The many faces of the modern learning professional
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Coach.
For reasons we’ll reveal in the months to come, the Mind Tools Custom team spent last week discussing the job requirements of a ‘learning professional’. Since you’re reading this, I assume you identify with this term! Is it what you signed up for?
As an absolute minimum, you should have a high-level insight into your organization’s strategy and goals, as well as an in-depth understanding of its day-to-day operations.
You will be part field researcher, designer, copywriter, web developer, facilitator and coach.
Sometimes, you will have to pretend to be a lawyer.
You are likely to appear on camera and should be able to present naturally. You must be comfortable behind a camera, directing others to make them look good - even when what they say is borderline incoherent.
You must establish extensive networks throughout your organization if you ever hope to get anything done. And you must maintain those networks, even as you tell colleagues that their ideas are too big and too expensive, or too small and too expensive.
You must establish extensive networks outside your organization. These will be developed at conferences you cannot afford, and on social networks that must be maintained.
You will become an industry expert, because by speaking at a conference you can get a free ticket.
Your best friends are the internal comms team and the IT department. You will keep smiling when they say ‘no’.
You must be good with people, and with numbers. Understanding statistics is a benefit, presenting with Excel is essential.
It helps if you have an ongoing understanding of the latest technology, including LMSs, LXPs, LRSs, MOOCs, SCORM, xAPI, ChatGPT and WTF. LOL.
It helps if you know the number for a good caterer.
You will be measured by vanity metrics, and accused of being difficult when you bring up the metrics that matter.
You will be accused of being a cost center, and measured by how many bums you sit on how many seats.
You will do all of this with a precarious budget, and a vague sense that nobody else cares.
Sometimes, people will thank you.
You will worry that the sense of pride this gives you does not count as ‘robust evaluation of your programs’.
You will cry when your course is rated 1 out of 5.
You will make friends and alienate people.
And at the end of the day you will sit with your team in the pub, and you will feel a sense of quiet satisfaction.
Because when all is said and done, at least it’s fun!
Overwhelmed in your role? Contact custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox if you want to chat about how we can take some of that effort away.
🎧 On the podcast
Coaching, once the preserve of a privileged elite (ie: the leadership team), is increasingly seen as a useful tool that can help all of us perform better in our roles. But how do we roll coaching out to a wider audience when the cost of a single coaching session is relatively high?
This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, author and coach Jenny Garrett OBE joined Owen and I to explore the options, including group coaching, the impact of technology and the ‘manager as coach’ model.
This last approach is particularly interesting to me. We’ve worked on a few projects in the last few years to help managers develop coaching skills, but we’re always aware that they can never be entirely neutral.
For example, if a skilled team member wants to move to a different department or organization, can we trust their manager to coach them effectively? Or would they try to ‘coach’ the team member into staying?
Says Jenny:
‘We'd hope that [what the manager focused on] was what was best for the individual because, ultimately, if you try and keep someone in a box, they're going to become demotivated and try to leave anyway, so why not support them?’
I’d love to hear what our listeners think. Is this aspirational? Or is ‘manager as coach’ the future of coaching?
Listen to the full episode here, and hit reply to this newsletter if you want to share your thoughts!
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
‘Extended Reality’ (XR) is the broad collective term for three types of experience:
Virtual reality - Where the user wears a headset and experiences an entirely virtual world. Think Ready, Player one.
Augmented reality - Where the user can observe digital content layered on top of the real world, via a tablet or mobile device. Think Pokemon, Go.
Mixed reality - Where the user can interact with digital content and the physical world at the same time via a headset. Think the new Apple Vision Pro.
As the cost of these technologies comes down (relatively speaking), more and more researchers are exploring these tools as an approach to collaborative learning. Last week, an introduction to a special issue of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning summarized just some of the techniques being explored.
These include:
entering a VR environment to collaboratively explore and manipulate geometric shapes;
a VR science lesson to explore microscopic genes up close;
students acting as ‘particles’ in a physical space, with their movements then projected onto a shared digital screen;
using AR headsets and tablets to simulate a crash landing at sea, where students must identify where they are using constellations;
and exploring geolocial history through a mobile AR app.
Taken together, these five examples represent a clear use case for XR technology: bringing physical objects and places into either a physical or virtual classroom, so that learners can examine and interact with them.
Fortman, J., & Quintana, R. (2023). Fostering collaborative and embodied learning with extended reality: Special issue introduction. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1-8.
👹 Missing links
Public libraries are amazing. Anyone, regardless of wealth, can pop in and borrow (or order) any book they want. They’re also great for authors, who benefit from the bulk orders placed for new books. Now, a new study has found that libraries in England generate £3.4bn a year in value - around six times their running costs — and offer, among other things, drop-in sessions for refugees, post-Covid literacy recovery, an alternative form of support to the NHS, and a shared space for alleviating social isolation.
🎂 The Learning Performance Benchmark celebrates 20 years
What are the characteristics of a high-performing L&D team? As the Learning Performance Benchmark, our industry-leading survey of L&D leaders, hits 20-years-old, we’ve taken a step back to review how things have changed. Personally, this line jumped out at me:
‘Success as an L&D team is not about what you’re doing, but why you’re doing it. It’s about making decisions that are evidence-led and grounded in purpose, being able to adapt to meet the needs of the business, and having an openness to experiment with new ideas.’
⚠️ Swearing isn’t a sign of ignorance, it’s an indicator of fluency
There’s a common misconception that people use swear words because they can’t think of a more articulate way to express themselves. In fact, according to researchers Kristin L. Jay and Timothy B. Jay, speaking on the Freakonomics podcast:
‘The people who generated the most swear words were the people who generated the most letter words and animals.’
For me, swear words are delightfully versatile. Just think about the range of meanings conveyed by ‘take a sh*t’, ‘tough sh*t’, ‘good sh*t’, ‘bad sh*t’ and ‘don’t give a sh*t’. I could go on, but check out the podcast episode instead. It’s a lot of fun,.
And finally…
A few years back, I worked on a digital onboarding project for Virgin Trains. It’s one of the best projects I’ve worked on, incorporating animation, 360-video, a video FAQ and an arcade game to address the cares and concerns of new starts.
Last week, I recorded a short overview to share how it worked. Check it out below!
👍 Thanks!
Thanks for reading The L&D Dispatch from Mind Tools! If you’d like to speak to us, work with us, or make a suggestion, you can get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or email custom@mindtools.com.
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