Four tips for coping in a BANI world
The world has moved beyond VUCA. A framework that captures today’s reality more honestly is BANI – brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible. If our challenges feel harder to grasp, it’s because they are. Here, L&D expert Nigel Paine offers four practical strategies to help your workforce not just survive, but flourish in this unfathomable new world.
Breaking through the surface: How to transfer learning into performance
Only 12% of employees apply new skills from workplace learning. How can L&D address this transfer gap? The solution lies not in flashy methods, but in Performance Learning – an approach that connects development to real work. Ang Brennan, Head of Talent and Learning at Insights explains how to make learning stick.
From cracks to collapse: How to prevent team erosion
When did you last notice a team starting to fray before it fully unravelled? Dani Bacon and Garin Rouch of Distinction Business Consulting know that high-performing teams don’t collapse overnight – they erode gradually. Discover how L&D professionals can become the early warning system that catches these subtle signals before costly interventions become necessary.
Make it stick: Why learners can’t recall your training session – and how to fix it
Is your training session not leading to the desired behaviour change among learners? Amy Brann, author of ‘Make Your Brain Work’, explores why this might be, and offers neuroscience-backed strategies to help make learning stick for life.
The six Is of real learning: A new model for L&D
How often can you honestly say your L&D efforts have created lasting behavior change – not just course completions? With four decades of learning expertise, Andrew Gibbons presents his Six Is of Learning Model: a practical framework that helps L&D cultivate sustained performance that learners, ultimately, drive themselves.
Resistance to change is your ally, not your enemy
Those who are resistant to your change programme are not the villains. Dani Bacon and Garin Rouch of Distinction Business Consulting share five reasons why resistors are, in fact, your friends.
How your childhood affects your leadership skills
Did you know that early childhood experiences can shape the leaders we become? Leadership expert and consultant Nik Kinley and IMD Business School Professor Shlomo Ben-Hur explain how our understanding of this can help optimise performance under pressure.
Wimbledon’s mental game: What L&D can learn from the centre court
As Wimbledon unfolds, Ang Brennan, Head of Learning and Talent at Insights, draws powerful parallels between elite tennis and the modern workplace. In this piece, she reveals what L&D leaders can learn from the mental game of centre court – from building resilience and emotional intelligence to reframing pressure and embedding reflection.
Is your leadership style spreading fear?
According to a global study, nearly one-quarter of UK leaders are leading with fear. How can we tackle and alleviate fear and, most importantly, ensure we aren’t propagating it ourselves?
Four hard questions L&D professionals must ask themselves
Are you asking the tough questions that drive impact? L&D expert Nigel Paine urges the learning profession to stop making surface-level inquiries and, instead, interrogate the root of problems, get curious about AI innovations, and seriously consider L&D’s future.
Brains, bias and breakthroughs: Tackling AI learning anxiety with neuroscience
What happens when a cognitive neuroscientist takes on the fears surrounding AI? Teresa Rose, Director of Consulther Ltd, reflects on Professor Joseph Devlin’s compelling session at Learning Technologies 2025 – and why it sparked real hope for learning professionals grappling with AI learning anxiety.
Line managers: You shouldn’t have gone to Specsavers
Danny Wilkinson, Co-founder of Traction Coaching explores why it’s time for line managers to stop looking elsewhere and to take a good look at themselves.
The discipline-only trend crushing workplace motivation
What is the discipline-only trend and why is it pushing motivation off the agenda? Coaching expert Matt Somers explores the problem with applying this orthodoxy at work and why ‘wanting to’ still wins.
‘Termite biases’: What you need to know about them and what you can do about them.
A joke, compliment or remark: What’s wrong with them, right? Think again. These ‘termite biases’ might be just what needs to be addressed to nurture inclusion.
Untangling wicked problems: Build connectivity, resilience and trust in organisations
How can you enable employees to solve your organisation’s wicked problems? It requires the power trio of connectivity, resilience and trust, says L&D expert Nigel Paine.
How brain diversity drives collective intelligence: Four useful techniques
Kate Lanz, CEO of MindBridge, shares four techniques to help you harness, rather than hamper, brain diversity to access collective intelligence.
Who has cultural intelligence and who doesn’t?
Cultural Intelligence or Quotient (CQ) enhances connections, fosters mutual understanding and encourages good business, but who possesses this skill and how can you identify them?
Four critical gaps in performance review training for managers
Leadership consultant Nik Kinley outlines four ways to make performance review training more effective for managers and their teams.
How to sharpen your leadership skills (without another futile training programme)
Why not use the turn of the new year to strengthen your leadership skills? L&D expert Nigel Paine shares three recommendations for becoming a better leader (and none of them involve an expensive, yet futile training course).
Three learning and development trends for 2025
How will the world of learning evolve in 2025? Continuing the TrainingZone tradition, Robin Hoyle embarks on his yearly effort to predict the learning and development trends for the coming year.
