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ATD OrgDev will provide you with the skills needed to develop employee programs at all levels and throughout their employment lifecycle. You’ll learn innovative methods at all levels to manage the ever-increasing rate of change in today’s workplace.

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Get the Toolbox You Need to Design for All LearnersDesign for All Learners empowers instructional designers, trainers, and all talent development professionals to create learning experiences that are accessible to and inclusive of all people. Learn from practitioners’ vulnerable lived experiences, moving stories, and practical advice. Written with accessibility, inclusion, and L&D experts and edited by Sarah Mercier, this book will help you ensure that individuals can fully participate in the talent development and training programs you offer.Adopt a progress-over-perfection approach, and take steps to build momentum toward accessible, inclusive design. Start with shifting your mindset to consider that all learners are people who have unique experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and abilities—and that learning design should be built for people, not just to compliance standards. Find what you need to know about designing for the modality you’re using to reach learners—from e-learning and job aids to training in the physical and virtual classroom. Gain a clearer understanding of requirements and standards, and then explore strategic tactics to foster an inclusive mindset throughout your organization.Anyone involved with the practice of design in the learning and development will benefit from the wide range of perspectives and techniques offered, whether you’re a team of one or work in an organization with a variety of resources. If your goal is to become a better designer, developer, teacher, and leader, this book presents a packed toolbox to do so. It will change everything you think you know. Use it as a guide in your journey to accessible, inclusive design for all.

Design for All Learners

Core4 is the premier foundational training and development conference where you’ll learn the fundamentals of instructional design, training delivery and facilitation, evaluating impact, and learning technologies.

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Measure Learning Impact Despite Limited ResourcesYear after year, talent development professionals report that lack of time, lack of support or partnership from stakeholders, and limited budgets are key barriers to measuring and evaluating their learning programs. Measurement and Evaluation on a Shoestring offers TD professionals a process to measure what matters to the organization with the tools and resources they have available. M&E pro Alaina Szlachta applies the Build-Borrow-Buy approach to provide guidance, quick tips, and shortcuts for making measurement easier while still demonstrating the value and impact of organizational learning.With this book, you will learn to ask the right questions, brainstorm metrics to evaluate learning, and build a measurement strategy that fits your needs. It also guides you on integrating measurement and evaluation into your instructional design approach from the beginning as well as using and analyzing data sources you might already have. You’ll discover how to build stakeholder relationships to secure buy-in and when to look beyond your expertise for external support and technology.The Association for Talent Development’s On a Shoestring series helps professionals successfully execute core topics in training and talent development when facing limitations of time, money, staff, and other resources. Using the Build-Borrow-Buy approach to problem solving, this series is designed for practitioners who work as a department of one; for new or “accidental” trainers, instructional designers, and learning managers who need fast, inexpensive access to practical strategies that work; and for those who work for small organizations or in industries that have limited training and development resources.

Measurement and Evaluation on a Shoestring

The ATD SELL conference focuses on bringing together the best practices and strategies across sales training, tools and technology, and processes needed to drive incremental sales performance. 

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A little over a year ago, LinkedIn launched its AI-powered coaching chatbot. You can ask it for advice on workplace issues, and it will help with suggestions on how to build skills, tackle issues, or move your career forward. Could this be the future for coaching at scale?The prospect of deploying an AI-powered virtual coach that could support thousands of employees simultaneously with their workplace challenges and aspirations is an attractive one. Imagine the savings on coaching and the benefits for employees of having access to a coach, round the clock, to respond to their every need almost instantly.Can AI replace a human coach?For incoming, younger employees, this may be just what they’re looking for: A recent survey found 66 percent of 25–34 year-olds would rather talk to AI about their problems than a loved one.And it’s easy to see why. With the power of generative AI, a chatbot can communicate with empathy. People report that the experience feels just like texting with an actual human, leading to concerns that we are rapidly becoming too attached to or dependent on these AI companions.The potential of providing this kind of support to employees is not without risk. While the interactions feel real, we must remember that the chatbot has been trained to mimic empathy. It knows what an empathic response to challenges and vulnerability sounds like and gives a seemingly appropriate reply. But it lacks genuine human empathy. It doesn’t actually care like a person may.Unlike a human coach, AI can’t think, feel, or relate to a person. No matter how sophisticated its language model, a coaching chatbot lacks the nuances of personal connection—and it cannot draw on a lifetime of emotional intelligence to offer support. Without that vital human connection, AI cannot effectively deliver workplace coaching.What are the benefits of AI in the coaching process?Where AI can significantly enhance coaching is by automating some logistical aspects, such as coaching provision and mechanics, making it easier and more efficient to build strong, effective coaching relationships. For example, AI can analyze hundreds of data points to match an employee with a suitable coach, increasing the likelihood that the two individuals will work well together, rather than leaving it to chance or asking an employee to choose from a list of coach bios.AI can then manage administrative tasks, such as scheduling calls, taking notes, and curating personalized content and learning materials from the vast quantity of resources organizations provide to their employees. This helps employees take post-coaching action and removes the administrative burden of managing the relationship, driving greater engagement and improving ROI.When deploying coaching at scale across all levels of the organization, AI platforms can minimize administrative overhead for learning and development (L&D) teams while delivering a seamless, engaging employee experience.AI also has the potential to analyze data from across an organization’s HRIS, recognizing patterns and identifying employees who could benefit most from coaching. For example, AI can detect factors that increase the probability that key employees could become flight risks, thereby creating an opportunity to intervene with career development resources before they decide to leave the organization. What’s next?It’s inevitable that AI will advance exponentially, potentially even creating life-like avatars that mimic human interaction. Until we have artificial general intelligence (where machines can truly think like humans), behind those lines of code, AI-powered coaching misses the spark of humanity that makes coaching so effective.Learn how you can offer scalable, personalized career coaching—that’s powered by people and technology—to employees at all levels of your business within your budget. 

What Is the Future for AI in Coaching?

Rare is the workplace where you don’t have one or more sensitive coworkers. The reasons for such sensitivity are endless, and some are even valid, but when such sensitivity is combined with emotional displays, they can especially be a challenge! Such reactions are one of the main reasons people don’t hold others accountable. As we discuss how to work with sensitive, emotional employees, there are two questions I want to address: Why do people get defensive? What can you do? When I teach or coach leaders, I find that many of them believe that employees get defensive because they simply don’t want to hear “the truth.” As far as the manager is concerned, the employee got caught in their mistake and their guilt is driving them to emotion. So, their response sometimes is to get tough and say unhelpful things like, “Let’s not get emotional, let’s keep this professional,” or “No need to get defensive, let’s stay on topic.” While it may be true sometimes that people get emotional because they feel guilty, our experience suggests something else. When people get defensive, it’s because they don’t trust your intent. They’re leery that you either don’t respect them or don’t respect what they care about (shared goals). When one or both are lacking, or the other person perceives a lack of respect, you see a spike in emotional responses. See, our brains are always scanning our external environment for threats. The moment we perceive a threat, our fight-or-flight response is triggered. We react. Defensiveness is the attempt to restore safety in response to a perceived threat. And some employees may have been shut down, mistreated, or disregarded by previous bosses, contributing to extra sensitivity that needs to be considered. So, what do you do about it? You need to make it clear to the other person that you DO respect them and care about their goals. This can’t be accomplished with trite phrases when you’re in a bind. You’ve got to truly care. The way you treat them outside of crucial moments may do more for your Crucial Conversations than how you respond during them. I love what the late Stephen Covey said. “You can’t talk your way out of something you’ve acted your way into.” If you don’t show respect for their time, their work, or their unique personality, no amount of flowery language will ease their defensiveness. I think you could have a conversation with this person to address this dynamic between the two of you. You might begin, “Hey Gabriel, I’ve noticed a pattern between us that I want to talk about. When I bring up a concern about a commitment you didn’t complete, you often raise your voice or start crying. I’d like us to be able to talk about things in a way that allows both of us to feel heard and find a solution. But I’m wondering if I’ve done something—or not done something—that’s provoking your response. How do you see it?” That may not be a perfect opening statement, so adapt it to work for you. But please see the principle in the details. Be honest about the issue. Don’t let them off the hook because they get emotional. Show them you care AND address the issue. Ask how you can show you care. Keep talking. 

Working With Sensitive, Emotional Employees

The intent in writing this article is to raise awareness of the problem with leadership training the way it exists now and to encourage people like you to be a part of the solution. Your managers need help. They need help delivering results and doing it in a way that people feel good about. If you stop reading right now and go to work on solving that, our work here has been successful.The way most companies are training managers and supervisors isn’t working. The Harvard Business School recently published The State of Leadership Development Report. Take a look at these statistics their researchers uncovered:Seventy-five percent of organizations rate their leadership development programs as not very effective.Only 18 percent of organizations say their leaders are “very effective” at meeting business goals.A mere 19 percent of organizations say they are “very effective” at developing leaders at all levels.Pretty startling, huh? It gets worse. Imagine reading those reviews on a product that costs $400 billion dollars! That’s how much companies spend collectively on leadership training annually, according to Forbes. This isn’t an indictment of any one particular company’s approach or any HR or L&D professional reading this article. It’s simply a suggestion that the industry needs to take a step back and acknowledge there’s a problem. So, what’s going wrong? Here’s what the data says about what’s wrong with the current approach to leadership training in most organizations:Disconnected From Business OutcomesYour managers are paid to deliver results. And yet an audit of LinkedIn Learning’s leadership courses revealed 97 percent of the content never referenced business outcomes. How is that even possible? While managers need help learning how to do effective performance reviews, be a better coach, have hard conversations, and build trust, none of those things will matter if they can’t deliver organizational outcomes. More Is Not MoreLeadership training companies deserve a lot of the blame for the state of the industry. In trying to get L&D teams to pay large licensing fees for access to their content, they’ve decided to go with the “more is more” approach. We were a bit surprised to discover 947 courses on video gaming strategies in LinkedIn Learning’s manager training programs. Although the courses on acne removal and clown makeup caught us off guard too. We didn’t watch any, so we can’t comment much on their overall instructional design.When 75 percent of people rate their leadership development training as ineffective, we can safely presume “more is not more.” Your managers don’t need access to more content, they need less.Too Theoretical – Lack of Immediate ApplicationManagers don’t want two full days of content or three books to read. The way current training programs are structured doesn’t lead to retention or application. Multiple studies show the typical learner retains 10–20 percent of what they’re taught in a full-day class. They retain more than 80 percent of what’s shared in one hour. Our brains and bodies don’t like long meetings or classes. They’re inefficient.Humans learn best with a blended approach, in cohorts rather than alone, with start and end dates, and with things they can apply immediately. Lack of Accountability and Follow-UpOne of the four fundamental flaws with existing management training programs is a lack of built-in accountability and follow-up. All too often we’re onto the next class teaching a whole new set of behaviors or competencies when the manager forgets or neglects what was taught in the last one. When we say follow-up, we don’t mean an email a week or two after the course with some reminders. No, effective accountability and follow-up are facilitated discussions where managers share how they’ve been trying to lead differently and what obstacles they’re running into. Additional models or learning tied to the core competencies already taught are introduced, helping the learner improve their skills in that critical area.It’s Time for a ChangeLeadership is more than just a set of skills; it involves making critical decisions about when and how to apply those skills. Leaders often rely on a pattern of responses based on their past experiences. These can become habits that may not be effective in changing situations. This happens because unconscious encoding processes shape responses, especially under stress. Adapting behaviors requires conscious effort and openness, which can be challenging in the high-pressure environments many leaders face today.

The Leadership Training Industry Is Broken

Learn how TD professionals can help leaders transform conflict into a tool for growth and innovation.

Building a Culture of Constructive Disagreement in the Workplace

You just can’t beat how easy it is at smaller events like Core4 to get to know the other attendees.