Managing content well and communicating effectively with audiences are two key competencies needed by a learning business that wants to thrive, and taxonomies and metadata can play an important role in both.

Stephanie Lemieux is an information management consultant specializing in taxonomies and metadata. Educated as a librarian, Stephanie is now president and principal consultant at Dovecot Studio, which helps organizations optimize the way they structure and manage their mission-critical content.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Stephanie about what taxonomies are and the negotiation that has to take place between an organization and its audience to create an effective taxonomy. They also discuss the role of taxonomy in search, findability, integration, analytics, and personalization, and they talk about how content has gotten more targeted and more granular in Stephanie’s years of work. They also touch on artificial intelligence and how AI and machine learning can both benefit from and contribute to tagging and taxonomies.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode367.

Empathy is essential to both learner-centered design and effective leadership, and empathy with doubly disadvantaged individuals, like Black women, can be that much more important—and rare.

L. Michelle Smith is a certified executive and personal coach whose work is informed by positive psychology and neuroscience. She’s the author of three books, including Yes Please! 7 Ways to Say I’m Entitled to the C-Suite. L. Michelle’s specialty is moving women and women of color to the C suite and E suite. She focuses on both professional and personal success, working with women so they can lead organizations they love while also living the lives they want.

In this episode, co-host Celisa Steele and L. Michelle Smith talk about the difficulty women of color and women in general face in the workplace because of microaggressive behaviors and gender biases. They also touch on intrinsic motivation, positive emotions like gratitude and amusement, demographic changes to the workforce, the importance of sponsorship and mentorship, and the role of empathy both when leading and when designing learning.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode366.

Travel can serve as a field laboratory for learning. Whether a trip is short or long, near or far, done alone or with others, travel offers an opportunity to learn.

In this episode, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss the pre, during, and post phases that make up both travel and learning experiences; feelings of belonging and othering that can arise; and the value of learning business professionals reflecting on their own experiences to help them design better and more empathetically for others.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode365.

If we had to pick just one thing as the key to the success of a learning business, we would argue for the learning experiences offered because those learning experiences are at the core of what learning businesses do.

In order to offer effective learning experiences, we need a solid understanding of adult learning theory. Although many of learning business professionals are already familiar adult learning theory, there can be tremendous value in taking time to periodically revisit it.

In this redux episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb examine three principles of adult learning theory and the implications each has on designing, developing, and delivering meaningful learning experiences.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode364.