Birth Doula into Corporate Learning & Development | Tara Fisher [36] - Transferable Skills

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Transferable skills, skills fromCackle Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah, Michigan.
Today's guest is Tara Fisher, who shares her skills journey
from birth doula into adult education, working within
corporate HR and more specifically on learning and
development and training. I hope you enjoy.
I want to welcome Tara Fisher totoday's show.

(00:20):
Great to have you here. Thank you for having me.
I'm really excited to talk aboutthe things that I have
experienced in life that are a little bit different than other
people's experiences, so I'm excited to share it.
We can look at that from a few ways.
One is interesting insight into something I had no idea about,
didn't even know existed or outside curiosity and I've

(00:41):
always wanted to know more aboutor inspiration to the people who
are like, wow, that sounds interesting.
Now I'm going to pursue that. I'm going to look more into that
stuff. So I love when people have
different backgrounds, but I equally love it when people have
fairly standard backgrounds because it's all about inspiring
people and giving them more insight and skills, strategies
to apply to their role. So.
When people have a non traditional background, it can

(01:04):
bring in different perspectives,right?
In your workplace. So things can be kind of
stagnant. If you have people from a very
similar background, very similareducation, it can get stagnant.
And not because people don't care and not because they aren't
willing to learn more. It's just there's only so many
perspectives you can have if you're in a certain place.

(01:26):
So my hope is to bring in other perspectives so that people can
see things from a different perspective, right?
To find those solutions, right? Because sometimes we need that
that just that little different viewpoint to just find like a
little thing that's a better solution.
Do you think from a colleague Coworker standpoint, they have
more confidence and interest in working alongside someone who

(01:49):
has essentially the ideal parallel background that they do
the same overlapping background?Or do you think that they look
at it as I love working with people who have varying
backgrounds that are quite different because it gives that
diversity? I'm not sure which one gives
more confidence to a Co worker. I think it depends on the
person. I am the type of person.
I like lots of diversity and thought and people and

(02:11):
experiences, and I'm a lifelong learner.
I will take on any project and learn about it and become what
we call a subject matter expert,even though I'm not officially
supposed to in my role. But I can't help it, right?
But that's me. That doesn't mean that it's not
valuable. Somebody who goes to their job

(02:32):
every day and they do their job and they go home and it is the
same thing every day and they are comfortable with that and
they are happy in their lives and they feel successful.
And they don't need all of thoseshifting changes because maybe
they have a lot of shifting changes like in other parts of
their lives. So it just depends on the

(02:52):
person, right? I've worked in a lot of
different places, being a learning experience designer.
It's a really good thing becauseI know lots of different things
and I know how different places work and how they work together
and how they could work togetherbetter.
There's a time and place and a need for both the specialist and
the generalist. You really need to have the

(03:13):
opportunity for people to be really, really deep into the
specificity of the technical elements of those roles, as well
as the larger picture person that could get it 60% of the way
there. Because they're a generalist and
they have the ability to just pick up and learn a subject
matter to the point of getting the ball rolling or getting it a
little farther and getting it maybe even the problem solved.

(03:34):
Maybe not perfectly, but really,really well and good enough.
Having a team that is diverse, that incorporates both of those
learning styles, mentalities andand individuals.
It's an All Star team. Great.
I can't tell you how many great experiences I've had over my
career working with great teams.Sometimes you bond together,

(03:58):
maybe under not so great circumstances, like you have a
leader that's not so great, you know, and you commiserate
together. But it really is important for
people to work together, especially nowadays because
everybody's working remote. Not everyone, but a larger
portion of people than five years ago, six years ago, The

(04:20):
ability to come in in remote positions, it helps a whole
swath of people come into jobs that they weren't able to do
before. That already is bringing in more
people and more talent and more skills and more perspectives,
right? So that we can shift how work
is, because that's kind of my goal.

(04:42):
Yeah, it's great from an internal standpoint, the ability
to work differently internally, but also from a talent pool, the
ability to find anybody that you're looking for, for a
specific role from not just, youknow, where you live right here.
But I mean, it could be international, depends on what
your needs are. There's a lot of pluses and
minuses, benefits and challengesthat have emerged from the
remote working style. And I would argue that there are

(05:04):
more positives that have come out of it.
And I would also argue that the challenges or negatives aren't
universal and aren't necessary. So if there's things that you
dislike about it, you can find another job that is either
hybrid or in person. It's not like it has to be so
binary. Right.
That's a huge thing for me personally because you know, if
we want to talk about the transition of careers, you know,

(05:25):
I went from being a birth and postpartum doula and not working
in offices, not working in corporate environments, you
know, working for myself, so working at home and then
obviously working in hospitals and birth centers and homes.
And so I was a very nomadic worker.
That transition to that corporate space and the office

(05:47):
space, it's not that I hadn't done it before, but that
transition was a bit of a shock.I didn't really want it.
Like I didn't want to go back toan office.
I hated being in offices. I really hate it.
I'm going to be honest, like I will tell any, any future
employer, any client. I just, I know it's a necessary

(06:08):
evil. I know, I understand.
It's not a necessary evil. There are trade-offs and you
have more control over a lot of these things.
I, I do believe that you don't have to suffer through work.
You should actually ideally findthe, the job that fits you and
that you're happy and fulfilled through.
So maybe there's the misnomer orthe perception that this is what
work looks like. Here's the definition of it and

(06:28):
fit into this box. But really it's a lot more broad
and diverse. And there's a very liberal
definition of, of work today. There's so many things that you
can do. In fact, I mean, you can
criticize it. There's a lot of people getting
paid to do things that, that my age.
I, I don't get it. I don't understand younger
generations. And that's paying for it.
That's great. They're paying for it.
That's, that's exactly what the market is all about, right?

(06:50):
If there's a need, you can fill it.
I do understand it from their perspective of being people,
being able to create things and make money off of them.
I mean, that's amazing. I mean, I'm a musician.
Like musicians don't make money.No, but they're but they're
often very happy. We.
Do it because we, you know, it'slike breathing, so you have to.

(07:12):
Yeah. So let's talk about that non
traditional background. Tell us about it.
So I grew up on a farm about an hour outside of the Kansas City
area, so very close to the Missouri State line.
My first job was being a Hostessat a restaurant called Joe's
Barn in Stanley, KS. It was a buffet restaurant.

(07:34):
We had a lot of people that frommy local high school that worked
there, but there were a lot of older individuals that had
worked there for a long time. I mean, it had been around for
decades. So within like 3 months of
hosting and seating people, theymade me a server.
It was a buffet restaurant. So you're not really serving
food, but you're serving drinks and you're picking up lots of
plates and busing and things like that.

(07:56):
Even at 16, I ended up training new servers, right?
So it's always been a theme fromthe very beginning.
So that's where I started, right?
And Fast forward a few years, my20s, they're very blurry.
I was in a rock bands, I was working corporate jobs, temp

(08:16):
jobs. I was not happy with anything I
was doing. I was also doing graphic design
at the time. I really enjoyed
graphicdesignihadworked@a.com and learned it on the job.
Everything I know, I've learned on the job.
Did it bother you? Did you have an imposter
syndrome that you didn't go to school for days or learn so?
So what got you through that? Convincing your brain that it

(08:38):
was OK and acceptable for you todo that.
I don't know that I have the confidence.
I just did them. My father became a pretty
successful man. There is something to be said
for the fact that he did not have a college degree and ended
up being the CEO of a company. I think knowing he had those

(08:58):
experiences gave me a little bitof confidence, like, because he
would always talk about that, how he had imposter syndrome,
and he would go to these. Yeah.
And he would go to these, you know, huge, like, stockbroker
meetings in New York and like, you know, everyone else there
has. They're from wealthy, rich
families and they all went to Ivy League colleges.

(09:20):
Fancy degrees and yeah, pinstripe suits.
Yes. So I have a lot more confidence
now, but I wouldn't say back then I did.
I still very much had imposter syndrome.
It carried over probably until Iwould even say in the last
couple years. What changed in the last few
years that your mind shifted andyou were suddenly past that?
I don't know, getting older. Yeah, I always wanted to be a

(09:44):
teacher, even from being like a little kid.
But I, I knew that I never wanted to teach children.
I just, I think I knew that maybe I didn't have quite the
patience for that. I don't know.
It wasn't really very appealing to me.
So I always thought that I wanted to be a college
professor. That's, I think really where my
mind went for a long time because I was the first person
in my family to get a bachelor'sdegree.

(10:06):
I wanted to go beyond that, right.
But financially it just wasn't really possible.
And of course, topics that I'm interested in are definitely not
high paying topics. I mean, I almost went to grad
school for ethnobotany, so I just really struggled with that.
I think I had to come to terms with the fact that I don't have

(10:27):
to be a professor at a university to help adult
learners. And in fact, I am sometimes
doing a better job of teaching adult learners then, especially
professors that have been doing this a long time and they
haven't changed the way they teach.
I guess I've just learned in this field, there's a lot of

(10:48):
people up on the top echelons that are good at what they do,
but they cannot teach people howto do what they do, right?
That's a totally different skill.
This keeps coming up in conversations and it's one that
I have been sensitive to in years past, just professionally
speaking, that you have a top performer who then the obvious

(11:10):
next step is to move them into management, but then they're not
doing the things that they were so good at and might even
actually enjoy. In addition to maybe not being
such great people leaders, we promote somebody, we say,
congratulations, you did a good job and now you are in charge of
other people. And there's so many other skills
necessary that have to be eitherintrinsic in some ways and as

(11:32):
well as some that are learned skills that you experience.
And you have a mentor that teaches you and you go through
the trial and error and you makemistakes and you learn from
them. And over time you get better at
that job. But not everybody is going to
get better at that job. And yet it's typically what we
do for people that are good at their job or subject matter
experts and they eventually get put into positions where they

(11:52):
are, let's call it teaching, Whether they are a manager,
mentor, advisor, professor, headof a department, head of a
company, there's so many skills that are necessary for you to be
good at teaching and mentorship.And The funny thing is that even
though I said I didn't really want to teach children, so
watching my kids go through elementary school, I just

(12:16):
watched these amazing teachers work with all of these
elementary school kids. And just watching them do the
things that they do in the classroom, I'm like, oh, wait,
we could learn a lot from them. I think we just get caught up in
that. I got to be an adult.
Yeah, people are putting expectations on us.
It's time that we take take control and put the expectations

(12:37):
on ourselves that we want for ourselves the the goals and
vision for ourselves and. It was a struggle even in the
last probably 10 years, 11 yearsof getting back to the corporate
world and not kind of being taken seriously.
Or I can do a lot of corporate speak, but I also don't really
speak to people differently, whether they're ACEO or they're

(13:00):
a crew member at a fast food restaurant.
When I was working for a law firm a few years ago, it was
brought up in one of my reviews of how easily I talked to
people, how easily I would talk to general counsel of some of
the biggest retailers in the world.
And it's like I was a doula in the birth room.

(13:21):
Everybody's the same. Not changing your speech
pattern, language behavior, regardless of who you're
speaking to, the first reaction to some people is context is
important and it's important to change language code switch
essentially. But I do think that you're
praised for that in your performance reviews.
The positive feedback that you're getting about that is I

(13:42):
think that's actually indicativeof society, especially 2025.
Be relatable. It's just really important right
now to be direct. Yeah, transparency.
No dancing around the issue. No one wants dancing around
right now. I agree sometimes get to the
point, just say it. I have passed up so many
professional opportunities of late because I don't sell

(14:05):
myself. I'm not interested in over
selling myself or convincing youto hire me either as a
consultant or professionally full time because I'm not
interested in selling myself. And I look at that as taking
control of my life. Like if you want me, you, you
tell me. I'm not here to convince you,
right? That's fine.
There's a little bit of a difference.
But when you're in certain corporate roles that require you

(14:28):
to close a deal, build a relationship farther, press for
certain performance, you have tobe transparent.
Right. And let's say you know, someone
does something that upsets someone else on your team,
right? And you're the leader and
instead of telling that person that they upset someone or you
know, intervening if they, if you need to, right, you just

(14:51):
keep those two people a little bit further away from each
other. Don't put them on a project
together. That doesn't solve the problem.
And if the person that offended the other person or hurt the
other persons feelings doesn't know that they did that, how can
they correct it? You know, I'm a parent, I am.
My kids mirror me every day. I am trying to learn to be a
better parent every day. All of those things together,

(15:15):
I'm just trying to help people be better people, right?
So that they feel happy in theirlives and they feel successful,
whatever that means for them. Because it's definitely
different for every person. I just want them to enjoy their
job as much as they can. You know, it's still a job, but
I mean, I've been lucky. I've been able to work at a job
being a doula. I mean, it was my calling.

(15:37):
Like it was the greatest job in the world.
So what made you leave it? It doesn't pay well, it's not a
sustainable model for working. I was training to be a midwife
and you know, you have to work on your own and be on call 24/7.
It's really a profession for people who can afford to do it.

(15:57):
And at the time I was a married woman who was a stay at home
mom, but I didn't want to just stay home.
I wanted to do some other thing.I wasn't quite sure what it was.
You know, initially I thought that I, I would go back to work
after like 6 months and I was just like, no way.
This is not what I envisioned inmy life.
I, I have to do something different.

(16:19):
Not that it wasn't hard going from 2 incomes to one, but I had
the ability to kind of squeeze things together and get it
figured out. And then the doula work allowed
me to be able to work part time.So kind of run my own business,
right, But still be able to be with my kids most of the time,
right? You know, I did most

(16:39):
appointments in the evenings andon the weekends when my husband
was home. Obviously births, you can't plan
any of that. But I had backup upon backup
upon backup, you know the situation.
So that if the kids needed to bewatched, right?
But that's a lot. That's a lot on a family.
There's a high divorce rate for birth workers, the very
demanding job and and birth workers tend to maybe bend over

(17:02):
backwards a little too much for their clients because they love
what they do, right? They're so dedicated to what
they do that they cause harm in their own lives.
My marriage ended and I'm sure that contributed to it.
There were lots of other issues,but I tried to make it work.
In 2014, I went through a prettyfinancially devastating divorce
and you know, went from being this kind of part time doula

(17:26):
training to be a midwife, but didn't have a full time job and
hadn't had a full time job. And I want to say 7-8 years.
You know, I was trying to piece together contract jobs, right,
so that I could still work on call.
I don't know. There were just a number of
things that came up. And there was like a Saturday
that I I came home from a childbirth education class that

(17:48):
I had taught. And I came home to my boyfriend
at the time, who is now my husband.
And I just said, I can't do it anymore.
I just, I can't. I mean, I was crying.
I was in tears. It was the greatest job.
I was really good at it. But it's just you can't make
money, you know, you just can't.It's sad because you want to
live your truth, you want to really take advantage of all of

(18:11):
your strengths, and you want to do these things that are so
meaningful to you. But at the end of the day, you
need to support yourself and youneed to be able to reconcile the
time spent with the value that you're earning for that time.
And it's so hard sometimes for some passions to really line up
with the value, with what I'm good at, what I love and what's

(18:33):
going to earn enough musicians too.
You're a musician, you know, something like people who are
musicians. Often time that dream is, I wish
I could do this for a living. I wish I could support my family
and do this. And it's actually similar to a
doula in that it's an expressionof your emotions.
It's that I'm here in service ofthe audience, the mother, the

(18:53):
family. I'm here in service and I'm
going to give a lot of myself toyou.
And I'm going to I'm going to leave it all out there and you
feel a purpose. And it's weird hours, yeah.
And, and it's it's hard to plan around and you never know when
things come up, but it's meaningful work.
It is very meaningful. It's a sad thing in our society

(19:16):
that we don't pay our teachers, we don't pay our health care
workers, we don't pay all the people who lift up us up, even
though our musicians, right? Because without music, well,
we're just not human. Honestly, my husband's a stroke
survivor and that is what brought him back to life, being
able to go back and sing and play guitar because he thought
he wouldn't be able to do it. But that's what keeps him going.

(19:38):
You're talking about books. I was thinking about this before
we met today and I was thinking about how like in my world and,
you know, learning experience design and workplace training,
like a lot of people talk about a lot of management books and,
and things like that, right? And the book that like, drives
me is actually The Body that Keeps the Score.
Yeah, that's more of a guiding principle for me because I'm

(20:00):
trauma informed. So that's why I and I apply it
to all of my work, all of my work, because I believe that
probably 95% of us are walking around completely traumatized
and we have no idea that we are.And we take it out on each
other. The Body Keeps the Score by
Bezel van der Kolk. He's a doctor.

(20:20):
So many times I've heard this book mentioned or recommended,
I've never read it. There are debates about FM RIS,
which is like a different type of MRI than the other kind of
the. Brain frequencies.
Yeah, so there's debates about the accuracy of that, but I'm an
abuse survivor. I have PTSDI read that book.

(20:41):
That is a good book for abuse survivors.
It's hard. It's really hard to get through.
What was the big take away for you from that book that you're
still thinking about? Something from the book that was
really instrumental in helping you process.
Adverse childhood events rewire us and we don't necessarily have

(21:02):
control over how we respond to things because it has rewired
us, right? It's not my fault.
I'm not saying that I'm not responsible for my reaction to
things because that's what I'm always continually working on.
And I'm not always good at, you know, good reactions to things

(21:23):
like, but having that feeling oflike, this is something that
happened to me and like, my brain rewired itself.
I don't have any control over what that was.
It's not just about how the abuse was not my fault, right?
It's about the fact that, like, my response to it is also not my
fault. The way my brain rewired itself

(21:45):
is not my fault, but my responsibility is to understand
this and know this and work on myself because my abuse and my
PTSD will cause me to react in ways to people that causes harm
because I learned harm, so I don't want to cause harm.
A quote that I always rememberedwhen I was a doula was what will

(22:08):
she remember? Birth is a very visceral
experience, and people remember things that you wouldn't think
that they would remember. And things that don't seem
harmful can sit in a person's mind for many years and no one
knows. It's a big responsibility to be

(22:28):
in a birth room with somebody and it's a little scary, but
it's also like totally worthwhile in my work now, when
people say, oh, aren't you stressed out about this?
Aren't you stressed out about this?
I'm like many years of being a doula and being an abuse
survivor. I was always in that like,
hyperactivity mode of like, you know, I want to do so much that

(22:50):
I do too much, right? I've slowly learned over time
how to kind of pull that back and go, wait, my energy doesn't
belong here. That's going to be not a waste
of my energy, but like a draining of my energy that's
maybe not necessary. And for a long time, I didn't
know how to balance that in my work and in my personal life.

(23:14):
I still struggle like I said, but I'm getting better at it.
That's remarkable. I've never heard that before.
Characterized or described how when talking about abuse or
trauma, the subject of allowing or helping the individual accept
that it's not their fault is itsown challenge.

(23:36):
It's a mountain to climb and to get over, and it's true.
It's never their fault. I've never heard someone then
talk about the the results of that.
The reaction or the rewiring wasalso not your fault.
You're not in control of that. That wasn't you.
And to describe it that way allows for more patients and

(23:58):
accepting for somebody to continue to recover beyond what
they thought. OK, I'm accepting that it was
not my fault. The the abuse of trauma I get
that took me a while. Now I'm past that.
There is residual effect that lingers to manifest in other
different ways and to talk aboutthat separately as its own

(24:19):
individual challenge. If you go through trauma and
abuse and your brain is rewired at a young age, what would it
take to help rewire it back to ahealthier state later on in
life? I mean, his suggestions are
really, you're not really rewiring because once, I mean,
once he had about 25, your brainstops really, you know,

(24:43):
developing. Yeah.
And you can see why, like the younger person is like how much
more impactful that could be because there, you know, there's
more cells growing, you know, you got more growth earlier on
than later. So I mean, for me, it's been
things like becoming a doula. Becoming a doula helped me heal.
I don't want to say that my I I use my clients to help me heal,

(25:06):
but it certainly helped me heal.All jobs are mutually beneficial
and you're there for for when you are in any, any service
providing business and you're anindividual providing something.
You're giving the benefits of that service hopefully to your
clients and you are earning and learning from those experiences
as well. You're not taking advantage of
them negatively. You are leveraging an

(25:26):
opportunity and exposure to situations and individuals that
help you as a human being grow. I think the thing about being a
doula was it was like the embodiment of this type of
person, right? And I wanted to be that person.
I wanted to be this like calm Earth Mother, you know, like I'm
just, everything's cool and, youknow, I'm not stressed about

(25:48):
anything. I'm not like that, but in the
birth room, I am very quiet and I am very calm.
And it is a very different space.
And I'm, I mean, I'm a differentperson in that face and it's,
it's very calming and it's, things can be chaotic in birth,
sure. But I mean, like the space
itself, like it's, there's nothing abnormal about what

(26:09):
you're doing in a birth, you know, like it's a natural state
of being. It's sort of like being in
nature. You're kind of watching nature
happen, right? Not everybody's going to become
be able to become a doula or want to become a doula to, to
help with their abuse, right? You know, and to help recover
from their abuse. But there's things like I went
through yoga teacher training, not because I wanted to be a

(26:30):
yoga teacher, but because I needed that deeper practice to
help me heal. And it did.
It helped me heal. And sometimes I take that
healing on to other people, you know, and I like to share it
with other people like this is what I did.
This is what helped me. But then I can take it all the
way back to like learning experience design, right?
You're trying not to cause harm.If I have to put somebody

(26:52):
through an hour long training that is they're not going to
learn anything from, and let's say there's 1000 people in this
place, then everyone has to go through an hour long training
that they're not going to learn anything from.
They're not even going to remember 5 seconds after they
walk out the door, after they take the e-learning and you've
lost 1000 production hours. Yeah, that's causing harm.

(27:16):
That's causing harm to your business.
That's causing harm to your workers.
It's like, what a waste of time.You know?
I know everybody. You know, we need to have
compliance training. We need to check off the box.
But what a missed opportunity for people to learn something
new. I'm always trying to bring that,
I don't know that curiosity, butalso, like, don't cause harm.
You want to help your people do their job better, Help them do

(27:39):
their job better. Don't make training miserable.
This is actually a perfect segue.
I remember finding myself in a meeting one time.
The meeting must have been pretty boring and feeling
unproductive because I looked around the room and started
calculating the cost of that meeting.
A one hour meeting with about seven or eight people in a room

(28:00):
who had fairly well paying positions.
It was an expensive hour and I know that we can't look at every
hour or less. You'll it actually can be
counterproductive if if you quantify or calculate the value
of a meeting to the point where you're not scheduling meetings.
And maybe that's also good. It's a balance.
Everything's a balance. But the point of that is how do
we get the best use of this time?

(28:20):
And then the cost and responsibility of having this
number of people in a room for one hour to discuss something
that's actually just kind of lowstakes.
Do you really need all those people in the room?
I know we have regulatory requirements and training that
is sometimes necessary annually or maybe more frequently
depending on what you're doing. Those are regulations, Those are

(28:43):
necessary and you have to do these things.
I get it. How do we do these things in a
way that doesn't feel like a chore, like a task, an
undesirable necessity that I nowhave to go through this training
every single quarter or every single year, and it's really
annoying. And what is the responsibility
of the organization or maybe even the outside service
providers, A consultant, a platform, somebody that's

(29:05):
providing the ongoing L&D and certification training and all
that stuff. It might not be super fun, but
how do we make it productive? How do we actually allow
somebody to do this, Learn something, not feel like they
have to figure out how to cheat and game the system where all
right, well, if I move my mouse every few minutes.
Click, click, click, click. I'm here, right click through

(29:25):
it. They're going to ask questions
that are designed for me to be able to answer them, even if I
didn't sit through the video or read the whole paragraph or
story behind it. There are ways to game these
systems, and we only game them because they feel boring and
unnecessary to some of us. These things are necessary for
everyone, not just legally, but for us to remind ourselves, hey,

(29:48):
be sensitive about how you say something, what you are doing,
your conduct, your behavior, sensitive information.
How are you sending it? To whom are you sending it?
All these things are very important.
How do we do that in a way that is engaging that the employee
comes away actually feeling likethey learned something?
And then the third is that it's responsible use of time and cost

(30:10):
for the organization, not just checking off a box.
Do you have like a hopes and dreams and a vision of what that
might look like? Well, I'd love for people to
stop putting arbitrary time limits on training.
There is literally no reason. Like, I mean, I'm sure there's a
reason that managers in California need to go through
two hours of sexual harassment training, but it's not based on

(30:32):
any science. The reality is it's qualitative,
not quantitative. It needs to be a quality,
engaging conversation or learning opportunity.
Not that I sat through these number of hours.
Right, So here's what it comes down to is like when I was a
doula, I would always talk aboutand even now I talk about high
tech, high touch solutions. So my hopes and dreams is that

(30:56):
for for whether it's compliance training or or maybe more fun
training that companies and organizations realize that it's
not the time requirement, it's the output of what happens.
So the idea is that like, what is the work product they can
create based upon their sexual harassment training?

(31:17):
What do they have to provide, like a homework assignment?
But then you start talking aboutadministering that in an L&D
department. That's a lot of administration,
right? Checking assignments on, you
know, people and stuff like that.
I used to work for a learning platform that that was all kind
of baked in. So those kinds of things are
possible, but it really takes leadership to understand that

(31:42):
they're costing themselves moneyby not investing in good
training. It's always been hard to prove
ROI for L&D. And part of that is because the
discipline itself is a lot of teachers and a lot of
facilitators and a lot of peoplethat really like to engage and
they like that kind of soft skill, part of communicating and

(32:03):
collaborating with people. They're not necessarily the
people that want to look at the data, right?
And that's fine. I love looking at the data.
I'm a project manager, so I'm just like, how can we make more
money and everybody's happier? It's like everything you have to
sell to your audience. And sometimes that means
whoever's responsible for budgetinvesting and projects at your

(32:23):
own organization. Sometimes you have to sell
internally. And yes, you talk about the soft
skills of L&D and the individuals who are so
passionate about that kind of adult education and fostering
culture and growth. And it's a lot of soft skills.
And you also have to have a way to sell using hard objective
data that includes what is the average cost for a settlement

(32:48):
for sexual harassment case. I guarantee you it far exceeds
whatever cost for that top tier L&D platform for sexual
harassment training that is being measured against the one
that's cheaper. So you go with the top tier one,
let's just say it's like $100,000 a year.
What is that one off litigation or settlement for the harassment

(33:10):
lawsuit? And if you talk about
annualized, you also talk about reputation.
What does that do to the reputation of your organization?
And it's really hard and costly to overcome a bad reputation
like that. So it's not just sexual
harassment, it's many other things too.
And so if you invest in a meaningful platform that costs
whatever it is the top amount, it has to be justified If you

(33:34):
are trying to cut corners because of the sticker shock of
what it cost for that top plan, sure, go ahead.
Go with the one that's half thatprice.
And every single person going tothe training is going to be
bored. They're going to make fun of it.
They're not going to walk away with any real value and
knowledge. And it also is just another
thing to like to say, well, thatwas a waste of money versus

(33:57):
here's the cost, here's the data, here's the opportunity.
And so to invest in that, that'shard skills, that's data and
that is budgetary. So speak that language and
there's probably a lot of attrition.
Let's talk about like training for like skills and talent.
And so retention, the ability toretain employees that are
excellent at their job, high performers in any capacity,

(34:18):
because you're giving them opportunities to continue
learning and growing and being satisfied in this organization.
There's a growth trajectory and opportunity for them to continue
to grow. You're investing in them.
And by way of doing that, that keeps them there.
But by not doing that, not giving somebody the opportunity
to grow and to stay within the organization, you've put all
these months or years investing into this employee who's been

(34:41):
excellent at their job. You're just going to, you know,
lose that contract, you're done.You're letting, it's a free
agent that they're going to go to another team or you can work
on giving them opportunities at a pretty low cost relative to
the cost of attrition. Because when you lose somebody,
especially somebody that's, you know, admired, appreciated and
excellent at their job, there's a culture shock there, too.

(35:03):
People start questioning, well, Susan's gone.
I'm not sure if I want to stay what.
Maybe I should be thinking aboutwhat?
Else, yeah, I call myself all sorts of different things, but I
work in learning experience design, I work in L&D training,
talent development, whatever youwant to call it.
I also design commercial courses.
It's not just internal. It really needs to be a top

(35:26):
priority in organizations because we're seeing a shift in
how people are learning just in general, like whether or not
they go to college, right? So you're going to see a lot
more people not going to collegeor getting certifications.
I chose eventually to get a certification instead of getting
my master's degree because it was better return on investment.

(35:46):
I think organizations are going to need to see that they are
going to need to provide these things and to be able to hang on
to people, quality people. It's not about giving them more
money. I mean, it is, but it's not
about continually promoting them, right?
Sometimes it's just about providing them what they need in
their job, which is learning because people like to learn and

(36:09):
opportunities to like stretch themselves, right?
And always getting raises, OK, don't cap the raises.
It doesn't mean that you need tobe continually giving somebody a
10% raise every year. But don't be skimpy, you know,
because there's only a certain level that some people will get
to in their careers because that's just where their career

(36:29):
goes, right? So you still have to invest in
them, give them opportunities todo something challenging, you
know, get their curiosity going.And that takes a lot of people
because it's L&D, you know, yes,we have AI, and AI is going to
make a whole lot of things a lotfaster, but you still need

(36:51):
people. And overtime, I mean, I've been
doing this a while and consistently, there are never
enough people on L&D teams, never enough people.
And they're always doing so much.
They're the heartbeat of the company.
I'm telling you, L&D people are the heartbeat of the company.
They know everything that's going on because we are the like

(37:12):
counselors. You find out things.
We have our safe spaces where wediscuss things and try to figure
out what to do for the training.But it's an important role.
Organizations do not give it thecredit that it deserves.
That's for sure. 100% agree withyou, comes down to how to help
people and individuals and it sounds like that's been a
hallmark of your entire career is what can I do to provide a

(37:35):
part of me to other people in service of others?
That's my whole philosophy. My life is being in service to
others. That doesn't mean that I don't
take care of myself. That doesn't mean that I don't
take care of my own family and, you know, make sure that they're
protected and, and things are, are, are working smoothly for
them before anyone else. But I have an obligation as a

(37:58):
community member to be giving back and serving.
And sometimes, you know, donating money, sometimes it's
volunteering for a non profit and doing these kinds of skills
to help them increase their values to the community.
And sometimes it's just, you know, consulting with clients
and just being in service. You know, I'm just trying to
find solutions for people and just trying to help them.

(38:20):
I don't have all the answers butI can try to help them find
them. No one's expecting you to have
all the answers. I think that one of the benefits
of talking out ideas with somebody else is that you, even
if that other person didn't giveyou the right path to go down.
Our solution is that talking things through helps you
discover it yourself sometimes. Yeah, sometimes it's just when

(38:41):
you talk about meetings, there can be some really productive
meetings, right? Some great brainstorming
sessions, all sorts of things that can happen, but your God,
let's not do a meeting about a meeting.
And you know, if someone doesn'tneed to be in person, let's not
do it in person. Let's make in person experiences

(39:03):
valuable. It's something you cannot do
online, you cannot do on the phone.
It's something you specifically can only do in person.
If you want to talk about artistry and and all the things
that like influence me, I alwaystell people this experience.
So like a year and a half ago I went and saw Janelle Monáe.
That's awesome. And so I just recently listened

(39:24):
to a podcast that she had done. I think it was before the tour.
She was talking about how she she likes to curate experiences
and that's very much how I feel.What I do.
I mean, she's, I'm not to know Monet in the corporate world,
but like. No, you're it's relatable to
you. Yes, because I went to go see

(39:45):
her. She's from Kansas City, so this
is her hometown. I was probably one of the
greatest experiences I've ever had at a musical performance and
I've seen a lot of concerts in my time.
What made it different? She created an experience.
She created something that you would never be able to get
listening to her just on your headphones, right?

(40:08):
Or even seeing a video of her. You had to be there to feel that
it was a theater of people that were all moving together.
I don't know. I mean, it was it was such a
brilliant performance. And she, the way she told
stories and and communicated with everyone in the audience,

(40:29):
came down in the audience, brought her elementary, one of
her music teachers from schooling up on stage.
And he's like dancing around. And I'm just like, Oh, my God,
this is like the epitome of likeevery music teacher's dream
stage with their famous student.You know, that performance just
really inspired me. I don't know, maybe I was just

(40:51):
like, really receptive to it at the time because I was going
through a lot of changes. But.
And so I'm just always thinking about her when I'm trying to
contemplate when someone comes to me and they're like, I need a
training. You know, it's like, OK, well,
what? What do you need?
What is it you really need? And sometimes we find out it's
just an e-mail that needs to go out and then maybe when they

(41:14):
need to do a team outing. Yeah, you know.
Totally. Patrick Lencioni has a book,
Death by Meeting, which is arguably the best title of any
book ever. But part of the message is don't
over plan and over meet. And to your point earlier about
what are we going to get out of being in person?
When does it have to be? Another one of my favorite lines
is in response to a meeting. Could this have been an e-mail

(41:38):
instead of a meeting? The opposite of that would be
OK. We are, we are having a meeting,
we are gathering IRL. And so how are we going to take
full advantage of this time spent together?
Your description of going to seeJanelle Monáe in person and it
being a truly life altering experience, this sense of

(41:59):
elevated experience with so manyother people.
Another book, The Art of Gathering talks about that.
How are we taking advantage of the time that we have invested
together? We're here together.
You can't get that in any other way.
So what are we doing to capitalize on this?
All these things resonate with the importance of being together
with other people in real life versus just virtual when we can

(42:20):
and when it makes sense. So now that we have it, what are
we doing differently because sitting around a conference room
table in the exact same method as we would just on a computer
with a webcam, what is differentabout this experience?
And it has to be more than just good snacks.
It has to be that we're doing, we're doing something else
because we have decided to be here together, all of us.

(42:44):
So that's a great message. I love it.
Yeah. I mean, it's connection, right?
When we're in person, we're really trying to connect, right?
It's not what we can't connect here.
I mean, I love the virtual space.
And in fact, like my social anxiety, you know it, I love the
virtual space. It's much better for me.
But that doesn't mean that I don't like being in person with

(43:04):
people. But I, I, I want to feel that
connection. I want it to be meaningful, not
just I'm in this space because people need to be in this space.
There's nothing wrong with listening to Janelle Monáe while
you're going down the 110 in Kansas City.
I mean, it's, there's nothing wrong with that time and place
context. You're getting a great
experience listening to her music and sitting in the car and

(43:26):
singing out loud. But it's a very different
experience than going to see herat the theater in person with
those people swaying side by side.
So the same thing we're in person, virtual has so many
benefits, so many opportunities that we that we are getting from
it. And it's not 0 sum.
No, we're here in person. What does it look like?
How's this different? I'm glad people are starting to

(43:48):
recognize it. I hope that it continues and we
don't start. Let's just not do the easy way.
I don't want the easy button. I'm not an easy button person.
I'm just not. Goes back to quality versus
quantity. Yeah, I agree.
We're all looking for high. Quality experts doing if you're
not going to do it right. That's right.
You know the when someone offersyou a sweet and it's like, would
you like this? Well, is it worth the calories?

(44:10):
What's the what's the point? Why?
Why am I going to waste the calorie count on something
that's just not going to be fulfilling?
Yeah. It's right.
Save it for when it when it matters.
Right, right, right. Exactly.
This has been awesome. So Tara, I just want to say
thank you for being here, for sharing so many very personal
experiences of yours and learnings.
This was a very different conversation and not one to be

(44:32):
taken lightly and I I expect a lot of people to gain so much
from the lessons and experiencesthat you've shared here.
So I just want to say thank you personally.
Thanks for having me. I was glad to talk about it.
I'm happy to share things with people.
I'm pretty much an open book, so.
Fantastic. Well, we're here to listen, and
we're here to learn. Thank you.

(44:54):
Transferable Skills is produced by Cackle Media, music by
Cosmonkey, and this episode was edited by Aaron Wertheimer.
I want to thank our listeners for joining us on this episode
and remember, the skills you've gained can take you anywhere.
Until next time, keep exploring those transferable skills.

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Birth Doula into Corporate Learning & Development | Tara Fisher [36]

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Birth Doula into Corporate Learning & Development | Tara Fisher [36]