Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com What happened to them there writers who When they wrote we would be moved to write Who would be called HR Juggler, or Garelaos, or MJ, or Fuchsiablue, or MHIOP (iykyk), or Punk Rock, or a DDS here and a Heath there. Oh, but oh That it would be cutting, and direct, and attacking, hilarious and funny, and people would be upping their arms That grammer be damned, spelling didn’t care, and pop culture be strewn, but damn the bodies and damn the high and the mighty Where it took Superman to revolve through the door Where a question left you thinking and searc ..read more

I’ve been thinking lately about the way we’ve been able to improve the conversation around mental health and wellbeing in the last decade. It really wasn’t that long ago that talking about mental health openly had significant stigma, which is surprising in many ways considering that mental health professionals have been around for a very long time. I guess seeing a therapist in days gone by was seen as something you needed if you were particularly troubled, and in recent years it’s becoming more accepted that seeing a mental health professional is an important part of regular mental health car ..read more

This one’s been brewing a long-time coming. If you think toxic masculinity is bullshit then you shouldn’t read this piece. This is a long post. There is no precis or TL;DR version of this. I think the best way for me to write about this is to address various unhelpful myths and share where they fall down. I’m allowed to be strong – physically and mentally. No-one, but no-one is saying men shouldn’t be strong physically and mentally. Physical strength helps individuals live healthy lives. That’s true for both men and women. Where it goes wrong is when that physical strength is used to intimidat ..read more

My boys are going through their GCSEs right now, and as their father I’m finding I’m quite anxious about how they’ll perform. Good performance means they’ll gain places in their sixth form / high school of choice. Poor performance means scrabbling for a place on other courses they may not have wanted to pursue. As an L&Der for 20 years, and someone who’s been part of the world of work for more than 30 years now, I have never been tested on my rote memory of the work I’m involved in. Not. Once. I’m not writing anything new or differently critical than many others will have written in this s ..read more

It’s a phrase I hear so many times. Especially from L&D folk. We have an incredible sense of ego and arrogance in L&D. I read this book, this one time. I heard this talk. I delivered a thing. I had this great feedback. I read blogs all the time. I listen to all the top podcasts. I am connected to 56078 people. I’ve spoken to the authors. I’ve been to the conferences. I’ve watched the videos. I developed this product. And then, we have the arrogance – the sheer bloody arrogance – to believe we’ve heard it all before. Oh you want to learn about that topic? You have to watch this video. Y ..read more

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com My growth as an L&D leader has been closely linked to the roles and career path I’ve taken. I’ve been really clear since I started out in this world of L&D that each role I’ve taken has to help me grow. That growth has meant many things. I have been accredited in many L&D tools that in some way or another are centred around personal development. Early in my career, it was MBTI Step I and getting trained as a facilitator by a vendor who supplied very scripted facilitation kits and VHS resources – yes folks, I started out my L&D career in ..read more

I’m in the midst of a project to source a new LMS, and so far, it’s been a really good project to be part of. I wanted to capture some general learnings that have come from this. Nearly every vendor we’ve spoken with, and those we haven’t spoken with, thinks their solution is right for our business. The amount of cold emails that I receive letting me know I’m missing out on improving engagement, learning design and leadership development is ridiculous. I understand the need to try your luck, but the majority of the emails I receive like this (and same with LinkedIn messages) just get straight ..read more

As is often the way with my blogging, my title is the blog post. Maybe it’s because I never really got into competitive sports, or a competitive career. At school, I played sports, but never cared if I won. But at school, sport wasn’t anything other than a lesson to do with no real emphasis on being good or not. For work, I never really cared about sales targets when I worked at Blockbuster Video. We’d be incentivised to upsell, and I just never really cared so never got the subsequent payouts. As I started to learn more about myself, I learned that I do enjoy being active and keeping myself ..read more

In a couple of months time, I’ve been invited to talk to the New Zealand Association of Training and Development conference (relax I’m speaking virtually not travelling to the other side of the world!). I’m going to be talking about leadership in L&D. Here are my early thoughts on what I’ll be discussing. If you have a leadership role (whatever that might look like) you are a business leader just as much as any other part of the business. Often, we hear that L&D (or HR for that matter) is just a cost to the business because we don’t earn our salary back in generating revenue. This narr ..read more

It’s a question I am really curious about. As L&D professionals, we think we know. We should know. It’s in our actual job title – Learning and Development. And if we were to survey 100 people what they think learning is, we would quite likely have 100 variations and different answers. If we asked 100 L&D people, would we get more consistent answers? I don’t think we would – and I don’t think that’s a problem by the way. Here’s the thing. We all have an opinion about what learning is and we’re all biased in our opinions. It’s rare for any of us to have a genuinely objective view. My bia ..read more