Fearless L&D: The Most Crucial Skill for L&D Professionals Going Forward

For the better part of five decades, I have been thinking about the barriers L&D professionals face in being more accepted and respected by business leaders.?These barriers, I believe, pertain across industries, and in business, government, and non-profit sectors alike.?The inklings I had back in the 1970s are even more pronounced today.?There is a skill set that I believe could make a measurable impact on L&D’s role in the organization.

A shout out to the recent ATD Talent Development Capability Model (2019) that identifies forward-looking capabilities needed to make progress, not retroactive individual competencies that don’t drive organizational results.?I have tried to avoid this trap by not choosing a:?

·????????A Technical Skill:?In a fast changing world, technical skills are constantly being redefined and shuffled.??The meta skill that’s important is learning agility—being able to learn new technical skills quickly—before they become obsolete (Forman, 2020).

·????????An L&D Skill:?While these foundations can be important, they are not sufficient to achieve breakthrough recognition and impact.?We must get out of our own silo and learn to speak the language appreciated by others.

·????????A Personal/Clinical Skill:?While skills like empathy, belonging, and improved communications can be personally enriching, they don’t move the organizational needle quickly enough.?

Instead, it is the business skill of marketing that can make a huge difference in both the perception and effectiveness of L&D within organizations. As strange and as over-simplified as this sounds, let me clarify my meaning.?By marketing, I mean the ability to:??position L&D solutions vis a vis other alternatives; articulate the value provided to different audiences; demonstrate the business impact in $ (actual dollars); and communicate these messages regularly so that L&D solutions are highly visible and credible to business colleagues.?Marketing goes way beyond communications, messaging, slogans, and spin.?It is at the heart of strategic positioning and value creation which is a capability not often demonstrated by many L&D and other functional professionals.

Among the benefits for making L&D professionals better marketeers are:

·????????Demonstrating greater external focus by understanding the needs and priorities of other audiences.

·????????Getting out of L&D’s comfort zone, internal perspectives, and language.

·????????Becoming more comfortable with the lexicon of the business.

·????????Listening to others.

·????????Gathering data from different audiences on priorities and barriers.

·????????Asking questions to get at the root cause of problems and becoming more attuned to different ideas and priorities.?Pink (2012) describes value of attunement---being able to think (not just feel) like others as being core to influencing skills.

·????????Thinking in terms of benefits, not just features of a solution.

·????????Focusing on benefits for different audiences and defining the “why behind the what”?(Sinek, 2009).

·????????Being able to monetize benefits so that the business impact of L&D initiatives can be demonstrated (Forman, 2020).

·????????Establishing priorities and being able to discern the critical few from the inconsequential many.

·????????Simplifying practices so that the most important outcomes are achieved.

·????????Demonstrating how L&D drives organizational performance (Forman, 2015).

A good marketeer does all these things, and these activities can make a tremendous ?impact on L&D professionals, many of whom are not practiced in marketing.?They didn’t need to be in a world in which their role was to train and impart skills to individual employees. ?ASTD, ?the precursor to ATD, was founded in 1945 with training (literally) as its middle name.?The training legacy is derived from schools and teacher led-classrooms in which the individual was the primary focus.?This schooling model was moved (lock, stock, and barrel) to business contexts, but now new demands are being placed on learning organizations. As the power of culture and different organizational practices have become known, new skills and ways of thinking are required to incorporate both the individual and organizational perspective.?OD (Organizational Development) has become a full partner with L&D as organizations face uncertain futures, fast changing conditions and increasing pressure to innovate and be more responsive.

The key to improving the credibility of L&D professionals is for them to become better business people, move out of their own silos, become less of a support function, and more of a driver of business results.?This may be uncertain terrain for some, but I am convinced that those who make this journey will become the future leaders?of the learning and development profession going forward.

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