Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of
the L &D Books, one of the Women Talking About
Learning podcast. I'm Andrew Jacobs. Originally,
this was going to be one episode, but as our
guests had so much they wanted to share with
us, we decided to make it a two -parter. In this
part, our guests discuss their own books and
we'll hear more about writing in general in part
two. To help us get a greater understanding of
what it's like to write a book we have four awesome
guests who have all written different books for
L &D. Two are from Canada and two from the UK.
Our first guest is Hannah Brown. With 25 years
in learning development, Hannah bridges the gap
between formal training and learning embedded
in Teams. Her latest book, Into the Hands of
Leaders, Employee Growth Through Learning, reflects
the need for organisations to move training out
of the classroom and into the hands of leaders,
where they build cultures of learning. Our second
guest is Beth Kugler -Blom. Beth is a facilitator
and learning designer who creates impactful meetings
and learning experiences for clients through
her company, BCB Learning Inc. Beth is the author
of Design to Engage, How to Create and Facilitate
a Great Learning Experience for Any Group, and
is the host of the Facilitating on Purpose podcast.
Our next guest is Pam Hamilton. Pam is a collective
intelligence expert and author of the workshop
book, How to Design and Lead Successful Workshops
and Supercharged Teams, 30 Tools of Great Teamwork.
She is the founder of Queen's Award -winning
innovation and capability agency, Parafin. Our
final guest is Emily Gardner. Emily is a trainer,
facilitator and author of The Path of the Guide,
a framework for effective corporate facilitation.
She specialises in facilitation and innovation
skills for corporates and also has a coaching
practice supporting facilitators to scale their
impact. Recorded in July 2025, this is such an
engaging conversation. This is women talking
about learning. This is Hannah, Pam, Beth and
Emily talking about L &D books. Hi, Beth. It's
great to see you again. I know that you're in
BC. How's it going over there? What are you up
to these days? I'm visiting a friend, so I'm
not even in my regular office, but I'm really
happy to be with you, Hannah. Nice to see you
again and also with Pam and Emily. So I'll say
hi to Pam. Pam, how are you doing today? Good
thanks, Beth. Nice to meet you as well, Hannah,
and great to meet you, Emily. So we've got two
people in Canada, two people in the UK. How about
you, Emily? How are you today? Yeah, I'm good,
thank you. I mean, good to meet all of you, since
I didn't know anybody before I joined today's
call. I guess it's just so interesting to hear
about why everybody's here. So I don't know.
I mean, Hannah, you kicked us off. So I don't
know if you want to share a little bit about
why While you're here on this episode, what is
it about L &D books that you really wanted to
talk about? Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Emily. So
I wrote my book. It's actually my second book.
It's called Into the Hands of Leaders, Employee
Growth Through Learning. And I've been working
in learning and development for probably 25 years,
which makes me feel really old, but that's the
truth of it. And I guess over that time, I've
realized that Yes, and most of that time has
been working in kind of designing formal training
programs, working with learning and development
departments, things like that, trainers, facilitators,
and that there's an important role for formal
training, but also realizing that there's so
much learning that happens on the job and in
formal learning. And so the book is really about...
how can we take some of that learning and put
it into the hands of leaders and help leaders
create a culture of learning so that we can reinforce
the learning that's already happening and promote
it a little bit more. So that's my book and I'm
clearly passionate about it and I know, Pam,
that you got all of our books and you were saying
earlier that there's so much alignment between
what we're all saying in our books. So I'm excited
to hear a little bit more about everybody else's
and where all the synergies and overlaps are.
Yeah, it's a good point. So Hannah, I did buy
all of our books before this recording and I've
had a quick look through and it's just amazing.
We come from completely different backgrounds
and places, but we've got so many things in common
about what we're saying. You know, we're saying
things like, Today's working world is so pressured,
so difficult. There's so much change fatigue.
People have no attention spans. And yet learning
is so important. I mean, we know for a fact that
there are huge skills gaps in businesses. People
are trying to create new business models to deal
with new marketplaces out there. We know that
employees themselves or anyone in any organization,
even if it's a charity that you're volunteering
in, we need to learn, we need to grow our capabilities.
And there's a lot of challenges for, I think,
people's time and attention. And I think you
pointed it out in your book, Hannah. In fact,
a couple of you did. You know, you can't just
provide the resources. I always say to my clients,
if you build it, they will not necessarily come
at all. So, you know, doesn't matter if you've
created the most beautiful playbook in the whole
world, literally, maybe no one will read it.
And so it's a real challenge for our you know,
professionals like us. How about you, Emily?
I like that point. Yeah. What I was going to
say, Pam, is that I feel like for me, when I
wrote my book about facilitation skills, which
I know is something that we all touch on in our
books in some way, it's not just about giving
people those skills. It's also almost creating
that demand because you were talking about the
world of work and how the workplace is changing.
I've done a lot of work with companies over the
years. My background is in innovation. So companies
more and more readily will bring people in to
train and run workshops in the innovation space.
In the facilitation space, I still feel like
that's really nascent. And one thing that we're
all trying to do is let people know through our
books and sort of cultivate the demand for that
skill and show how important it is to democratize
skills across the organization. And like you
were saying, Hannah, give people the power to
take those skills into their own hands and use
that to create this culture of learning which
spreads everywhere in a very natural way and
isn't just dependent on external facilitators,
trainers, coaches, even though there is a place
for those sorts of things, but really democratizing
those skills and putting them into the hands
of people I think is so important. Yeah, I was
thinking about that too, in terms of when people
start to want to learn facilitation skills. So
my first book is about designing and facilitating
learning, but I'm actually writing a second one
right now, which is going to be called Everyday
Acts of Facilitation. And so I'm thinking about,
and I'm trying to write it for that time when
people, maybe they've just been asked to... you
know, teach something or train in some way in
their organizations, and they've kind of fall.
We all fell into the role, I think, of being
a facilitator. I don't know who grew up wanting
to be a facilitator. It's so rare. I never heard
of it. But, you know, how can we get people at
the moment where they go, I think this is sort
of a thing that I can learn more about. And how
do I do that? And where do I go? And books are
one way, right? I'm also trying to say we can
look around us at the world around us, all the
conversations we have every day and learn facilitation
skills or what not to do sometimes as well from
what's happening in our daily lives. So, you
know, if we can get them to know that it's a
field, it's a thing, then our books are there
for them, aren't they? What do you think, Hannah?
Oh, sorry, Emily. Go ahead, Emily, and then I'll
chime in. All I was going to say is I think you've
hit on a really good point, Beth, which is about
this word facilitator and the word facilitation.
And actually with the sort of sphere that we're
all operating in, you need to talk to people
who perhaps are facilitating but don't know that's
what they're doing. And that comes with its own
challenges of generating that awareness. I think
you've all done really well at picking book titles,
because I personally really struggled with that,
trying to find something that communicated what
these skill sets do without calling them out
explicitly in a way that would make people feel
like that's not for me. But sorry, Hannah, I
interrupted you. You're going to start speaking.
Yeah, no, no, no, it's OK. Beth, I know your
first book and I'm excited to hear that you're
writing your second one. And your first book
was, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I read
it a little while ago, but it was facilitation
skills more for facilitators, so people who are
are in the learning and development space or
the training space or the learning space. And
what I think from your next book is it I think
is everyday acts of facilitation and so it feels
to me like it's stretching into and anybody can
be a facilitator and if I think about the messages
in my book it's leader, what's leaders role in,
in encouraging their teams to learn a kind of
on the job. And a big part of that is for them
to be facilitators. How can they facilitate learning?
How can they facilitate discussion and dialogue?
And so yeah, lots of Pam, I know you said at
the beginning, lots of overlap between our books,
but I'm seeing a really clear one, clear one
right there. I agree with you. And I completely
agree. I mean, my, as you know, my book's called
the workshop book. So, you know, kind of the
most plain name for it. And in fact, that's how
I got into learning and development was actually
by running innovation workshops like you, Emily,
but then bringing all of that skill about, you
know, inspiring people, making them curious,
making them have some sort of attention, bringing
that into learning. But I feel like you're right,
you know, facilitating or leading any kind of
learning is a universal skill. because of the
times that we live in right now, because we lack,
I think, a little bit of formal structure. And
I definitely don't want to go back two centuries
to where every meeting had a chairman, but somebody
who has an agenda for the meeting makes sure
that lots of different people get to talk rather
than just one person. A lot of the work that
I do is using the principles of collective intelligence,
which is a science which measures how groups
of people are more intelligent as a group than
the most intelligent person in the group. if
they behave well, and there are three things
that make them do that. One thing is turn taking.
So conversational turn taking where everyone
lets everybody speak because you then get that
diversity of opinion. Second one is building
on ideas, not just waiting for your idea and
then saying it out loud. And the third one is
more women in the group because women tend to
be naturally more empathetic and aware of and
not, you know, that's a stereotype as well. But
the science proves that more women in the group
are, you know, are able to get greater collective
intelligence. I feel like women do naturally
facilitate in whatever sphere of life we're in,
we're always thinking about what does everybody
in the room need, which is why I think we bring
this kind of skill to learning. I'm super excited
about your book, Beth, about everyday active
facilitation, because it just feels quite true.
That is what we're doing all the time. Even if
it's tiny, it doesn't have to be a massive week
long thing. Yeah, that's right. And I think Hannah
was alluding to it too with leaders because we
want people to know that facilitation skills
are they can be used one -on -one, don't we?
And not just with groups. We're using them all
the time. And actually, I think they can make
us better people, you know, for like facilitators
can change the world. Yay, you know, I'm so pro
get on my soapbox about what skills we bring
to the world. But let's talk a little bit more
about our books because I think it's so exciting
for me to actually talk about the book because
it does feel like something that's off the side
of my desk in a way. I mean, I'm a learning designer,
I'm a facilitator, but then like the rest of
you, we wrote a book and not everybody does that.
But maybe I can ask Emily first, why did you
decide that you would write a book? You know,
what brought you to this point? Yeah, I always
had to hesitate to admit this, but I actually
started writing the book completely by accident.
So I am a writer, like always have been. I have
a literature degree, so I learned to write very
long essays about things that other people had
written down. And when I first joined the world
of work, as I mentioned, my background's in innovation.
So I was working for a financial services organization,
wound up in their innovation team, which was
just me and one other person not knowing what
we were doing. And we started with books, you
know, we read sprints by Jake Knapp and we were
like, yes, we can take this, we can introduce
this. And we just started doing things, you know,
trial and error. And then From there, I moved
into innovation consultancy. So working with
loads of different organizations, workshops every
day, all of that sort of stuff. And I just started
a Word document one day and started writing for
myself, you know, what went well, what didn't
go so well, what I could do differently. And
one day I opened this Word document and I was
like, wow, this is really long. This could be
a book. So I took a week off and I sat down and
started jumbling all the parts around until I
was like... Okay, this is a framework. I think
I'm starting to take this seriously. So from
beginning to end, it took over three years to
bring the book to where it is now, where people
can actually hold it and buy it. And I still
find it almost laughable when I see people holding
a copy. I'm like, did I do that? Is that that
word document? Is this that thing now? But looking
back, I'm going to retrospectively add a reason
that I wrote the book, which is, I guess, it
was a sort of love letter to myself in that first
original role, I guess, because I feel like I
really wanted those skills to be able to facilitate
well within a corporate context, except I didn't
know what facilitation was, and I wasn't sure
that's what I was doing. So let's say that I
wrote the book to my past self. I feel like it's
the same for me, Emily. I started writing the
original workshop book because this new one is
10 years later. It's the updated version and
it's like 80 % new. even though it has the same
foundations. But yeah, you know, writing down
what really worked, what didn't work. And I'm,
as I said, at the beginning of the conversation,
while we were just warming up, I said my, you
don't really read my book, it's more of a manual.
It's like, have it ready for when you need to
do a specific objective. So that's what I really
love the kind of gamifying of different objectives
into different structures. And so do you need
to create new names? Or do you need to align
a group of difficult stakeholders or, you know,
do you need to create something that's an idea
that works really, really well, but improve it.
So I've kind of done it through the lens of all
of the different challenges that I've done in
my, you know, 25 years of workshops, working
on things from diamonds to toilet paper and everything
in between, probably similar to you, Emily. How
about you, Hannah? Yeah. Well, a first quick
thought. I don't remember when this was. I'm
going to guess COVID is a bit of a mind vacuum.
So I want to say it was five years, but if I
add COVID, it was probably more like 10 years.
So let's say it was 10 years ago. I can remember
literally coming out of my mouth, I could never
write a book. I don't even know what I would
say. And so it's really interesting to be on
the other side of that. So if you're listening
and you're wondering, can I write a book? I would
say, absolutely, you can. And so why did I write
my book? So as I said earlier, I've been working
in learning and development for a long time.
And most of that time has been as a consultant
designing custom programs for clients. And I
had lunch with a client probably two or three
summers ago at this point. And she was telling
me about a program, she's the manager of a learning
department, a program that they created with
a lot of... a lot of detail and and like really
good design that went into it like they did a
needs assessment and it was for leaders in their
organization on change managing change and the
leaders all came which was great and they asked
them you know what do you need to be able to
implement these concepts in your organization
to be able to actually apply what you've learned
and so they got this feedback and then they turned
around and they've created a follow -up program
on resiliency specifically and when they invited
those leaders back to the resiliency program
of the hundred or so leaders only six people
signed up and When my client told me this my
heart just sank And it was so familiar to me.
So yes Yes, well, that's the thing and that's
how I felt when she was telling me because I
thought in my time consulting I feel like I've
heard this over and over again and I I started
thinking there's a there has to be a better way
or a different way that we help people change
their behavior or improve their performance or
learn essentially, be more innovative, Emily,
because I see innovation and learning go hand
in hand, right? And so I really started questioning
my own profession about all this formal training
and realized that we can't just have formal training,
that we need to look at that culture where we're
learning and working and growing. And so it was
that lunch that was really pivotal and the seed
that was planted about how might this look different
for it to be more effective. Can you imagine
that in this time starved, high pressured, low
attention span world where there's so much change,
so much learning that we need and so much demand
for learning that we still have people, all of
us, who feel like we don't have time to learn
what's being given to us and the resources that
we're privileged enough to have. It seems like
such a shame. I totally agree. I think it changes
maybe how we write books, because we don't want
to stop writing books, do we? And there's multiple
ways to read books. We're all reading more audio
books, aren't we? Just to try to fit it in, but
I don't know. We can't stop doing this, but maybe
we write them in such a way that it's easier
to read. I know when I wrote Design to Engage,
I said right in the beginning, you don't have
to read this from cover to cover. You can just
go to the chapter that is relevant to what you're
doing right now and get that piece. And we know
that's good learning anyway when it's immediately
relevant for the... for the people. So did you
think about how you wrote your book, any of you,
and make different decisions based on kind of
that busy world we're all living in right now?
Yeah, I was going to talk about my own process,
but also link back to something that Pam had
said, which was, you know, my book's more of
a manual. And it connected with me when you started
talking Hannah and saying, If you don't think
you can write a book, you absolutely can. I was
having this conversation with another facilitator
recently where she said, oh, I really liked your
book, Emily, but I can never write something
like that. You know, my mind doesn't work in
that way. My mind works in a much more visual
mapping way. And I was saying, that's OK. You
can write a book which is just facilitation maps.
You know, I think we all do have a book in us.
And as you rightly mentioned, Beth, people have
different preferences for how they take things
in and learn. And that's fantastic. It just means
that there's more need for diversity out there.
So in a way, it lowers those barriers to thinking
I can't write a book because I can't write in
this particular style. You know, that's absolutely
fine. People take things in in different ways.
And people make choices now about what they consume
based on how they can consume it. I think that's
one of the joys of There's not many great things
to say about Amazon, but that's one of the great
things to say about Amazon is you can look and
you can definitely find something that suits
you and your style. Yeah, definitely. But keen
to hear from the rest of you on the format of
your book and how you picked it. I know you said,
Beth, it's dive in and out. Was that a similar
approach for you, Hannah, or did you have something
slightly different? Yeah, well... I was thinking
I was going to talk about just my latest book,
but I'd like to kind of contrast both of my books.
So my first book was very much kind of what was
in me and what could easily, and I'm using air
quotes because it's never easy to write a book,
but what was easy to write based on my consulting
career. And it was very much for learning and
development professionals, how to design really
impactful virtual training. And I was very conscious
of making it very user -friendly and digestible
or accessible. I have a great graphic designer
that I work with and there's lots of images and
illustrations and models and pictures, for lack
of a better word, to make it really easy. I didn't
want it to be like this dense textbook, kind
of Pam, like yours, like reference, like go in
when you need it, right? I wanted it to be really
accessible. And my second book is really different.
So it's written for leaders, still without learning
emphasis, but written for leaders instead of
L &D professionals. And my approach with that
one was, well, first of all, I had this lunch
with this client and I'm like, well, is this
a thing? I think it is. But I wanted to validate
that. So I ended up taking probably a good six
months interviewing lots of different leaders
and getting their perspective, which was really
helpful in shaping kind of what I ultimately
wrote. And many of them agreed to have their
stories in my book. So there's still some models
and not nearly as many illustrations, maybe one
or two, but there's leaders' stories throughout.
And so I was conscious of not having the book
be just my voice, but to pull in other voices
and perspectives to, again, make it a little
bit more interesting. So it's a really different
read than my first book, but I hope it says,
I don't know, I have to ask, I suppose, if it's,
yeah, that having the stories in there makes
it a little bit more engaging. Hannah, I want
you to tell everyone what you did about the podcast
series for your second book, because I haven't
read, I'm going to full disclosure, I read your
first book, but I haven't read your second book,
but I have listened to the short podcast series
that you did, which is brilliant. And I think
people should know that you did that. Yeah, thanks,
Beth. So a colleague of mine when I was talking
about researching and doing these interviews
just kind of said off the cuff, he's like, why
don't you record them and turn them into a podcast?
And like I said, 10 years ago, I could never
write a book. I was like, I would never do a
podcast. But he planted that seed and that's
what I ended up doing. So about half of them,
sorry, not half, half a dozen of them agreed
to use that recording in a podcast. So I worked
with a great producer who took those. So it's
not like this style where it's a topic and it's
different people talking. It follows the story
arc of my book and it's me with Emily and then
me with Beth and then hearing a little bit from
Pam kind of all around a theme. And it's not
a forever podcast because I feel like that would
be just far too much. to tackle, but it's six
episodes kind of that I launched leading up to
the book. So it was a nice way of providing a
different format for people to hear or read what
I had to say. And again, not just hearing it
from me, they're hearing it from other people's
experiences. Because stories bring all the interest,
don't they? I mean, whether or not you can say
who the case study is or not, it doesn't matter
because so long as you can, you know, put their
name as confidential, you can tell a story that's
maybe a total failure. Yes. People love, love,
love, love listening to those or learning from
those and then, you know, and then some successes.
So it was, it's the thing that I've learned the
most about writing my books is put in lots of
stories, you know, the more traumatic, the better.
And then it's like learning, isn't it? People
then learn because they get a spike of emotion
and it's memorable. And so they take that story
with them. Yeah. When I got my first book edited,
the editor said, I love your stories and please
do more. So I went and wrote a bunch more and
tried to integrate them in. And now when I'm
writing this one, it is all story based. But
my challenge is, I mean, Emily, you mentioned
diversity before. I'm thinking so much more now.
I mean, it's not like I wasn't thinking about
diversity and inclusion five years ago, but now
it's just even so much more a part of my reality
and my recognition as a white middle -aged woman.
I only have my own experience and I just try
to learn about other people's experiences. And
so part of me is saying right now, well, I can
only talk about my everyday, you know, everyday
acts of facilitation. I don't know what everyone
else's everyday looks like. So it's a challenge
to kind of boil it down to just the mindsets
and the skills and the whatever. And hopefully
that resonates with people around the world because
we're so much more our global audience for each
other. Now, we weird people who read, you know,
write and read books in training and development
and learning, learning and facilitation, all
the words, right, that we use in our field. And
so are you going to do that, Beth? Are you going
to ask for different people's perspectives on
everyday facilitation? You're going to do it
from your perspective. But yeah, it's kind of
a challenge, isn't it? Because I interviewed
30 people when I wrote my first book and that
was really useful. And I think maybe I needed
that in terms of like a validation or something
at the time to say, well, I don't know, do I
know what I'm talking about? Well, 30 other people
were kind of in line, right? And it felt good
to do that and to put their quotes in the book.
But in this one, it almost is a little bit more
memoir and looking back at my whole life and
go, well, how did I become a facilitator? and
a learning designer, you know, yes, I took formal
courses, but actually all those micro moments
across my whole life, you know, and I'm, I'm
51, like I've had a big life so far. And how
did, you know, how did we all learn the things
that we learned? It was tiny stuff along the
way, right? So it's, it's got a bit of a memoir
quality to it. So it'll be a different type of
book. Yeah. But what about you, Pam, because
you've written two or three books, I think, and
are they different from each other in certain
ways? Yes. So the first book was the workshop
book, which was definitely about what I'd learned
and the different techniques related to corporate
facilitation, usually around innovation. And
then I went into trying to do a much more clever
book, which I'm really very proud of it. It's
called Supercharged Teams, and it's got a lot
more research behind it. And it's all around
collective intelligence. So instead of just how
to bring people together in one meeting, you
know, or one workshop, it's about how to build
a really strong team. It's again a toolkit. It's
30 tools of great teamwork. And I really enjoyed
writing it. I wrote it during the pandemic or
at least just before the pandemic. And I was
talking about remote working at the time and
virtual workshops and everything. And then it
sort of landed. The thing is it landed in the
pandemics. So I'm super proud of it. And I still
refer, you know, I still refer to it all the
time, especially because so many people, so many
experts gave me amazing research and incredible
interviews. So I really reached out in that one,
whereas the first one was just me saying what
I'd learned. And then I did the update of the
workshop book, which was fascinating because
I've done a kind of a combination of the two
books now because I have the old workshop book,
then I had to update it. And the publisher said,
you know, please make sure that it's at least
10 % new. And it was like 80 % new, but just
because of how much has changed in 10 years,
but then I went out and interviewed lots of different
people. So hopefully brought more case studies
to it, even though it's still a manual. So yeah,
it's been a wonderful journey. You know, one
of the best things about writing these books,
apart from the fact that writing is quite hard
and you've got to do it in addition to all of
your day job, is the people that you speak to,
isn't it? People like yourselves you meet or
the people that you're interviewing. And that's
such inspiration for anybody. And that's so enriching,
don't you find? Is that what you found, Emily?
Yeah, definitely. Meeting new people was a big
part of the book writing process for me, not
just for the side of getting people's insights
to put into the book, but also from the side
of What does it mean to write a book and to be
successful in that space? You know, I reached
out to a bunch of L &D authors, not any of you
three, so it's okay, I didn't get ghosted by
anyone in this school, but I reached out to a
bunch of other L &D authors and spoke to some
about, you know, what makes a book successful,
all of those types of things, and really tried
to do my research into that as well. And that
was such a fruitful process to... learn about
those sorts of things. I think one other key
thing that I learned from writing the book was
how to work in public. So the year before I published,
I was thinking, how am I going to get to the
point where this is finished? And accountability
is a massive thing for me. So I was thinking
about how can I create accountability? And I
set myself the goal, like every week this year,
I'm going to put a video on LinkedIn of me talking
about something in the book. I'm going to do
it every week for the entire year and just hopefully
it will help me to get over the line. But it
did way more of that than that as well because
it introduced me to new people. It helped me
to develop and refine my content because they
had to talk about it. Then I developed and refined
it further because people gave me feedback and
it got me more comfortable as well with appearing
on camera and building a sort of momentum behind
the book so that when it came out it wasn't just
launched into a vacuum, there were already people
there who were interested to read it because
of this content. So I think there's so much to
be said for the process in pushing you out of
your comfort zone in so many different ways that
you don't necessarily even anticipate when you
start going through that process. I mean I see
you all nodding so I know you've probably got
one or two stories along these lines as well.
We're going to take a pause here, stay tuned
for the second part which will be out in a day
or so. A huge thank you to our awesome guests
Hannah, Pam, Beth and Emily and you'll find all
their details along with links to the subjects
they spoke about in the show notes.