Every conversation about talent growth eventually comes back to the same question: what is leadership actually doing to the people underneath it? In this episode, Liz Wiseman, CEO, The Wiseman Group and author of the New York Times bestseller "Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter," walks Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth, Infopro Learning, through the multiplier framework she built after 17 years as a vice president at Oracle. Liz explains why diminishing leaders, often well-intentioned, access less than half of their team's actual capability. She unpacks the three habits that quietly diminish talent: pacesetting, rapid responding, and rescuing. She shares the personal systems she built to catch herself, including her 24-hour rule and the day-old donut strategy. For any CHRO, CLO, or people leader focused on talent growth, this conversation reframes what leadership impact really looks like. Follow The Talent Equation on Spotify for weekly conversations on talent strategy, AI, and workforce performance.

What if the chaos hitting your team right now isn't a crisis to fix, but a permanent condition every C-suite leader has to learn to operate inside? Kevin Black, Founder, Kevin Black Consulting, Author of the book "Strength in Chaos," joins Nolan Hout, SVP, Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, to unpack why chaos and crisis are not the same thing, and to outline a four-part framework leaders can use to diagnose where their team actually stands: unity, forward integration, mission command, and trust. Kevin explains why trust is earned last through repeatable reliability, why control-oriented leaders often make chaos worse by gripping tighter under pressure, and why one team's stress level can act as a diagnostic for an entire organization's workforce performance.

If you are a senior leader navigating AI disruption, workforce restructuring, or doing more with less, this episode gives you a framework, not just a pep talk. Follow The Talent Equation podcast on Spotify, YouTube & Apple Podcasts for weekly conversations on talent strategy, AI, L&D and workforce performance.

What does it take to lead with courage when employees are burned out, workplace culture is under strain, and AI is transforming every role across your organization?

In this episode of The Talent Equation podcast, Justine Froelker, Licensed Professional Counselor, two-time TEDx speaker, founder, Courage is Built Here™, and author of 12 books, including five Amazon bestsellers, joins Nolan Hout, SVP of Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, for an insightful conversation about what courageous leadership demands today.

Together, they explore why keeping humanity at the center of work is more than a feel-good concept; it's a business imperative. They discuss how leaders can balance accountability with compassion, where organizations often misunderstand empathy, and why authenticity matters more than ever. The conversation also addresses the AI question head-on: Does AI make human leadership skills more or less important? How can leaders guide teams through AI adoption with transparency, trust, and courage?

If you lead people, this episode will challenge your assumptions about accountability, empathy, authenticity, and what it truly means to show up for your team in a rapidly changing world.

Most Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) are solving the wrong problem. They hire more people and build more training programs, yet still can't move the needle. Candice Mitchell, Founder & CEO of Talent Collective and USA Today bestselling author, has spent nearly two decades inside global organizations watching this play out. In this episode, she and Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth, Infopro Learning, discuss why capability development keeps failing and what senior L&D leaders need to do differently. The conversation covers why training alone is never the answer, what it means to build a learning culture, and why the people function is the most underleveraged growth lever in any business. If you lead talent, learning, or people strategy at a mid-to-large enterprise, this one is for you.

Recommended Resource: Impact Toolkit.

The shift from AI assistant to AI agent to AI super agent is not a product marketing arc. It describes a fundamentally different relationship between your workforce and the systems designed to enable them. Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst, Founder & CEO, The Josh Bersin Company, joins Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth, Infopro Learning, on the Talent Equation podcast to explain what that shift means for enterprise talent strategy right now and over the next three to five years.

They cover agentic workflows in Galileo Mars, how AI agents surface and scale top-performer behavior, why ambient AI in the workplace is closer than most leaders think, and how the L&D function itself will be restructured as super agents take on more of the enablement work. If you are making platform, structural, or investment decisions in talent and learning, this conversation provides the framework. CLOs, CHROs, and senior talent leaders will gain valuable, real-world insights that go far beyond the surface-level discussion.

Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst, Founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, joins Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, to talk about Galileo Mars and what it means for organizations trying to figure out AI right now —not someday, but now.

They cover the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an active participant in talent decisions, what companies are getting wrong about adoption speed, and how the role of L&D is being fundamentally rewritten. Josh has been tracking this space for over two decades. This conversation reflects it. Full episode coming soon. Subscribe so you catch it the moment it drops.

AI is reshaping how healthcare organizations develop their workforce, but the fundamentals of effective clinical training have not changed.

In this episode, Nolan Hout, SVP-Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, speaks with Mary Logar, BcID-MBTI Certified Practitioner, about closing the gap between what clinicians are expected to do and what their training actually prepares them for. They discuss evolving expectations for clinical talent, the importance of learning in the flow of work, and how brain-centric design supports different learning styles and personality types. Mary also shares a case study on a Hollywood-produced VR training program created during the COVID-19 pandemic for home care clinicians. Designed without the need for a headset, the program was built to be accessible to all learners. The conversation also explores AI’s role in workforce development, with both speakers emphasizing its value as a tool to accelerate work rather than replace human expertise.

For CHROs, CLOs, Vice Presidents of Clinical Education, and healthcare talent leaders, this episode offers practical insights into building training programs that improve workforce performance. Also available on YouTube.

What happens to your organization when AI starts doing the work your people were hired to do?

Sean Bartman, Vice President, Organization Effectiveness and Future Workforce, TD Bank, joins Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, to get specific about what AI in the workplace is actually doing to the shape of organizations and what CHROs, CLOs, and talent leaders need to do about it. Sean shares how large financial institutions like TD are rethinking workforce structure and HR strategy, from a traditional pyramid to what he calls the diamond-shaped organization, as AI absorbs more task-level work at the base.

They get into the real work of reskilling: why predicting future skills is harder than it sounds, what skills hold their value as AI takes over tactical execution, and how a strong talent strategy focused on redeployment toward growth will outpace one built around cost reduction alone. They also challenge the reflex to train people on AI tools first, arguing that curiosity, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving are the meta-skills that actually drive workforce performance.

If you are a CHRO, CLO, or L&D leadership executive making high-stakes decisions about your workforce's future, this is the conversation to have before your organization starts making the wrong moves. The full episode is also available on YouTube.

CLOs and HR leaders who want L&D to drive real workforce performance face a problem that has nothing to do with the quality of their training; it is a positioning problem.

When the learning function is built to fulfill requests rather than solve talent challenges, even excellent work fails to move the business. Jess Almlie, Learning & Talent Development Transformation Leader, Almlie Consulting, author of “L&D Order Taker No More! Become a Strategic Business Partner” and host of the podcast “L&D Must Change,” has spent 30 years diagnosing exactly why this happens and what it takes to fix it. In this conversation with Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth & AI Strategist, Infopro Learning, Jess breaks down the cultural and organizational forces that keep L&D leadership stuck in reactive mode and lays out the practical shifts that change how the business sees the function. They explore how to reframe stakeholder conversations, negotiate strategic access even when handed a pre-baked solution, and use measurement as a tool for building credibility rather than just reporting activity. The full episode is also available on YouTube.

What if the most painful chapters of your life are actually your greatest leadership assets?

Rhoda Banks, Two-Time Author, Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, and Independent HR, Talent & Culture Consultant at The Rhoda Experience LLC., joins Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth & AI Strategist at Infopro Learning, in this episode of the Talent Equation Podcast (Formerly known as the Learning and Development Podcast) to explore one of the most underused tools in leadership: your own story. Drawing on 25+ years in talent management and organizational development across major health systems and financial institutions, Rhoda makes a compelling case that authentic leadership is not built in classrooms. It is forged through lived experience. She also shares the story behind her memoir, “Daughter of an Assassin,” and how growing up in the shadow of violence and trauma became the foundation for a leadership philosophy rooted in empathy, accountability, and psychological safety.

If you lead people or develop leaders, this episode will challenge how you think about vulnerability, storytelling, and what it actually takes to create cultures where people grow.