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As a regional director at Qstream, Mike D’Angelo is focused on helping customers drive performance, productivity, and proficiency for better results. Mike has held positions at SAVO Group, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and TrendMicro. With two bachelor of science degrees under his belt, Mike is able to apply an analytical and data-driven mindset to his approach, and his results have been recognized through numerous performance and President’s Club awards.

Mike D'Angelo

Thinking FAST is one of five microlearning principles that are proven to change on-the-job behaviors and boost knowledge retention.

Thinking FAST Leads to Learning and Development Success

If you’ve been following the news in recent weeks, you’ve most likely seen the upheaval of the global financial markets. Many of our 401ks have become 201ks. Much of the turbulence and volatility is due to uncertainty. Uncertainty wreaks havoc. Uncertainty is the ultimate productivity killer (and mood killer). It’s the number 1 cause of workplace stress and anxiety too. When people don’t know what’s coming next, whether it’s a market downturn, a restructuring, or even just a shift in priorities, they often freeze. Fear and ambiguity lead to distraction, disengagement, and second-guessing. Great leaders know that uncertainty is inevitable, and more importantly, they know how to lead through it. Leadership isn’t about waiting for stability, it’s about creating clarity and momentum even when the path ahead is unclear. This week, let’s look at what leaders can do to keep their teams engaged, focused, and moving forward, no matter the circumstances.Reinforce Clarity and PrioritiesWhen uncertainty rises, leaders must double down on clarity. A lack of direction creates hesitation, and hesitation leads to stagnation. The best leaders make sure that their teams know exactly what to focus on, even when things are shifting.One way to do this is by clearly defining Team Key Results (TKRs), the critical outcomes that matter most. In uncertain times, teams often feel overwhelmed by competing priorities. By simplifying the focus to just a few TKRs, you create a stabilizing force that keeps everyone aligned. If everything feels like a priority, nothing actually is. Your job as a leader is to cut through the noise and define what success looks like right now.Communicate More Uncertainty breeds assumptions, and assumptions are dangerous. Without clear communication, team members fill in the blanks with worst-case scenarios. Leaders who proactively communicate early, often, and transparently reduce anxiety and build trust.Leaders provide context, not just commands. Instead of simply assigning tasks, they explain the why behind decisions. People are far more likely to stay engaged when they understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture. Even if you don’t have all the answers, being honest about what you do know (and what you don’t) creates a sense of psychological safety.Create Stability Through RoutineWhen the external environment feels unpredictable, leaders can create internal stability through structured routines. Regular check-ins, weekly progress updates, and consistent team meetings act as anchors, providing a sense of normalcy. These aren’t just about status updates, they’re opportunities to reinforce priorities, celebrate wins, and address roadblocks.Moreover, predictable cadence beats crisis mode. When teams operate in reactive mode, they burn out quickly. Establishing stable processes, whether it’s a structured weekly meeting rhythm or a standard way of handling shifting priorities, allows teams to focus on execution instead of constantly recalibrating.Keep Momentum With Small WinsIn uncertain times, big, long-term goals can feel overwhelming or even impossible. That’s why effective leaders break work down into manageable pieces, creating opportunities for quick wins that build confidence and momentum. Progress (even small progress) creates a sense of control.Ask your team: What’s the next best action we can take? When people feel powerless, action is the antidote. By focusing on what can be accomplished today, this week, or this month, you keep energy high and prevent paralysis.Guide With Resilience and OptimismYour team takes its cues from you. If you show signs of stress, uncertainty, or doubt, they will mirror it. However, if you project confidence, resilience, and optimism, they will follow your lead. Optimism doesn’t mean ignoring challenges; it means acknowledging reality while keeping people focused on solutions. The best leaders create a sense of possibility, showing their teams that uncertainty isn’t a reason to stop moving but an opportunity to adapt and grow.Leading Through UncertaintyUncertainty is a constant in leadership. The best leaders don’t wait for things to settle before taking action—they create clarity, structure, and focus even in the most challenging times. By reinforcing priorities, communicating transparently, maintaining stability, celebrating small wins, and leading with resilience, you can keep your team engaged and moving forward, no matter what’s happening around them.Now, take a moment to reflect: Where does your team need the most clarity right now? The sooner you provide it, the sooner you can turn uncertainty into momentum.

Leading With Clarity in Uncertain Times

When COVID-19 arrived in the United States in early 2020 and the country was awash in questions about its origins, a relative of mine was certain that the virus was not what officials said it was, wasn’t dangerous, and probably wasn’t even real. I shared a different perspective, citing information that I believed was reliable, but she was firm in her stance. Feeling indignant, I determined I would do what most of us do when another person is skeptical of what we deem to be facts: I would bludgeon her with more facts! Being a writer, I decided to do this by letter. I began by expressing what I believed in my self-righteous stupor to be good intent: to keep her safe. Then I proceeded to school her in “The Philosophy of Logic,” “The Psychology of Belief,” and “Coincidence and Conspiracy.” These and other subheadings eventually became chapter headings, complete with bulleted lists, hyperlinks, and citations. A week later, the letter exceeded 4,000 words! I read and reread the letter aloud, trying to imagine how she might receive it. I tweaked the words over and over, hoping to tame the screed. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine her receiving it with anything other than total irritation. The way I wanted to handle that disagreement is perhaps best represented by a quote by James F. Welles, who wrote, “We cannot really understand ourselves without understanding stupidity; and if we understand stupidity, we will understand ourselves.” Notice that Welles does not say “We cannot really understand other people without understanding stupidity.” Yet when it comes to our disagreements, that’s always how we imagine it—it’s only others who are capable of being so stupid. In the Crucial Conversations courses, we learn about our reptilian brain. Because we associate facts with truth, when it appears to us that someone is willing to disregard them, we experience conflict. When we experience conflict, the reptilian brain lights up, we tell ourselves convenient stories, and we (often) foolishly resort to either silence or verbal violence. So, whattayado? First, check to see if you feel indignant. If you feel some sense of disgust, you’ve most likely concluded the other person is ignorant and you’re not. While you may not be wrong in your assessment of the other person, you’ve probably overlooked your own fallibility. One lesson of Crucial Conversations, and of life in general, is that when we judge only others to be fools, we are more likely to act like a fool in our interactions with them. Next, seek mutual purpose. You may need to explore motives to find some common ground, but it might be as simple as listening or suggesting an alternative. “I appreciate what you’re saying. I’ll keep that in mind as I do my shopping.” Or, “Thanks for your input. I don’t feel comfortable revising our lessons completely without more research and discussion, but how would you feel if we took such-and-such approach for now?” Also, talk tentatively. Don’t misinterpret the alliteration—there’s no need to be timid. To forward your ideas tentatively simply means to make it clear they’re your perspective. Share the events or experiences that have led you to your conclusions. About a week after I tucked that unfinished letter away, my relative and I decided to meet for coffee and openly discuss our beliefs about Covid. I felt very vulnerable. But instead of trying to teach her everything I think I know about logic and science, I listened to her viewpoint, and then I shared mine—as a viewpoint. “Based on my experiences, this is what I think.” That was far more effective than “Well, this is just how the world is.” We didn’t see eye to eye, but we maintained our respect for each other, and we gained new appreciation for each other’s viewpoint, which is all I wanted in the first place. In time, our perspectives shifted, and in hindsight I can see it would have been futile to fight each other with facts. 

What to Do When You Disagree About “Facts”

It’s hard to overstate the importance of compliance e-learning. Your employees’ day-to-day activities represent your company and their relationship with regulatory bodies. Undertrained professionals are particularly dangerous in finance, healthcare, or law. So, keeping up to date on new policies and procedures not only keeps your company out of trouble but keeps both employees and clients safe.Challenges with Adult LearningAdults learners have the deck stacked against them in many ways. Some common challenges for adult learners are self-doubt and a lack of time. Institutions are often responsible for providing resources to learners, but it is easy to understand why adult learners with other responsibilities would have trouble further dividing their time and attention. After spending years away from formal education, entering a digital classroom to continue professional development can be a challenge. Moreover, new methodologies, regulations, and technology can all be overwhelming.Learning Theories to Target Compliance E-LearningResearch from different fields in psychology suggests that adults may not learn effectively through traditional learning methods when compared to children. Neuroscientists note decreases in neuroplasticity: The capacity of brains to restructure in the processes of learning. Other theories, like Knowle’s andragogy, note distinct differences in the cognitive processes of learning between adults and children. For example, Knowle proposes adults are motivated by the immediate application of knowledge to make their lives easier. This idea serves as a foundation of the instructional design trend to explain that training content is valuable because it is relevant to learners’ work. Moreover, Knowle emphasizes the need to integrate new information by building upon prior knowledge and the importance of prompting critical thinking.Adult learners can use their prior work experience to contextualize content from a compliance e-learning course. So, be sure to use relevant examples when creating training activities. Training simulations can be effective for recreating situations in which to apply newly acquired information. Experiential learning strategies, for instance, prompt employees to learn by doing. Adult learners will better absorb new information by putting the training content in the context of their daily work and by using their knowledge to navigate relevant challenges during training.Tips for Better Compliance E-LearningGeneral theories are interesting, but how can you turn these ideas into tangible results for your people? There are some specific tips that can be used to incorporate adult learning theories into your compliance e-learning coursework. Providing clear and understandable language to your learners will help them apply the concepts to their own work, especially with technical terminology. Always avoid or define jargon, even if there is an assumption of knowledge among your learners. Make videos and written examples available for subsequent review so that learners can refer to those assets on-the-job.Your compliance e-learning courses are important for your employees, your consumers, and your company’s ability to continue to operate. Use these tips to find the best way for your company to work every day within the context of the law.

Adult Learning Best Practices for Compliance E-Learning

Sally is the chief learning officer for a large well-known bank. She was recently brought in by her CEO to “professionalize” the Learning and Performance function within the company. Sally inherited a very extensive learning measurement system that rigorously cataloged the results of each training course using Likert-Like questions and numerical averaging.As Sally sifts through the data, she notices something curious. Instructors whose smile sheet ratings were consistently low were still teaching, even after several years of poor results. Sally, of course, is thrilled! She’s been mandated to professionalize the learning function and already she’s found a problem she can fix. She makes a plan. She’ll bring her team together to improve—or fire—the low-performing trainers.Brilliant, right? Maybe! It depends on whether Sally’s assumptions are accurate:Instructors who get the best smile sheet ratings will help their learners achieve the best learning results and the best on-the-job performance. Instructors who get the worst smile sheet ratings will produce learners who achieve the worst learning results and the worst on-the-job performance.Interestingly, Sally’s predecessors never thought to correlate their smile sheet ratings with learning results or on-the-job performance. Sally, like most L&D professionals, doesn’t think of doing this either. She just assumes that smile sheet results are related to learning outcomes. Indeed, as an industry, we tend to assume that smile sheets are telling us something important about the successes and failures of our training efforts. Are we right? Is Sally right? And does it really matter, anyway?In 2013, ATD and i4cp teamed up to examine how organizations measure the effectiveness of the learning programs. The research, reported in The Value of Learning: Gauging the Business Impact of Organizational Learning Programs, found that Level 1 smile sheets were by far the most common method of measuring our learning solutions. One implication from these findings is that we, as workplace learning professionals, get most of our feedback from smile sheet data.Consequently, because feedback enables improvement, the validity of smile sheet data is critical. In other words, if we’re not getting good data from our smile sheets, we’re not going to be able to create maximally effective learning.Research on Smile SheetsSo, what does the research say? Are smile sheets effective in giving good feedback? The short answer is No. Two meta-analyses in the scientific literature covering more than 150 research studies found that smile sheets are virtually uncorrelated with learning results (see Further Reading below). Specifically, both meta-analyses found that smile sheets were correlated with learning results with a correlation of r = .09.Statisticians tell us that correlations below r = .30 should be considered weak correlations. Therefore, a correlation of r = .09 is practically no correlation at all! It would be like correlating smartphone usage with hair color.Bottom line: Sally’s assumptions were faulty. Our assumptions, as an industry, have been faulty for decades. We’re all caught in the delusion that smile sheets tell us something important, when in fact they may regularly mislead us.A Smarter Smile SheetWow! What should we do then? Should we throw out our smile sheets? Should we collect data to be polite and then ignore the data? I don’t think so. After thinking about the smile sheet problem for a decade or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that if L&D professionals redesign smile sheets from the ground up—based on the science of learning and guidelines from the measurement field—we can build effective smile sheets.In Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form, (more info available at www.SmileSheets.com), I describe how to build a much more effective smile sheet. There are two critical aspects.First, questions should be based on the science of learning. Because we’re asking that our smile sheets tell us about learning, it makes sense to base our smile sheet designs on learning science. Second, we have to do a better job of designing our smile sheet questions. Most of us use Likert-like scales or numerical items, both of which are fundamentally inappropriate for smile sheet use. We also have to help our learners make good smile sheet decisions. According to research from Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014), as well as Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013), learners don’t always know their own learning. Because of this, asking them questions about their learning may give us faulty information—unless we design our questions to support their smile-sheet decision making. Too many of our questions ask learners to answer questions they are not prepared to answer.Here are some of the major areas that smile sheet questions should target:ability of learners to successfully apply what they learned to their work learners’ full comprehension of what was presented to them learners’ capability to remember what they’ve learned level of motivation that learners will bring to implement what they’ve learned post-training resource that will guide and enable learners to persevere in putting their learning into practice.Most smile sheets do a poor job of targeting these issues, which is unfortunate because it is through these types of research-inspired factors that learning effectiveness can be discerned.Bottom LineMost of our smile sheets are ineffective and provide poor feedback. Fortunately, we can build better ones. Of course, smile sheets will never give us all the information we need. It’s critical that we also measure learning by focusing on learner comprehension, decision making, and memory, as well as measure application by examining the factors and results produced in the way of on-the-job performance.While smile sheets are never enough, most organizations will continue to use them, so we ought to make them as effective as possible. Scientific research makes it clear that our current smile sheet efforts are ineffective. Fortunately, the science of learning and wisdom from the measurement field give us hope for better smile sheets.Like what you read? Join us at the ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition in Denver, CO, May 22-25 to hear Will Thalheimer speak.Further ReadingAlliger, G. M., Tannenbaum, S. I., Bennett, W., Jr., Traver, H., & Shotland, A. (1997). A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 341-358.Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Kirschner, P. A., & van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48(3), 169-183.Sitzmann, T., Brown, K. G., Casper, W. J., Ely, K., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2008). A review and meta-analysis of the nomological network of trainee reactions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 280-295.

Are Smile Sheets Supported by Research?

Your Periodic Table of Learning ElementsEngaging, effective training programs are a mixture of science and art, requiring the right balance of adult learning theory, available technology, intuitive tools, proven practices, creativity, and risk. How does a trainer find the right combination and proportion of these elements? How does a trainer know what’s possible?To answer these questions, Brian Washburn offers a simple yet elegant periodic table of learning elements modeled on the original periodic table of chemical properties. Washburn’s elements—which are organized into solids, liquids, gases, radioactive, and interactive categories similar to their chemical cousins—are metaphors for the tools and strategies of the field of learning design; when they’re combined, and under certain conditions, they have the potential to create amazing learning experiences for participants. They are that impactful.From critical gas-like elements like the air we breathe, present in every training room (think instructional design or visual design), to radioactive elements, powerful and dangerous yet commonly used (think PowerPoint), Washburn guides you through the pitfalls and choices you confront in creating engaging learning experiences. A well-designed training program can be world-changing, he argues, and if you believe in your craft as a learning professional, you can do this too. Whether you’re an experienced learning designer or new to the field, this book inspires with new ideas and ways to organize the design of your learning programs. With stories from Washburn’s professional experience, the book includes a hands-on glossary of definitions and descriptions for more than 50 of his elements.

What’s Your Formula?

Ariadna Jiménez Continente has been a member of ATD since 2018 from Spain. Here's her story in her own words.Tell us a little bit about yourself.I work in the training department at Novartis in Spain. I am responsible for the knowledge of the products and business skills in the neuroscience area.I develop and lead the training plan in face-to-face meetings and online sessions to achieve the best communication about our products with different stakeholders: medical, pharmaceutical, and nursing.What are your personal and professional goals?I want to progress in my training career and continue learning and developing my skills. I would like to get a leadership position in the training department someday with a clear goal in mind, which is to give this department the recognition it deserves within a company.What challenges have you had to overcome in your career?One of the biggest challenges in my career was to change my role from a commercial position to one in the training department. After 13 years in the position, it was a huge change, and what I have been working on since then is to become a good reference in the training department, thinking out of the box.What’s the most valuable thing you’ve gained or experienced during your membership with ATD?ATD is an excellent resource for professional development. There are books, articles, videos, and many resources that are useful and valuable.Can you share any professional tips specific to talent development that you have picked up along the way?From my point of view, it is useful to be open minded with audience feedback, to learn about the mistakes, and to try to incorporate the learnings in future actions.What’s a common misconception you see when it comes to talent development?I think it is dangerous that the value judgments of talent department are taken as immovable values. That does not help to project a correct image to help the person in their development path.Do you have any advice for people looking to further their careers?Learn, learn, and work in multifunctional roles and with multidisciplinary people to open your mind to contribute as much as possible in your position.What is your personal definition of talent development?For me, it is not a definition; it is more like a concept. I think that talent development is completely linked with training in all the aspects that include a role in a company (soft skills and hard skills).How do you stay motivated?In my mind, I really enjoy improving every day, learning from different people, and working together to build something to prepare, execute, and analyze its efficiency.How do you find meaning in your work?When someone tells me, “Thank you so much for your work. I have really learned, enjoyed, and found your session useful for my role,” then I feel complete with my work.Have your own story to tell? Share it with us.

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