L&D in 20 is your go-to podcast for quick, actionable insights on employee learning, training, and development. Hosted by Dan Hayward, Go1's Chief Customer Officer, each episode delivers expert advice in just 20 minutes.

With a deep understanding of the L&D industry, Dan leverages his experience at companies like Degreed, LinkedIn, Yum! Brands, and now Go1 to bring you interviews with influential thought leaders. Together, they'll explore strategies to build employee engagement, drive organizational success, and foster a culture of continuous learning.

Hear insights from industry leaders, learn new strategies, and elevate your L&D game — in just 20 minutes

L&D in 20 Podcast

(00:58) Elevating skills through compliance training 

How can you use compliance training as an opportunity to advance workforce skills? In this episode, Dan sits down with Jennifer Dowdy, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts at Emtrain,  to explore innovative ways to transform traditional compliance training.

Jennifer Dowdy leads Partnerships and Strategic Programs at Emtrain. Bringing 30 years of expertise in technology sales, she is responsible for driving new revenue streams through channels and strategic client initiatives touching the HR and HCM technology sector. 

Beyond her professional role, Jennifer is actively involved in supporting domestic violence prevention and advocating for safe housing in her community. In her leisure time, she is camping and searching for waterfalls on the rivers and lakes of the Sierra Nevadas.

In this episode of L&D in 20, Dan sits down with Jennifer Dowdy, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts at Emtrain, to explore innovative ways to transform traditional compliance training.

Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training with Emtrains’s Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts, Jennifer Dowdy

More than a checkbox: Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training with Emtrains Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts, Jennifer Dowdy

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning, brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer and Industry Veteran. Today, we'll be speaking with Jennifer Dowdy, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts at Emtrain, where she has spent nearly seven years helping organizations scale employee learning and analytics to enhance inclusion, trust, and performance.

With over 20 years of experience in major account sales and partnerships across multiple industries, Jennifer leverages data driven insights to improve workplace culture. She's passionate about empowering businesses to make better decisions for their people.

Jennifer: Thanks, Dan. So happy to be here.

Dan: It's great to have you. Okay. So, the topic of today is compliance training as an opportunity to advance skills, which I just love. Um, so a couple of questions to kind of kick us off. Um, so some employees or many employees within the workplace are only getting, um, upskilling when it comes to compliance training, can you kind of describe the opportunity that that creates and how you think about elevating the employee experience during compliance training?

Jennifer: Yeah, I think it's important to start off with what most people think about when they think about compliance training. And it's typically these routine for the business, for the sake of laws and regs, or for the sake of mitigating risky behaviors or poor behaviors in the business and in the communities we serve, such as our clients.

Uh, and when we think about compliance training, it's, it's this have to do, not get to do, right? And what is in it for the employee or the learner is typically a distraction from their regular productivity day or their lives where they have to sit in these hours long trainings. They're compulsory. And a lot of what happens in these trainings as, as everybody has been through them at different phases of their career is that you're sitting there and you're really faced with a lot of policy, laws, and or obvious scenarios of what to do and what not to do. And for different people, it can be less obvious depending on where they are in their career. So when we think about an opportunity to advance skills, the way we want to think about compliance training is it's an opportunity to develop skills.

Every moment that you engage your employees and especially in a compulsory fashion where you have to do a mandatory training is an opportunity to engage the employee or the learner and give them something additive and valuable that not only they can apply in the business but in their, in their lives.

Dan: Yeah. I love that. So, so practically what are you seeing in terms of some of the content and how are you integrating some of those other skills into that, that compliance training?

Jennifer: My founder and CEO Janine Yancey says it perfectly. And for those who have pets and for those who don't, you know someone who does. Uh, we think of this as the pill and the peanut butter. So, when you think about, you know, having to take a medicine, give a medicine, it isn't an ideal situation, but it is for your health or for your animal's health in this, in this metaphor.

Uh, so when you think about being able to, uh, reach an entire audience of your employees, your, your audience of your business, and you are thinking about what can I do at this time. Advancing skills like how to communicate better, how to resolve conflict, how to take a step back, slow down and slow our judgment down, slow our thinking down.

Checking your bias. Uh, different, different elements of the human condition you can tackle as part of a compliance program. Because what compliance is really addressing is not so much laws and regs. Those follow behavior. Behavior is what gets us into the position of having to have mandatory programs for compliance.

And so when we think about behavior, what an opportunity to address skills development and actually address a condition that we're all experiencing in our lives as well as at work.

Dan: Okay, that's great. I love that. And so then, as we think about kind of now that we've captured some of those, uh, those, um, those passive learners or those compliance learners kind of interest, we've piqued their, their interest. Any, any, um, thoughts or experience of the, you know, the multiple clients that you work with, of how they've kind of transitioned some of those learners from kind of doing just the required learning to then moving on to kind of more inspirational, inspired learning?

Jennifer: Absolutely. It's how you say it and it's how you tackle it. So, I have a 30 plus year sales background, and in sales training, you learn a lot about how marketing engages the audience, you learn a lot about how you're engaging your buyer, your prospective buyer, we learn about personas, and we learn about the motivations of buyers.

Your learners are buyers. Your learners are another audience. And if you think about it, like any marketing or really well done advertising, you have to connect with what the learner is interested in and whatever it is that you're trying to roll out in a compliance program should be no different than what would interest me to purchase something off of social media.

You are trying to appeal to a sense of career development, advancement, and most learning programs are coming out of talent and talent development, talent succession strategies. In compliance, oftentimes we find that the stakeholders are going to be legal, risk, uh, employee relations, often there's a lot of attorneys involved.

So when we think about what we can do, it's how you say it and how you engage the learner around a set of skills that will develop them, not only for their role within the company that they're performing in, but for their career and in their lives, dare I say.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, that's great. And just to kind of, uh, jump onto a, a little, um, comment you made, made there. I think one of the really interesting things about compliance training is those multiple stakeholders. So you just kind of mentioned there's, yeah, there's going to be probably the legal team, uh, compliance, um, HR, uh, what may be involved.

L&D might not be the primary buyer. So could you just talk to me a little bit about kind of how you navigate, um, you know, how to navigate that internal stakeholder kind of, uh, discussions and what you've seen work well.

Jennifer: I think that what really works and what I've learned, uh, because L&D is a newer part of my career, right? I've been doing this, this space for seven years under, uh, compliance as a specific part of learning and development. And L&D typically is the platform that the compliance program sits in. And so what I find to be some of the most inspired client scenarios that we see is where corporate communications, internal communications are involved.

And we are finding out what other programs employees are spending time on, whether they're company sponsored or they're things that are more grassroots level, where, where the organization has sponsored employee resource groups, where there's different groups of representation. So, when you're finding out how employees are engaging outside of the actual funded program for compliance or even the L&D programs, and you're bringing that perspective that you've gathered out from the field into the L&D's visibility. L&D is wanting to listen. They are wanting to innovate. And often they're just so slammed with what is the typical L&D program. So being able to be creative and bring back that perspective from the field. Um, also the companies that we see working really effectively on programs that are engaging employees around skills.

Are not limiting it just to an L&D funded initiative where you see, you know, an annual compliance program, you see other skills development and other learning programs, leadership development, uh, even, even new employee onboarding programs. When you think about the different training programs that L&D has to steward for the organization.

The thing that we see working really well in some of the most innovative companies, um, some of them are our clients, uh, is that they are actually putting the programs, not just within the learning system, or, or just within where people can go and, and this is where we get the idea of passive learning, um, where we can actually put programs where, these kinds of skills can be developed and entice an active learning culture.

And so if you have a CRM, which most organizations will, if you have a community site and you are able to put these programs and also the results of these programs is shared in data driven storytelling, out to the employee base and actually maybe duplicate the areas in which you're going to engage employees around the business, making it available outside of the learning management system.

That's been a really important mover that we've seen some of our more innovative clients doing.

Dan: I love that approach. And I think, you know, what we see typically within organizations is like those different functions will have different expectations and different objectives.

So a legal team coming and checking out compliance will make, will be very different to that kind of internal communications team. But I think kind of aligning internally around kind of what are our expectations, not just, uh, from one functional, but organizationally and how are we uplifting and up leveling the workforce through this acquisition of great compliance training.

That's fantastic. So, I know one of the things we spoke about, uh, previously, you and I was the fact that in compliance training, there's a, there's a real need to create a speak up culture. And at the same time, we now have multiple, five generations, uh, in the workforce with different kinds of cultural practices, and we're, can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, what you've seen and how you've seen, um, the differences of creating a culture to navigate, you know, these generational differences in the workplace?

Jennifer: Absolutely. So we think a lot about multicultural differences and how to bring people together around a shared understanding of topics or concepts like respect. So often times, again, when we talk about compliance training, we never want an organization we're working with to call it their compliance program.

It is called their compliance program. But what we try to do is help them with a message around respect, inclusion, belonging. And when we think about those concepts and ethical decision making, we want to have a concept of what good looks like. So, establishing things like a shared language for your skills development program is a really important strategy in how you're going to roll out any program.

Again, it's how you say it, what's in it for the learner, and appealing to those audiences. And across five generations, what is readily, um, available at the tip of most of the emerging workforce's tongue is some of these issues of what work should feel like, what good looks like, and being vocal about your needs.

I am a stepmother to a 17 year old boy. What he is comfortable talking about is not what, you know, older generations or more experienced seasoned generations of executives. Or even in our own family members at the dinner table. It's not the same as what they're comfortable talking about. So things like politics, religion, conflicts in the world, climate.

These things are at the tip of a, an emerging workforce's tongue. And so knowing how to navigate that across five different generations at work, plus adding in multicultural layers, there's a real art to that, but it gets down to our shared experiences as human beings. So, when we think about tackling what things feel like at work, and tackling some of these concepts that may be drier, more legalistic concepts to impart, we get down to our basic behavior skills and how we make each other feel at work.

And it gets down to good manners. Or also being able to create space for multiple generations to tackle things. So, when you're teaching skills around uh, let's just say anti harassment, right? Often times it boils down to, are people having a bad day and they just lost their manners for a moment? It doesn't necessarily have to be the end of that meeting or the end of that professional relationship.

You can teach people how to navigate multiple generations in the workforce by teaching respect skills. And also how to apologize, how to navigate a misstep, and how to actually recover the opportunity to deepen the trust just in your own team meetings. So starting there with your one on one and your team relationships, as well as figuring out, that leadership needs to advance the skills to be able to manage these multiple generations in the workforce.

And that also comes down to how we approach manners and professionalism at work. You've got to teach people to be comfortable in creating space, and it's often called conflict resolution, but we think about it a little bit more. Deepening that relationship and trust means holding space for accepting, but also understanding and being curious. And finding commonality in our lived experiences at work and being able to apply that into any program that you're, you're putting out at scale to develop.

Dan: Yeah, no, I love that. I love that insight. I think kind of the, the commonality piece definitely feels like a, you know, like a, a key, a key opportunity for a lot of organizations. Okay. So now we're going to move on to our next segment. Uh, it's called the 60 Second Budget Breakdown.

Uh, so from a, from an L&D perspective, uh, or from a, yeah, from a perspective of you supporting your many, many clients, kind of what, what would you say the most important three things that you'd advocate that they spend their money on right now?

Jennifer: People. I think that spending your money on people and appointing them into positions that are cross functional is super important. Um, this is, this is the opportunity that will be a difference maker, especially in a time where we rely on so much technology. And we are also looking at ways to apply automation and things like AI, as well as being able to bring in, uh, different ways of engaging employees, especially when it comes to talent and succession planning, talent mobility programs, investing in your people.

And when I think about L&D and, and the hierarchical organization, you know, especially a matrix organization, when you think about the way that we staff for talent acquisition, when you think about the way that we staff for employee relations and human resources business partners, L&D needs to have that representation across the org chart so that L&D has that same agency to go in and tap for gaps and blockers and also find opportunities.

Skills assessments and skill development usually come out of performance reviews, assessing skills through different programs. L&D usually stewards that data around builds business cases. And when you're thinking about investing in those budgetary areas, and then you have sort of these outlier organizations that are integrative or trying to be integrated within the business like D&I, or you think about the sales program, sales usually gets their own bucket of training, right?

But being able to stretch across all of the functional aspects of the organization, having L&D have their own. Actual business partners that are sitting within the seat of the organization to not only tackle issues that they're identifying, but also the opportunities. So making sure that L&D is listening to the sellers, listening to the clients and the community served by the business, but also making sure that each from leadership and the executive board, all the way down to the new hires who are in their emerging career, being able to tap into what people need and what their expectations of learning are within the workforce, not just within that company, is going to really create a strategy out of the L&D programs that allow for you to meet people where they are.

Dan: I love that, that strategic learning, business partnering is, is definitely something that we don't see all that often. Is that something that you've seen in, in the organizations that you're supporting?

Jennifer: I have, I have, yeah, and some of the more progressive, this is not for every size company, obviously, you advance your, your functional staff, according to your growth, right? We have to, we have to be mindful of a budget and an investment strategy, but being able to have a culture of that established from any size company so that as you grow, and if you get into the largest companies and you're taking learnings from what the largest top performing organizations are doing around the world, really finding out how they're advancing their L&D programs and building a community around those functions that are outside of your business too, so that you're taking those learnings into the business, and applying them according to what you have the available investment to do, but always be pushing to build that business case to grow learning around concepts like curiosity.

We can't wait for the emerging workforce to advance to leadership to get leadership development quality training. We can actually tap in and start finding out and applying what learning can do for an organization at all stages of growth.

Dan: So now we're going to move on to our next segment, uh, Lifelong Learning.

So can you, uh, yeah, give me an example, describe a time where a situation that you're working on, um, turned out differently than you expected, either, yeah, positively or negatively, and what were, Couple of the key learnings that you had.

Jennifer: I would take this back to, to selling. And I think that all, all of us in business can relate to sales. Uh, when you think about putting and applying your typical sales motions, you've got a recipe, you've got a methodology, you have a process that you follow.

And I think that one of my biggest learnings around, around selling L&D was coming into the L&D space. I really, I really thought as a learner who had been taking these programs that it was one way. I was delighted to find out how much change management, organizational development, and how much data opportunity there is in this particular slice of a business.

And so my, uh, my surprise in entering this space. I've always sold according to metrics. And when you go into a compliance space, you're not really able to find metrics except for when people have claims or you read in the news about the DOJ doing an investigation. And it tends to be really juicy after the fact, but being able to actually tap into organizations who are struggling to find better ways to do that.

To be good partners together. That was one of my eye opening experiences. It's obvious around selling that people want to get to better metrics and better outcomes. But being able to tap into a community of HR leaders who I think get kind of a bad rap and L&D comes in as sort of the, the tech solutions team, but being able to see how many people want to actually do good was one of the most eye opening experiences of my last seven years.

Dan: So Jen, I'd love to know, uh, what's the biggest L& D win of your career?

Jennifer: I love this question, Dan, and the reason is, is because of selling, I think that the wins have to be the wins for your clients and the communities they serve. And so when you think about compliance programs, um, some of the, we've done this with several of our clients here at Emtrain, one of the things that I think was one of the most rewarding programs that we serve is that we did a compliance program that dealt with inclusion, belonging, and we expanded that from just the employees to the contingent workforce, and then it expanded out to the supplier and the ecosystem of our client, Cisco.

And that was a, an enormous win for us professionally. And also around a purpose, a shared purpose in the world. So these programs include things like inclusive language, uh, being able to speak up at the workplace in a productive and constructive way, um, through an upstander program, and taking it beyond those respect skills to applied skills that are relevant not only to the employee learners at Cisco, but out into their supplier and their partner communities.

Creating that kind of expansive learning program around these topics, um, is under purpose for Cisco and being able to be a provider of that kind of learning and development program where you know that these skills are going around the world into Cisco's ecosystem. That is an enormous win because people have given amazing feedback and actuallyasked more  engaged questions from their communities around how they can apply these skills and more of these programs within their own workplaces.

Dan: That's, that's amazing impact. That's great

And now we're going to move on to our final segment, ‘Self Development Hacks’.

So what is your personal kind of go to, where do you go to grow? What's your favorite L&D or learning related content or resource?

Jennifer: I thought about this question a lot and I think that to learn we have to be uncomfortable. Um, I'm a natural introverted personality, which is ironic because I've been in front of people selling for 30 plus years.

And what has been, I think, a secret to my success is pushing myself to be uncomfortable to grow. So tapping into people and, and actually pushing myself to form community and relationships that are not just within that near term window of, of achieving my goals. And actually forcing myself to work with people, practice the skills of curiosity and actually talk with more and more people, pushing myself to make introductions that are cold introductions to people that I just want to learn from, not sell to, so that I can, engage myself as an active learner, because if I am only relying on the technology that's out there, I'm relying on only my curiosity, not challenging myself to grow.

Dan: Thank you for sharing. So Jennifer, that's it. We've come up on time. Thank you so much for coming onto the show today and sharing your insights with us.

Dan: So, thanks for tuning into the show. I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as we did. Whether you're listening on the go or at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode and until then, keep learning.

Episode 2 - More than a checkbox: Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training 

(00:55) Interpersonal skills in the workforce

How do you build empathy and trust on teams? In this episode, Dan sits down with Shawn Hunter, President and Founder of Mindscaling, to discuss the importance of giving trust, demonstrating that the workplace is safe, and empathy.

Shawn Hunter is an entrepreneur, speaker, best-selling author of Small Acts of Leadership, and currently Founder and President of Mindscaling, a company dedicated to creating beautiful, and intelligent online learning products.
Until July, 2015 Shawn was Executive Producer & Vice President for Leadership Solutions at Skillsoft. For over a decade Hunter has interviewed, collaborated with, and filmed hundreds of leading business authors, executives, and business school faculty in an effort to assemble video learning solutions. He started this journey as an entrepreneur, and later expanded that business for Skillsoft. Hunter originally co-founded Targeted Learning Corporation with his father Hal Hunter, Ph.D., which was acquired by Skillsoft in February 2007.

In this episode of L&D in 20, Dan sits down with Shawn Hunter, President and Founder of Mindscaling, to discuss. They dive into the importance of giving trust, demonstrating that the workplace is safe, and empathy.

Building empathy and trust on teams with Mindscaling’s President and Founder, Shawn Hunter

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer and industry veteran. 

Today, we'll be speaking with Shawn Hunter, Founder and President of Mindscaling, a company that builds and designs leadership experiences, hand crafting best in class courses. Shawn has over 20 years of experience in designing and building customized learning experiences that create real measurable change within organizations.

He's also a podcaster, a speaker, a writer, and the best-selling author of two books on leadership and innovation, Small Acts of Leadership, And OutThink, Shawn, welcome to the show.

Shawn: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Today we're talking about soft skills in the workforce, particularly mental flexibility, collaboration, and creativity in the workplace. 

Much of your work is focused on soft skills, so what trends are you seeing in the workforce regarding these very essential skills?

Shawn: So, my organization, Mindscaling, what, what we do here at Mindscaling is we focus on soft skills. We focus on innovation. Empathy, communication, um, collaboration, teamwork. We don't so much focus on technical skills, so to speak. And what we're seeing in the marketplace, if you look at the latest ATD report from 24 and into 25, one of the top, number one, number two, number three, is the ability to communicate.

To communicate, to communicate in a hybrid environment, in a spoken environment, in a written, you know, good writing. How do you communicate ideas? And so, addressing this, I think one of the most important things we can do to kind of upskill, improve our communication is to work through a narrative, through storytelling.

So basically, you know, if you're, if you're a coder and you're getting really good at coding or you work in user interface or something, you can improve those skills remarkably. But if you want to convey those ideas, I think you should do it through a narrative. And to do that, like, I'll give you a little example.

So, a few years ago, I interviewed the, uh, Chief Operating Officer for Starbucks and his name's Howard Behar. And Howard Behar, back in the day, decades ago, his job was to set up new stores, you know, open new shops. And he opened this shop down in Santa Monica, California, and the manager that he placed in there that he hired was a woman named Dina.

And Dina contacted him and said, you got to come down and check out this new drink we're making. So, he's curious and he goes down to Santa Monica. And they're making this frothy, you know, cold coffee drink. And he's like, oh, this is quite good. And so he goes back to Seattle, to the operations people, the headquarters, and he explains it and he, you know, shows them how they make it, et cetera.

And all the operations people, the menu people, the logistics people, they're just like, no, forget it. Like it's too expensive. It's not on the menu. We're just trying to get started. This is ridiculous. Like we don't have time for this. So, he calls her up and he says, look, Dina, I, uh, I talked to headquarters and they don't like it.

They don't like this idea, but just keep doing it. You know, you just keep making it and tell me how it goes. Like, tell me how the sales are and everything. So that story right there is the birth of the Frappuccino. Okay. The Frappuccino is their number one product today, billions and billions of dollars.

Now, inside of that narrative, there's all kinds of different things that you can identify and look to. You can look to, oh, Dina's initiative, like the chance that she took or the way she, you know, empathetically understood the customer and, and work to craft something of their interest. Or you could think of yourself as Howard.

Well, Howard's like the, you know, the executive who comes down to oversee it and he gives them autonomy. He gives them license, he gives them, you know, free, free will to go experiment. Or maybe you see yourself in the story as like the CFO who says, no, this is ridiculous. We can't do this. So, from whatever perspective you dissect that story.

You can see lessons inside that narrative and it's memorable. So back to my point, my point is to convey something compelling, focus on building it into a story that people will remember.

Dan: That's great. And so as you think about kind of, I know that you've spoken a lot about, um, driving exceptional outcomes, uh, in your book, kind of out think, how do you actually, so I understand the storytelling, but how do you kind of teach something like mental flexibility? So, in that story, like Dina kind of stood out to me.

I'm like, oh, that's, that's fantastic. Yeah. But how, you know, how do you convey that? So, if we're in a, you know, one of your, one of your clients, or if we're in an L&D function, what are some of the, the steps or the kind of the tactics that you think, um, work best?

Shawn: Okay. So, so this is about like, how do you draw out that discretionary energy, that creativity, that, you know, deep engagement from someone. And I would, my recommendation is for people to remember that we all have an emotional wake. Everywhere we go, right? In every interaction. And by that, I mean, how do you leave someone?

Do you leave someone uplifted? Do you leave them anxious or agitated? I was just, before this phone call, like I'm prepping for this little interview here. And I called my colleague, uh, at Mindscaling. And she said to me, well, you know what? I've learned something from you, Shawn, because when we have these, these phone calls, you've taught me that not all phone calls are perfect.

From your boss have to be bad news. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. She's like, you know, I leave interactions with you feeling sometimes affirmed or uplifted or, so my point is like, I had a previous boss who every time he would say like, uh, can we talk at Friday on new at noon? And I'd be like, Oh, great.

And sure enough, it's bad news. Right. So, he's teaching me that when he wants to talk to me, it's bad news. He's going to cut the budget. He's going to fire people or whatever. It doesn't have to be that way. So, in order to draw out that creativity, that energy, that innovation from people, you have to teach them that this is a safe place to be.

Dan: Mhm. Yeah, I love that. And I think one of the interesting things is that intrinsically with soft skills, they're, they're, they, they are, they're human behaviors, right? They're, they're, they're things that I think all of us have in some shape or form. Um, but to your point, being able to identify that and draw that out.

So, what are some of the ways that you, maybe you, you know, you'd assess that within a work population or within a cohort of learners?

Shawn: Well, you'd want to be looking at how much initiative are people taking, like how reticent are people in these meetings? Are they speaking up? Are they taking initiative? And then encourage that. So, and one way you can do that is by asking more powerful questions. So if you ask questions like, Uh, which one or how many, these are kind of binary questions that have simplistic answers and people can tell you, you know, like if I, if I ask you, can you describe your high school? You're like, oh yeah, I could, I could do that. But if I asked you, um, in five years from now, if you were, if you had no constraints, what, where would you like to see yourself in your career? Well, that's a much more powerful question and that's going to bring out from you, like more ideas, more expression, more ambition, more aspiration.

You'll take more chances and that creates a vulnerability loop, you know, or, or self-reinforcing. So back to the original question, how do you get people to be more creative? My answer is. They are, they are now in their book clubs, in their, in their guitar, in their writing, in the things that they're passionate about.

Dan: Yeah, I love that. And I think one of the things from an organizational perspective, quite often we talk about creating a culture of learning as if, you know, the people that we employ are not learning outside of work, they're not in book clubs, they're not doing jujitsu or going, you know, getting better at bowling or, or whatever it is, right.

And I think kind of intrinsically, the vast majority of us are interested in learning and growing in some aspect. It's really about how do you bring that into the workplace? I don't know. We spoke previously when we spoke previously, we talked a little bit about kind of like empathy being at the core of this.

So can you talk to me a little bit about how, you know, empathy shows up in, in the, in the sessions and the, and the work that you do, I think kind of creating that, that safe space, allowing people to kind of grow and be innovative, but really interested in terms of, from a, from a leadership perspective,

Shawn: I'll give you this perspective on empathy because it is, you know, in and of itself, uh, one of the key ingredients in innovation, in collaboration, you know, the, the ability to walk in somebody else's shoes, see from, you know, somebody else's perspective. And we're, we're taught, of course, in our podcasts and mindfulness, uh, journaling to express gratitude.

You know, be grateful, express gratitude to your colleagues, your kids, your wife, to your life. And the twist that I put on this is recognize that when you express gratitude, thank you for your contribution in that meeting. Thank you for asking that really powerful question that opened up and unlocked a new way of designing the user interface or whatever it is.

When you're expressing that deep gratitude. You're not just saying, thank you. What you're saying is I see something in you that I want more of in myself and I want to grow into. I want to become, I want to adopt that passion, that way of speaking, that way of learning. You're, you're, you're basically building a compliment into that expression of gratitude by saying, I want, I see something remarkable in you and I want more of it in myself.

So that in and of itself. Is an act of empathy. So you can start with a little piece of gratitude and acknowledging that and adopting those behaviors yourself. And that is in and of itself, empathy.

Dan: Yeah, I love that framing. That's great. And then I guess one of the, you know, uh, maybe the flip side to what we've been discussing now is we talk a lot about kind of, uh, teaching, training, soft skills. What are some of the biggest or most common mistakes that you've seen as you've kind of been brought in to help organizations. 

Shawn: Hmm. We were at Mindscaling, we work a lot with small and medium sized businesses. I mean, I've done work with giant companies as well, but what we see in small and medium sized companies is they might be, uh, an L&D operation of one, you know, or two and they're, and they're trying to, you know, upskill and build collaboration or drive the behavioural objectives of the organization from, you know, a small footprint.

So, my recommendation is, you know, once you've built the curriculum, the learning paths, curated the library, aligned it with the behavioural objectives of the company, then you have this almost like a marketing challenge. You know, how do you get people to take it, to attend, to go through the learning path, et cetera.

And my answer is, co-opt the leaders in your organization. And what I mean by go to your Head of Sales, go to your Head of Marketing, go to your Head of Operations and Logistics and bring them in because they do have deep expertise. In their skillset, make them the subject matter expert, allow them to share their insights and ideas.

So, all of a sudden you've now populated your learning and development curriculum with the experts inside your own organization, who will then go out and be ambassadors for what you've created. And bonus points. It doesn't cost very much.

Dan: No, that's, that's awesome. And I also think what's, what's interesting there is it quite often it generates a, you know, it generates an inter, you know, internal to the company sense of kind of ownership and even competition amongst those executives. Like they want to make sure that it's their function that is, you know, that is the top of the, the, the stack and rack, um, in terms of kind of adoption and engagement.

That's, that's great. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. So now we're going to move on to our next segment and it's called the 60 second Budget Breakdown. Uh, and so from a, you know, and, and obviously, uh, I know that you're supporting a lot of L&D, um, functions and working with a lot of different organizations, but if you had to kind of give advice, uh, what would be the, the three things or the three most important things that you would recommend that your clients or someone in an L&D function spend their money on? 

Shawn: My top recommendation, as I said a second ago is, to leverage the key expertise you have in your organization, but start small, like start with a deep cohort of people that, you know, are invested in what you're doing, that have your back and hand pick them and build that success.

So then when they go back to their colleagues and they rave about, you know, the workshops they went to and the, and the asynchronous learning and the mentoring they had and the job rotation and all of these different practices that you implemented into your curriculum. All of a sudden, they too also become ambassadors.

So, you, you know, you start in the executive team and kind of work your way downstream through the organization to build like pillars of leverage to create a constantly continuous learning organization.

Dan: That's great. Thank you. Thank you, Shawn. And so, moving on to our, uh, next segment, Lifelong Learning. 

So, I know there's going to be a lot to discuss here. Um, so can you describe a time or situation that, that turned out differently than you expected, uh, and what you learned personally, um, about that?

Shawn: Well, I'll harken back to my first company. So, oh boy, this was, uh, like, like late aughts. Uh, uh, five, six, you know, in there. And, and we had, we had, well, it was actually a video-based learning organization called Targeted Learning. And in that small company, I mean, we were a company of fewer than 15 people.

And it was. In that company, I felt like, and I was young and earnest and trying really hard. I felt like I had to be involved in everything. You know, I had to help write the contracts, help do the sales call, help build the production. I had to sweep the floor. I had to, you know, on and on and on to such an extent that I became an inhibitor.

I became a roadblock to progression. It was like an unwillingness to let go. And, and what happened was I was. We were having a team call and, you know, there's like eight people on the phone, like half the company's on this phone call and, and, and I showed up late. This was first mistake. But then they said, oh, well, we've just been chit chatting because we can't do anything without you being here.

So, I, again, I had taught everyone around me that I needed, I needed to be involved in everything. That's a mistake. That's absolutely a mistake. Give trust.

Dan: Yeah. And so how did you, like, what were the first kind of one or two steps that you took to, to address that with that workforce? Yeah,

Shawn: And, and doing that is, you know, an act of letting go, you know, now I've got kids in college. I mean, you have to let go. I mean, when they're at home, you know, you can put a, uh, uh, like a lojack on their phone and figure out where they are.

And if they don't come home at midnight, well, you know, they're at Joey's house in his backyard. Well, when they go to school. And they're a thousand miles away or wherever they are, you have to let go. So, it's the same concept and why in the world we micromanage adults, you know, demand that we get the highest GPA from the best school and, and make it ultra-competitive to get in this organization.

And then we don't let them requisition a box of pens.

Dan: Ueah, yeah. Well, if I can just dig in a little bit deeper there, cause I think that, that, that level of competition and what we're teaching kind of our, our kids, or even in, you know, corporate, corporate America, corporate life kind of worldwide from a competition, how does that gel with, you know, with what you're seeing from a soft skills perspective?

Um, in particular, you know, it feels like sometimes it could be at odds in terms of, you know, it is, it's not always the person who's got the most empathetic that gets ahead or the person that is the most collaborative, uh, but just interesting to, to get your perspective there.

Shawn: I think what you're asking is because we're, I guess at the moment we're, we're kind of narrowing in on Gen Z, all right, and emerging into the, into the workplace and how do we bolster their skills so that they can be more collaborative or more effective, more accountable. And I guess I'm back to my. Well, my last piece of advice about give trust, please speak to them like humans, you know, human to human.

We all have innate wishes, desires, hopes for peace and love in our families and safety, right? Understand that these are humans we're dealing with. But my first recommendation was to tell them. Teach people, particularly perhaps this generation or any other, to speak in stories and narratives. They're also easier to tell.

I mean, nobody remembers statistics. So, I mean, my advice to, you know, anybody from 25 to, you know, 75 or 85 is, if you want to be impactful in the ideas you're conveying, couch it in a narrative that somebody can remember. That's right. That's what she taught me. Ah, I remember that.

Dan: That's great. That's fantastic. Thank you. So now as we move on to our final segment, uh, Self Development Hacks. 

Uh, super interested to, to understand from you kind of personally, what would be your, yeah, your favorite, um, self development or L&D related content or resource, like what, what, where do you go?

Shawn: Alright. Uh, I'll take a left turn here. I, I study guitar and piano, but I take music lessons and I love this. There's, there's an app that I use, this is not an endorsement, I actually pay them to take, it's called pickup music. There's many out there. It has all star instructors. I mean, these are Berklee professional musicians or touring musicians, and you can go and you can learn melody or chords or songwriting or whatever you want. 

My point that I'm getting to is, as you work through the course, every week I have to be accountable. So I have to record myself playing and working on a piece that I've been instructed on in that week and then submit it. And of course the instructors are gracious and they're, you know, encouraging, but they'll give me little tips, hit, you know, and hacks to improve my work.

But most of it, I mean, I do appreciate the feedback, but most of the learning is in the doing. In the do, in the, okay, yeah, I gotta, I gotta learn that, um, that four part progression and then try to play that melody over it. Okay, here we go. In the doing of building it, submitting it, letting go, and then waiting for the feedback.

So, so the, the real learning is in the creating itself and then bonus points later, then they tell you how you did.

Dan: Yeah, that's great. That takes me from a kind of a corporate perspective, straight back into the real value of critical development experiences and opportunities, giving people a chance to kind of step up or step in, to actually do the work in a, in a way that is kind of. Self led, but also supported and guided on the, on the outside.

That'sgreat. Well, Shawn, thank you so much. Uh, these, these, these shows go so quickly. This is, um, really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all your insights with us.

Dan: Thanks for tuning into the show. Uh, I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another episode of L& D in 20. We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as I did. Uh, whether you're listening on the go or at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode. And until then, keep learning.

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Episodes

More than a checkbox: Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training with Emtrains Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts, Jennifer Dowdy

Building empathy and trust on teams with Mindscaling’s President and Founder, Shawn Hunter