Learning for Good | L&D Solutions and Leadership Development for Nonprofit Organizations

If training alone isn't moving the needle, it’s time to bring coaching into the equation. In this episode, I share how nonprofit leaders can use three simple yet powerful coaching questions to drive behavior change and improve staff performance, without micromanaging.

You’ll discover why traditional training isn’t always enough and how coaching can help build autonomy and accountability. These coaching questions are rooted in t...

Creating meaningful change through staff training and development in a nonprofit can feel overwhelming, especially when you're the only one driving it. In this episode, I talk with Jamie Bussey, Senior Director of Learning and Development at the National Audubon Society.

Jamie joined Audubon as a team of one, inheriting a blank slate and a whole lot of opportunity. She shares how she used a needs assessment to guide her strateg...

Improving staff accountability doesn’t always require a training program. In fact, some of the most effective strategies for nonprofit leadership development and team performance don’t involve training at all. In this episode of Learning for Good, I share three powerful non-training solutions to boost accountability, enhance team culture, and drive consistent performance across teams.

Whether you're facing missed deadlines, inc...

Are you curious about what a career in nonprofit Learning and Development looks like across different types of organizations? In this episode of Learning for Good, we explore the real-life journeys of two nonprofit L&D leaders - Eric Wu, formerly of Northwestern University, and Matt Tod of Plan International Canada.

You’ll get an inside look at what Learning and Development roles actually look like in two very different nonprofi...

Employees spend 42% of their time collaborating with others. That’s almost half of their time. But are they any good at it? Or are there challenges around collaboration? 

And if there are challenges, what can we do about them?

Most people would say collaboration is important for their work, but we're less likely to do it when it feels challenging. And when there's conflict, we're less likely to do it then, too. Can tra...

What does it mean to be a good partner in Learning and Development? That’s what we’re exploring in this episode, but we’re doing it from the truest sense of the word partner. 

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is that we focus on the actions we need to take to be a good partner. And while actions are important, I don't want a list of actions today. I want us to look at the attributes or the characteristics of being a ...

All too often, new managers have no training, peer group, or support. Then, when they fail or burnout, we say they weren’t management material. We can and we should do more to support new managers.

When Cru, a faith-based nonprofit, faced this exact challenge, they decided to offer a coaching program to their emerging leaders. This coaching program would bring in business leaders from outside their organization and engage them as co...

When we create learning solutions, what we really want is to create a new behavior or change behavior in some way. So, what does it take to create a new behavior? 

On this episode of Learning for Good, I’m sharing lessons from behavior change experts Charles Duhigg, James Clear, and BJ Fogg. Then, I’m going to take those behavior change lessons and translate them into workplace learning.

▶️  Translating Behavior Science into L&a...

Our world is constantly evolving, and because of that, our experiences across generations are different. Because our experiences are different, our perspectives are different, and because our perspectives are different, our actions are also different. All of those experiences, perspectives, and actions impact our workplaces, which is why L&D needs to get to know our audiences.

In this episode, I've invited Kat Landa to talk...

I often get questions about working in nonprofit, so I launched Career Conversations - a series of LinkedIn Live conversations with people currently in nonprofit L&D roles. We are talking about their organizations, teams, and personal career journeys.

Today, I’m bringing two of these conversations to you. We’re hearing from Nadra Dennis, the learning and talent development director at the Center for Employment Opportunities, and...

Understanding your training audience may be the best thing you can do as an instructional designer. Yet, many of us have never been taught how to conduct a training needs analysis.

On this episode of Learning for Good, I want to talk about what you should be learning about your audience. What do you actually need to know? Tune in to find out.

▶️ If You've Never Conducted a Training Needs Analysis, Listen to This 

▶️ Key Poin...

In L&D, when we are approached with a training request, it's our job to do a little research for ourselves about training audience needs.

Often, the time you have to do this research is limited. Your capacity and the capacity of your subject matter expert is limited, and you may not even feel like you have the expertise to do the analysis. So how can you validate the audience's needs with limited time, capacity, and ex...

The fear of failure impacts our learners’ ability to learn, so we need to help them move to a growth mindset. A growth mindset is a place where it's okay to try new things, fail, and continue to show up and be persistent even in the face of failure.

For this episode, I've invited certified professional coach, consultant, and learning facilitator Kim Andrews to talk about the growth mindset. I want us to think about how we ...

Do you take the time to intentionally reflect after a training project ends? Reflection is powerful and it's something we often do, but it's not something we often do with intentionality.  

That’s why on this episode of Learning for Good, I want to share the seven steps I follow each time I close out a training project and why they set you up for success later. This training project debrief is really a time of reflection.

<...

If you are looking to transition to L&D, your experience matters! Volunteering can help you fill in the gaps. This is exactly what Dr. Ashley Dugger is here to talk about.

Ashley engages volunteers in her organization to help increase the capacity of her team. It also gives those volunteers a chance to deepen their skills in instructional design. 

So whether you're a small L&D team looking to expand the capacity of your ...

In this episode, I want to share my 4-step process to write better learning objectives.

 What do I mean by better?  

This is not a lesson on making them SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely) though that is important. This is about the actual process I go through when writing objectives. This thought process is what gets me to action-oriented, performance-related objectives that drive behavior change.

▶️ M...

Are your learners bored?  

So often our training audience attends training that isn't relevant or engaging, contains so much extra information they feel lost, or the included scenarios make no sense for them and their role.

Context is one of the most important things in creating effective learning. That’s why in this episode, I want us to explore learner personas. What are they? Why are they important? And how do we build them?

<...

What’s the value of an outside perspective? 

An outside perspective will help you be more consistent, improve your awareness and confidence, and accelerate your career because they can see the things you can't. This is true in all areas of life, including your career. 

That’s why on today’s episode, I'm talking to self-proclaimed nonprofit nerd, Jarrett Ransom, about how to create a personal board of directors to help you t...

A lot of what we do in Learning and Development is not life and death. We often have the freedom to experiment with new ideas in our nonprofit training and while we want the best possible outcome, we can feel safe to fail.

This is not the case in every industry.

In this episode I want us to take some time to learn from another industry - the aviation industry - with leadership development expert Craig Coyle. Craig is a graduate of th...