The Mindtools L&D Podcast

Most advice on burnout focuses on workload, stress and work-life balance. But what if the real cause is the act we put on at work? And if it is, what does that mean for an industry built on improving performance? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Gemma are joined by Rabih El Khodr, keynote speaker and author of The Way Out of Burnout, to explore where burnout really comes from and what L&D can realistically do about it. We discuss: why 'performance' in the theatrical sense, not overwork, drives burnout how 'survival scripts' shape the beliefs that sit upstream of our behavior why resilience training for burnt-out people is like handing a drowning person a swimming manual, and what L&D can do instead Rabih's book, The Way Out of Burnout, is available now. Rabih explores survival scripts further in his TEDx talk, Burnout Begins with a Script. For more on Rabih's work, visit rabihspeaks.com. In 'What I Learned this Week', Gemma recommended an episode of The Rest Is Science, The Threshold of Human Sensation, which explores the smallest things our senses can detect. Her highlight was lugduname, an artificial sweetener hundreds of thousands of times sweeter than sugar. Rabih shared what he learned from trying the other side of Riverside, the recording platform used by many podcasts, including this one, as he considers hosting a show of his own. Ross G recommended a piece from Wired, Why Normal People Aren't Using AI Agents. It explains why agents are still a niche next to chatbots, and why organizations hoping to adopt agentic AI will need to be deliberate about how they support people. For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our new website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills. Connect with our speakers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Garner Gemma Towersey Rabih El Khodr

AI can build a course in minutes. That should be the best news our industry has had in years. Instead, a lot of teams are skipping what really matters: working out what the problem is, and checking whether anything changed. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Cammy Bean are joined by Tim Slade, founder of The eLearning Designer's Academy, to explore how learning design is changing and what is left for the humans doing it. We discuss: Why AI shifts the work from 'building' to 'diagnosing and evaluating' Why order takers are exposed and performance consultants are not Whether portfolios can still be trusted to demonstrate capability. Tim's new book, The Instructional Design Handbook: A Practitioner's Guide to Designing Performance-Based Learning, is available now. Cammy's book, The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age, is published by ATD Press. Tim also shares his thinking on where the industry is heading on his YouTube channel. During the conversation, Ross G referenced Julie Dirksen's work on performance gaps. Julie joined us recently to look back over ten years of L&D in episode 500. In 'What I Learned this Week', Cammy shared her method for crispy tofu: press it, tear it rather than cut it, dust it with cornstarch through a fine mesh sieve, then bake it on the top shelf. Tim learned, for the second time in his life, that selling a house is no fun. And Ross G shared the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report on brands, which finds that trust now sits alongside quality and value for money in how people decide what to buy. For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our new website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills. Connect with our speakers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Garner Cammy Bean Tim Slade

Articulate's latest product release puts AI at the heart of it's strategy. What does this mean for learning designers? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross G flies solo to react to Articulate's Articuland announcement, unpacking what Frontline, Nova, and the platform's pivot toward operational teams means for learning design. He discusses: What Articulate's new 'Frontline' and 'Nova' tools actually do, and why the launch has 'annoyed basically everyone' Whether the shift from 'training creator' to 'capability architect' holds up The seven things humans can still offer that AI can't automate, from 'embodied presence' to 'provenance' During the episode, Ross discussed Articulate's own recap of the Articuland 2026 announcement, covering Frontline, Nova, and the new integrations in full. He also discussed The AI Acceleration Gap, Monika Saha's thought-leadership piece arguing for a shift from training creator to capability architect. See also Dr Philippa Hardman's LinkedIn post testing Frontline against a real fraud-reporting policy document. And The AI Daily Brief's episode on the new jobs AI will create, the source for the seven things humans still offer. For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our new website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills. Connect with our speakers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Garner

What research papers did you read while lounging by the pool this summer? In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross D is joined by Claire and Dr Anna to review three studies that have caught our attention over the last few months. Anna's pick was Vestner and colleagues' 'A dyadic training to promote technology-related learning and development among age-diverse employees: the power of co-workers' enthusiasm', published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Claire brought Kestin and colleagues' 'AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting', the Harvard study comparing an AI tutor with in-person active learning. Ross referenced Will Thalheimer's LinkedIn article 'The Learning Styles Challenge After 20 Years', and Clinton-Lisell and Litzinger's 'Is It Really a Neuromyth? A Meta-Analysis of the Learning Styles Matching Hypothesis'. For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills. Connect with our speakers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Dickie Claire Gibson Anna Barnett

Training one person is hard. Training 750,000 people, in more than 80 countries, spread across frontline shifts, event security and executive teams, is a different problem entirely. In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross G and Claire Gibson are joined by Brent O'Bryan, Senior Vice President of Global Training and Talent Development at Allied Universal, to explore what L&D looks like at genuinely massive scale. We discuss: Why 750,000 employees are never one audience How to choose between the LMS, the classroom and virtual training The role of AI and automation in training frontline workers at scale. Brent and Ross G first got talking about this after Brent shared The Josh Bersin Company's research on dynamic enablement. You can read the executive summary of The Definitive Guide to Corporate Learning: From Static Training to Dynamic Enablement on the Josh Bersin site. In 'What I Learned this Week', Claire shared the world's smallest Fringe venue, a chicken coop in the Pear Tree garden in Edinburgh. Brent recommended The Surprising Power of Reflection, an episode of Trevor Ragan's The Learner Lab podcast, on why reflecting after learning can beat a second round of practice. Ross G shared Garner interference, a cognitive science effect named after Wendell Garner, in which irrelevant information slows people down. For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our new website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills. Connect with our spearkers If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Garner Claire Gibson Brent O'Bryan