learn or bringing a group together, that’s one of the things that I like to do. Sometimes I miss a session and I’ll go back and listen to the podcast or the webinar and participate. The other thing I found is I was getting overwhelmed by all the potential resources that were out there because there’s so many things that catch my eye, but to delve into them just seems almost overwhelming at times. I worked with my team and trying to develop them professionally and myself. What we did was take a series of topics and distribute them out over all of us. What we ask is once a month, a different team member tackles a professional development topic. During a team meeting, they take about 15 to 20 minutes and they present the topic and then we talk about how are we going to incorporate what we learned.
Then it’s a coaching opportunity for any supervisors to follow back with their team and say, “Hey, what did you do with this information?” It also opens the door to follow up on topics. You hear something and you’re like, yeah, I really want to learn how to engage hybrid learners better, or I really want to learn more about creating better dashboards, or I need to collect better information. It allows you to self-select, catching your interests, and then really delve into the micro learnings. That seems to be successful for our organization and group right now.
Sarah Gallo:
I love that. Another topic I really wanted to discuss with you all, especially after this was something you all mentioned as a strategic priority for your organizations this year, is that of mental health and wellbeing as it pertains to training professionals, because you all are working on supporting everyone else’s mental health and wellbeing and wellness, but training managers are also prone to burnout too, just like everyone else. What advice do you have on how to mitigate burnout as a busy training manager?
Lauren Harris:
I always feel lucky in this space because I love what I do, and I think a lot of learning leaders wouldn’t do what they do unless they love it. With that, the burnout seems to come at least just for me personally, a little bit differently just because even when I feel overwhelmed or I’m feeling stretched or a little stressed or anxious, ultimately the passion of the job keeps me going. Outside of that though, I’ve been reading some of the newer research coming out around burnout that a lot of times burnout has a lot more to do with some of the underlying components and not necessarily the role itself. Thinking about is the work actually sustainable? Are we asking ourselves to do too much than what is actually capable? What’s also the culture in the organization as it relates to time off? Is that sacred? Is it told and protected to take? Do we encourage folks with that? Do we model that behavior for our learning teams as well as ourselves?
I think if we can take care of some of the underlying components too, some of those organizational aspects, then it really is, this is the other thing around engagement is what people find engaging or what mitigates burnout for folks is very, very diverse. Having some introspective reflection time to find out what really works for you. I know for me, I’m kind of like a water baby and there’s a lot of research that says being by, near, or in water is really healthy for our brains, for our bodies. I love to swim, I love to do those types of things. I also have a side passion as a musician, so that fills my bucket a lot. Being able to tend to some of my side passions really helps keep me balanced in my work and my personal life, and then mitigating that burnout for me personally.
Kristen Davis:
Definitely burnout and taking the time that’s needed has been in past years has definitely been a big struggle for me. Something that my manager always has to remind me of, you work a lot of overtime, you can take some time for yourself. Have you taken a vacation this year? I get those constant reminders, and that was something towards the beginning of last year where I had to make note of what I needed to do, especially with a two year old. It’s been quite interesting so that the two year old keeps reminding me of the need to step away and it actually helps to break me away from getting so burned out because of that need. Definitely remembering that you have to have time away from everything and then knowing when to say when you have too much stuff on your plate and you start divvying out what you have to those who are around you or work for you or your colleagues.
Using your internal resources and you’ll be surprised, especially if you’re one that does everything. Once you start to reach out for others, they’re a lot of times honored that you even ask them to take on something that you were doing so much and then they realize and appreciate how much work it takes to do what you do. It kind of helps to mitigate the whole burnout issue because then they start to realize how much is really on your plate and start to do more to help you in the burnout situation as well. That has been an eye opener over the covid years between me, my manager and some of the co-supervisors.
Amber Hancharick:
I loved both of your answers. I think they were just very insightful and spot on. The other thing that I would add is that there’s a lot of humor in what we do, a lot of things that don’t go according to plan. A lot of bloopers that happen and just being able to laugh at ourselves and laugh at the situation. Sometimes. I know you can’t do it at the time, but I can tell you every now and then get the opportunity to still train and develop. We were spearheading a course and it was a rollout and I had a lavaliere on or one of the microphones and I forgot about it and left the room to go to the restroom, didn’t even think about it. As one of my colleagues running, because she knew where I was heading, she’s like, “Stop, you’re mic’d.” When I got back I’m like, well, do I address this or don’t I address this? Or what do I do? So I addressed it with the class and they’re like, “We didn’t even know.” My entire team was there watching this. And so I was like, listen, I take the things so that you learn from me what not to do, because I guarantee that every single one of you will always make sure you’re not mic’d when you leave the room to go to the restroom. Also, make sure you’re keeping your language clean. They laughed. Just the ability to find the humor, like I said, and laugh at ourselves personally. I like to read. I love to cook, I like to bake. I do strength training. So finding things that aren’t work related that you just really enjoy is a great way to, as Lauren said, to fill your bucket. You have to do it. You have to invest in yourself because what we do does have some pressure to it.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
We all need to invest in ourselves. That’s such great advice. For some the new year has brought with it a new job role. What advice do you have for learning leaders who are new to their roles? How can they set themselves and their organizations up for success this year?
Lauren Harris:
Yeah, I think if you’re in a newer learning leader role, one is just talking to lots of people, really getting an understanding of the lay of the land, your organization and your folks. What are the priorities? Again, going back to the theme of what are the organizational priorities that need to be translated into skills for learning and development, taking deep dives into the profile of your employees, what are their strengths and weaknesses? Then how do you align your learning strategies to meet the needs of both the organization and the employees? That would be my first recommendation for if someone’s taking on a new learning leader role, get out there and talk and talk and talk and listen, listen, listen.
Kristen Davis:
Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that because definitely with getting out there and knowing the lay of the land and actually hearing the needs and the wants of those that you are working with and those that you are providing, we’ll say it this way, providing your services too and for is critical. Then since you’re out there listening and not actually being prescriptive, you’re just listening and taking in information, you can learn a whole lot from doing that. It gives you a perspective of where the organization is. It’s one of those things that, especially in an organization where people have been in their roles for years and years and years, and some are coming up on retirement.
They have a lot of knowledge and they’ve been through a lot of times, a good number of leaders, so they have an opinion and they want to be heard. When they’re not heard, that is definitely where the breakdown begins because they begin to have that feeling of not being connected and not being heard. I like that you said listening and going out there and getting to know how and what everything is, it’s very important. It is. That will help to create that plan or to be able to partner with them to make sure that the goals that are set for the agency, for the department, for the different leaders is being met.
Amber Hancharick:
I 100% agree. I think it’s so easy when you come into an organization to want to prove why you were the right fit for that job, but that ability to just kind of stop, observe what’s happening, learn the organization, listen to what others have those conversations about, what have you done, why have you done it? What was the big plans? What’s worked before? What do you think would work in the future? And really kind of getting that lay of the land before making any changes. If you have direct reports, the same thing, you have to build that relationship with them and understand their perspectives, what ideas they have, and then you come up with some hybrid of everything that you’ve heard and you come up with the plan that you get everybody to buy into, drive you forward. But I think coming in as a know-it-all isn’t going to help you to get the respect that you need. As I always was told, growing up, your first impressions are lasting impressions. Just keep that in mind.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
Such good points. Before we wrap up here today, are there any final takeaways you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Lauren Harris:
I may be biased, I am biased, but I think our roles are more important than ever. Staying relevant with change for the needs of our learners and our organizations are even more critical and will allow us to continue to be successful.
Kristen Davis:
Same here. Knowing where you are and knowing the impact that you make on anyone that you touch through training is important and a good thing to remember. I think it hit home for me most a few years ago when I was able to hire someone that I trained when I was first starting out as a trainer and then hiring that person to step into the role that I was in, it was very rewarding within itself. Just knowing that small things build up to big things.
Amber Hancharick:
I love that, because that goes exactly in a line, which was what I was going to say is celebrate your successes. Because there’s so much of what we do that we focus on what didn’t work or what we need to improve, but there’s so much that we do that should be celebrated. We help elevate people to do their jobs and be the best versions of themselves, and that really should be celebrated.
Sarah Gallo:
Well, on that note, Kristen, Amber, and Lauren, thank you so much for speaking with us today on the podcast. How can our listeners get in touch with you after the episode if they would like to reach out?
Lauren Harris:
My email’s the best way, it’s lauren.m.harris@colorado.edu.
Kristen Davis:
You can find me on LinkedIn.
Amber Hancharick:
You can find me on LinkedIn, and I’d love to connect with you and shoot me a direct message anytime through there.
Michelle Eggleston-Schwartz:
To learn more about leading a high performing training function and to view the highlights from this episode in animation, visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustry podcast.
Sarah Gallo:
Don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time.
Voiceover:
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the contact us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry podcast.
