Recapping 50 Interviews with L&D Professionals

Speaker A: M. Are you trying to pivot into or advance your career in a growing field of learning and development and struggling to envision your next role? Me too. I got your back. In this space, we'll be conducting job analysis style interviews with folks holding L and D and L and D adjacent roles in order for us to better clarify, classify, and envision the type of L and D work we want to do next. So come along this journey with me. I can't wait to survey the L and D landscape with you. Hey there. I'm, um, your host, Abigail Wheeler. Charlu, and today we are celebrating 50 episodes of interviews on the podcast. My current boss and mentor, Emily Freeze Kemney will be joining me in just a minute to interview me as we wrap up some of the learnings, which is really quite exciting. For a bit of context. Emily is the founder and CEO of Arose Group, a firm who is bridging humanity and profitability through leadership, culture and organizational transformation work. Prior to founding Arose Group, Emily led talent and leadership development at companies like Morgan Stanley, IBM, Avon, and Scholastic. Emily is a multi modality wellness practitioner and she brings a ton of experience, knowledge and heart to the work she does, helping organizations design the conditions for both the people and the business to thrive. If you are looking for a new podcast and enjoy our conversation about holistic approaches to talent development, you just may enjoy her podcast. Let's talk, people. All right, let's get into it. Hi, Emily. Welcome to the Surveying the L and D Landscape podcast.

Speaker B: Hi, Abby. Very excited to be here with you.

Speaker A: I am so excited to be here today. Going to be very special. We are flipping the script and after completing 50 episodes, I'm going to be interviewed. Let's see what unfolds as we go.

Speaker B: 50 is an amazing milestone and I feel like it's just right to put, uh, a bow on it by you getting a chance to sit in the spotlight and reflect and to think about this journey that you've been on. It's pretty, uh, remarkable.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And I'm super grateful for you and the work we've been able to do together recently. So, yeah, let's dive into it.

Speaker B: So I want to start back in time and maybe even a little bit before the podcast. So what is it about learning and development, talent development, this whole space that you've been curious about, or what was it that attracted you to it?

Speaker A: Great question. So I have always known that leadership development, teaching training, building things and solving problems is my calling. I've done that throughout my life. My mother was a teacher My father was a pastor, now works in, you know, leading non profits. His father was a carpenter. So building things, being really creative. My mother's family, they were missionaries and lived abroad. So all of these things I feel like, really are innate to who I am. Thinking about how people work together, how they communicate, how we get stuff done, how we build things, and how we solve problems. You know, I have always just kind of followed my passion and done, um, what's the next right thing for me? And until this point in my life where I'm 30 years old, I haven't had a strong kind of career plan or trajectory. So after undergrad went to China, I kind of found my way there doing entrepreneurial things, serving, ending up being a teacher, teaching business studies, leading leadership development programs. So I was doing things that I really loved to do, but I wanted to build a career out of it. Right? I wanted to be working in organizations, driving change, helping organizations solve problems. And so when I came back to the U.S. you know, it was, how do I get there? I started my master's program. I found industrial organizational psychology just because it was similar to some of the stuff that I was able to teach in my business studies classes. How do we think about jobs? How do we place people in the right jobs? How do we manage performance? And how do we develop people and develop the organization? I then moved into a nonprofit training. Then I went to work in higher education doing program management and then getting into marketing. But I knew I needed to get back to working in an organization. Was it hr? Was it learning and development? Is it organizational development? I was trying to figure out how to think about my skills and what I know I'm created to do and be able to pivot into this kind of space. But it's also still big. Am I a facilitator? Am I building instructional design programs? Am I managing an lms? Am I building a leadership development program? So I had just started to leverage my network and have informational interviews with people in these types of jobs.

Speaker B: So you started to talk to people and to explore what could a role look like? What were the different options? When did you figure out that there was a podcast idea in it? Like, where did that come from?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I started talking to people, you know, as I was thinking about preparing for these informational interviews, a tool that I learned in my IO psychology program, which is a, uh, job analysis framework. And it's more simple than it sounds. What is a job analysis? Kind of list of questions, a very detailed way of getting at, uh, understanding what is the scope of a job? What are the. What's the role? What are the responsibilities? What are those buckets of activities encompassed in that job? What are the critical skills, abilities, and personal characteristics required to do that work? What is great performance, exceptional performance versus, you know, just average or kind of get by performance? How are we measuring that performance? So, uh, all of those things is, you know, how you get at, uh, understanding the scope of a job, doing a job analysis. So I went back to that tool and I started pulling questions from that and asking people about their jobs. And as I was doing that, I felt like I was learning so much, and it was a lot of fun for me. And at the time, I was working with a coach and I was, you know, trying to see how I can pivot my career, and I didn't feel like I had a strong portfolio of work. How do I demonstrate to other people that I know this content? What's needed for this kind of work? You know, we were talking and the idea just came to me, what if I just record these conversations and put them out in the world? And so that's kind of how it happened. You know, he was really encouraging and gave me the support to get it off the ground. And so that's how it happened.

Speaker B: So one thing that I was curious about is how has it shaped you? So how has this shaped how you think about this, let's say, landscape of work that is talent, learning, leadership development, organizational development? How has it shaped you and your thinking about the impact of this type of work, the impact that you want to have? And then the other way I want to come at it as I'm curious of. You know, you've now had 50 podcast conversations, I'm sure even more before you embarked on this. What are the things that have become really clear to you in terms of what's working in our field, what's not? Where should we be heading in terms of, you know, the future of learning in the context of work? So, again, if you want to start big picture or personal, however it comes to you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think my greatest takeaway is that if we're talking about learning in the context of an organization and adults learning, it's about how they do their job. It's about performance. Um, and that is such a critical place to start from because this is a creative job and there's so many ways we can go about talking about learning. Teachers in the classroom know this best, right? They can spend so much time with all of the frills and making all of the work that could go into making a learning experience for somebody, and those are great and important. Um, but at the end of the day, if what we're doing isn't driving performance for individuals, teams and organizations, we're not doing our job. So I think that's my greatest learning is that everything we do has to be grounded in how are we building new knowledge and skills for people to better do their jobs, solving problems for the organization and driving greater results.

Speaker B: So I think one of the places get tripped up is when there's a misalignment and people are not passionate about it. Because I think there's so much within us which is about free will and following what moves us and where our curiosity is. And so sometimes there's a disconnect. So how do you kind of reconcile that? We want it to be about performance, it has to be about performance, as you said. But sometimes that's where the most conflict or strife happens is when there's a misalignment.

Speaker A: Right. And so that's why I think from that perspective, learning and development is just one slice of the whole talent development, talent management pie. If someone is not in the right role, we can't solve it through any type of learning and development. There are much bigger issues at, uh, play. It's about looking at the holistic approach to how we leverage people within organizations. What is the job that someone is supposed to do? How are we matching the right person to the role? How do we articulate expectations around their work and their development over time? How do we support motivation, development appraisals to say you're hitting the mark or you're not and we need to improve in these critical areas. We'll put you on this development path and here are the things that you can do to enhance your performance. Being able to do performance management, it's being able to move people in to different opportunities, develop their skills. If they're doing well, great. Do they want to improve? Do they want to grow in their career? How can they grow in their career? And what are the mechanisms that we provide as an organization to do that? Is it coaching, mentoring? Are there clear career pathings across the organization that people can begin to move to other roles in other departments that they can job shadow to learn new skills? Is there a talent development marketplace? Right. So all of these things is really the, a, ah, larger piece of the puzzle. And the learning and development professional, depending on where they sit within an organization, they are either very specialized and skilled. So they might not have that holistic or larger Strategic vision, because they're doing a lot of really difficult work to create content and to produce a lot of product. But how do we connect those things? And they're not just isolated and going off and building these things, but they're a part of the whole organizational strategy. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah. I mean, I, uh. This resonates with me so much. It's exactly why my career took the shape that it took. Because I do see it as a connected system. And it is about roles and people's desires and how teams are formed and the dynamics of how leaders lead in departments. And it is a system of change and impact. And it was hard for me to look at it through one specific lens or pillar. This totally resonates with me. And it's why organizations work or don't work. I mean, yes, you have products, you have services, you have technology. However, the way people work and your ability to put people in the right roles where they can do incredible things is ultimately the key to it. It really does resonate. And then let's flip it and let's go to the second part, which is, you know, what has come to you about you through this journey? You know, what have you learned about yourself, you know, your career, who you're supposed to be in the world? Like what, what got clear as you went through these 50 interviews?

Speaker A: So I think one of the biggest challenges for me is that, uh, I am a very passionate person and I have a very high level of self efficacy. So I think I can do a lot of things.

Speaker B: And you can. I've been working with you. I know you can. I love that.

Speaker A: It's good because I can usually, you know, take on something and I thrive when I am growing and developing new skills and taking on new challenges. The kind of shadow side of that is that sometimes I overinflate my skills or it's very difficult for me to be very specific about what it is I want to do because it could be this, it totally could be instructional design. I could be a facilitator. You know, I could be in hr, I could be an organizational development practitioner, I could do change management. But at some point you have to pick a lane or at least be able to articulate what it is that you want to do. And so I think this process has helped me get a little bit more clear about my career and be able to say that while I still want to take that higher level strategic view, that holistic approach that we talked about earlier, there are very specific things that I can be in a building. Continued skill towards, like designing leadership development programs like competency modeling or succession planning or for talent marketplaces like building out job aids to help people better do their work.

Speaker B: Yeah, I have a theory from listening to you, which is the reason you haven't been able to land on the one is because it's, it's all of it that's interesting to you. It's, it is the system. But what you're saying, Rich, speaks to me is we can have breath, but it's also nice to have some depth, but you can keep switching up, uh, which parts you want to have depth in. And so it may not be that you go as deep as somebody else who only wants to do assessments only, or somebody who only wants to facilitate, but that you can kind of dip into each of the pillars that interests you and then be that connector of helping organizations or leaders or teams to know what solutions is the right ones for them.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: Because I think sometimes we get told we have to be one thing, and some people really like to be more tight in their expertise and really deep. However, that's not for everybody. And I think as I listen to you, my gut is you're going to be the L and D landscape. Right. Like you're. And it's not even just L and D. You know, I think it's going to be talent OD, L&D, maybe even beyond that. Right. But I think you're going to want to be that connector and that one to identify what the right solution is and then in some cases to build or deliver them.

Speaker A: Right, that's exactly it. And for me, being connected to you and being able to learn from your experience and your great breadth of, um, expertise in this area has been really inspiring to me, um, to know that I don't have to just choose one thing. That being said, I'm getting experience from you in some of these areas where I'm getting able to go deeper as we build out a leadership program for an organization, as we do 360 assessments and specific leadership development assessments, like in our case, hbdi, and facilitate the mechanism for coaches to support those folks as they're going through the programs.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting we're very similar because I've never liked being in a box either. Even though this field of work was absolutely what spoke to me too, once I navigated my way through the different functional areas within hr, this is where I landed. And it's so true though, you do want to know how to do the work, right? You can't stay at a high level because then you can't provide the solution. So I think that's exactly it. The solution doesn't have to be one thing and you're not going to have to sit in one pillar. But I totally feel that desire to be able to kind of do the different parts of it and then eventually you'll know how to, to pick and choose which ones will drive the right level of change for an organization or for a team. So it makes a lot of sense. And I just think, I don't know, it's just so perfect that you named it L and D Landscape. And like you're, you're the landscape, right? Like that's what you're building and like it needs some trees and it needs some bushes and it needs a river. Like you're kind of like filling in all like the, the details of what's in the landscape. But ultimately you're more of a landscape.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: You know, it's like from a metaphor, it just, it feels just too perfect.

Speaker A: And I picked that name. So the reason I came to that was because you know, I'm specifically doing job analysis for different types of jobs in order to build out what this whole ecosystem looks like. As ah, you do a job analysis, there's interviews are a way to do research and to get out the information you need. Um, but it's not the only way.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Just like all kinds of research that we would do. You can do a one on one interview with the uh, incumbent or the person in the job. You can do a one on one interview with a boss, especially if nobody has been in the role before or sometimes with a team to understand as you call it team crafting, what are the skills and the responsibilities on other people's jobs and where are the gaps? So how do we build this specific role around the gaps in the team? Those are all interview ways. You know, you can do survey so form that somebody would, would fill out and take uh, you could do focus groups with multiple people. Those are all kind of common research practices. Of course you take other performance metrics or objective metrics to look at to understand, you know, what's missing on this team or towards this to accomplishing the work. You know, we're surveying. That's why that word was really important to me. Um, because we're trying to understand what it is. And then you know, you survey a landscape, that's a common collocation. It works for me. And a landscape to me I've always been really Interested in maps and compasses and the world and discovery. And so that kind of felt thematically like it aligned to who I am. And so that's how I came up with the name. I love that.

Speaker B: That's very cool. And it feels like you even, uh, Even how you had shared how you started out going to China. Right. It's a sad idea of kind of being a, uh, like a student of the world and wanting to branch out and have different experiences and kind of that, like the curiosity and the teacher and the builder in you. So it's. It's perfect. What was some of. Like, maybe the top three. Like, let's see what comes to you. Like, what were the top three moments? When you think back over these 50 episodes, where something really clicked for you and something that you were curious about or maybe didn't even know you were curious about? Like, things. What things got really clear to you or really struck you? Like what. What were some of those highlights?

Speaker A: Oh, uh, this is a great question. I think there are three areas that I can point to. One was an episode of a content project manager. And to me, just having come from a marketing background where, you know, I never wanted to be a marketer, I never set out to be a marketer. Me doing marketing work was simply a product of finding a gap at the organization that I was at and knowing that we need to sell these educational programs and how do we sell them? What are all of the ways that we communicate this content and how do we visually design it, and how do we speak to what people need and what all the formats that we need to do that in video and website, in tablecloths, in brochures, and all of the tools that we have at our fingertips. And so I really liked that episode about content development and project management because at the end of the day, we're teaching people things. We have to have content, and we have to, um, use the mediums that speak most to the people that we're trying to communicate information to. We have to be really clear about our message. And as you and I know from working through articles and podcasts and social media posts, it's not easy.

Speaker B: No, it's not. It's this feeling that, you know, you have something to say and you have a value you want to bring, but it's hard to know how to always translate that so it can be received in the right way and to picture your audience. And it's true. It's like you've. I can really see that. It's like you've all of this value you want to bring. And yeah, marketing is a big part of how you translate the value into something that connects with audience. And I think, I don't know if this came up, Abby, uh, for you along this journey, but one of the things that I felt a lot, especially when I was heading up learning and development specifically, was you provide all of this content. And this was a thing that organizations have done for decades of having these kind of learning libraries and nobody was using it totally. And I was, I kept thinking, like, in our personal lives, if we need to learn something, we, we go find it. We ask somebody, we YouTube, we Google, you know, we read a manual. Like, it was such an incongruence between, like, how we solve problems and learn in our personal lives and this very passive engagement with content at work. And I was like, something about this is wrong. So it's very interesting. I think this idea of is the problem the content or is the problem the way we're connecting the content to the audience?

Speaker A: Right. That's a huge, huge piece of it. Uh, adult learners and their jobs need to learn things on demand, when they need it and how they want to get it. So that presents a, um, very difficult problem for people trying to build out this, these libraries. And, you know, where does it sit? In what ecosystem is the learning management system available? Is it on a platform that people go to every day for other things, or is it some other system that they have to log into? Yeah, to access and, you know, is it user friendly? And if it creates more friction to go find the thing and then to dig through content courses or whatever to find something quickly, they're never going to do it. Right.

Speaker B: And then, and then you think about people who are in manufacturing roles or on the road and are out clients or, you know, consulting and doing engagements, they're, you know, salespeople. Like, there's so many scenarios where, you know, people don't even have the same type of a, uh, work day, or you sit in front of a screen like.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And then also, you know, if you think about the world right now we're living in, especially with AI, I mean, things are changing so fast. I mean, by the time you've created the course or content, I mean, it could be irrelevant 100%.

Speaker A: And so this is the type of challenges that we're facing in this space. And almost every single one of my, of the people that I interview, you know, I ask what do they think is on the horizon? This is the type of challenge that they bring up. Everybody's talking about AI. Everybody's talking about how user friendly is our content, in what mediums are we providing them? Are we learning from the field of marketing? Are we able to create short videos that can communicate something to people? Are we using social media? You know, how are we meeting the people that we need to our audience just in time with the content that they need in a way that's easy to consume and leverage.

Speaker B: Do you feel like anybody had some real successes? Like, I mean I think that is absolutely the direction because you think about how do we consume and desire to get content in our again in our personal lives? Because we do it, we don't expect to be spoon fed it, we do it. Do you feel like anybody from their experience had really nailed it or at least an example of where someone did something that really stood out to you?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. Um, a couple examples that stand out to me. One is in the context of uh, a manufacturing company, how are you creating the tools and the resources to communicate through a team leader in morning huddles? It's really not that innovative or new, but it's that reminder that learning and development is not just one thing, this whole big elearning course that we've created. I think another is as you're walking people through change management initiatives, what are the communications they need to receive? How are you to, for example, in the context of a talent marketplace, providing workshops for leaders to help their team members build out their talent profiles.

Speaker B: There's two things that are striking me. So one is you're totally reinforcing. Why if I had to pick amongst all of the pillars within this body of work, I lean towards leadership development. Like if that, if I had to have a primary and it's very hard for me like you to choose, it's because of what you just described. So much of our experience, experience at work is through the leader and the people manager. And there's no other way around it. I mean that's who we listen to, that's who puts it in context, that's who understands what our job is. And so they can connect the dots for us. And of course also where we find a lot of gaps. And then the other thing is, is while there's so much innovation and this idea to do things better and change them, sometimes you have to go back to getting the basics right. And that's why leadership development's so essential. Because if you don't get that right, people don't have a desire to change or they don't have A desire to learn the new tools. It's like you can't jump always ahead and do kind of the new shiny thing if your foundation is not strong. And the foundation is often what you described, the clarity of the role, how it ties to a performance need, slash expectation, and then the role of the manager and the leader.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. And so for that reason, I think it's less about the specific learning intervention or content or having to build this big thing for somebody to learn, but it's more about the architecture of the organization. Exactly what you just said. And how we're supporting leaders to mobilize their team members towards performance.

Speaker B: Yep, that's right. And it. So that doesn't maybe sound new or futuristic, but it's because we haven't gotten it right yet. Um, so we can't skip that step because that step has not been perfected from all the research we've been doing. It's gotten harder. So there is no way to take what we've done in the past and just continue to hit repeat because we weren't strong at it across organizations to begin with. And then now the volume of responsibilities that managers have has increased and the emotional landscape that we're living in has increased in complexity. And so there's a lot of. As you sat with each of these individuals, how do you feel like people in our field of work are feeling about their roles, their value, their relevance for the future? Like did you get any feel for how people are just doing, you know, our colleagues and you know, who are doing this work across organizations?

Speaker A: Yeah. In every conversation I had, I was continually inspired by the people doing this work. People who are in this type of work, learning and development, talent development, org development, hr. They're incredibly passionate about the work that they're doing. They believe in it. They know that their role is to help people and to uh, make a difference for their organization. And that has an incredibly profound impact for people's livelihoods, for their home lives, for their civic engagement, and not to mention when an organization can do well, the impact that that can have assuming the organization is responsible. And if they're responsible for their people, hopefully they're also responsible for planet and government items as well. So it was really just an honor to be able to sit with people and to learn about the nitty gritty of their work. I think also something that was special about what I got to do is, you know, most, uh, podcasts interview high level people in their roles and they typically have a lot of career experience and get to speak about the trajectory of their career and all of these things. And that's not the frame of my podcast. I feel really privileged to have been able to give people a space, to have their very first podcast interview and to. To speak about their. The nitty gritty aspects of their job that they never have articulated before or in most cases, have never even thought about. Um, so it was really an honor to be able to do that. A lot of folks after the fact said, I've never thought about my job this way before. And it made me feel really proud of the work that I'm doing, despite the challenges that I'm facing with. With how to keep up with the demand and how to really solve the problems and all of the intricacies that we've been talking about.

Speaker B: That's really amazing because it's true. Most of us just put our heads down and we have work we're getting done. And it's so nice that people get to reflect and I'm sure walk away feeling like, oh, wow, like I. I really do a lot of things that make a difference. Right.

Speaker A: Or that's totally.

Speaker B: It gives them more perspective on the impact they're making. And to be able to be reflective is not something we often build in. So, uh, that's. And it's also great to showcase people because it wasn't about, you know, being a leader or being a hero. It was about what is the actual work that you do.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I mean, you really did. You did a research study. You did.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, uh, people might find boring, but m. I found really interesting.

Speaker B: Well, that's the whole point of this is you embarked on it to learn. And for the people who came on, it probably helped them to really feel special about the value that they're bringing and to be able to celebrate and embrace their. Their impact. And then I think it's for the people who like you are trying to figure out what are the roles, what are they like, what can I do? I mean, people always want that, especially early in career. It's not tangible. I mean, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I was coming out of college. And you just. How would you ever know? I mean, you know a doctor because you go to the doctor. You know a lawyer because people know lawyers. You have no idea what they even do. I sure didn't. When I started working at a law firm, which is where my career started. Like, you know, even the things teacher. Yes. I mean, the ones that we know. It's only because We've actually interacted with them or somebody used the term. That's even, even in those cases you don't really understand the day to day works. I actually think it's super helpful because of the specificity of it and because roles are so nuanced and there's no way you would know that until you're in them. And then often we struggle our way through our careers because we didn't know what we were getting into really. So I think it's incredibly valuable for people who don't know what they want to do or think they want to move into this field. Like it gives them a place to start that they may not have had otherwise.

Speaker A: Right? Absolutely. And one more thing about, you know, a job analysis, the point of it is to be able to build a job description.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And to match the people to the role. And that's great and totally needed. However, we know that jobs change, the needs of the role change. Um, some people want a lot of clarity in their role and really appreciate, uh, a very thorough analysis that's clearly articulated. Some people like to build as they go. Like me, right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Some people like to understand and work on what are the needs of the team and the organization and adapt to fill those needs and those gaps. And so for those people, you know, quite a lot of people have said that I interviewed, there wasn't a job description before. I kind of built out this job as I went. And so this interview was really helpful for me to really clearly think about what I've been building. And so I think that that's why this is so difficult because we need that real clarity, but also we're dealing with real people. Mhm. And everybody needs something a little bit different. And the, the needs of the role, the needs of the team, the needs of the organization are always going to be a little bit different. And so it's ability to navigate clarity with supporting people to be really clear about what they want and how they can solve needs and enabling them to role craft in that way.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean it's so interesting when you think about how you started out, which was having a, uh, protocol to get really, really clear. But it sounds like m. There wasn't defined roles to be discovered. There was types of work to be discovered. But it's interesting. Like my, my takeaway as I'm listening to you is there is not a best practice that says These are the 25 roles that exist in this field. And here's how you pick and choose because probably between the composition of the Team someone's own passions and desires, you know, the size of the organization. So many factors that, you know, I'm sure you have figured out what types of work exists. But it's interesting, it sounds like you wouldn't be able to kind of list out like here's the menu of jobs because it would look so different in each circumstance. Is that, is that a fair takeaway?

Speaker A: Totally. I mean there are, I can run through a couple of, um, job titles and roles. However, just because a job is titled with something doesn't mean that's the be all, end all reflection of uh, what that job is. Titling is so, so varied from organization to organization. And this work is so varied from organization to organization because every organization is a little bit different. Are we dealing with professional development, leadership competencies that we're training? Are we dealing with real technical skills, which requires a very different set? Right. Are we talking about onboarding? Are we talking about elearnings? And when is the E learning something you kind of go and click through in an interactive way? Or is it like a whole video compliance type creation that has been built? Is it development opportunities? Is it career pathing? Is it, you know, coaching and mentoring? Is it analytics or the, or the project management or the lms, uh, administration? All of these things just vary depending on the needs of the organization and the way that it thinks about itself.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And each of us in our roles impact the shape of somebody else's role because of what we do, what we don't do and how we do it. So I think it, it kind of builds on itself. Maybe the last question coming to mind on this is if you now imagine the people like you who are setting out to figure out what they want to do and they know they want to be a builder, a teacher, a talent developer, a coach. Like they know there's something about how they help other people to learn and grow and thrive. And now that you've kind of been through this journey, surveying the L and D landscape, what would you tell them now that maybe you wouldn't have been able to tell them before this experience?

Speaker A: Mhm. Great question. I think it's a combination of things. One, you have to be, you have to get really clear about what your passions, your skills and your interests are. You have to start exploring and trying things and you have to think at every stage, what did I like about this activity of work or this team or this organization that I was involved in? And you have to continue to reflect and build upon those things. Nothing will ever be Perfect, right? So it's not, you know, being too critical, but it's thinking, what can I continue to live with and what are my non negotiables and how do I bring that new learning into the next experience as I continue to build the life that I want to build, the career that I want to build. And then how do you build up your network, find new opportunities? Uh, there's so many ways to do that by getting involved in different organizations like talent development, think tank, atd, organizational development, you know, all these shrm, IO psychology, all these opportunities that these organizations are doing similar things. Right. You just kind of have to experiment and build up your network and talk to people, have these kinds of conversations, utilize the questions that I ask in my interviews and learn from people, um, and keep going and decide, do you want to be more specialized? Do you want to be more broad? How can you do both of those things at the same time? Continuing to cultivate your skills while getting really specialized in a certain area, having a wider view and thinking about the strategy, if that's what you want to do, and getting more broader experience to see different levels so you can begin to build that holistic picture.

Speaker B: I love that, uh, I love that there's a structure that they can use and just that mindset of curiosity and following what calls you. For me, thinking about this journey that you've been through to learn and to figure out different roles and I think it kind of brought you full circle to realizing that you're curious about all of it. And I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to now be a part of your journey and, and to co create with you and you know, maybe where I can, to share some of, you know, my journey and to let you have your own, you know, through doing a variety of things from a work perspective, it's like almost like a cool full circle moment, you know, of like seeing the piece parts and how they really are a whole.

Speaker A: It's definitely a full circle moment for me. Um, and to be able to work for you and the work that you're doing is a full circle moment for me. In college I studied international business and I was really interested in CSR and global companies and how do we support people and build a sustainable, impactful, ethical business that builds leaders and is effective and all of these things and the work that you're doing with your organization, bridging humanity and profitability, your kind of mission statement, um, really resonates with me and it's by looking at all of these pieces in an organization how are we leveraging our leaders? How are we supporting our leaders? What is our culture looking like? What are the implications of these policies and procedures on our culture? How can we create change, positive change, through various initiatives? And how are we supporting our talent? What's our holistic strategy? And how can we build these skills and capabilities to enable our strategy? It's just been such a privilege for me to work alongside of you, to think about strategy and execution, to think about retention, succession planning, and then to actually like, build up, uh, these leadership development programs that we're working on right now. And just as an aside. Right. You came to a colleague I had started to work with, a professional relationship I built here in St. Louis. You needed help on your podcast, Right?

Speaker B: Right, Yep.

Speaker A: And you wanted some marketing support. And I had been doing this kind of work just because it was a passion, just because it was a need that I knew I could meet and I was kind of pursuing. And yet, uh, you know, you were able to bring me in and say, you can help me on these particular things and marketing and building up my brand and recognition and doing thought leadership. And you asked me a very specific question. At what point do you know you'll need to be doing different type of work to be able to stay? And I said three months in.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And at three months in, I was starting to work on these programs. And so it's just been so full circle for me and it's been so fun and such a great opportunity.

Speaker B: Yeah. Ah. And also just to think about that, of just how interesting life is that by you working on the podcast, of all things.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: It was the podcast knowledge that connected us so that you now ended up getting to do the work that you really wanted to do, which is why you embarked on the podcast to begin with. So cool. So cool. Life is so funny like that. Just me. It's just such a reminder to just follow your passions, follow your heart, you know, see what you think you know you need and what the world needs. And it leads you to places you probably could never expect you would end up.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah, yeah, completely. So good. Emily, it's been such a pleasure to work with you, to be on this journey with you, and such an honor for you to interview me today and guide me through this kind of reflection activity. So thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you for letting me. It feels like a really important, a big milestone for you. I mean, 50 interviews is a really robust piece of work. I, uh, really, again, I think it's a research study that you did and it's so impressive, Abby, you know that you followed your curiosity and now have done something that will benefit so many people. People who, again, would not know the knowledge they're going to be able to have access to because of this work that you did. And on a personal level, I feel incredibly grateful and lucky to get to work with you and to be, uh, a part of your journey.

Speaker A: The feeling is mutual. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Aw. What a great conversation we had. I feel all the warm and fuzzies from that convo. I hope you do, too. And more importantly, I hope that you got some good learnings from today's episode and the 50 episodes that I've done on this podcast. Thank you for being a part of this journey in whatever way, shape or form you have been. If you came to this podcast and found value from it, I would love for you to reach out to me on LinkedIn and just share a few of your key learnings and takeaways from the series. It would mean so much to me. Where we go from here, I'm not quite sure yet, but make sure to stay in touch with me on LinkedIn. As always, let's keep learning, let's keep surveying because there's so much more to learn in the talent landscape.