Performance Basics, 2nd Edition

In this issue of TD at Work, Danielle Wallace shares how talent development professionals can connect learning to performance and build meaningful partnerships across the organization to support the business and help shape the organization’s future. Wallace offers guidance on how to:

• Know your business.
• Understand what matters most to business leaders and align your work to their goals.
• Develop an advisor mindset.
• Ask meaningful questions and speak stakeholders’ language.
• Collaborate early and often.
• Demonstrate business impact using metrics.
• Rebuild trust when relationships stall.
• Sustain alignment over time.

The Tools & Resources in this issue include a Conversation Guide: Align TD With Department Priorities, and a Worksheet: Business Context and External Factors. A Bonus Tools & Resources is a Checklist: Business .

Grow Your Self-Awareness, Reinvent Your Value

There’s a moment of hesitation surfacing today in organizations. Executives want middle managers to operate more cross-functionally so they can scale performance. Middle managers are waiting for permission from executives to activate their leadership voice and create more value. Written by leadership expert and coach Dan Gallagher, The Self-Aware Leader sharpens the self-awareness of middle managers to drive productivity and career growth.

Gallagher presents a model that emerging leaders, middle managers, and senior executives can use as a catalyst to grow their leadership value. Based on empirical research and more than two decades of use, the model fully integrates a deep focus on self-awareness and reinvention with the practices of servant leadership and business transformation.

This second edition includes additional thought exercises, new research on the Self-Aware Leader model and Generosity Quotient, and real examples of how increased self-awareness grows a leader’s value.

Make Learning Stick Through Reflection Activities

Employees today crave development, growth, and skill building. They also want more meaning and connection at work. When they learn to reflect on training experiences intentionally, they get all that and more. Pausing to reflect makes it easier to retain and transfer the knowledge and skills we need on the job.

L&D expert Katrina Kennedy shares more than 45 reflective learning activities that instructional designers, facilitators, and trainers can use in face-to-face and online classrooms to create more meaningful learning experiences for a variety of contexts and participants. Each activity is designed to help participants develop critical thinking skills and improve future performance by analyzing what they’ve learned and how far they’ve come.

Built around eight essential outcomes, this book will show you how to strengthen motivation, social connection, memory, and critical thinking skills through targeted reflection activities—all of which are adaptable for in-person or remote training situations. Activities include mental inventories for boosting motivation, shared learning maps for building social connection, and after-action reviews for improving performance.

Start achieving your organization’s business goals and building people’s capacities with this comprehensive reflection toolkit.

Become an Expert AI User and Strategy Leader

Artificial intelligence (AI) and performance expert Josh Cavalier shares his in-depth knowledge and skills to help L&D professionals master learning experience design by using generative AI in their employee learning and development efforts. More than just a technical manual on generative AI or a collection of best prompt practices, this book explores how AI is reshaping jobs, skill development, and human performance. Cavalier provides his Learning and Development AI Ecosystem framework as a practical road map for integrating AI into your day-to-day work and your organization.

Discover how to seamlessly incorporate AI into your existing L&D processes and broader L&D ecosystem, optimizing workflows and driving measurable results. Explore how AI-enabled L&D platforms can facilitate personalized learning paths, automated performance support, and real-time skills gap analysis. Learn how to craft effective prompts for learning design and use chatbots and AI assistants for help in the moment of need. And importantly, dive deep into the ethical considerations, from maintaining data privacy and security to mitigating bias in AI-powered learning solutions.

No matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes, L&D professionals must remain focused on performance—both of humans and now machines. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your AI journey, this book is your essential resource to unleash the power of AI in L&D.

Demand for creative thinking is currently outpacing supply. Despite that need, creative thinking is one of the skills most lacking in job candidates. The good news is that creative thinking is a trainable skill. In this issue of TD at Work, Gerard J. Puccio and Pamela A. Szalay will:

• Explain the nature of creativity.
• Identify the four stages of the creative process.
• Present, and provide the opportunity to practice, six strategies to enhance creative thinking.
• Describe ways to facilitate creativity at individual, team, and organizational levels.
• Provide opportunities to pair creative thinking with artificial intelligence.

The Tools & Resources in this issue include a Worksheet: Diverge First Strategy, Tool: POINt Evaluation, and Exercise: Stakeholder Analysis.

Become Indispensable in Driving Business Growth

L&D leaders must know how to connect learning strategies with business strategies and communicate effectively with leaders to improve employee performance and drive revenue. In other words, L&D needs to run like a business. Enter learning operations expert Tracie Cantu and her innovative Learning Operations Blueprint, which puts critical business needs first and brings rigorous systems-based thinking to corporate learning.

This first-of-its-kind approach offers step-by-step guidance for updating L&D processes and structures to immediately improve results and increase the relevance of the L&D function. When learning teams and leadership become better partners, outcomes improve for organizations and employees.

You’ll learn how to build an L&D business model that works, how to manage a portfolio of learning products, and how to design employee learning experiences that improve outcomes without demanding more tech or human resources.

Cantu also provides questions for reflection, checklists, worksheets, and scorecards for practical application of her recommendations. Each chapter includes tips for taking action immediately and real-world stories that illustrate how to use the framework successfully and avoid common pitfalls.

With this book, you will learn to scale your impact, secure your influence, and reach L&D’s potential.