The Remote Working Culture & Performance Management: A Conversation with Joan Capua

CommLab Podcast with Joan Capua - Meeting Recording

2:00
Hi there. I'm Shalini, your host for today's session on the e-learning Champion’s pod and I'm thrilled to have with us Joan Kapua, who's a Senior Manager, L&D, at Taylor and Francis. Joan is a seasoned professional with over 25 years of experience in leading financial, advertising, and publishing firms and her demonstrated achievements through her professional career in HR, corporate training, and sales uniquely positioned her to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to all aspects of performance management. Joan excels in creating and also facilitating programs in management, influence, priority management, consultative selling and professional development. Joan has played a pivotal role in Taylor and Francis's transition to a remote working culture. Joan holds certifications in Myers-Brig Type Indicator, the Disk Profiling, Franklin Covey's five choices to extraordinary productivity, and 360 profiles. Joan is affiliated with the ASTD, the Human Resources IQ, Professional Society for Sales Trading, and the National Speakers Association, amongst others.

3:25
So Joan, a very warm welcome to you and a very warm welcome to our listeners. We are very thrilled to have you with us.

3:32
Thank you, Shalini, it's a pleasure to be here.

3:36
So Joan, you have a very interesting profile, and a lot of those certifications are a lot to do with really the psychological aspect of dealing with people and teams and building leadership and so on. So I would really love to have your insights on some of the questions that are very common to L&D and time permitting, maybe some insights into your very unique challenges when it comes to those specific areas as well.

4:10
So let me get started with the first question for today, which has to do with aligning training with business goals. So Joan, could you share something about the importance of aligning learning and development initiatives with your organizational goals and priorities?

4:29
Absolutely, Shalini. Actually even more than alignment, that is our foundation. The overarching mission that we have at Taylor and Francis, our 200-year-old company, is foster human progress through knowledge. So that foundation drives all of our organizational goals and priorities and it's the foundation for any learning and development initiative that we do build.

4:56
So that's kind of, as you said, if it's your foundation that must be deeply ingrained in every person who's in L&D. Yeah, because we've been a lot of buzz around these words, especially in recent times.
But from what you're saying, that's been a solid foundation for you all along.

5:16
Absolutely. With all of our publications, we provide the greatest value, most of all in sharing understanding across the world through knowledge.

5:28
So coming to really identifying the training needs of your people, what strategies do you employ to not just identify these needs, but to really tailor your solutions to meet the diverse requirements of a very multi-generational, multicultural workforce?

5:53
Absolutely, Shalini. And that is an excellent, excellently posed question. We have a multi-pronged approach to how we identify and analyse feedback, not only through the lens of learning but we also look at the larger context, assessing levels of satisfaction overall within the organization and that's the starting point for considering learning needs. We monitor the results of our frequently held pulse surveys. We also do informal surveys and polls to again assess the broader context of overall satisfaction. Many themes, challenges and requests do surface in the workshops that I lead, so I carefully monitor those and make sure I record them so that I can address future needs.

6:41
In L&D, we also liaise closely with our HR business partners who are kind of our first lines of contact with each of our business lines to stay on top of changes, initiatives, challenges and of course, considerations of our regional cultural nuances. To your point about diversity, we want to make sure that we are honouring all cultural nuances. And in terms of generations, I have a different perspective on that, Shalini. I believe that rather than try to ascribe certain traits to generations, why don't we go deeper and assess them as individuals? Because we have found that there are many, many traits that are solely individual and we don't want to lock anyone into any traits that are ascribed to a certain career level or age bracket.

And Shalini, I should also mention that we're careful to distinguish between L&D training and performance management and consulting.

7:45
And I think that's part of the value that we offer as L&D professionals to our stakeholders that we consult with them and say, you know what, this may not be a training program, it may be more of a conversation to have with your direct report.

8:03
So I think that is really essential to positioning the L&D function as a strategic partner rather than just somebody who's executing orders

Exactly rather than saying, here's what you want, is it really what you need? So we help them distill, is this performance management or is it a training or is it a one-to-one coaching? Frequently we determine that it is a situation where it should be a one-to-one coaching, right, right.

8:39
And so, Joan, I think this is the part that really takes the longest time because this is where you really get the foundation right. So after that, it's a matter of identifying if training is the required solution, then it's a matter of identifying which modality, and so on.

8:59
So what would you say to L&D professionals, how much of the time and effort should really go into this consultative piece to begin with? Vis a vis the rest of the entire design and development process.

9:14
Absolutely. I would say that as you said, Shalini, you use the term consultative, and I would say that that is the strongest characteristic that you can develop as a learning and development professional and that is being able to discern and help them distill what their needs are.

9:37
So Joan, I was just wondering, can you share examples of innovative L&D initiatives you've implemented in the past and what were the results achieved?

9:50
Yes, our approach is pretty much following Stephen Covey’s philosophy, which is ‘begin with the end in mind’. And what does that mean? That means it's our first step in consulting with our stakeholders to determine what outcomes, what behaviours are you aiming for, what's your current state and where do you want to be? So that's our foundation in determining any approach.

10:52
I would say, Shalini, that one of our innovative approaches was forced upon us with the COVID pandemic. So I had to re-engineer all of our trainings to reflect having that engaging and connecting experience to people that were isolated, and that was all of us. So making the learning and development programs more connecting, more personal. It was interesting because what was really fun is that we got to meet people's pets, people's spouses, people's children, and someone might see a guitar in someone's home and say, oh, do you play guitar? So we really tried to make that a benefit to connecting with each other personally.

11:39
Another innovative approach that we did was with the help of Comlab India, we had a policy program getting recruitment right and this was extremely successful in regionalizing the content and making sure that it was structured in a certain way, one to one and self-paced, so that people could dip in and out as required. So that really went very well. And to add on to that digital program, we developed a role play program in which we were able to practice the theories of recruitment and interviewing with role play examples and actual actors.

12:26
So that became the Part 2 of our Getting Recruitment Right project with Commlab India.

12:34
So Joan, all these were during in the during the pandemic or immediately after the pandemic, if I remember correctly. So, when we think of onboarding, typically we expect a face-to-face interaction, you know, an in classroom presence. So how do you really overcome the challenges that learners must have felt going through a virtual onboarding? Because I don't think it was as common then as it is now.

13:05
That's exactly right, Shalini. And we have a wonderful leader in our organization who has taken on
onboarding to make it connecting and personal. And her theme is ‘moments that matter’. And that is helping, managers determine what are the touch points I should be having with my direct reports?
What indicators do I have that maybe they're feeling a little lost, maybe they'd like a little more connection?

13:37
And of course, we are moving a little bit towards some in person meetings and even that one in person meeting, maybe if it's only once a year, tends to really connect people forever.

13:54
And this is especially interesting because Joan, you mentioned that you played a key role a pivotal role in helping Taylor and Francis transition to this remote working mode. So I'm sure during this pandemic, it was an eye opener for many of us who could not envision working remotely or training remotely. But yes, I think with very deliberate in person or face to face interactions, you just bring it all together.

14:31
Shalini, I am so proud that Taylor and Francis didn't just say, OK, here's your laptop, go home.
We're closing the office. But we had massive amounts of support in our employee assistance program, in coaching our managers how to take people through this difficult transition, and also to bring out maybe some of the advantage for some people of working from home. So we really have done a lot of hand holding and staying close to the emotions of the people in our organization, to really care for them as individuals for whatever they need to transition into this difficult period

15:17
I think Joan, one of your passions is performance management, right? So I'm sure there were a lot of lines blurring and boundaries being stretched through this whole transition period. And I think we all probably discovered new ways of working, which actually really worked, perhaps in some ways even better than the old.

15:41
Exactly. Shalini people had as a silver lining to this cloud that we had some flexibility in their working hours. I think that most of us, if you ask, we're working a lot longer hours than we did in the past. But the difference is maybe we can, for some individuals take a break for childcare, take a break for picking up a child from school. and taking that time, maybe you're a night person, so you might be working more at night rather than the standard, I don't know, eight to five, nine to four schedule that was prior in face to face.

16:23
So Joan, how did remote training, digital learning is here to stay. Of course, it may have, you know, gotten the pace might have gotten accelerated since the pandemic, but now it's pretty much here to stay.

16:41
So what are your views on where it is particularly impactful and where it's not suitable? Because you managed to really accomplish a very successful onboarding, a virtual onboarding. So I'm sure a lot of the preconceived notions that probably were in place went for a toss because we tend to think that certain things are only dealt with in a live classroom. So what are your views? Of course onboarding is one impactful area where you made a difference and drove results. Are there any other areas where you feel digital learning is particularly impactful?

17:23
Absolutely. Well digital learning as you said Shalini is here to stay, and we welcome it because it has literally opened up worlds of knowledge previously difficult to access. It enables people to access content asynchronously, through their own channels in their own time zones.

17:43
Digital learning as a stand-alone works extremely well for compliance policy training, enables learners to absorb information again at their own pace, and it has important considerations for accessibility, for sight impairments, hearing impairments, and that's so necessary. And that's another foundation that we have at Taylor and Francis, a focus on accessibility for everyone now. So it's great as a stand alone for straightforward compliance training, for announcing new policies, procedures, for announcing new technologies.

18:33
And as I mentioned, Comlab India has helped us take a launch into our first digital only compliance program. In addition to stand-alone value, digital learning helps us with a precursor and pre work by providing theory and content upfront. Then we follow by the more impactful instructor led formats, for example, management training, performance management, interpersonal communication skills, influencer relationship building through discussions, where participants share with each other their challenge and successes.

19:17
So it's not so much that digital learning is not appropriate or impactful in some places, it's where it occurs in the cycle of learning, as a pre work for those communication skills that of course had better impact when it's peer learning and people come together and share. Here's what's worked for me, here's what I'm stuck with. Those are very necessary discussions for those type of interpersonal programs.

19:47
I think increasingly this flipped classroom mode is becoming the norm. You set the foundation, you allow people to learn at their own pace and their own time so that you don't waste the valuable face to face time on dealing with some of the foundational aspects and you reserve it for skill practice, skill building, and sharing challenges and probably best practices. So there's a lot of collaborative learning happening in those sessions.

20:18
Absolutely. We really value peer learning. And Shalini, I should also mention that my goal and my passion is creating a safe space for people to come forward and to make sure that they're heard and that they can speak out. And many times someone comes to me and says, you know what? May I have a one-to-one session with you? There's something I'd like to address with you personally about a direct report challenge I'm having. So again, these workshops provide an outlet for sharing peer learning, but also for someone to come forward for one-to-one coaching. I think that really expands or broadens our role significantly because you kind of get into performance consultancy as well, where you're really equipping and enabling people to perform. It may not necessarily be related to a lack of skill or a lack of training, but the more emotional side of it or the softer side of it.

21:33
Thank you, Shalini. That brings me to an excellent point and thank you for bringing that up. The emotional connection can be overlooked sometimes. So we have a great management boot camp program and a master class, and we talk about a TuneIn tool and questions that you should ask your individual direct reports so that you're managing them in the best way, because we're all motivated by different things.

22:08
Do you really know that about your direct reports so you can manage them the most effectively and the most supportively? So that's our one of our key focuses.

22:17
Wow. So do you have some training materials in this space as well, Joan or maybe some job aids or some performance support materials?

22:32
Absolutely. We have on our ‘my development platform’ massive amounts of resources that list our calendar of instructor-led training resources. We have learning pathways. We also access LinkedIn learning for all of our colleagues, and we also are working on some subject matter expert-led programs that we now have. So we are empowering our stakeholders to take on training for their particular area or region. So that's been very exciting.

23:10
So, Joan, would you say that increasingly L&D managers and L&D leaders are helping transform the organizational culture too, not just within the L&D space, but directly or maybe indirectly influencing the entire organizational culture? Or would that be a reach to make a statement like that?

23:37
Shalini, I think that's a very healthy reach because I think it's a key part of our role. We are to feed up to our senior leaders what's going on in these workshops, in these surveys. So that's very important, Shalini, the point that we like to feed information from the field to our senior leaders who are very focused on our overall organizational goals. So yes, we have fed that up to our senior leaders and they are extremely receptive, fortunately, in our organization to listening and to aligning or maintaining a positive culture.

24:23
Wonderful, wonderful. So Joan, coming to the next question, there's so much happening every single day. How do you stay abreast of industry trends and best practices in L&D?

24:38
Well, Shalini, you've just hit on the favorite part of my profession, and that is continuous learning, growth mindset. I am a research nerd and I'm happy to say that my programs and resources, to please me, have to be the most current, fresh, and with themes that address our very specific needs in the moment, or trends that are happening, or better yet, anticipating what the organization may need in the future.

25:06
So I'm always on LinkedIn. I have over 500 connections in all different areas and all different industries, and I monitor their postings. I belong to certain groups for L&D and also for the publishing industry.
I read all new insights. There are amazing thought leaders on LinkedIn that I've learned so much from.
And they also reach out to me when they have questions, as I reach out to them with questions when I'm building a new program or want a fresh viewpoint. So I want to make sure that my participants gain the value of the most cutting-edge, externally and internally, current to suit their needs.

25:53
Sounds wonderful. So I think this community of practice gets stronger and stronger when there is this back and forth and people are actually really sharing their real-life challenges and solutions.

26:07
Absolutely. You know, Shalini, we have a very interesting generational thing that we've been noticing.
I will be leading a workshop, say on feedback, supportive feedback. And we have models for it and specific templates that we help empower managers with. And someone will say, I just got promoted to manager and wow, now I know where my manager got this feedback template from. It's from a course that they took. So I love this generational knowledge and as you said, community of learning that we're all on the same page because I think that's the most critical skill in learning and development.

26:48
How to give supportive feedback so that you keep your direct reports engaged, motivated, and most of all, having them see the bigger picture of how their role contributes to the larger vision of the organization. And I think that's the key motivator.

27:11
And with L&D playing an increasingly important role all across the employee life cycle, not just when it comes to development, I think this is absolutely the way to go.

27:24
That's right. And Shalini, to your point about all the whole process starting with our onboarding and we do certain things for our new hires that acquaint them with Taylor and Francis ahead of time and then take them through the cycle. And those touch points that we mentioned before, the ‘moments that matter’ that you are familiar with at Comlab helping us through the recruitment program.

27:48
And so what you were saying Shalini is that L&D is actually present along the whole cycle from new hire onboarding to recruitment to then having that very important. We have check at the three-month mark with people and at six months. And of course the annual performance review which we consider as just a summation of the year. We never want to be like those old, old ways of oh I'm nervous and I'm hearing all these things that I should have done. No, that's not the Taylor and Francis way.

28:34
We are supportive and we love to encourage one to one conversations that are occurring at least once a week with our direct reports so that we can solve small problems before they become bigger. And that is from the wisdom of Bruce Tolgin, another wonderful author whose insights we have used.

29:11
OK, that's really interesting, Joan. So is there any formal mechanism to capture this feedback to perhaps pass on to L&D?

29:26
Yes, we are regularly engaged with onboarding feedback, with the three-month feedback, and we encourage open conversations with everyone so that they can share with us and feel comfortable sharing with us challenges, things we need to address. Out of this also comes skill gaps. And as you said Shalini, the important distinction between is this is performance management not a training.

30:00
Yeah, thank you Joan.

30:01
I think it looks it really is heartening to see so more and more organizations ahead, the very progressive and ahead of this entire co-ownership aspect of L&D and the business. You know, you co own certain things and not just leave it to say just HR or just leadership or just the managers. It's wonderful.

30:31
Shalini, that is such an important point because as you said, it is a partnership. In the old days, HR was the department you went to to fill out forms or to have disciplinary processes. Now it is a partnership with L&D and the whole organization.

30:50
All right, so Joan, how do you perceive the evolving landscape of L&D in the context of advancing AI tools and technology?

31:06
Shalini, I see it as a seemingly limitless and fascinating new world that we're open to on a smaller level, just with dipping into some ChatGPT in Microsoft Copilot, it will be helping us reduce the amount of time spent on some maybe tedious manual tasks that will accelerate us and enable us to spend more time focused on bigger projects.

31:36
Absolutely. And Joan, a couple of months back, I was actually testing this AI tool. notebook LM and that promised a lot of help for research. This AI tool only takes whatever sources you feed it. It doesn't go crawling all over the web to add its own content. So it's meant as a great tool for researchers. So I was really stunned by its capabilities. I was wondering, do you use any AI tools at work at Taylor and Francis apart from these kind of the ChatGPT and Copilot, is there any tool for research perhaps or for editing and so on?

32:26
Shalini, I don't have information on that specifically. I'm sorry. I know that our researcher services and our journals people are currently working with that, but that would be no worries.

32:38
Sorry, sorry.

32:39
No worries, no worries.

32:43
So, Joan, one final question, what advice can you share with LND professionals wanting to grow their careers?

32:55
Very good question Shalini. I would say following in the footsteps in my footsteps and the footsteps of many of my colleagues. Make LinkedIn your career development partner. Seek out profiles of L&D professionals and check out what groups they follow, which thought leaders they follow, what certifications do they hold.

33:22
Also, seek out an L&D mentor either within your organization or outside of your organization and return the favour. We have to say that because we know people are very busy. Mentoring does take time but return the favor by offering to do some research for them or volunteering to be maybe a test subject for a new employee initiative. In addition, I would say get a good solid foundation in the content. And Shalini, you have highlighted throughout this podcast interview so much about the emotional connection with people. So I would suggest that to anyone growing their career in L&D, get to that emotional connection first. Because unless you connect with someone emotionally, the learning doesn't absorb. If someone is nervous or someone is intimidated, the knowledge doesn't enter. So I would say for a solid foundation in this type theory, I would recommend books to start with, by the best experts in the field, of course.

34:36
Who do you think I will recommend? Of course, the Taylor and Francis imprint, routledge.com. These are my Bibles that I give to everyone seeking to polish their career in learning and development. And I would say again, in addition to going to routledge.com, I would say start with the book Adult Learning and Development. It's a gold standard. And another one, The Ways of Learning by Alan Pritchard. So I would say starting with those two on routledge.com would be a solid investment in learning theory. 5
And again, what you've been referring to that emotional connection on how people learn.

35:22
Thank you so much, Joan. Those were a lot of interesting insights that you've shared today and it's very exciting to be in L&D at this point because it's becoming boundary less, in a sense our function and that's exciting.

35:48
It is exciting. Before we were just classroom trainers, right Shalini? Now look at what we've evolved into – full on consultants, sometimes therapists, coaches and most of all, an important sounding board, aren't we, Shalini for people that are coming that may not know what they want or need or how exactly to empower themselves or direct reports? So I love that term that we're boundary-less.

36:17
Shalini, that's a great term.

36:21
And Joan, since you mentioned psychological safety, I was just thinking that in a lot of ways, the L&D manager is in a very strong position to listen to the actual concerns of people struggling to perform because they may not be that forthcoming with their first line manager. But when you do a survey among the actual learners, prospective learners, they're likely to give you the actual challenges that they face, which puts you in a very strong position to really address their pain point and come up with a solution. So I think that's a very satisfying part of L&D.

36:55
Yes, it is Shalini. That's very satisfying. What’s so great in these workshops is that when people are having this great peer-learning and with all our interactive discussions, they are so encouraged to find out, hey, I thought it was just me that had that challenge, right? And then they find out that so many of their peers have the same issue. So that brings them to a level of comfort, and they might even share with a peer. And that's the beauty of having these workshops. People are connecting with each other virtually who may not have the chance otherwise. So I think that's the purpose of our programs, right, Shalini? We tend to bring together people to share their insights and then they develop relationships after the program. Or at least as you said, they're in a safe space to realize, wow, I can be open and look, other people have the same issue.

37:54
Absolutely.

37:56
And on the flip side of that, they are able to share tips and successes that other people have done that they can try themselves and apply. So I would say, Shalini, what you keep saying, we are so much broader than just learning and development. We are true consultative partners in the organization, and I think you've summed it up very well.

38:20
Thank you, Joan, once again. And I'm sure listeners have a lot of food for thought. And thank you once again for graciously accepting our invite to be the speaker of this podcast. And listeners, thank you for your time and do stay tuned for our upcoming podcasts. Thank you, Joan, once again

It is my pleasure. I wish you a wonderful evening, Shalini and a great evening or morning. To everyone listening, thank you so much.

38:51
Take care.

38:52
Thank you.

38:54
Bye.