...some days are just like that.

Kia ora, I’m Lee. A middle-aged over-committed woman whose best friend is a rodog (dog the size of a rodent). I spend my days trying to navigate the learning and development landscape, often with conflicting ideas and a head full of random ideas that swirl into a vortex of doom.

As a child, my favourite book was ‘Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’. It told the tale of a poor boy who has a series of unfortunate events ruin his day and a very wise mother who provides sound advice that some days are just like that.

At the moment, this is what the learning and development landscapes looks and feels like for the majority of us peeps who work in it. It feels like the last few years have been a series of unfortunate events which have resulted in deprioritising learning to save funds and there is nothing we can do about it other than be ready for when the new day begins.

So the question then is what will this new day look like and how do we prepare for it? Here’s my take. It all starts with values, your values, your team’s values and your organisational values. If we really want learning, particularly e-learning, to have a meaningful impact, we need to show how it aligns with what we value and set our intentions based on this. For example, if our organisation values whanaungatanga (relationships and connection) then we need to unpack that to identify what our intentions are. It might be that our intention is to put relationships at the centre of our mahi (work) and foster a culture where relationships and collective wellbeing are at the heart of our decision making. But how do we actually do this?

Hello capability framework and behavioural statements! This is where we put in the effort and co-design with our teams. We ask the question “what do we want this to look like in our place?” so that we can all get on the same page about the actions required to ensure collective wellbeing and mana-enhancing relationships. Mana-enhancing is a Māori term that embodies a way of engaging with others that is respectful of their spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual being.

Once we have Miro’d the hell out of our ideas and refined them into behavioural statements, we can start to think about how we are supporting growth of the skills, knowledge, and attributes identified. Ideally, this is a blend of in-house training, e-learning, and external learning opportunities to provide a mixture of content and context to meet learner needs. The key is that all of these things should connect back to the behavioural statements which clarify expectations.

What I find interesting when I run workshops and ask the participants to share their organisational values is that most people don’t know them. Nothing to be ashamed about as it’s the reality, we hear the values in our induction and then tick them off as done. By bringing values to the front of the line, we embed them in culture, we do what we say, and we bring our teams on the journey.

The new day for learning and development is people centred, it is embedded in culture, and it is collective in nature. It’s about the right learning for the right reason, at the right time and for the right person.

Well, that’s what I think anyway.

Lee Turner is one half of Kim and Lee - two learning geeks from Aotearoa who are on a mission to raise the recognition of Human Skills and the power they have to help real people achieve their potential. Lee comes armed with 25 years as an educator with a masters in eLearning and Kim with a background in design and engagement. Together they are smashing your microlearning experience with Skillpod.

Connect wth Lee here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-lee-turner/