How to Become an L&D Change Maker in 3 Steps

Every profession has challenges. Everyone has something they can complain about, something that isn’t working the way it should. 

Learning and development (L&D) isn’t any different.

In reality, challenges are the reason professions — including L&D — exist in the first place. Solving challenges is why this profession started and it’s why we still exist.

A victim-style mindset, even if we fall into it unintentionally, doesn’t help us solve challenges. 

However, as many times as I’ve seen the victim story, I’ve also seen the champion's story. The champion is someone who embraces challenges over complaints. They see the challenge as an opportunity for critical and creative problem-solving instead of seeing it as a roadblock. They use the challenge as momentum to change rather than as a reason to complain — and the results are incredible. These are the needle-movers, the change-makers, and the career superstars.

It’s time to use our frustrations as fuel to create better outcomes, better organizations, and a better future.

Choose to be a winner, not a whiner

I’m going to start by answering my own call to action and offering practical ideas to empower ourselves and our profession.

Every organization is complex in its own way, and you may have to modify or adapt my ideas based on your unique scenario. But you will have a place to begin your march into the champions camp.

Let’s start with an overall approach to addressing challenges and begin acting like the champions of our story. We’ll look at it in three phases.

Phase 1: Expose and Interrogate

Many learning and development pros are training others on topics like tough conversations, emotional intelligence, and decision-making. So, you may be familiar with this approach. It’s the one where you start by clearly naming the problem at hand and then working to further define it.

1. Name and describe the problem/challenge

When you find yourself starting to complain about an L&D issue, that’s a sign to stop and define. Clear the emotional fog by naming the problem. Describe how you know it’s a problem and when it surfaced. Do what you can to clearly and logically outline the situation.

This sounds easy, but I’ve found clarity may not be immediately apparent. Our emotional reaction often surfaces before our logical mind can make sense of it. Or the problem might be layered or complicated. It might take a while to unravel the issue, and that’s OK. What’s most important is that you start trying.

I have a personal method I use when I’m searching for clarity. I imagine myself taking this issue and putting it inside a hypothetical marble. Then I imagine that I’m popping the marble inside my brain and letting it roll around for a few days, like it’s in a labyrinth or an old-fashioned pinball machine. It’s my way of allowing myself to ponder on the issue without completely forgetting. 

Usually the “marble” pops out at some point with a new type of clarity. I have no idea how I came up with this method and I fully admit that writing it out makes it sound a little weird, but it works for me! Find what works for you to gain added clarity.

2. Be relentlessly curious (interrogate)

Now that you’ve clearly identified the problem, put on your curiosity hat — the really big one — and start asking questions about the problem. Why might this be happening? Does it seem to happen most often at a certain time or in response to certain events? Is it continuous or intermittent? Has it always been a problem or did it just start?

Answers to questions like this will give you insights into the issue. As you begin to reflect on and uncover a few new thoughts, they will lead you to additional questions. Keep that curiosity hat firmly in place.

3. Determine whether anyone else has figured this out

Most challenges aren’t new. It would be extremely rare for you to be the first and only person to encounter it. With your issue defined and a few insights gained, it’s time to look for others who have stumbled into the same spot, even if that means you need to look outside of your typical resources for answers.

Years ago, I had a team of L&D rock stars, who were pumping out amazing training products. But despite their design and facilitation savvy, we were still getting blamed for performance issues. The feedback from our stakeholders sounded like this: “That training wasn’t good enough, and you need to fix it. We are still having the same performance problems after our team members completed it.”

This was frustrating because I knew the training was top-notch. It also meant that what we had spent hours creating was basically a waste of time and resources. Something else had to be going on. After defining the problem and getting curious about it, I moved to find out if anyone else had figured out the solution to this problem. Naturally, I looked to L&D resources. I found nothing.

So, I expanded my search. I started studying parallel professions like sales and marketing, stakeholder management and project management. Those were helpful, and then I discovered performance consulting and it changed the game. This was how I figured out that training can’t solve every problem. That’s why our fantastic training solutions weren’t working.

Now I had some ideas as to how to proceed differently, which naturally led to the next step.

4. Search for a reframe

This step might pop into your process at a few different points. For example, it can be incredibly helpful to, say, reframe the complaint as a sign to explore or to view the obstacle as an opportunity can be incredibly helpful. Are there other reframes you can apply? Those that might help you move forward?

Using the example above, I stumbled on my first reframe. Knowing that training wouldn’t solve every problem, I realized it was time to reframe how we looked at requests. 

It sounded like this: Solving a stakeholder’s performance challenge is more important than offering a training solution (no matter how awesome that training solution is). A request is an opportunity to explore whether training/learning can help and, if not, to offer alternatives.

This reframe made the process a bit more exciting. Now we had a reason to play detective, work more strategically, and improve efficiency and reduce waste.

Phase 2: Let go of perfect and lean on learning

Ah, the beast of perfectionism! This surfaces for many high-achieving learning professionals who want to do the best job possible. I used to be stuck in this beast’s lair as well, until I figured out perfectionism is just another blocker for progress.

5. Learn everyday

One of your L&D superpowers is your ability to learn. So, trust and lean on that right now. Start where you are and learn along the way, throughout your experience.

One of my favorite tools for this is my TILT journal (Things I Learned Today).

I started using it years ago when I was working with a CEO named John. This quiet, unassuming guy was a leader everyone in the company admired and respected and I was determined to figure out why. What did he do differently?

When I finally had a chance to sit down with him, I asked a ton of questions about leadership and his typical day. Nothing particularly unique or different stood out. But when we were just about done, he said, “You know, at the end of the day I get in my truck to drive home and I do what everyone does, I think about the day. I consider what worked well and what didn’t and why. Then I make a plan to continue doing what worked well and adjust what didn’t tomorrow.”

That was it. That was what set John apart. He reflected daily and learned from it. He wasn’t focused on perfectionism, but on paying attention and iterating in small ways, gradually, over time. Contrary to what he thought, everyone does not do this.

I started my own reflection practice that day and it’s been a game-changer in my career and leadership journey. As we implemented changes, I was continuously reflecting on what worked and what didn’t and iterating along the way. Which leads me to the next step.

6. Start trying little things

Anne-Laure Le Cunff would call these “tiny experiments.” We often think we need to have big programs and big plans to make a big impact. Big programs and plans that take large amounts of time and resources to complete.

The reality is that most changes take place a little at a time, over time, not in large sweeping movements.

What is one little thing you can try doing differently right now?

I worked to focus our team on looking at training requests as an opportunity to explore the real issue, knowing that not every problem could be solved with training. We started by asking a couple of different questions, that were more performance and evidence driven and less learning solution driven, during our intake process. 

That was it. Just a couple of different questions.

Then we paid attention to what happened as a result. We iterated on our questions, adding those that seemed to work better with stakeholders and eliminating the ones that seemed confusing.

Later, we added other small things, like learning more about our stakeholders’ business goals and asking them questions about those goals in regular meetings so we could better understand what they were hoping to achieve even before the training ask.

But everything we did was small. Nothing was big and nothing happened overnight. Eventually, we shifted the entire culture of how the business worked with us simply by adding in tons of small, iterative actions over time.

If you want to become a champion, start by trying small things as an experiment and learn from them.

Phase 3: Find your fellows

Both complainers and champions like to surround themselves with those who have a similar view. But while complainers agree on frustrations, champions agree on empowering themselves and others to change.

Champions know collaboration is a strong strategy for change and influence, so they intentionally work to build their collaborative team and presence.

7. Keep your plans just fuzzy enough

In a nod to releasing yourself from perfectionism, you don’t need to start with a perfect plan to achieve a new reality. If you’ve clearly defined the issue and have an idea of the goal you want to achieve, that’s the best place to start bringing others along.

A perfect plan for achieving success doesn’t allow for any additional insights, perspectives, or improvements. It actually discourages collaboration.

When I was working to shift our team to be more performance focused, I shared that our goal was to ensure, to the best of our ability, that we said yes to creating training that would solve or improve performance problems and no to those that wouldn’t make a dent. 

But I didn’t share all the ways we would get there. Instead, I asked for suggestions and input from the team. We iterated together, and the managers on my team often thought of ideas I wouldn’t have come up with alone.

As a result, we became a stronger team with a stronger outcome. My vision and plan were just fuzzy enough to allow others to contribute.

8. Build your champions network

Be on the lookout for your fellow champions. Those who are on board with working to make positive changes. Focus on them first. The phrases “work with the willing” or “go where the energy is” come to mind.

It can be tempting to spend your energy convincing complainers of their misguided views. Don’t give in! Your time and energy will be better spent gaining momentum from those willing to partner with you in working toward solutions.

As your movement gains momentum, others will want to join in and you should welcome them! They will add to the shift you are working to achieve. Eventually, many complainers will see the light and join in as well.

In the example related to “fuzzy plans” above, I specifically asked for contributions from those who were willing. Later, once the momentum started to build, we had more difficult conversations from resisters on the team who would rather complain than change. But several had jumped on board along the way and there were fewer by that point.

Hopefully these phases and steps provide you with some practical ideas to reframe when you begin to slip into the complain game in favor of marching into the champion’s camp.

This post was originally published in the L&D Must Change newsletter on LinkedIn.

Jess Almlie is a learning and performance strategist with over 25 years of experience across multiple industries. In that time, she has worked in all the people development roles, from her very first job as a trainer at McDonald’s to vice president of learning experience at WEX Benefits. Now, as an independent consultant, she helps L&D leaders and teams shift their approach to work more strategically, intentionally, and impactfully.