The other week I had the delightful experience of riffing with Patrick Healy of The Learning and Performance Podcast.  Patrick comes from a background in a field that was new to me, Learning Design.

Though I’m apt to botch the nuance in my layperson’s description of it, Learning Design means creatively and intentionally crafting a learning experience (including the materials, pacing, presentation and overall delivery method), and do so in a way that best gets the target audience to effectively engage and ultimately learn what there is to learn.

In other words, it’s the stuff of going well beyond throwing a textbook at someone and telling ’em to get cracking.

This perspective that Patrick comes from made for an exploration of coaching from a nuanced lens which is novel to me, namely how coaching maps on to learning and ultimately performance.  We open with a hearty survey of what coaches do and how coaching compares to ostensibly similar activities, like training and mentorship.

Some of my favorite parts:

• How accountability is often the missing magic in coaching and why execution matters (17:30)
• A big success of my own self being coached, and why it worked so well (37:02)
• Advice for coaches starting out: get specific about your pitch (42:38)
• My leeriness around AI’s growing presence in coaching (featuring reasoning beyond the mere fist shaking of a Luddite!) (47:47)
• The 3 skills that make one stand out as an exceptional coach (in this definition, competence from training is mere table stakes) (53:15)
• CoachAccountable as a long form love letter to the practice which has given me so much (1:12:18)
• Why, if I had to pick, “Baller” would be the one word I’d get tattooed on me (1:16:54)

Enjoy!