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Amy Hand

Enhance Your Training Brand

February 2011 - TD Magazine

How to Enhance Your Training Brand

Resilience allows for better decision making, sustained personal growth, and the ability to bounce back with fierce resolve.

The Road to Resilience: Failure, Recovery, and Recovery Again

Think about your favorite band or artist. They find their rhythm with each other by ensuring they are “N*SYNC” with one another both musically and socially. Employees are the same way.Creating a culture of continuous learning and collaboration is essential for any organization, but it’s not always easy for teams to make the time or prioritize these skills. One innovative way to engage your team and drive discussions around key organizational topics is through book clubs. While book clubs are often associated with personal reading, they can be a powerful tool in a workplace setting, encouraging team members to develop skills and understand topics aligned with your organization’s goals.Promoting Continuous Learning and Professional DevelopmentA book club can serve as an engaging ongoing professional development opportunity. By selecting books that align with your organization’s objectives, your team stays informed about the latest developments in your field but also furthers a collective culture of lifelong learning.The most important part of any book club is the analysis and discussion that happens once the book is read. Through group discussions, team members can apply what they’ve learned to real-world situations, enhancing their ability to contribute to the organization's success. Now you’ve got an excited and engaged workforce that has a collective vocabulary and set of short-hand phrases to convey complex ideas! Here are a few examples of professional development titles offered on Libby.Encouraging Open Dialogue and Diverse PerspectivesBook clubs create a welcoming space where employees can freely share their thoughts and engage in deep conversations on complex topics. Whether exploring themes like diversity and inclusion, change management, or innovation, these discussions promote cross-departmental communication and help break down organizational silos. In an informal setting, book clubs allow employees to connect on a personal level, strengthening relationships and creating a more cohesive workplace. Leveraging existing employee resource groups (ERGs) is an excellent way to launch a book club, seamlessly integrating it into your organization’s culture.Here are a few examples of titles centered around diversity and inclusion in Libby.Aligning Team Efforts With Organizational GoalsBook clubs can be strategically used to align your team’s efforts with the broader goals of your organization. By carefully selecting books that reflect the company's mission, vision, and values, you can reinforce key messages and inspire employees to think critically about how they contribute to the organization's success.For example, if your organization is undergoing a digital workflow transformation, reading and discussing books on technology trends like artificial intelligence can help your team understand the challenges and opportunities ahead.Driving engagement with learning and development isn’t always the easiest sell for an organization, but a book club can help activate employees more, engender passionate advocates for the process, and even develop champions for learning. To learn more about book clubs and how they work at OverDrive, visit our website to inspire your organization’s next book club.

Learning and Reading Are Better With Colleagues

Game On! Action-Based Training Designs for Better Learning Passive learning just doesn’t cut it in today’s evolving, competitive workplace. Research demonstrates that action-first learning works because it engages the mind immediately and makes sure that knowledge and skills will stick. With a more diverse array of action-based training designs, organizations can motivate learners, provide hands-on, collaborative practice, and drive behavioral change. In Action-First Learning, educator and tech expert Karl Kapp covers nine distinct types of learning experiences in one volume—from card and board games, escape rooms, and branching scenarios to augmented reality and AI-powered coaching. He explains why each design works and how to choose, plan, and execute the right kind of project for your goals.The book includes a chapter by instructional designer Amy Pape about how to improve action-first learning through accessibility and another by L&D expert Kevin Thorn on the use of comics in action-first learning. Each chapter includes a detailed case study, a design checklist, and tips on how to leverage AI in the creation of action-first learning.

Action-First Learning

Psychological safety, like anything, can be misconstrued or, even worse, weaponized. Unfortunately, psychological safety frequently gets mentioned with no grace or understanding of how hard it is to build it within a team.

The Number 1 Predictor of Team Effectiveness: Psychological Safety

Bridgett McGowen is an award-winning speaker, author, and publisher. She has been a professional speaker since 2001 and has spoken on programs alongside prominent figures such as former President Barack Obama, Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes, Kim Coles, Amy Cuddy, Stacey Abrams, Dr. Mae Jemison, Common, and Katie Couric.The University of Texas at Austin presented her with a Master Presenter Award; Canada-based One Woman presented her with two Fearless Woman Awards; and McGowen has facilitated hundreds of presentations to thousands of go-getters positioned all around the globe.She is a former Forbes Coaches Council contributor and an Entrepreneur online magazine contributor. She has earned bachelor's and master's degrees and has taught for Prairie View A&M University; Lone Star College System in Houston, Texas; and University of Phoenix.McGowen is author of multiple books, including Real Talk: What Other Experts Won’t Tell You About How to Make Presentations That Sizzle, which is the 2020 winner of the Best Indie Book Award in the business/communication category. She is also author of Show Up and Show Out: 52 Communication Habits to Make Even More You Unforgettable. Her publishing company, BMcTALKS Press, won a 2021 Bronze Stevie Award in the Startup of the Year–Business Services Industries category in the 18th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

Bridgett McGowen

Amy has spent the majority of her career at Grainger. As an HR professional she has over 19 years of experience in the HR function spanning LMS/learning technology and support, enterprise-wide program design, development and deployment, operations, facilitation, and internal consulting to business partners on a variety of learning, change, and communication initiatives. Amy currently leads a team spanning the U.S. and Canada that focuses on learning technology, measurement, and delivery, along with operational processes and support.Amy received her degree in teaching kindergarten/prekindergarten children from Iowa State University. Amy and her family reside in Mt Prospect, IL.

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