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Welcome to issue #52!

LinkedIn partnered up with Glint to explore
the state of managers, the challenges they face, and some solutions we can explore to support them. Here are the top things I got out of their research:

People-Centric Management

  1. Apart from being aware of goals, KPIs, and projects, a skilled manager is most attuned to a person’s mental, emotional, and behavioral commitment to work;
  2. Successful managers cultivate belonging actively support and appreciate varying styles, perspectives, and ideas;
  3. Managers play an important part in sparking new demand for learning by inspiring their team members;
  4. People-Centric Managers drive culture and connection by walking the talk, creating culture stewards, and celebrating successes.
How to support people centric-managers?
  1. Understand what motivates them (41% reported doing challenging work that matches my skills, and 35% feeling trusted to make work-related decisions as top motivational factors);
  2. Equip them with survey results to offer them context about their team members;
  3. Support them with feedback, learning, and giving them the power to act.

The top challenges are, of course, related to this past year's context and they talk mostly about burnout, feeling disconnected from colleagues, and being conflicted between work and home demands.

One question stays with me after going through this report: how much do I know about the challenges faced by my colleagues with people management responsibilities?

Enjoy and read on,
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
This article goes through some interesting concepts used to power learning in the flow of work: crowdsourcing, internal gigs platform, and social learning. I was familiar with all of them, but still loved to see clear examples of how the author applied them.
Coaching for L&D 2.0 
Register
You might have been familiar with L&D Shakers' Coaching for L&D project. It started this year, went great, so this week they launched the second iteration. Go ahead and register if you want to get in touch with a coach and talk about your challenges.
I became an Adam Grant groupie after reading Think Again. His ideas are really simple and mostly related to how we think, rather than how we do things. In this article, Adam Grant explores 4 ideas: (1) embracing “better practices” over “best practices”, (2) leading with humility, (3) reading emotions like data, (4) “thinking like a scientist”. Although all of them have applications to L&D, I found the fourth to be the most interesting.
This article discusses moving from an individual performance system to a team-based one through team goals, appraisals, development, rewards & recognition, and a transparent performance culture.
There are three key behaviors that drive psychological safety: being consultative, supportive, and challenging. Starting at the very top, with your executive team, then following up by supporting the use of these skills in your leadership development programs seems to be a good way to start.
Such an amazing ebook from Humu. It explores the benefits and challenges of hybrid workplaces, together with 5 things we should pay attention to when moving to hybrid: (1) re-establishing the culture, (2) being intentional about equity, (3) making both in-person and remote work a source of energy, (4) facilitation connection, and (5) investing in emotional intelligence.
"Branding is how you make people feel. It’s the words you want them to conjure when they think about the thing you’re selling (yep, in your case you’re selling learning)". This new MAAS Marketing Webinar will explore brand as a concept and how we can build our L&D Team's brand.
CIPD recently launched the results of its newest research, and it's full of insights about how we're doing as L&Ds, challenges we're facing, and solutions our peers explored in the past year regarding those challenges.
David James is exploring an interesting topic in his already pretty cool podcast: Starting your journey in L&D. His guests talk about different pathways to L&D, what you should focus on when getting started, and the skills and knowledge you should start acquiring. 
Usually, summer is the season when companies open their doors to interns. Last year putting together internships was quite a challenge given the pandemic, and this year doesn't seem to be different. Since we're all looking towards virtual internships, thought it might help to learn how others approached this challenge.
Everyone knows Daniel Kahneman and his amazing book Thinking Fast and Slow. We got to learn so much about human behavior through the two systems he researched and presented in this book. This time, he's back with yet another amazing book, and this is a good intro you can explore before digging deeper.
Whether we're just having a meeting to talk about project updates with our team or facilitating a workshop, the advice in this article will still be valuable. Since the future will be at least hybrid for some of us, learning about building rapport on video calls will help us on the long run.
Overheard on LinkedIn
"Withholding feedback is choosing comfort over growth. Staying silent deprives people of the opportunity to learn. If you're worried about hurting their feelings, it's a sign that you haven't earned their trust. In healthy relationships, honesty is an expression of care." 

- adamgrant
Visual of the week
Improve learning programs with deliberate practice

Adding practice to your learning experience is probably basic advice by now. The type of practice you're promoting is still important. We're fans of deliberate practice and always thinking about how we can apply it in our programs.
Thanks to Huma Adnan, Coach Firoze Ismail, Letitia Stefan, Anna McCarron, Roy Ben-Yehuda, and Kira Litvin 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.

If you found this issue interesting, share it with other L&Ds in your network. You can explore past issues here.