Soft skills training is a different beast than technical training, and Manny Avramidis, president and CEO of the American Management Association, knows this well. AMA provides management development and educational services to individuals and organizations in over 100 countries, with a primary focus on soft skills.

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Manny talks with co-host Jeff Cobb about how the market for professional development and education has changed and matured during his quarter century working at AMA, how AMA places emphasis on the application of the skills and knowledge it teaches, and how it can say that a very impressive 98 percent of people who have taken AMA training confirm that they apply what they've learned.

Manny also touches on his belief that a leader's success should be measured by the intelligence of their team, the value of leveraging partnerships, and why AMA and Tagoras (the parent company of Leading Learning) formed a partnership to allow membership organizations to get their learners access to AMAs library of 70 plus e-learning modules. For leaders of learning businesses and aspiring leaders, there's lots to glean from this conversation.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode376.

Social learning is a fundamental, age-old method of learning. But it got somewhat lost in the broader adoption of digital learning, especially self-paced e-learning, that happened in the last 20 years, and social learning suffered again during COVID. But, done right, social learning is a highly effective and efficient way to learn.

Our guest in this episode is Nellie Wartoft, founder and CEO of Tigerhall, a social learning platform that’s trying to change how professionals learn from one another in the real world. Nellie talks with Leading Learning Podcast co-host Jeff Cobb about what’s wrong with the current approach to education and how social learning can help, five key aspects of social learning, how to tackle measuring the effectiveness of social learning, and how artificial intelligence can be used to support social learning.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode375.

The Leading Learning Podcast is just one part of what we do at Leading Learning. In this episode, we reintroduce Leading Learning and the range of resources, education, and insights Learning Learning provides to learning business professionals.

In brief, Leading Learning provides resources, education, and insights to learning business professionals, and we provide those resources, education, and insights via several avenues, of which the Leading Learning Podcast is just one.

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode374.

On the Leading Learning Podcast, sometimes we get to talk with someone whose thinking and research have deeply influenced our work and lives. Such is the case with Ellen J. Langer, AKA the mother of mindfulness.

Dr. Langer was the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard, where she is still professor of psychology. The recipient of three Distinguished Scientists awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Liberty Science Genius Award, Dr. Langer wrote the international bestseller Mindfulness, as well as The Power of Mindful Learning, Counterclockwise, On Becoming an Artist, and, most recently, The Mindful Body.

In this episode, co-host Celisa Steele talks with return guest Dr. Langer about what mindfulness is (hint—it’s not meditation), the ubiquity of uncertainty, mind-body unity, and attention to variability. They also discuss mindful contagion and how our perception (of time, of ability) changes what we’re capable of. 

Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode373.