What does the future of skills development look like — and how can learning leaders prepare their people and organizations for what’s next?
In this bonus episode of The Business of Learning, recorded live at the 2025 Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) in celebration of Training Industry’s 20-year anniversary, we gathered a panel of L&D leaders to discuss what it really takes to build a future-ready workforce.
Tune in now to hear insights on:
- How skills-based strategies are reshaping talent development
- The evolving role of learning leaders in workforce transformation
- How to bridge the gap between learning, performance and business needs
- …and more!
More Resources:
- [Magazine] The Skills Edition
Download a preview of the e-book, “Transforming Talent: The Strategic Role of Upskilling in L&D” for more insights on L&D’s role in training a future-ready workforce.
Download a Preview
The transcript for this episode follows:
Marisa Shapiro: Amy, I will leave it to you to introduce the rest of your panel. Let’s welcome Amy.
Amy DuVernet: Okay. Hello and welcome everyone. We are so glad to be here having this important conversation about the future of skills development for L&D. In my role here at Training Industry, I interact with many, many amazing L&D professionals, and one thing that stands out to me is your ability to adapt, to anticipate changes in the industry, and to stay curious about those innovations, those trends, those new technologies that are going to impact the way we do things. So I’m very excited that we’re going to dive into these concepts and talk a little bit about the changing nature of skills. As L&D professionals, we have a responsibility to look at how that’s going to impact our own work, but also a responsibility to shepherd our organizations through those changes. So I’m going to ask our panelists to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit about who they are, where they work, what they’re doing, and share one word or phrase that they think about when they think about the future of L&D. I’m going to start with Christi.
Christi Hooks: Good morning everyone. Such an honor to be here talking with you on this today. I am very excited. My name is Christi Hooks. I am a learning and leadership development director for Weatherby Healthcare. And when I think about the future of l and d, I am so excited. And the one word that comes to mind for me is dynamic.
DavidLee Richardson: Beautiful. Good morning everyone. My name is DavidLee Richardson. DavidLee, one word. I’m the head of organizational leadership development for a company based out of Chicago. I am based out of Dallas, Texas. That company is Harris & Harris. And it’s really two words for me, really based on the experience that we’ve had here so far at the conference. If I can think of two words that describe the future of L&D, it would be Nichol Bradford. Those of you who attended the session yesterday, get it, right? Those of you who missed it, strongly encourage you to get those footnotes or the PowerPoint that’s available. And the reason Nicole Bradford is because she stated yesterday, she made very, very … several very impactful statements during her presentation. The thing that stuck out the most to me when she talked about the future of L&D, what it looked like, she mentioned skills based, so, tt’s me.
Megan Dillon: That’s great. Hi everyone. I’m Megan Dillon. I am the director of learning and development at Q-Centrix, which is a Chicago based organization. And I think the one word that I would use to describe the future of L&D is human.
Amy DuVernet: Thank you Megan.
Aaron Jones: Yeah, good morning everybody. My name is Aaron Jones. I’m the director of onboarding and training at Live Nation. And when I think of the future of L&D, it goes along what Mr. DavidLee was saying. I was going say skills first. I focus heavily on onboarding, new hire experiences. And I feel like it’s been really exciting to see how skills first and a new hire experience have really revolutionized the way that we’re doing it at Live Nation. So I’m excited to continue to see how that bleeds into the rest of what’s to come.
Amy DuVernet: Wonderful. Well, let’s take it a step further. I want to dig a little bit deeper into what we think that future L&D state is. So Christi, my first question is for you, in your view, what does a future-ready L&D function look like?
Christi Hooks: Yes. So, so many things. Strategic, efficient, tech savvy, consultative.. I think really great storytellers, and consultative. Oh, consultative and value-add focused. So I think being able to look down the road around the corner and translating trends and the times into effective strategies is going to be very important. Building in efficiencies everywhere that we can, not just to keep pace, but to actually set the pace. And then leaning into consultation with our stakeholders and our business partners to really inform and also influence, uh, to really be partners in creating business and organizational solutions. So to the point of, of my colleagues up here, skills-based is going to be so, so important. And when you think about the keynote yesterday, um, it’s no longer about tasks. It’s about how do we get in the right mindset to truly be value add.
Amy DuVernet: That’s great. Thank you.
DavidLee Richardson: Can I add to that?
Amy DuVernet: I would love that.
DavidLee Richardson: Just one thing. We talked about the one word that describes the future of L&D and as you were talking, Dr. Hooks, it just occurs to me that collaboration, right, which is what this whole meeting is about. Right? We’ve been doing this for some 20 years, and let’s face it, we’re not the only organization in the game who are doing what we do, but we pull together a variety of individuals who are either directly involved with what we do, or they offer support to what we do. Like we have a exhibit halls that’s filled with vendors that don’t directly do what we do, but they undergird what we do to make us more effective. So to me, it seems that the, the more collaborative we are as we’re moving forward with the dawn of AI, that many of us just. I mean, some of us are struggling to grasp it and a lot of us are kind of leading the charge with defining what, you know, the future’s going to look like for us as we move forward with AI. But it just occurs to me that it’s going to take a great deal of collaboration from all fronts, all these different areas in order to be really effective and be a viable player as an as L&D professionals as we move forward.
Amy DuVernet: I love that that undergirds some of that human element that you were talking about, Megan. And it is a great segue into my second question. So thank you DavidLee. Megan, this question’s for you. What sources or signals do you rely on to spot future skills trends?
Megan Dillon: I think you can kind of divide this up into maybe three categories or three buckets, if you will. I think looking at labor market trends, looking at what skills are in demand, and I think there’s a lot of different ways you can do this. You can look at LinkedIn Learning, what’s trending. I think just looking at open roles too and, and kind of identifying what’s trending with job openings. I think the second is, is also just looking at industry trends in general, whether it’s L&D adjacent industries. So reading those industry reports is obviously very helpful. And then third, I think that this is probably goes without saying, but looking at AI and automation, looking at trends and reporting around those areas can really help us kind of spot what part of our job is going to be, or the tasks rather, you know, [that] can kind of go to AI and automation and I think that’s a cue for us to look at where we need to upskill ourselves, our colleagues as far as the more complex skills needed that AI at this point can’t do. So whether it’s problem solving, creative thinking… identifying those types of skills is a great place to start too.
Aaron Jones: That’s great. Yeah. I think it’s interesting for me too, because I look at these reports and I look, you know, I do the research online, but something that’s been impactful for me is asking different business leaders, not just at my organization, but other organizations. Where are the gaps? What, where are the inefficiencies happening in your teams? And I feel like that’s also really informed my future thinking of, okay, these are some skills that are going to be applicable for the folks that I am impacting. And this, this is kind of like the bridge where we need to fill in. And I think that’s been a really good way for me to make it relevant, not just on an industry-wide basis or this kind of big picture, but also how can I make it applicable and relevant for, for me and my role with my people. So that’s just one, one way that I’ve done that as well.
Amy DuVernet: That’s an excellent point, Aaron. It’s taking all of this information that’s out there and really thinking about how we apply it in our own context. So switching gears, I would love to hear some more tactical, practical examples. So, DavidLee, I’m going to ask you my next question. What is a specific learning initiative that you’ve launched recently that reflects a future focused approach? And can you tell us a little bit about what you learned from that initiative?
DavidLee Richardson: It’s a very, very good question because I think that gets down to where the rubber meets the road in terms of who we truly are. You know, because you have titles, you have departments, you have, I mean, lots of movement within companies and sometimes we put people in positions that maybe they’re really well suited for, and sometimes we put individuals in positions that they’re probably not the best suited for. So I’m going to dovetail off of what, um, what Aaron was stating in terms of really drilling down this industry to how it specifically applies to what he does. So AI, I remember several years ago when we were doing a conference here and we were talking about AI and how it is the future. And I think I kind of really locked in on that and trying to understand the trend. So I work for a company that’s a BPO, Business Process Outsourcing. And with many of the clients that we deal with, those clients may or may not have all of the resources that you need in order to build out an effective training. To deliver to new hires, right? Because we talk about training, that’s the core, right? What does training look like when we have individuals who have butts in seats, whether they’re virtual or whether they’re onsite. What does that look like? So a, a tied into a couple real practical AI tools to help with the delivery of the training. So formally I worked as the director of training and development, learning and development for a company, the CMI Group that was acquired by Harris & Harris. And so in that role, it was my responsibility as with my, my, my peers here, um, to roll out an effective training program that minimized the amount of time that our trainees spent in training, get them … speed to learning, minimize the retraining that needed to happen, and, you know, gave us good positive scorecards. And so, if you have a pen, I’m going to give you something really practical [tool that] I used. You want to jot this down, especially if you’re on the design and development end of training. I use a tool, so I have a training tool that I use a tool called, oh boy, and I can think of the name of the tool. It’s Revoicer. There it is. I use a tool called Revoicer, so Revoicer.com or something like that. You can search it. And what Revoice her allowed me to do was to take one of my trainers, clone her voice and use her voice and implement that into a training build. And so we took that AI delivered voice that sounds exactly like the trainer, built it right into the training build. And so that trainer, it’s training the class. We embedded that training in Articulate, where you can create triggers, right? So that the, as the agents go through the trAIning, they are forced to engage with the training. So the trainer, as we captured it, we wrote the training as if she were training it. Okay guys, today is day one. Type your name in the chat. They type their name in and they’re not able to move forward without typing the name in. We pull up a screen of whatever it is that they were going to be performing in that training, and she would say, click the start menu. And if they took too long to click the start menu through articulate with its triggers, there’s an arrow that points to the start menu, you’d click the start menu. So it makes it engaging and it, and we designed it in a way where the individuals in the training could not move forward without doing what they needed to do. So it’s better than just a sandbox. With this training, the way it was built, it was built in a way where the individuals had to engage in order to get through the training. So they performed the job during the training with an AI trainer, and then they had an opportunity to go through the sandbox or through their nesting phase where they performed the training. Again, the results for all of that, we earned Agency of the Year. And, you know, I can’t really name the company, but we earned Agency of the Year just based off of that simple training build and all of the efficiencies that came out of that for a seven-day training. The seven-day training was cut in half because there weren’t all those questions that were asked. The individuals got to go through the training at their pace and we put them in a WebEx where they had to go through the WebEx and the trainer was there. So I was able to repurpose the trainer as a moderator versus a hard-line trainer. So I didn’t need to get rid of the trainer. There’s no threat to the trainer’s job there because there’s certain elements of the training built that still required the human element, the trainer. But I just repurposed the trainer and we did that with several of our clients.
Amy DuVernet: That is an excellent example. Revoicer. Wow. Okay. So that is a great lead into my next question, which I’m going to throw back at you, DavidLee. How are you integrating AI and automation into those programs without losing that human element?
DavidLee Richardson: It’s, it’s AI is, is there all different forms of intelligence? We happen to be, we believe we’re the highest form of intelligence. I believe that AI is an intelligence that it’s growing. I believe that the way we design and build the training, we build it so that it can’t be delivered without the human element. But the real truth is the program that we use to build these trainings, the trainer in this training laughs. You can hear the breath between conversations. This is Revoicer, with the litany of different characters that they have from all different nationalities with all different dialects in all different languages. So although we are able to build it now where it can’t be delivered without the human element, the question is so good. I think as we look down the line, I think as we look 10 years, 15 years, 20 years into the future, especially with some of the, you know, the lifelike AI that’s coming, I don’t know. It may not require a whole lot of human effort. The further we get into the future, as we see AI coming, becoming more and more and more effective at what it does, so we can build those human elements into the training currently using expressions, laughter, pauses, jokes, and, you know, the class that we delivered the agents in the class could not tell that it wasn’t the actual trainer.
That’s interesting. Yeah, I think using a voice that is familiar is going to really help create that more human experience. And to your point, the inflection points being considerate of their culture or kind of the dialect that they have, that also is a way of building that human element. So I appreciate that, DavidLee. Megan, I think you have something to add here.
Megan Dillon: Yeah. I think for me the answer is a little bit simpler in that we are using, we are looking at how automation can replace some of the tasks that are taking our trainers, for example, away from doing what they do best, which is training. So we’re looking at how can we automate some of the tasks that, um, you know, they have to do kind of independently as part of their role, and how can we replace their time that they spend doing that by putting them back in front of the people, right? And, you know, allocating more time toward training for them. I certainly agree that automation and AI is going to get to a point where we likely won’t need a large percentage of humans to do our job. I think what’s not going to catch up as quickly is biology and science and our brains. There’s still going to be a part of us and a part of our brain that requires the relational piece to just continue to function as humans. And I think that’s what’s going to take a lot longer to adapt and change. So I think that we’re safe for a while. Thankfully, we have biology on our side.
Amy DuVernet: That’s great. And, and as I mentioned before, I think particularly in the l and d industry, there are so much curiosity and willingness to adapt and think through these changes and learn. So as DavidLee said, maybe less human effort in some areas and we can deploy it into others. That’s great. Okay, so I have a question for you, Aaron. We’re talking about a lot of change and that’s going to impact us, but it also impacts our workforce and we know that with change comes some uncertainty and some emotions. So I wonder how do you support your learners who might be feeling hesitant or overwhelmed by rapid changes in their required skill sets?
Aaron Jones: Yeah, I think it’s a good question and it goes really well with what we’re talking about because we are experiencing a lot of change. I think as l and d practitioners or in our roles, especially with how AI is being integrated, we’re all doing it differently. We all have different parameters we’re working within. So it’s not the same. So the folks on the other end of that are also feeling that as well. And so I think there’s a big opportunity to not only step in as. This expert in the space that’s helping to lead those changes. But how are we designing programs? How are we designing those pauses, those moments where we can really allow folks to feel grounded in what they’re doing? And I think for me specifically, I focus so much on the new hire experience and onboarding. It has presented a really great opportunity for me to ask myself, how can I use these more innovative elements like AI to actually help people feel more confident, quickly, more secure in their role, quickly, more set up to succeed, faster? And, you know, while doing that, it’s also protecting the business. Something that I had to do, you know, from day one in my role, I was brought in to help, uh, with a, a team that was experiencing a lot of high turnover. I work in live entertainment. And I work on, you know, I work within the media and sponsorship division at Live Nation. And my folks are running around venues all year. They’re at festivals, you know, they’re burnt out. So it’s a lot, [and a lot of them], they don’t want to sit in a training. They don’t want to sit in a three-day experience where they’re learning how to, you know, be a better people leader… that is not always at the forefront of their mind. And I know a lot of you all probably can empathize and you have, you know, similar situations. But for me, where I felt like it was, I had the, uh, ability and, uh, it was going to be the most impactful, was to catch some of that on the front end. And that’s when I started to think about the skills-first approach with onboarding. And I didn’t know that that was something that wasn’t widely done. It was out of a need. It was out of… I didn’t have a solution for the business leaders that were looking at me to solve this turnover problem. And I saw groups of new hires that were widely overwhelmed trying to get their footing, doing their roles well, and also not be burnt out and not feel just completely depleted by the end of their first six months in their role. And so I took a step back and I said, wow, we really need to stop and ask ourselves some of these really hard questions. I think when we’re trying to create a, a more seamless experience or a more grounded experience for our team members, it often comes back to have we asked ourselves some of the, the very simple questions. And that was something that I challenged myself whenever I joined this team. Asking the business leaders and the folks that were actually requiring, who were setting the expectation. Mm-hmm. They couldn’t necessarily articulate what some of those expectations were, which is perpetuating this idea of, I don’t know how to do my job well, I don’t have the time to do my job well. And we paused and I said, what does it look like to do this thing well? And they couldn’t answer it. They couldn’t answer the question, and that’s okay. And it was, it was okay. And you, you could see the defeat and their eyes too. It, it’s never an intentional thing, you know, I think we have so much on our plates. People are busy, there are a lot of things going on. Sometimes those simple things are what we brush under the rug, and that is where the impact is. And to tie some of this together, I feel like with AI, that is where AI can be so helpful with some of these fast-moving industries where we don’t have. I have a team of three. When I started, it was a team of one, so I was overwhelmed. I was experiencing some of those feelings too. So I was in this great position where I was very empathetic to both sides. So we stopped, we paused, we asked some of those very simple questions, got some standards, some expectations set, and then we took a skills first approach and we really mapped out what are the core elements of, of these specific teams, these specific roles, what do they have to be good at right now so that they can start in two weeks? You’re happy. They’re happy. That was the question I was asking. Is it ideal for everybody? Not necessarily is it sustainable? Not always, but I think it’s a really good place to start. And once we started parsing that back and really identifying this team is here to do this thing, these things. This role is here to do these specific things within your first 30 days. I need you to do the these things really well. When you give new team members that, that’s when they can start to feel grounded. That’s when they can feel supported. They can digest it. They do this well, cool, now we’re going to focus on these things for your next 30 days. So, so really dialing down, getting so specific. That has really helped me to help my team members feel supported. We, we’ve increased retention 32% over the last year, year and a half. Um, it was around I think 60, 72% retention whenever I came in. It’s at 98% now. And that is not just my efforts. There is a collective effort. So, you know, it definitely has contributed. And I also think our engagement score has increased around 30%. And so skills first, AI, they’re buzzwords, but I took those things and I really tried to bring it into the context of what I was experiencing, and it’s working.
Amy DuVernet: How powerful. When we feel overwhelmed and we take things and we break them down, how important is that? And then providing a roadmap. This is what you need to know now. This is what you’ll need to know later. Again, breaking it down can really help with the overwhelm. So appreciate that example. Yeah. Christi, I believe you might have an example or an answer to this question.
Christi Hooks: Yeah. So, the rate at which tasks are changing that our people are, needing to learn how to do it, it’s just, it’s become unsustainable to train on tasks. I think we’re all kind of on the same page on that. One of the things that we’ve really leaned into, um, and helping our new people absorb and not feel overwhelmed by the change is focusing in on behavioral competencies. So things like being resilient, managing ambiguity, um, self-development, you know, ways of thinking and perspective skill building to help kind of absorb the amount of rapid change. The other thing that I think is a change that we’ve made is, you know, we base our training and learning on the Tell, Show, Do Model. And so leaning into AI for the tell piece, but then really leaning into the human element for the show and do piece. And I always think about my, my little one, is he wants to be a ninja and he wanted to learn how to do this like cartwheel into a ninja pose, you know, thing. And I think about him and it’s like he’ll practice on his own all day, but the minute he calls it, if I’m not there to see it, he is so upset. And it’s almost like it just, it just is deflating and it loses the impact. Right. And it’s the same thing for our people, like absorbing training and learning how to do something is one thing, but when you have that human element that’s doing the, the show and the do alongside and they, someone sees you do it, right? That is a different feeling than having an AI chatbot say, great job. You know? So I think that it, back to the question, how do we help new learners not become overwhelmed with everything they have to learn and do different? I think the answer is, is that human touch, it is the high-touch coaching aspect. Pull through, be there, invested in the trenches. That is the difference between a learner persevering and giving up.
Amy DuVernet: That’s wonderful. Yeah. What I heard from both of you, I think is starting with empathy, right? How are those learners feeling? How [are you] putting yourself in their shoes and then thinking through what you might need in that moment, whether it’s celebrating your victories, breaking things down to a roadmap. That’s great. I appreciate that. I really like that you’re coming together to discuss it. It kind of gets at what you said a little earlier, Aaron, about making sure that we talk through and understand how these things apply in our own context. It allows your team to kind of align around those ideas. So that’s really a nice example. Thank you. Aaron, did you have something that you wanted to add here? Aaron Jones: Yeah, I think, um, I, I love the idea I having these sort of internal round table discussions. I think it’s something that we probably all do a lot. Everybody in this room, we sit in these round tables, we talk, we share, we, you know, we learn from our peers and it, it got me thinking over the last six months, how can I integrate some of that internally? And we’re, I’m really trying to instill this culture of coaching, not just at the, the people leadership level, but really throughout the entire division. Everybody’s a coach, right? Doesn’t matter if you’re my boss. It doesn’t, you know, you could be somebody that has been there a year, I’ve been there four or five years, I can learn from you still. And one way that we’re trying to kind of flip the narrative and really empower folks that not, not only maybe emerging talent or newer talent, but maybe we have some high potential team members who, you know, they really want to grow into leadership roles. Having those opportunities to have structured discussion around a topic, but letting other people lead them and have the chance to really be a leader, a, a thought leader in, in those areas, whether or not it’s something they’re passionate about or something that’s important to the business at that time. I’ve found that it’s been very beneficial just to spark ideas and creativity and the output. Something that I focus on a lot and my teams are focused on a lot is how are we being more innovative and creative for our clients at our concert venues? So when you go to a concert and you see a booth, my people are the people that put the booth there and they’re working with the brands and, you know, how can we make those exciting for fans? And we get so fixated on the business, the numbers hitting the goals that we don’t often stop to pause and talk about ideas and just spark the creativity. And so it’s been really, really great for that, that as well. And that’s one way that I’ve been incorporating that. But I think it’s been really, really impactful.
Amy DuVernet: There was a common element between the two things that you guys shared, and it was, um, putting some of that initiative or that responsibility onto your team’s hands and asking them to come provide some leadership in this realm. So come back and report on what they read or what they’ve learned. I love that. I think empowering our own teams is similar to empowering our learners, making it clear that that is a piece of their job role that you value and that you want them to engage in. So thank you for those examples. Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about skills today. We know that as an l and d function, we are kind of shifting to, um, emphasizing skills more in our initiatives. We are not the only function looking at skills. Skills span the breadth of many of our kind of employee-centered areas from employee selection, promotion, succession planning, compensation. So my next question is about the overlap and how we work with those, um, different areas. And this one is for you Christi. Should L&D lead the skills conversation or should we play more of a supporting role? Who really owns the future of skills development?
Christi Hooks: So I would say both. We should lead and support. I am all about empowering our team, and I do think that. The role of L&D is evolving and needs to evolve. I would say that the starting point would be co-creation, right? People support what they co-create. Um, however, I do think that L&D has the best front row seat to see, what the skill needs are, um, from our incoming, uh, employees, and that we should be using strategic consultation to inform and to influence the decisions around skills development. At the end of the day, L&D is the SME on skill development, and I think that teams should be bold on, you know, really consulting, of course partnering, but using their influence and being strategic about how we are defining and pulling through skill development in our corporations.
DavidLee Richardson: I would like to add to that. I agree a hundred percent with what you’re saying. I mean, we, Dr. DuVernet, we are hired, trained, and paid to own it. That is the expectation of our industry. We’ve built an entire ecosystem around owning it. We own it, we define it right, and we lead it. And so for all of our stakeholders, they look to us for that expertise. Like exactly what, Dr. Hooks is talking about. They look to us for that. Now how we execute it is exactly, I agree with everything that you’re saying. How we execute it may require collaboration, right? It may require that it may require partnering with subject matter experts because we all know that we don’t build training functions and we don’t build training content, you know, or training ecosystem within companies. We don’t do those things within vacuums because we have to be strategically aligned right to our stakeholders in whatever the business objectives are. And in order to do that, we have to understand what’s driving the business for our partners, right, for our stakeholders. But at the end of the day, they are looking to us, right? As the experts, as the know-it-alls, right, as the ones who are leading the charge. Which is also why if we, if we get that piece right, if we really truly understand that, it helps us to have clarity about why it is essential that we have a seat at the table. If there are any discussions being had about onboarding, about whether it’s onboarding a new client or on onboarding a new employee, regardless of the department that they’re being onboarded to, if there are any discussions being had about training, it is essential that L&D that the training industry be strategically involved in those discussions and that, and that decision making, right? So as we understand our footing and our positioning in, you know, in the corporate spaces in which we work, whether we are serving clients or whether we are the client and serving internal customers, if we get that piece right. It will really, truly help us to be able to make that argument, have those discussions about why we should be seated at the table when skills development or performance gaps or lagging scorecards or turnover, right? It’s happening within an organization. Our organization should be looking to us for those solutions, and then we deploy different methods for how we go about getting those answers, which in many cases, it may, as we know, it may not be a training thing that can fix it, but as consultants, as true consultants within these organizations in which we work, we can help those decision makers to come to the right decisions because they’ll be well informed, you know?
Christi Hooks: I will, I’d like to add onto to that too. I think back to COVID when everybody had to go remote, right? Like overnight, everybody had to go remote and then the fog lifted and, and um, we started hiring again and people started picking up again. It was the front-line trainers that were the first to notice and realize our new young employees that were graduating high school around that time were coming into the workforce with a completely different perspective, with different skill needs and gaps. And it was L&D that identified that, right? Because our hiring didn’t change. What we were hiring for didn’t change. And once we started seeing the effects of culture and the times coming in through our new employees, it was L&D that was at the front of the line saying, hey, we’re seeing this. Hey, they’re struggling with this. Hey, this is new and different. We need to consider this. Um, I think that was a really a more exaggerated example because we’re such a huge cultural shift during that time. But I think that L&D should be bold in, you know, sharing and consulting on what they see because they really are the first ones to see, um, where there are challenges, um, what strengths people are coming in with and, and how the culture and times are changing what’s needed from a skill development standpoint. And it’s been changing ever since. I mean, there’s lots of ways that our new employees need different skill support and development that they, than they did pre-COVID.
Aaron Jones: That’s great. Yeah. I think going off of that connectability is so huge. And it’s something that’s really lacking in some of the younger generation. And I think that it’s a lot because of the way that folks are interacting with technology, you know, not necessarily AI, but it’s, it’s a huge culture shift and connectability is so important and I think that that is the root of a lot of the skill gaps that we’re seeing with some of the younger population. But back to DavidLee and what he was talking about in terms of being a consultant internally and being the expert in your space. I think from my perspective, whenever I came into my organization, they weren’t accustomed to the l and d function. They, they brought me in to do one thing and I came in and I said we are not ready for that yet. So I am going to need to do these things and my role is probably going to look a little bit different than what you anticipated. And so a lot of it’s been education, me educating them on what they actually need just by knowing what, what they’re actually looking for. They want training. We didn’t have anything to train on, so we had to build, we had to do some building, you know what I mean?
So it was a lot of those conversations. So to DavidLee’s point, credibility became so important for me. And as a young professional, it was challenging. It was intimidating going into those conversations with people that have been at my organization for 30 years to say, oh, I know what you need. So it’s taken some time to really identify, build those relationships, because I, once they started to see, I know about your industry. I’ve taken time to understand what you need. I don’t need you to tell me necessarily, I know I have an idea of what you need because I understand your industry and I’m coming into these conversations, being able to speak to the, to those things as an L&D practitioner. So it’s almost like I’ve merged, I almost feel like I’m an operations sometimes, but I have to have like both, both hats on and they’re becoming like one hat with this specific group of, you know, business leaders that I’m working with. But that took time, that took me understanding what they were looking for. There were a lot of conversations that fell on deaf ears and it, it’s just taken time to build that credibility where they actually do trust and they, they are saying, Hey, Aaron probably should be in this conversation. So it’s, it is the expectation I think, of us to be the expert in our space. I also think it’s, it’s up to us to become as credible in their spaces. The people that we’re working with as we possibly can so that there’s that mutual trust there and they feel like we can actually support them.
Megan Dillon: Yes, absolutely. I think one of the common themes that I heard from all of all of those responses was this idea kind of regardless of our opinion on who should support the conversation. I think where we’re all in agreeance is we have to do what all of these things, all of these things that we said, we need to do all of these so that we can be strategic partners to the business. And I think that’s really, really important, that we are able to place ourselves at the table, um, and, and show the business how we can, how we can move them forward, how we can drive their initiatives and be enablers.
Amy DuVernet: Absolutely. So what I hear is permission to have the confidence to go in and say what you need to say and be a part of that conversation. Thank you.
