The Mindtools L&D Podcast

What does an effective workplace wellbeing strategy look like? For some organizations, it's fruit boxes and staff discounts. For consultant and author Liggy Webb, it's a holistic approach that factors in the physical, social, mental, financial, digital, environmental and spiritual health of colleagues.

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross and Nahdia are joined by Liggy to discuss:

• The benefits of a more structured approach to wellbeing
• How to approach each of the '7 Wisdoms of Wellbeing'
• The role of personal responsibility in wellbeing.

For more from Liggy, check out her website: liggywebb.com

You can also check out her Future Human series, available now.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Nahdia recommended 'The impact of bad news, compassion fatigue, and the psychology of whistleblowing' from All In The Mind.

Ross recommended Lauren Bacall's autobiography, By Myself and Then Some.

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. Or you can email [email protected]

Connect with our speakers

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

• Ross Garner
• Nahdia Khan
• Liggy Webb

Artificial Intelligence (AI) generally and Large Language Models (LLMs) specifically have been all the rage over the past 12 months. Should you care?

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Rosses Garner and Dickie are joined by learning strategist Ross Stevenson to discuss:

• The current state of AI

• The extent to which L&D pros should pay attention to ongoing developments

• Tips for making the most of AI tools, especially ChatGPT.

During the discussion, Stevenson referenced 'custom instructions' for ChatGPT. These help tailor ChatGPT's responses to your prompts, and mean you don't need to add background information to every prompt. See his video on the topic for guidance.

He also recommend Perplexity AI. See: perplexity.ai

In 'What I Learned This Week', Dickie recommended the Fit Bod app.

Garner discussed the rise (and subsequent fall) of Quora.

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. Or you can email [email protected]

For more from Stevenson, see Steal These Thoughts.

Connect with our speakers

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

• Ross Garner

• Ross Dickie

• Ross Stevenson

Jackie Kennedy is Learning and Development Lead at London Borough of Camden, where work contexts range from libraries and schools to waste management and social care. How do you develop managers in these diverse contexts, with a public sector budget?

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Jackie joins Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson to discuss:

• The unique challenges faced by local government
• How to develop a management development programme without providing any 'teaching'
• The role of digital in Camden's L&D strategy.

To read more about how London Borough of Camden leverage the Mind Tools on-demand content library, see our case study.

In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross discussed his article for People Management, written with Gemma Towersey and our automated companion The L&D Dispatch GPT: 'What we learned from seven years running an L&D podcast'.

Jackie discussed 'eating the frog'.

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. Or you can email [email protected]

Connect with our speakers

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

· Ross Garner

· Owen Ferguson

· Jackie Kennedy

Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, AI has seldom been out of the news. Such is the pace of change, it can feel difficult to keep up. But how is L&D actually using this technology? What do learning professionals perceive as the benefits of AI, and what are the barriers to implementation?

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Dickie and Owen Ferguson are joined by Donald Taylor to discuss a report he co-authored with Egle Vinauskaite, which seeks to answer some of these questions.

We discuss:

· The current state of play of AI in L&D,

· The expected benefits of using AI in L&D,

· The technological and business barriers to deploying AI in organizations.

To read the full report, AI in L&D: The State of Play, head to Don's website.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Owen mentioned CGP Grey's focus on 'themes' (as opposed to resolutions) as a method for achieving long-term personal and professional goals. Check out this video to find out more.

Ross D recommended the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible, exploring Nimsdai Purja's attempt to summit all fourteen of the world's 8000-metre mountains in under seven months.

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 our speakers:

· Ross Dickie

· Owen Ferguson

· Donald Taylor

How much thought does your organization give to the Employee Experience? And what tools can you use to enhance it?

In this year's first episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson are joined by Danny Seals to discuss his new book The Insightful Innovator: How to level up your Employee Experience.

We discuss:

· The advantages of strengthening the Employee Experience

· How 'designing a relationship' can set your projects up for success

· Tools and techniques to enhance the Employee Experience.

During the conversation, Danny referred to Employee SPIES (Services, Products, Interactions, and Experiences, while applying a Subscription model to work).

He also refers to EVP (Employee Value Proposition).

And he discussed The Ladder of Abstraction as a tool for connecting with stakeholder groups.

All are discussed in more detail in his book.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Owen recommended the research paper: Cook, A., Thompson, M., & Ross, P. (2023). Virtual First Impressions: Zoom Backgrounds Affect Judgements of Trust and Competence

Ross recommended The Economist's workplace podcast Boss Class.

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.

You can also email [email protected]

Connect with our speakers

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

· Ross Garner

· Owen Ferguson

· Danny Seals

It's a wrap! In what is traditionally our 'least listened to' and 'most unhinged' episode of the year, we're celebrating the festive season with some reflections on the biggest talking point in L&D: the emergence of generative AI.

And we're joined by special guests, ChatGPT (our first AI guest!) and Bedford Falls' own George Bailey (making his annual appearance).

Ross Garner is joined by Owen Ferguson and Ross Dick to discuss:

· How have tools like ChatGPT and Bard evolved over the year?

· How are we using them?

· What's coming next?

ChatGPT then asks its own questions, with a spattering of festive zingers.

And George shares his observations on the prevalence of AI, and provides an insight into the Baileys' favourite drink at this time of year.

In 'What I Learned this Year', Ross Dick recommended two newsletters: Platformer and One Useful Thing.

And Ross G wanted to provide the phone number for Samaritans: 116 123

You can also visit their website: samaritans.org

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.

You can also email [email protected]

Connect with our speakers

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

· Ross Garner

· Owen Ferguson

· Ross Dickie

Hey listeners! Here's a fun stocking filler for you: Throughout this year, Rosses D and G have been writing The L&D Dispatch, a weekly newsletter from the Mind Tools Custom team.

In this bonus episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we reflect on the effort involved to write a newsletter, the personal benefits we've experienced from doing so, and how our use of AI tools for content production has evolved over the last 12 months.

Never heard of it? Subscribe now at lddispatch.com

In the past, we've always talked about Virtual Reality training in the context of skills that are expensive to learn or dangerous to practice. But Lucie Coudret and the team at Cappfinity are using VR for coaching and leadership development.

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson speak with Lucie Coudret, to discuss:

· The advantages of VR for coaching and soft skill development

· How to overcome the cost and technical hurdles of providing VR learning experiences

· How the VR 'fad' has continued to evolve and improve, even if it's not always in the spotlight,

During the conversation, Lucie referenced PwC's study into the effectiveness of VR for soft skills training.

She also referenced the DICE model (Dangerous, Impossible, Counterproductive, Expensive).

Details of the VR EY Summer Internship, developed by Cappfinity, are on YouTube.

Ross referenced the popularity of Snapchat's 'My AI', which by June of this year had been sent 10 billion messages.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Owen recommended Lenny's Newsletter.

Ross recommended The Rest Is History podcast.

For more from Lucie, see luciecoudret.com

For Cappfinity, see cappfinity.com

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.

You can also email [email protected]

Connect with our speakers

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

· Ross Garner

· Owen Ferguson

· Lucie Coudret

Ever launch a workshop that no one attended or an e-learning module that nobody accessed? It's surprisingly common: and one reason is that we're not always great at marketing our L&D initiatives.

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Dick and Owen Ferguson seek to reverse this outcome with the help of Ashley Sinclair from MAAS Marketing – the world's only (we think) marketing agency focusing specifically on L&D.

We discuss:

· Why L&D teams need a marketing strategy

· What an effective marketing strategy looks like

· How to measure the ROI of a marketing strategy

For more from Ashley, visit maas-marketing.co.uk

Ashley's podcast is at maas-marketing.co.uk/podcast

The Mind Tools reports that were mentioned are available at: mindtools.com/business/research

Ashley also mentioned the LPI's 'Workplace Learning Report'

In 'What I Learned this Week', Ross D discussed the BBC's new series on Shakespeare.,

He also the Netflix series 'Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul'.

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 our speakers:

· Ross Dickie

· Owen Ferguson

· Ashley Sinclair

Historically, if you wanted to get better at having difficulty conversations, you had to take part in embarrassing roleplays or actual high-stakes conversations. Now, thanks to generative AI tools like ChatGPT, we can practice in a safe environment with realistic responses and in-the-moment feedback.

That's the premise for 'AI Conversations', a new digital learning offering from Mind Tools and Learning Pool. In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Garner and Nahdia Khan are joined by Learning Pool's Lindsey Coode to discuss:

· How AI Conversations works

· The role and importance of feedback in developing skills

· The measurable impact on user capability after just one practice session.

During the discussion, Ross referenced the following paper:

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251-19257.

Nahdia referenced the World Economic Forum's report 'Jobs of Tomorrow'.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Nahdia discussed HuddleCraft.

Ross discussed 'The False Binary in Higher Ed' from Ben Wildavsky.

To find out more about AI Conversations, visit:

· Mind Tools

· Learning Pool

Connect with our speakers

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

· Ross Garner

· Nahdia Khan

· Lindsey Coode