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Megan Bridgett is senior director of Learning Operations and Delivery Resource Management for GP Strategies. She's a leader in training and talent development for over a decade, helps organizations implement, optimize, and increase capabilities in their learning management initiatives.

Megan Bridgett

We created the following list of questions that you can ask yourself to ensure you deliver engaging and successful hybrid events.

4 Questions to Consider When Creating Engaging Hybrid Event Experiences

Your training delivery management may need alignment with what your business actually needs. Read on for tips to ensure alignment in this area can facilitate better engagement, more growth, and increased customer satisfaction.

Five Key Methods to Improve Your Training Delivery Management

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

5 Practical Takeaways From My First Core4 Conference

Megan Torrance is the CEO and founder of TorranceLearning, where she leads a team of learning experience designers and engineers in reimagining workplace learning. Her firm has served Fortune 1000 companies, major research universities, global professional associations, and federal agencies for more than two decades. Megan brings a strategic vision that helps TorranceLearning bridge vision with execution—delivering innovative, data-informed, and learner-centered solutions. Megan is the author of Agile for Instructional Designers, Data & Analytics for Instructional Designers, Making Sense of xAPI and the upcoming book, The AI Implementation Guide for L&D. She facilitates several of eCornell’s certificate programs focused on power dynamics, communication skills, and women’s executive leadership.

Megan Torrance

5 Critical ISD Challenges—and How You Can Address Them

Bridget Egan

January 2019 - ATD Links

As a training professional, you know that creating effective content relies on knowing your user. Good training teams are constantly gathering data and conducting user research to adapt and grow with their audience.

Apply UX Design to Your Management

Picture this: A leader spends half a day in assessment. They walk away with a thirty-page report packed with insights on their behavior, skills, and personality. They’re ready to apply it. Then...nothing. No follow-up. No plan.Meanwhile, the report gathers dust while the leadership gaps it uncovered persist. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Organizations are drowning in unused data.But the need for this data is clear. In a recent DDI webinar, 75 percent of L&D professionals said leaders lacked the ability to evaluate skills, and 52 percent said the absence of assessments led to poor talent decisions. These numbers highlight the urgency of moving beyond reports that sit on a shelf.Let’s look at three reasons why assessments fail—and what separates ineffective assessments from real transformation. Problem 1: The Assessment-to-Action Chasm “All Data, No Decisions”A high-potential leader completes a rigorous assessment that pinpoints exactly where they need to grow. But the results never make it past the debrief. No one builds a development plan, and the data sits in a folder—valuable, but unused.Here’s the core failure: treating assessment as the end goal instead of the starting point. It’s like asking employees for candid feedback and then ignoring it. The message is clear: You weren’t really listening. Without action, you’re worse off than before.Why does this happen? Assessment is often buried in talent acquisition or succession planning, making it harder to connect with L&D. The cost is high: disillusionment, disengagement, and leaders who learn to game the system.The fix is to bridge the chasm. Build action planning into your assessment process from day one. If you’re not ready to act, don’t assess.Problem 2: Inconsistent Implementation “The Rollout Roulette” In many organizations, assessment feels like a game of chance. Some leaders are evaluated during hiring, others for succession, and many complete their tenure without being assessed.Key capabilities like “strategic thinking” or “effective coaching” can mean different things without a consistent framework. One leader’s “coaching” might be weekly mentoring sessions, while another’s is quick feedback when something goes awry. With no shared definition, comparing results or target development is nearly impossible.Timing is another issue. Assessments might happen years apart or at random intervals, leaving leaders without timely feedback when it matters most.Inconsistency means no guardrails. Data might be repurposed in ways never intended. Results meant to guide growth are sometimes repurposed for high-stakes decisions like promotions—or even layoffs. When organizations weaponize assessment tools, leaders lose trust and disengage.The antidote is an assessment journey tied to leadership milestones. You create consistency and trust by aligning assessments to key transitions or performance management and defining exactly how the data will (and will not) be used.Problem 3: Leadership Buy-In Crisis “Doubt at the Top”Executives may champion assessments in theory, but if they skip their own, the damage is immediate. Skepticism cascades. If leaders don’t trust the process, neither will anyone else. Common symptoms of a lack of buy-in? Budget battles and a focus on participation over impact. Without executive support, assessment becomes a “nice to have” rather than business-critical. And when success is measured by how many assessments are completed—not how leaders are growing or driving results—the process loses value.Executive sponsorship isn’t optional. It’s the difference between transformation and expensive theater. When executives share their own assessment experiences or visibly support the process, it builds trust and boosts engagement.The Path Forward Each of these problems can be fixed with proven leadership assessment best practices.First, stop treating assessment as a one-time event—embed it into the leadership journey to support ongoing growth. Next, connect assessment directly to development resources and opportunities. Quick, relevant action builds momentum and engagement.Then, establish clear governance for consistency, trust, and protection against misuse. Define what will be measured, how often, and exactly how data will be used.Finally, before launching assessments, ask yourself: "What will we do with this data?" If you can answer, you’re prepared to act with alignment between your assessment goals, business strategy, and leader growth.Conclusion When assessment drives action, the payoff is worth it—leadership gaps close, performance improves, and your leadership bench grows stronger. When leaders see assessments lead to meaningful development, they trust and engage with the process. Now’s the time to examine your assessment strategy. Are you turning data into action? For practical ways to bridge the gap, watch the webinar.

Your Assessment Strategy Has a Fatal Flaw. Here’s How to Fix It. 

A common question I am asked when delivering workshops on applying learning science is “what’s the best way to teach someone \[insert topic or skill\]?” Or, “What is the best way to explain a particular topic or concept?”Let’s think about this. If I want to teach someone how to make a new kind of soufflé, what’s the best way to do it? It depends!I need to know things like:Does the person know how to cook at all?Do they want to know how to make this new kind of soufflé?Has the person ever made a soufflé before?Do they know how to separate egg whites from egg yolks?Do they know how to make a water bath in the oven? Do they even know what a water bath is?Do they know how to use a whisk and how to tell when the whites have been whisked just enough?How I help someone make a new kind of soufflé depends on all these things (and more). But what it doesn’t depend on is the person’s “learning style.”Here’s a truth: Cognitive psychologists have conducted in-depth reviews of the literature in search of well-designed studies showing clear evidence of a connection between instruction tailored to learning styles and differences in student outcomes. Their conclusions: “There is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.”To be fair, the idea of people having different learning styles is appealing because it is intuitive. Just as height, head and foot size, and eye color and shape vary, people vary in their abilities.People are better at some things than others.Some people have an uncanny ability to remember faces, some can hear a piece of music and play it immediately, and others are extremely skilled at hand-eye coordination. Yes, we’re different, and we have certain preferences, interests, background knowledge, and motivations, but that doesn’t mean that the way we actually learn is better depending on our preferred modality of instruction.Back to the soufflé. Thinking about the “best” or optimal way to teach someone to make the new soufflé depends on the content, the context, the learner and their motivation, and how much they already know (their background or prior knowledge). To teach a complete novice how to make the soufflé, a video, an in-person demonstration, and some step-by-step, scaffolded practice would likely be needed. To the more seasoned soufflé maker, I could probably hand a printed recipe with the “innovative” part highlighted, and off they’d go.I am instructing neither person differently based on a stated “learning style.” Instead, I’m meeting them where they are and either starting from the very beginning and going over the basics using some visuals or live demonstrations, or letting them apply their prior knowledge and experience to learning a new recipe or technique.When I plan my workshops, I think about not discussing learning styles. It’s a subject people feel extremely passionate about, and it tends to stir up sometimes contentious, polarizing debates. Most importantly, these discussions can come at the cost of derailing otherwise productive discussions about improving teaching and learning using evidence that we know positively affects learning.Does it matter if some people believe that they have a “visual or an auditory learning style”? Is it really risky or damaging to keep this myth of learning styles alive?I think it does matter and here are some reasons why:Opportunity costs: As educators, we ought to think like scientists; consider the available evidence and tailor our teaching and learning practices to that. Trying to shape our teaching practices around individual learning styles comes at a cost; every moment of educator training or professional development spent figuring out ways to tailor instruction to learners' individual learning styles is an opportunity lost to help support the implementation of practices that have solid scientific support.Growth mindset: As well as costs in terms of time and money, another reason the notion of learning styles is risky is it creates the belief that certain people are unable, or less likely to learn because the material or mode of instruction is inappropriate for them. Talk about slamming the brakes on the idea of “growth mindset” (which interestingly, does not tend to stir up contentious debates and discussions).Telling people they can only learn in a certain way can both shape and constrain the way they approach learning. We have a tremendous capacity to adapt, change, and grow. It matters, therefore, for learners to believe they can grow and learn and are expected and encouraged to do so. Without that belief, people may lack the motivation to put in the mental effort and perseverance required to learn something new or get better at something. Learning is hard, and we do a disservice to learners if we let them believe otherwise or give them an “excuse” to give up on something they find more difficult.Square peg in a round hole: A person told they are a “visual learner” may try and process new content in the mode of their stated “learning style” even if the style does not fit the particular task. Or they might disengage from a high-quality learning experience because they think it won’t benefit them as it’s not in the “right” mode. This is an incredibly inefficient way to learn.Policy and practice reform: Misconceptions and myths about learning can impede education reform efforts at many levels. If a large percentage of people cling to beliefs on the benefits of a learning styles approach, they are less likely to support or engage with initiatives that oppose it. Some have used the analogy of climate change to illustrate this point. Skepticism and debate around climate change serves only to slow down meaningful policy action—even though there is broad consensus that climate change is real and poses a real risk to the future of our planet.Perhaps because most of us have encountered learning in some form, when we discuss ways to optimize learning, it can seem that everyone’s opinion is equally valid and that we don’t need to consider scientific data and evidence of efficacy. We do not all, however, have the same common experience with medical research, quantum mechanics, violin playing, or architectural design. This likely explains why we may be more willing to accept it when experts arrive at a consensus that a certain medical technique for knee-replacement surgery is no longer valid, or that a certain type of bridge design is better than another for a particular climate, than we are to accept that a common belief around learning is not based in evidence.In Think Again, Adam Grant wrote: “Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over certainty, curiosity over closure. If we believe we have already found the truth, then we stop searching for or recognizing gaps in our knowledge.” Grant uses the term “idea cults” for those who “preach the merits of their pet concept and ‘prosecute’ anyone who calls for nuance or complexity.”An admirable educational goal is to help make people better consumers of information. Equally so is the need to make educators and decision makers “critical consumers of scientific research” and to normalize the practice of evaluating research evidence. Surely this should trump the status quo of relying on personal beliefs and experiences and that which makes us “feel good”?My hope is that I can stop worrying about engaging in fruitless discussions about learning styles. This is because we are aware of and have respect for the wealth of excellent, reliable, robust research on how people learn and how to create effective learning experiences (details of which are outside the scope of this piece). And, perhaps most importantly, that we, in whatever teaching and learning role we play, continue to be open to evidence that calls into question existing beliefs, allows us to recognize gaps in our knowledge, and ultimately serves our goal of promoting long-term meaningful learning for all learners.

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