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Welcome to issue #46!

When I got into L&D I received the "consultant" title. But honestly speaking, it would have been better to name me "assistant", as I was basically fulfilling all the desires of my stakeholders. But what others ask from the L&D role it's not what makes it fulfilling, and I soon felt it on my own skin. So I started researching what a consultant should actually do.

These are the top things that stuck with me:

🙋 Ask the right questions to understand the real causes of the behaviors displayed;
📊 Gather data from multiple sources to put the pieces of the problem together;
👩‍🍳 Cook various solutions, some of which are not even the L&D responsibility (this requires an extensive understanding of the business, the client, processes, performance indicators, etc.);
🤝 Pitch solutions in a manner that gets stakeholders buy-in;
🛣️ Drive implementation or offer support as the plan gets deployed no matter if the chosen solutions involve learning activities or not;
📈 Analyze results and report back to the client.

Is it easy to actually practice the consultant role? No, it's not. Let's face it, it's hard for us, as L&Ds to keep in touch with all the industry trends and practices. Our internal clients are even less aware of them so more likely to miss the real value L&Ds can bring to the table.

Should we just stop trying? Again, no. First, because it makes our role way more fulfilling. Second, as stated before, it brings way more value to our organizations. 

So arm yourself with patience, assertiveness, and courage, and practice or keep practicing the consultant behaviors. Hopefully, in time, our clients will start seeing the L&D role as it could be, not as it used to be.

If there are other things you know about the consultant role from practice or research, I would love it if you would reach out and share your know-how. 

Meanwhile, stay safe and keep learning,
- Lavinia
This newsletter is built with the full psychological, design, development, and brainstorming support of Nifty Learning.
L&D Jobs of the week
L&D Newsroom
“I am struggling with engaging the audience when I present something, feeling myself like a lecturer. Might not necessarily be bad, but I am always anxious that people will get bored.” If you've found yourself saying this, The Facilitator's Engagement Pyramid from Mischief Makers might come in handy.
5 tips from Lifelabs Learning on scaling your learning culture, together with actionable items you can approach starting tomorrow: (1) Acknowledge positive performance, (2) Use “yet” language, (3), Help employees & managers co-own development, (4) Celebrate failures as learning opportunities, (5) Create ongoing learning opportunities.
We've been hearing a lot about how L&Ds should start growing marketing skills to pull learners towards our programs. The question always remains, "so where do we start?" Here's an event focusing on just that. Join it and you might get some inspiration out of it and even actionable tips.
This one can be shared with your people managers, and serve as inspiration for your leadership development programs. Three of the trends that are shaping the people manager role? Normalization of remote work, Acceleration in the use of technology to manage employees, and Employees’ changing expectations.
A short but sweet interview from Humu about the onboarding process of new hires in a remote world. Two nice ideas? Guiding managers to reach out to new employees even before day 1 and sending employee nudges. The nudge presented in the article? “Make your manager the best coach," full of questions new hires can ask their managers.
Since we're undergoing another transition into a new way of working, articles like this one from Microsoft might come in handy. Top trends I found most interesting in the article? (1) Leaders are out of touch with employees and need a wake-up call, (2) Gen Z is at risk and will need to be re-energized, and (3) Shrinking networks are endangering innovation.
We Are Whereby ➜
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We can rarely take a peek into how companies are structuring their employee handbooks, so I was really impressed and thankful to Whereby for sharing theirs. I particularly enjoyed the People Operations section and you might find it inspiring as well.
New podcast episode from David James, this time on Design Thinking. I love how they shift the conversation from Design Thinking as a buzzword into actionable things you can do to start applying it in your work.
Laura Overton asks L&D Leaders some tough questions in her latest LinkedIn article. Some of them: How do you think about the value you bring to your organisation? How do you think about your role in your organisation? How do you think about your relationship with others? Do you ever think about this kind of stuff?
I have heard of foresight before, but never looked for a definition until now. "Foresight uses trending, scanning, and forecasting tools to move beyond the known. This method is designed to help us better understand future possibilities in order to build strategic plans of tomorrow, today." The question briefly answered in this article is how can we use it in L&D. 
Although not an L&D piece, I find this short article really inspiring. I've never thought about "power" and all the good ways we can use it in the workplace. This piece might be particularly useful for people managers.
Some of the templates you will find in this resource? Learning Needs Assessment, Employee development plan, Training Tracking, Training ROI. All really useful for those who are just starting out and not only.
Overheard on LinkedIn
An uncomfortable truth - L&D has often leaned on the term “Provide learning to the right people, at the right place, at the right time.” But is this enough to ensure we are creating business value?

- chadthomas
Thanks to Letitia Stefan, Anna McCarron, Shoshi Weinstein Davis, Joe Stubenrauch, Roi Ben-Yehuda for sharing Offbeat in the past week.

If you found this issue insightful and think your peers could benefit from it, please encourage them to subscribe to the Offbeat Newsletter. Your support will help us grow this newsletter and bring it to as many L&Ds as possible.
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This newsletter is created through the joint efforts of Lavinia Mehedintu and Nifty Learning. Offbeat is our way to support the L&D community around the globe. We only share resources we find insightful, and we add our interpretation of how readers could apply what they learn. Could we be wrong? Definitely. We strongly encourage you to share your feedback and thoughts at lavinia@offbeat.works.

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