Ep34 Michelle Maunder | Learning and Development from Classroom to Workplace

Sarah Ashley Neal: Foreign. You're listening to the Be youe Start now podcast with San Artina. This is your host, Sarah Ashley Neal. My guest today is a qualified CIPD learning and development specialist who lectures, trains and teaches professional professional qualifications across further education and private training sectors. She's held senior roles as head of L and D for large organisations including TI Media, and also leads her, um, own company as a consultant and Managing director. With extensive experience in business management and training, she designs and delivers bespoke learning solutions, including blended and online learning tailored to different learning styles and business needs. Highly experienced in the recruitment, training, management and development of staff, council and employee representatives, she is sought after in her field of expertise, known for her fabulous energy and positivity. Let me introduce you to Michelle Maunder. Welcome to the Be youe Start now podcast. Michelle Maunder. Hi, Michelle.

Michelle Maunder: Hi Sarah. How are you doing?

Sarah Ashley Neal: I'm all right, thanks ever so much. And you?

Michelle Maunder: Yes, not bad at all, not bad at all.

Sarah Ashley Neal: So just for people who are listening, I've pronounced your last name correct. Maunder, not Mounder. Make sure people Maunder.

Michelle Maunder: Yeah, sp. Spot on the first time.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Lovely jubbly. So, um, one of the reasons you're coming on board today is, and thank you for, for agreeing to that, is that you are an L and D professional and trainer and you also teach other people to become, uh, learning development specialists, don't you? And I think this is a really wonderful opportunity for people listening who may be looking at going into learning development, um, or maybe just interested what L and D do in organisations. So, um, let's just get started. Would you like to tell us a little bit about your background so we don't make any assumptions and just natural flow wherever you go. Wherever you go.

Michelle Maunder: Absolutely. Um, I sort of fell into learning and development. It wasn't my first choice. My first choice was to be Indiana Jones and I found out that was a little too scary, um, and a little too dangerous for my liking, um, because I ended up being smuggled out of Turkey in the middle of the, um, when the country was locked down. So I came back after doing that, was part of university and uh, my first degree. And so I got a job, uh, working for a publisher, um, working for IPC Media M through what used to be called prospects today, which I think still exists for graduate students now to look for roles. So I got a role out of university and it actually started in sales. Um, I was what's known as a tele business executive. So, um, I had to be able to talk to people which I'VE always been. I mean I think my school reports as a small child was always Michelle talks too much. So I was always going to be in communications of some sort, uh, moving forward. And so um, I found that as I was um, even in my very first role as a tele business exec, whenever anybody new came on board, my line manager would say, oh Michelle's, you know, can you teach, can you take them under your wing, be their buddy, you know, take them through this. These are the training materials. What do you think? What would you do with them? Um, because I would have had. I had them previously. And so um, as I moved through the business and I moved into what's known as circulation, um, and that's sort of a sales and marketing area in magazines. If you wonder who decides how many copies of um, I don't know, Woman at Home magazine, you can tell my age now and what I read, uh, that's on the shelf in your local Sainsbury, Tesco's, Morrisons. Thanks Sarah. So all of those kinds of retailers, if you wonder who decides, that's the circulation team. They work out the promotions, they work with the publishers. It's a really interesting industry to get into. And again, all the way through my different roles moving up, I was always asked to be the trainer or roles were created for me to be focused on training. And so I'd done that for a number of years and I thought well I'm doing this and I don't actually have a qualification in doing that. I've just learned it by reading, by naturally communicating with people, just being somebody who likes to help people. And so um, I went to my, um, my group nd and said know high aid, um, I'd really like to get some qualifications in this. And he said absolutely. Uh, so I could, you know, make sure that I was doing the best possible job because I'd learned it so much on my own. Um, I very much wanted to make sure that I was doing the best I possibly could. So I got my C.I.P.D. qualification, uh, my certificate in training practice which was before the days of levels three, five and seven which um, I use now for those qualifications. And um, I continued on that path of then being focused very specifically on being the main trainer for the business. So I worked with the business for 23 years. I had 11 distinct different roles, three different secondments. Um, and I finally, when I left the business I was head of learning and development for Market Force, which was a division of uh, what was then called TI Media because we had lots of different bosses over the years. So that's how m. I kind of got into it. It was all natural, organic growth, what

Sarah Ashley Neal: I was going to say. And I mean, some people do go, you know, they want to go straight to the top and they work out what their career journey is going to be in the personal development journey, which we're going to talk more about those kind of journeys at some point. But wow, I mean, as I said, you don't look old enough to do any of this. And I know you think I'm jesting, but it's really true. We're not on video today for the, for the listeners, but this, uh, lady. Yeah, I trained with, uh, years ago, not doing the same kind of role. I was one of your students. And, um, yeah, I don't know where time flies. So you've got. You must have up to what, nearly 30 years experience in the whole industry overall.

Michelle Maunder: Absolutely. I started my first job was in 1997. So next year will be 30 years. Gosh, that's scary. And, um, yes, we did meet. And we met actually after. Not long after I'd actually got my certificate in training practice. Because when I studied for my certificate, um, the college I studied at and, um, the people I studied under, uh, asked me to first off volunteer to do some, um, oh, what was it? Continuous professional development training for some PhD students, some foreign students, which I did. And following that volunteering, they asked me then to start training CIPD qualifications. Um, and the qualifications at that point then had been structured into level three, five and seven. And so I started at level three with them, uh, moved into level five. And then by doing that, I actually set up my own learning and development business. And by doing so, I then had my main job, and then I had my side gig, um, or, you know, my side hustle, however you want to name it, as most people, a lot of people have nowadays. And I had my side hustle. My side hustle now is, oh, gosh, 16 years old. Um, so I've been.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Sorry to interject. You are absolutely experienced in what you do and you're about to tell us more about what learning and development is all about. Well, there's one question I might just touch on now, if that's okay. You mentioned cpd, so that's, uh. Cpd, yeah. Continual professional development, just by sort of definition. I mean, what does. It sounds logical when you say the word, but the amount of people I've mentioned that to, they say, what is. What is that? Um, and the benefits. Could you just touch on that just for a moment.

Michelle Maunder: Of course. I mean, I think the thing with learning and development is often the words get used interchangeably. Uh, if you look in a thesaurus, the. They are kind of related or sometimes overlap. There's so your continuous professional development. And I also think of that as continuous personal development, um, because it's about you, um, and it's about you developing and growing. And sometimes that's in a professional way, so specifically focused to work. But sometimes it can just be developing yourself as an individual that can then improve yourself within work. So I always, like, you know, I always think of it as being more than just continuous professional. It's professional and personal development. But learning is sort of the snapshots, the little bits that happen within that bigger development journey. Um, and so you're. The reason why it's a continuous professional development journey is because the world is moving on all the time, isn't it? Um, I remember, wait, even saying, you know, we've known each other say 12, 13 years. Um, we were doing everything face to face in learning. Then we had computers, we had E learning at the college, um, and things like that, but we didn't use virtual systems in this way. And so the world is moving on. So we have to keep up with it both personally and professionally so that we can still deliver in our roles and within our careers.

Sarah Ashley Neal: And yeah, that's great because I know we'll touch on that again because, uh, you know, these conversations interweave, don't they? And we'll touch on something and some we'll have a light bulb moment between us and we'll just blurt something out. So I'll let you take the stage when I know you're in flow. The same as you mentioned about talking. I can talk for England, but I've learned to be a really good listener over the years. I hope so anyway. But with, with, with cpd, I think it's when you, you can do CPD credits, can't you? So say, for example, yes, I've trained in an area of learning and development, but at the same time, you know, if I don't do anything with it for 10 years, it's quite good to actually do some other, uh, curriculum activities or to just do some refreshers, and that will give me CPD credits, is that correct? Because I know a lot of people don't really know what they contribute towards.

Michelle Maunder: Absolutely. Uh, you can do them formally. There are, uh, businesses you can sign up to where they actually give you credits as such within continuous professional development. Or you can do it yourself. I keep a spreadsheet tracker of my continuous professional development because at any point in time anybody I work for could ask to see it. Um, because it's part of what I sign up to, to be a cipd qualified, um, tutor. And so I have to keep it up to date. But it's all about recognizing that learning isn't just going on a course. Learning isn't just, um, doing something formalised. This is going to go down in my cpd, my. Doing a podcast with yourself, Sarah, because I haven't done a podcast before. I've listened to lots of podcasts, I've read transcripts from podcasts because I sometimes find that better for me as a learner. I like to be able to scribble, highlight and do things like that. Um, and whereas, yeah, whereas listening, for me, I sometimes it'll distract from what I'm doing. So I've got, um, lots of colleagues and friends who listen to podcasts while they're cooking. I can't do that. If I listen to a podcast while I'm cooking, I will burn everything because I concentrate too much to listening to the podcast. Uh, and so your CPD is everything that you do that's new, that's different, that has enabled you to move forward, to grow, to develop, learn new skills. And that can be done in so many different ways. It can be watching a TED Talk, perhaps on a video on YouTube. It could be, um, reading a book, a chapter in a book, um, in terms of what you're looking at, um, and it's. It, it. I think a lot of people do think, oh, I've got to do a course and put that down.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Yeah.

Michelle Maunder: And it's not. It, it's anything and everything. And you can learn about things all the time. And, um, you can learn and move forward and grow and have those little light bulb moments that you mentioned at any point in time. I mean, I think I had one at about half past three this morning. Um, I do tend to wait, of course, I do tend to wake up and think, you know, at certain points in the night, um, and go, oh, uh, you know, and then start thinking about things. And I was thinking about, I'm reading all of, um, the eight books that start with Anne of Green Gables and I'm on the final book. And it was quite interesting and I was thinking, because I think my head was thinking about our podcast, about us talking about learning and development and things like that. And it was really interesting that, um, within the book, I'm in the final book now, there is a young woman who, up until, um, the. The Canada became part of the First World War, and up until she wanted to learn, she'd never learned certain things. She was a young woman who'd been very interested in style and how she looked and what people thought of her. And she was interested in those things. But if it didn't interest her, she didn't want to know about it. And she didn't learn even when people tried to train her, because back then, um, at that point she should have learned how to sew, how to cook, how to look after children. And by the age of 17, she hadn't learned any of those things. She didn't want to learn them. But what was really interesting was when the war happened and she realized that to keep the home fires burning, as they said back then, and to help her family and to help other people, she takes in an awful orphan. She looks after an orphan baby. Um, she has to look after that by herself because her parents won't help her because they say, no, if you want the baby, you've got to look after it. Because they realize that until she took the responsibility and she wanted to learn, she wouldn't learn. So she got a book about child rearing, and she used the book to guide herself. And then she asked the lady who was their housekeeper, uh, and cook to teach her how to cook because she wanted to send cakes and food to the boy, her brothers, and her betrothed on the front lines in Europe. And it was amazing how you could see how, you know, her continuous personal development or would have been, you know, because rather than professional development was driven by her wanting to do it and being interested in it. And I think that's something we all have to think about, that you're going to learn things better, more ably and more likely if you want to. And it's something you're interested in.

Sarah Ashley Neal: I love this. I love this. And this is so unexpected because sometimes we can bring in an analogy. And for me, that's often the way I learn. I mean, I know we can end up jumping around, which is. Which is brilliant because it is so natural because we have different learning styles. And I know it's not a teaching session session on learning styles. Come on, Sarah, try and talk today. Um, it is very much about why we learn. And sometimes in a professional environment, you ask to go on and do a course. By the way, listeners, we are going to be talking about learning development in, uh, its raw sense about this terminology. But this is Ideal because in an organization some things are mandatory, aren't they? And some aren't. Uh, I guess you have people come onto your courses where someone's been asked to come onto the course and maybe their heart and soul isn't into it and they have to do it. But that want that you described and, and we go through life and we do things on a need to know basis. At some. Sometimes if you're going to learn to be a doctor, for example, you have to go do the whole course whether you like all the modules or not. But at the end that's when you go on your own career journey and professional development. So do you have people who come with your courses who feel that way?

Michelle Maunder: You can see it. You can see it. Uh, you can tell by how engaged people are in the sessions. You can tell by how much reading or pre work they've done, um, whether they've done their online studies before they get there, how engaged, how interested, how much they participate. Um, but you could say that. And I also have to be very careful because of neuroscience and things like that saying to me, but those people might be just as engaged. They just, they don't engage in the same ways. So you have to think about things like that as well. But definitely you, definitely. Even with neurodivergent, um, people I've had study with me and say to me, oh, I am ADHD or I am etc. So when we start the sessions they are very much, you can tell the difference between those who've been told they must attend then compared to those who've been told, you know, been said or asked for the opportunity and the business has said to them, of course we'll pay for you etc. Um, because they're a lot more driven when people have chosen to do it, I think, um, in a lot of cases.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Lovely. Well, what I'm going to do is going to quickly go back round again and just um, because these topics are lovely and they're going to flow again. Learning development in itself. Is there a definition about learning development? And I know there's lots of different perspectives, but can we do a couple of minutes and just talk through now what is learning and development? So I don't throw it in at the end because I'm certainly not going to edit the structure to this at all.

Michelle Maunder: No, I mean learning and development is fascinating area to focus on when it comes to human resource management and human resource development because it's a specialism within that part, uh, of uh, the workplace. Because we are Looking to develop people and grow them and to enable them to do more. And learning and development. Learning is the sort of an activity. It can be anything from, like we said, reading a chapter, um, having like me when I was reading a book that was for pleasure actually, then thinking about, oh, that's going to be relevant when I talk, talk to Sarah later. And I've learned something. You know, it's really made me think again about something. Um, and um, but development is that longer term. So all of your little learnings sit within your development, um, of what you're doing. But there are lots of different perspectives on how to learn. Um, you mentioned learning styles, which is something that when I did our, ah, when we did our certificates, uh, when you were with me, we used to talk about. But what we found is they're not empirically provable. But, but it's also, it's good for us to think about the fact that people don't all want to learn in the same way. People don't have a preference. So, you know, we. There is no proof that you are a vark learner, a visual learner, an auditory, etc. There's no proof with Honia Mumford that you are a theorist or an activist, etc. However, uh, what it does do for learning and development professionals who've had that kind of training, it doesn't really matter because what they're just doing is saying or. There's lots of different perspectives, there's lots of different ways to learn. I shouldn't only ever within my delivery of learning, give one option. So I should never just give a book to read. It should be, here's a book, here's a podcast, here's a video, here's an E learning option, there's a webinar, um, you know, there's a journal article, here's a checklist that's really useful. Here's a little grid you can use. So you, what you're doing is you are looking to suit as many people's preferences as possible because there's just so many other ways, um, to actually. There's so many different ways to learn now. And with the likes of digital developments, there's more and more and more. But what I would say is take into account, um, and think about what you hear when it comes to AI. And AI can be a really useful tool, but you can also see how, um, a problem it can be. Again, this is just from listening to the radio and it really showed me how I can get something wrong. It was recently in Birmingham. And the other reason why this resonates is my husband's Brummy and he supports Aston Villa. And I'm not sure how many people listening to the podcast know that there was a Aston Villa game last year that was played behind closed doors. No supporters were allowed in from the opposition team. I'm not sure if I think the Birmingham lot were allowed in. Um, and it was because the, um, West Midlands police had used AI, and AI had told them incorrect information about previous football games and it told them incorrect information so they thought it was going to be too dangerous to have the opposition protesters at that game. Um, and AI told them something wrong. Yeah. So it's being very cautious in using tools and AI and things to help you out. It's a great resource, but not to trust it on facts. Uh, challenge it to suggest ways to learn for you. So rather than asking it for an answer to something, ask it to suggest ways you can find out about things, things like that. Because even in universities, that's what they suggest students do is they ask AI, set them challenges, set them questions about things as a way of learning more about something. So. But don't trust it to give you answers.

Sarah Ashley Neal: That's a really good piece of. It is, in effect, a piece of advice and it's a good one coming from yourself. I think what you said was a really lovely tip because it can. If I wanted to learn about something, but I wasn't 100% sure of the different ways a topic, for example, then it's quite clever at bringing up, you know, oh, look at this resource, that resource, because it does sort of trawl the net and bring up, you know, websites and things like that. So it can sort of fast track you from that point of view. But definitely I'm sort of here on the. On the side of caution when it comes to sort of trusting implicitly. But I'll move on from that just, uh, so that I don't become an AI podcast, not get all that information wrong. Haven't done any homework on that. Um, so in a company, in an organization, so putting all what you said into practice there, you know, people get, students come through, you teach them and they go into the workplace if they've chosen to do that. And, um, they can go to a small organisation, they could go to a larger organisation, depending on where they begin. But with many companies, they have learning development departments, don't they? Or they have an HR department. It falls under hr, am I correct?

Michelle Maunder: In most organisations, you have to have a very large business um probably a corporation or you know some, a global business to have an actual L and D, um function of its own or an L and D department of its own with an L and D director. They are, there's not that many of them. The majority do sit um, within the human resource management department. Yeah. Under that umbrella you may well have an Ellen.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Sorry, sorry, sorry. So you may have like a learning development champion as well. You get a lot of champions sort of in titles these days.

Michelle Maunder: You do um, often L and D champions can be within the organization. So if you don't, if you are um say a medium sized organization so you do, you are able within your HR function to have somebody who is um, human resource management focused. Perhaps somebody who is focused on rewards, somebody who's focused on recruitment and then perhaps somebody who's a specialist who's focused on uh learning and development and you might have somebody else who's AN employees relations 1. So you may have those people but those people can't achieve everything within the business there's only so much time. So with often what you'll have is learning and development champions in the business. And I suppose that's in some ways the way I came through um, when I was talking is because they're naturally somebody who perhaps trains um and when I was um, in TI Media and in market force we had um, I only had limited resource. I would have a matrix structure of people reporting to me but they actually had day jobs and reported to other people. So that could be an analyst who do my learning and development analysis. It could be other senior managers and middle managers who would be part and parcel of a team working with me to ensure that we got the best learning um and development put in place for different parts of the business. Um and so often you need that because you don't necessarily have the resource to have multiple trainers. Um, you have to rely on people within the business.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Yeah, thank you Michelle for that because it does make complete sense because um, you might be listening on the call and thinking well you trained in it but um, you know it's keeping up to date with what goes on in organisations because an awful lot's gone on in the last 10, 20 years. And so you know it makes sense because if you are a smaller organization it also depends on the level of training you're doing and why you're doing the training. You know whether it's teaching um, or training on new products or um, soft skills or whatever it is that actually brings us nicely because we're going to go Around. You mentioned analysis. Training needs analysis. Where does that fit in with the company? Because I hear so many pros and cons about the amount of time and effort it takes to do them and, and some companies may not do them as well as they'd like to because of some of the time or restraints or the cost restraints. But, uh, surely that they're there for. It's there for a reason. So what is one and what's it all about? You take the floor again. Tell us all about it.

Michelle Maunder: Oh, my biggest worry is people not carrying out a decent, um, training needs or learning needs analysis, whichever way you want to coin it. Different people use the same thing, different terminology. Um, because if you don't do the groundwork, if you don't carry out that piece of analysis, find out what the actual skills gaps are, um, what's going to happen is you're going to end up. And this comes from a little book. Um, I'm going to nip and get it because I'm not on video when we are on podcast, because I've forgotten it. Hang on.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Please do, please. I'll take some water here. No one can see me. Slow.

Michelle Maunder: I don't think it's in print still. I'm not sure. Uh, but it's a little training needs analysis Pocketbook, and it's by Paul Donovan and John Townsend. And I use this back in my studies, hence why I think this printed edition was something back in around 2000, um, seven, 2008. Um, and in here what they talk about is, you know, learning and development is, um, it's an expense no matter what. Whether we like it or not. We are a specialism. We take, um. Even if it's just wooden dollars within the business, if you are training people, you're not doing your day job in inverted commas or doing something else that could be bringing revenue in for the business. And so we have to be very aware of the fact that whatever we do, it needs to make a difference and it needs to have the best return on investment that it can. Um, and if we don't identify the skills gaps, what we end up doing. And the analogy from this little Pocketbook was, um, you end up spraying your training all over the organisation. If we think of a garden, they were using the hose pipe, as in spraying water over a garden. If we think about a garden, some plants need more water than others. That's just because they might be new plants, uh, that you've just put into your garden and new plants always need a little bit more water. While they establish themselves, then you might have a more established plant that um, you know, needs water just because of the fact that you've moved it, you've um, changed its position. It could be like changing roles within a business. And so. But if you didn't look at those plants individually and you just looked at the whole garden when it's been sunny on a hot day, even in the uk, you think, oh, I've got to water the garden, I'll get the hose pipe out. But if you do that, lots of you use a big amount of water over everywhere some things are going. I don't need water right now, thank you very much. I quite like being the way I am. I'm settled, I'm comfortable, I'm doing a job. I'm not right now looking to move on. I've got a few other different priorities in life as a plant, um, and I want to attract the bees and all the rest of it or whatever it is. And so what we need to do is make sure we're not just spraying everything, that we are focusing our efforts in the places where it's needed. Um, it could be a plant that's drooping and that plant is drooping because it's not had training in something and so it's struggling, um, because it's not had the water it needs. So that, that plant is that analogy of perhaps somebody who's making a lot of errors, somebody who is confused, somebody who, um, has had a few kind of incidents with customers that perhaps aren't as good as they should be. So you've got all of these things that you can bring together and establish the gaps and then fill those gaps, actually provide what is needed. Um, because we need to make sure that we are, you know, making the most of the resources we've got. Um, and it is quite, it is, uh, training needs analysis, learning needs analysis can be resource heavy. But if you, if you build it into your strategy, if you build it into where your business wants to move to, that learning and development is focused, it's in line with where the business is going, um, and um, that you carry out decent appraisals each year with line managers, um, using good forms etc, so that people have got reliable data, you can sort of build up skills and knowledge, you can build up and have an understanding of people and where they are and then bring that together to make sure that then you are, you know, delivering the training where it needs to be.

Sarah Ashley Neal: You mentioned something there about reliable data and I think that hits the nail on the head, really. Because even with learning development, there's only so many things a company is going to create. Again, that's depending on the size of the company and what, what they do. So at some point in time they're going to have a lot of their material created, but they may improve that depending on, you know, uh, as things evolve, things change. But the data coming through is what informs. I mean, we haven't got time to talk about staff engagement surveys and all that kind of thing today. However, um, I remember talking to someone a while ago and they were saying, well, you can even do all these surveys or you can do a training needs analysis or learning needs analysis. Um, but even if you don't do it, if you don't do anything with that data, it's still not, not useful and you're not going to look at any return on investment, are you? So I'm thinking here putting you on the spot a little bit, but feel free to answer how you'd like to. Michelle. We want inclusivity, don't we? But at the same time, we can't meet everybody's personal, individual needs, can we? Or is that, what's your thoughts on that?

Michelle Maunder: I think it depends on what you mean by personal. If the personal need is aligned with the business strategy, then yes, we should be, because it's where the business needs to go. It's the goals, it's the vision, the mission of what we're trying to achieve. If somebody wants to do something completely different, there's multiple schools of thought. One school of thought is we can't afford that because if that person wants to learn how to make cupcakes, what's that going to do to help out our business? But the difference is sometimes if businesses just invest in people, in what they, they are interested in the organization, that person feels value, they feel engaged with the business. And what they'll often do then is that will mean they will give back more, so they will be more productive. They will be more passionate about working for the business and interested in what they're doing because of the fact the business has shown interest in them. But other people would say, well, we're just wasting money because they're just learning how to make cupcakes. But making cupcakes takes, uh, following a recipe, doesn't it? And if you think about a lot of jobs, a lot of things that we do in work are following steps and stages. It's remembering what to do after what, um, it's reading things, it's being accurate, it's Being precise. And all of those things can come out of somebody learning how to make cupcakes. And they've actually done it in a way that's enjoyable perhaps to them that they can bring back to the business than if they've been sent on a time management course or they've been sent on uh, you know, asked to go and do something in a different way. So it is, it's a big challenge because the one part of um, one part of budgets that tend to get dropped first is the learning and development part. Because businesses feel that uh, it's some, it is expensive and it's something they can live without. But what you will find is those businesses that don't, those businesses that maintain the focus, maintain um, the enabling of learning within the businesses in lots of different ways will move forward. But again, learning and development doesn't have to be extremely expensive. You can put in place structures, you can put in place things like buddy schemes, you can put in place coaching and mentoring schemes. Yes, you do need to train the coaches and mentors first off, but then they can perpetuate that. You can do, train the trainer so that you develop um, trainers within the business, uh, who are also subject matter experts so they can pass on so you're not bringing in specialists for things which are more expensive. And then you can do things like curation of resources so you're not creating things, you're using things that are already available. And all those things can be much more resource effective than um, just purchasing, buying and bringing in training or uh, always developing new things all the time rather than perhaps using things that have worked before.

Sarah Ashley Neal: It just shows that perhaps when we think of which is why you're on the show, learning, development, we do possibly think it's either an online course or it's just an in person event. Um, you've talked about all the different resources and different modalities and obviously there's other delivery methods, etc. But I do think it's about empowering individuals and if the learning and development team or champion or um, whoever's been chosen to sort of look after that part of the business, if they can even do their own cpd, their own homework on it, to what they can signpost other people to do. Because what I mentioned about the personal development, I mean, I mean clearly, you know, companies are going to initially focus on professional development. So if they need somebody to learn, like I said, something about a new product or they've changed something on how they do their customer service calls, that's something that has to be done. It might well be mandatory. However, you know, again, it's difficult to meet every individual person's needs if you've got like 30,000 in an organization. But then I guess it's um, you'll have you then look at the resources and the budget to go hand in hand with that, don't you? But I appreciate, gosh, time's getting on already. But yeah. So I guess in all your years you've seen that evolve and you've had to go and adapt your adapt yourself, haven't you? Because you've had experience working in companies, you've been on both sides of the table. Um, you haven't just decided to train on something, you haven't got any real world experience. And it is about going from classroom to the workplace, isn't there? Yeah. So how do you think L and D learning development has changed? Or do you feel it's more. I think you've mentioned in our discussions HR policies and different things have changed more. But what would you say has changed about L and D since you came into the industry? That's a put you on spot question, isn't it?

Michelle Maunder: No, no, not at all. It's something that I'm very conscious of because it has changed a lot in many ways and it's not changed a lot in others, which I know is a total contradiction. Um, so I best explain myself. When I came into the industry, um, everything was very much face to face, but we did still learn. What is a big way of learning now that we talk about, which is very much focused on in the flow of work, on the job, is social learning. So whenever I've done face to face learning, one of the big things for me, um, is getting people to talk to each other, getting people to share experiences. Um, because we, when we come into learning sessions, we are coming again from lots of different perspectives. We're coming from different industries, we're coming from different roles, um, we're coming with um, different interests and different passions and different ways that we do prefer to learn. And really those different kind of experiences are the key thing. So when people come, you know, with face to face training, it was always sharing those types of things, but that was learning socially. And it's very much focused on now that it's something that's talked about more, that we learned socially. Um, if we think about Jennings 70, 2010 learning, um, principle in the fact that only 10% of learning is formal within a classroom from people. The rest of your learning is around, uh, conversations in the Office or self directed learning. Um, but a lot of that then happens in the flow of work. It happens as you are doing things. So for me, but the big changes I suppose are where you're coming from, which is the technology side of things. Um, you know, historically back in 97 and all the way through probably up to around 2012 onwards, um, we were very much in a classroom, people, bodies, you went to a training session. But after 2012, when we got the invention of smartphones, um, and mobile learning and things like that, that accelerated it, things were moving forward anyway. You know, we were already, even when I did my certificate in training practice, we had had an online system, we had a virtual learning environment. As students we'd go into, read about things, answer questions, put them into things. So that has started but the volume was nowhere near as it is now. So what we have to keep up with, very much so in learning and development is digital advancements and what can help us and how we can use that to help people to get the most out of um, their learning and out of their CPD and out of their own development. And it is definitely the, the biggest change has been those types of things as in um, digitalization. But when it comes to virtual training and it comes to things like people will talk about gamification as if it's brand new. Um, and I know my watch plays gamification with me to give me little um, badges because I've achieved, I've actually done, I've moved enough times during the day or whatever it is that I've set as a little goal for myself. Um, but gamification, I used to do that in a very much more traditional sense in the classroom in the fact that um, I would have a, uh, competition so people would, in their groups and whoever got the most would win a prize of a bag of sweets for that, that table. I still do it virtually, but I've had to think of a different way of doing it virtually. And now we play tennis. So people go into breakout rooms. They come up with as many uh, ideas as they possibly can in an answer to a question. And then two people represent their teams and they can't repeat any answer that the other teams had. And we keep going them saying one and the other, one and the other until one team wins. But now it's just for pride because I can't send sweets virtually across um, the Internet. And so gamification is often people go, oh, it's a new way of looking at things. But it is, but it's a Digital way. It's like augmented reality. And we talk about augmented reality, we talk about virtual reality as new tools for moving forward. Well, not if you've been a pilot. Pilots have been trained using augmented and virtual reality for a very very long time. Um, way before it was thought of for any other sort of type of employment. But if you think about it, role play in some ways could be considered um, virtual. I don't like role play either. Role play could be considered virtual reality in many ways because you are creating a reality where you're trying something out. It doesn't have all the whistles and bells that virtual reality has. So that's why I say it's changed. Um, but it hasn't changed, it's evolved. I think it's probably how we do things are very similar but it's the evolution of delivery. The one thing that we didn't have though was being able to do webinars that people. And then people, people were walking through instructional Moodle based m learning where you know, they, you can take you through steps, ask you questions, you know, tell you whether you've got your answers right, those types of things. But interestingly I did used to have a PowerPoint that I have to hold my hand up and say it wasn't mine, it was my first ever tutors at ah college. Tristan, Tristan gave me his Millennium. Millennium.

Sarah Ashley Neal: I remember that name.

Michelle Maunder: Millionaire. Yeah, Millionaires game. And it's a PowerPoint where you put the questions in and everybody can play Millionaires and you can get to the Millionaire question and answer if everybody gets the question right as you go through. So we've got lots of ways that we could do it. Um but there are lots of modern ways. It's great to be able to have quizzes built in when you're training virtually. I can do word clouds with people which is lovely to see when you have larger groups so people can participate. Uh, but we used to do word clouds with post it notes on the board. You know it's.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Yeah it's.

Michelle Maunder: It was ways and means I suppose to make learning enjoyable because the one thing that I always find is if you enjoy yourself you are going to. Then it makes it more enjoyable for learning. And that's something that as well.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Absolutely. Thank you so much for, for covering all this. I feel like we should start paying you for your uh, for your knowledge here. It's uh, yeah, put that down into an ebook now where we'll probably close down purely because I appreciate, you know time gets on. It seems to be something we Naturally say at the end of a podcast, but it is true. Respectful. Um, because I'm loving this. I mean, I know there's, you know, we can always talk about more, explain to the listeners. You have your own business, do you? Because if they wanted to contact you, um, or they wanted some support, it'd be nice for them to know what kind of support. So, for example, I already know at some point I'm coming to you for some, uh, advanced lessons. Um, because even though I do things online, there are certain things I think, oh, I could do with, uh, learning how to do that. So, um. Yeah. So from that point of view, you're a consultant with companies or individuals or how does that work?

Michelle Maunder: Absolutely. Um, I have, with my husband as the finance director, company secretary and all the jobs that I don't do have my own, um, our own training company. So it's Tamesis limited And um, I work with clients from, um, you know, different organizations and businesses. I've got a meeting on Wednesday to talk to somebody who, um, I used to work with her when I was at Market Force and she's now working elsewhere and um, she's like, oh, I know this might be right up your road. And so she's contacting me via LinkedIn because I don't have a website and things like that. Because, um, I've always within the business in the main, um, specialized of working with sort of educational organizations. So I've worked with the likes of Arden University, which is an independent university, and I've worked with the likes of mol, which is one of the largest, um, CIPD qualification providers in the uk. So my specialism has been focused on that. So I've worked with sort of seven or eight different organizations in that area all the way through, from people who specialise in apprenticeships through to others that are just very much focused on uh, E learning as a, As a major area. But, uh, working with other organizations. I am very, um, happy and open. I'd love to, uh, work with different people on their learning development provision, what they provide, what would be good to provide if they don't have an L and D department that, what could be put in place. And so, yes, come along to me for advice, come along to me for tutoring, come along for me, for me to design some learning and development, um, sessions for you, um, that could be virtual for a global organisation. Because I've also worked with or businesses that are out in the Middle east and places like that. So I'm up to speed with the need to build in your prayer breaks, um, as well as any other kind of breaks, um, when you're training students, when you're in a different time zone, etc. So, um, yeah, I can, uh.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Sounds amazing. Sounds amazing, yeah.

Michelle Maunder: Sorry Sarah. But if anybody does want to contact me, LinkedIn's the best way.

Sarah Ashley Neal: LinkedIn. We'll get that in the show notes. So, yes, certainly, I think it's, it's worth contacting you. Then you can sort of discuss whether it's uh, something you can do and when and go from there. It would be very easy for me to put my head on and say, oh, you know, Michelle's got all the time in the world. No, you haven't. And you're a very busy lady. And I think it's about the time management side which I know you're good at. Business. I'm going to throw this in as well. Your business management skills are not any superb that usually have that experience through all the companies you've worked for. So. And that ties often into how you go about any role in organization and obviously you specialise in learning development. It's been an absolute pleasure. I don't think I've looked at my questions. I think they came so natural between us, most of them. And um, you do have a beautiful energy and I know you'll make you blush but you're not on video. You have a beautiful energy. It's a pleasure sort of reconnecting and talking to you and I think you've got so much, um, you're already sharing tons with the world but I think it's your, your experience can, can, can go from coaching to consulting to teaching and um, I'll leave it up to you to discuss what you do with your future clients. So, um, thank you ever so much, Michelle for coming on board. Thank you to the listeners today and, um, look forward to seeing you again in the future. Lovely.

Michelle Maunder: Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Ashley Neal: Thank you very much.

Michelle Maunder: Enjoyed the session.

Sarah Ashley Neal: No, you're welcome. You're a joy. Lovely, thank you so much. Bye bye. And remember, our show is about helping you to create healthier habits in the life you live now. Until new lifestyle practices change how you live your life. Well, that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and taking time out to join us. If you enjoyed the show, it would be really great if you could leave a review view on whatever platform you've been listening to us on and I look forward to welcoming you back to the show next week. This has been your host, Sarah Ashley Neal.