The Mindtools L&D Podcast

Those of who work in learning and development like to think we're in the business of behavior change. But we often don't have an in-depth understanding of what current behaviors are, or how to change them.

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross Garner is joined by Ross Dickie and Dr Anna Barnett to discuss:

• methods for understanding behavior;

• digital learning methods for changing behavior;

• methods for measuring change.

During the discussion, Ross Garner described the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Ross Dickie mentioned libertarian paternalism, very much a friend-of-the-show.

Anna referenced the COM-B model of behavior change.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Anna recommended a presentation from the Behavioral Insights Team, and Ross G referenced his video on nudge theory.

Ross Dickie discussed Jevon's paradox, based on Satya Nadella's tweet about Chinese AI firm DeepSeek.

And Ross Garner recommended a thread on X, where famous movie scenes are recreated as Lego.

For more from us, visit mindtools.com. There you'll also find details of our Manager Skill Builder, our on-demand management development program that intelligently adapts to every user.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner

• Ross Dickie

• Dr Anna Barnett

The National Trust is Europe's largest conservation charity, established 130 years ago to look after the UK's nature, beauty and history. Its leaders have diverse areas of focus, from protecting woodland to managing properties – and even running a gold mine!

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Ross D find out just how the Trust develops these leaders, with Development Specialist Carole Thelwall-Jones.

We discuss:

• how a leader needs to think 'to be' lists, rather than 'to do' lists;

• how leadership development is structured at the National Trust;

• how L&D professionals can help new leaders let go of what helped them succeed in the past.

During the discussion, Carole referenced Leadership: Plain and Simple, by Steve Radcliffe.

Ross G referenced our 'Building Better Managers' report.

Carole also discussed the 4D instructional design model, and Roffey Park's report 'The Expert as Leader'.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross D recommended The Racket: On Tour with Tennis's Golden Generation – and the other 99%, by Conor Niland.

Carole discussed Roko's basilisk and Stephen Fry's lecture AI: A means to an end or a means to the end?

Ross G discussed 'The Illusion of Explanatory Depth'.

For more on the National Trust, visit their website: nationaltrust.org.uk

For more from us, visit mindtools.com. There you'll also find details of our Manager Skill Builder, our on-demand management development program that intelligently adapts to every user.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner

• Ross Dickie

• Carole Thelwall-Jones

Author, podcaster and award-winning filmmaker Topaz Adizes specializes in creating deeper human connections. So, in this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, he joins Ross Garner and Owen for an in-depth chat about:

• how to formulate questions to build understanding;

• how better conversations help us partner with our clients and stakeholders;

• the benefits of online and in-person conversations.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross discussed the growing capabilities of 'Large Behavior Models', via The Economist.

For more from Topaz, visit topazadizes.com

For more from us, visit mindtools.com. There you'll also find details of our Manager Skill Builder, our on-demand management development program that intelligently adapts to every user.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner

• Owen Ferguson

• Topaz Adizes

At last year's Learning Technologies Awards, Mindtools and South Western Railway won Gold in the 'Best use of blended learning – commercial sector' category.

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast for 2025, Ross D and Claire are joined by Becky Eason, Leadership Delivery Manager at South Western Railway, to discuss:

• The context in which the program was developed, and the problems it was designed to solve;

• How we used focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and a valid and reliable behavioral survey to test assumptions and prove impact;

• The results of the program and the changes we've made to it in response to evaluation of the pilot.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Claire gave her seal of approval to Wicked, Becky recommended the Netflix series La Palma, and Ross D wondered why he doesn't listen to the Song Exploder podcast more often.

For more from us, visit mindtools.com.

There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Dickie

• Claire Gibson

• Becky Eason

Do remote and hybrid managers need different skills to those who work in-person? If so, what are those skills and how do we develop them?

In this first episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast for 2025, Ross Dickie and Ross Garner are joined by return guest Gary Cookson, author of Making Hybrid Working Work.

We discuss:

• The 'sensory loss' that takes place when managers move to a hybrid environment

• The digital signals that help managers understand their teams

• Strategies for building hybrid management capability.

Gary's book, Making Hybrid Working Work, is available now from Kogan Page.

During the discussion, we referenced a few other episodes of our podcast:

• 271 — Jobcraft Country

• 406 — Revisiting 70:20:10: Theory into practice

• 407 — Revisiting 70:20:10: From learning to performance

• 421 — Good managers balance care with results

Ross Garner also discussed 'context-dependent memory effect'.

In 'What I Learned This Week', we each shared a paper:

• Ross G: Vences, M., Köhler, J., Hutter, C. R., Preick, M., Petzold, A., Rakotoarison, A., ... & Scherz, M. D. (2024). Communicator whistles: A Trek through the taxonomy of the Boophis marojezensis complex reveals seven new, morphologically cryptic treefrogs from Madagascar (Amphibia: Anura: Mantellidae). Vertebrate Zoology, 74, 643-681.

• Gary: Veronese, N., Stubbs, B., Noale, M., Solmi, M., Vaona, A., Demurtas, J., ... & Fontana, L. (2017). Fried potato consumption is associated with elevated mortality: an 8-y longitudinal cohort study. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 106(1), 162-167.

• Goh, E., Gallo, R., Hom, J., Strong, E., Weng, Y., Kerman, H., ... & Chen, J. H. Large Language Model Influence on Diagnostic Reasoning. JAMA Network Open, 7(10).

For more from us, including details of our new Manager Skill Builder, visit mindtools.com.

There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

For more from Gary, see EpicHR.co.uk

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner

• Ross Dickie

• Gary Cookson

Another year, another Christmas Special! We've scraped the barrel of festive ideas and selected Love Actually, the "greatest Christmas movie of all time", as the unfortunate premise of this year's audio horrorshow.

In this edition, Ross G will be asking questions that are very loosely based on the Richard Curtis classic, with answers from Ross D, Anna and Owen.

Including:

• In Love Actually, grumpy husband Alan Rickman gets into trouble when he buys a necklace for a woman who isn't his wife. If you were to buy a gold necklace for another profession, other than L&D, what would it be and why?
• Creepy romantic Andrew Lincoln spends Love Actually pining after Keira Knightley: The wife of his best friend. What aspect of L&D do you secretly love, but know that you can never be involved with?
• Spurned husband Colin Firth spends Love Actually learning Portuguese to be with the woman he loves. What L&D language do you plan on spending the Christmas season learning?
• Aging rocker Bill Nighy performs his single 'Christmas Is All Around Me' naked on TV, to celebrate it taking the Christmas Number 1 spot. What's your great ambition for 2025?

During the discussion, Ross D referenced our newsletter 'Every learning intervention you design should be award-worthy'

Ross G referenced the Mitchell & Webb sketch 'Are we the baddies?'

Anna recommended our 'critical thinking' Skill Bite course.

The papers Anna discussed were:

• Carter, J. W., & Youssef-Morgan, C. (2022). Psychological capital development effectiveness of face-to-face, online, and Micro-learning interventions. Education and Information Technologies, 27(5), 6553-6575.
• Carpenter, S. K., Pan, S. C., & Butler, A. C. (2022). The science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 496-511.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross D revealed a shocking truth about Darlene Love's 'All Alone On Christmas'.

Ross G recommended A Christmas Carol, as read by Hugh Grant.

For more from us, including details of our new Manager Skill Builder, visit mindtools.com.

There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner
• Owen Ferguson
• Dr Anna Barnett
• Ross Dickie

When your team are faced with a crisis, you want them to be prepared. But how do you build those capabilities when crises are rare, and you hope they never occur?

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Owen explore the use of simulations to build capability. We're joined by Chris Peschanel, who ran crisis management at Bayer Pharmaceuticals for 12 years, and by Phil Willcox from St8 of Play.

We discuss:

· why simulations are the best approach for developing real-world skills in crisis management

· the role that emotions play in making these learning experiences memorable

· what a simulation sounds like in practice and how to create your own.

You can find out more about simulations from St8 of Play.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Owen shared how GiveDirectly increase donations.

Ross discussed Trung Phan's newsletter on Duolingo's priorities.

Phil discussed the paper: Chang, C. C., & Yang, S. T. (2024). Learners' positive and negative emotion, various cognitive processing, and cognitive effectiveness and efficiency in situated task-centered digital game-based learning with different scaffolds. Interactive Learning Environments, 32(9), 5058-5077.

For more from us, including details of our new Manager Skill Builder, visit mindtools.com.

There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

· Ross Garner

· Owen Ferguson

· Phil Willcox

· Chris Peschanel

Hello listeners! No new episode this week, but we wanted to revisit this 2018 classic with Dom Price, from Atlassian.

It'll help you think about whether the habits and behaviors that have helped you navigate the world to this point, are still useful today.

Regular show notes below.

---

In the early stages of our careers we learn how to do our jobs, manage office politics and earn promotion. But those habits and behaviours that initially help us advance can become a burden. We end up in meetings because it used to be important to show face, and not because they're an effective use of our time.

In this week's GoodPractice Podcast, Ross G and Owen speak to Dom Price, Futurist at software developer Atlassian, about his approach to 'unlearning' habits and behaviours.

If you'd like to share your thoughts on the show, you can find us all on LinkedIn.

The Atlassian Team Playbook is available at: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook

For a fun insight into how Atlassian team members speak to one another, see: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/inside-atlassian/teamwork-data-visualization

Owen's 'What I Unlearned This Week' covered Johann Hari's Guardian piece on depression. The original article is here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/07/is-everything-you-think-you-know-about-depression-wrong-johann-hari-lost-connections

And, for balance, the counter argument is here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/08/is-everything-johann-hari-knows-about-depression-wrong-lost-connections

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work

As Ben Betts wrote in a recent blog post, 'the LMS is the first point of entry to learning; the front-of-house of our industry.' While that front-of-house may look a little different now than it did twenty years ago, and despite the oft-repeated claim that the LMS is dying, it remains the default gateway to digital learning in organizations. But are things about to change?

To answer that question and others, Ben joins Ross D and Owen on this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast to discuss:

· the many eras of the LMS, and how we got to where we are now;

· the forces that have shaped e-learning interfaces over time;

· how AI and other changes in the tech landscape might usher in a new era.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Owen recommended the podcast Acquired, and Ben mentioned the website 'There's an AI for That'.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

· Ross Dickie

· Owen Ferguson

· Ben Betts

How can we help managers demonstrate care for their teams, while maintaining high standards of accountability and performance?

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Dr Anna Barnett are joined by Joris Merks-Benjaminsen, Managing Without Power, to discuss:

• why nice managers can still provide mediocre management
• how managers can balance care for their teams with high levels of performance
• and how to build better managers.

For more from Joris, visit managingwithoutpower.com

The paper Anna discussed, on 'nondecision-making', was: Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. S. (1963). Decisions and nondecisions: An analytical framework. American political science review, 57(3), 632-642.

Google's research into great managers (Project Oxygen) and effective teams (Project Aristotle) is available online.

During the discussion, Joris referenced the prisoner's dilemma.

We also discussed findings from our report, 'Building Better Managers'.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Anna recommended Those People Next Door by Kia Abdullah.

Joris discussed Sinterklaas.

Ross G discussed 'sovereign AI'.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work. And our new Manager Skills Assessment.

You can also email [email protected] and Ross G will get back to you.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Garner
• Dr Anna Barnett
• Joris Merks-Benjaminsen