Human Capital Lab Executive Director Rich Douglas curates a quarterly review of trade magazine articles, academic articles and books to help human capital and talent development practitioners and scholars excel and evolve in their profession. Here’s the Winter 2025 edition.
Failing to Learn?, by Raven Reddoch, Rory Penman, and Adam Anderson, TD Magazine, December 2024
How many times have we done poorly at something, only to get a lot better at it when we got a second chance? What if we, as talent developers, purposely built failure into learning to improve results? The authors of “Failing to Learn” give us insights into that notion.
The article explores the concept of “productive failure,” a learning strategy where participants engage in a task before being given direct instruction, encouraging them to make mistakes and learn from them. This approach mimics historical apprenticeship models where learners would fail in real-world tasks, refining their skills through trial and error.
For productive failure to be effective, it must be followed by corrective feedback that helps learners understand what went wrong and why, guiding them toward the correct actions. Trainers must ensure that failure is framed as a learning opportunity and not a demoralizing experience. (This reminds me of Adam Grant’s writings on “safe-to-fail experiments.”)
This approach also more readily incorporates differences in learning styles and causes our participants to take greater and earlier ownership of their learning.
5 Strategies to Extinguish L&D Staff’s Burnout, by Melanie Steppi, TD Magazine, January 2025
A 1-pager, Steppi offers five ways to avoid burning out ourselves and our teams. They are:
- Build wellness into the workday
- Crosstrain everyone
- Create stretch assignments for mental health relief
- Strengthen stakeholder relationships
- Know when to add more staff
Go check out the details!
Put a Different Spin on Networking, by Kimberli Jeter, TD Magazine, January 2025
Networking is a lot more than collecting business cards and connecting on LinkedIn. We need to care for, nurture and re-energize our professional network by re-engaging the most important people in our lives. The author offers the following process she calls the “Networking Wheel:”
- Reconnect with key people
- Assess the gaps in your network
- Design a network strategy and go about it with purpose and intent
- Engage with your network by communicating, participating, etc.
- Take notes of what’s important
- Express your gratitude; let people know you appreciate them and their impact on you
- Lead off with generosity—give value through your time, expertise and attention without expecting a quid pro quo
- Celebrate your network
Check out the article for the details. KJ is one of my colleagues, so do what she says!
What Will Drive 2025?, edited by Lorri Freifeld, Training Magazine, January 2025
Let’s end by looking ahead to 2025. The author has compiled a huge number of reports and perspectives on what to look forward to in the coming year. From the article:
“Although 2024 is in the rearview mirror, several learning and development (L&D) and Human Resources (HR) trends will continue to accelerate in 2025. Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to drive many of the predictions for this year, particularly those pertaining to employee training/development/upskilling, recruiting/hiring, and how to move from AI implementation to measuring and realizing the value of AI. Companies also are continuing to bring their workforces back to the office, while at the same time looking to bridge the generational divide and dialing back on some of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.”
There’s a lot to consume here, so give yourself some time. See you next quarter!