TLB #43🧠 Your career journey: Messy, Memorable, Meaningful
A bi-weekly inside scoop on all the hottest events, juicy discussions, and oh-so-many other exciting things happening in our dynamic L&D community. 🧡
Hello Shaker,
Here’s all that you’ll experience in today’s issue:
💡Learning Bites: Career Story Building
🗓️ Community Calendar: Be a part of the book club session on Radical Curiosity by Seth Goldenberg and many more local meet-ups happening.
🖌️ Community Creations: Welcome Joost Brouwer and Camilla Smerieri and Guillem Daniel as a part of the Core Team.
🔖 Resource Reel: A collection of resources on Instructional Videos, Innovation, AI and many more.
Learning Bites 💡
Imagine standing at a crossroads in your career, unsure of which path to take. What if the key to clarity wasn’t a perfect plan but a powerful story—your story?
This week, I explored a powerful session on Career Story Building by Ajay Jacob, part of the L&D Career Bootcamp by L&D Shakers, where storytelling was reimagined to navigate career decisions. Ajay’s approach isn’t just about telling your story—it’s about using storytelling as a mindset to explore, connect, and thrive in your career.
Here’s how storytelling can guide your next career move.
Top Three Takeaways
Lead with Curiosity and Embrace the Unknown: Career decisions don’t always come with clear paths. Like a child exploring a new world, approach opportunities with curiosity and the willingness to start as a beginner.
Craft and Share Your Story, Even If It’s Unpolished: Authenticity matters more than perfection. Share your thought process, work, and experiences—even if they’re messy. This builds relatability and trust.
Connect the Dots in Your Career Journey: Use the Hero’s Journey framework to identify your challenges, actions, and insights you gained. This structure can help you compellingly articulate your career story.
What This Means for Practice
Experiment with Sharing Your Work: Begin posting about your work or career reflections on LinkedIn, even if it's just a short note about what you’re learning.
For instance, share a LinkedIn post where you describe a problem you faced, how you approached it, and the outcome. This could be as simple as solving a communication gap on a team project. Use tools like Notion to organize ideas you can turn into stories for your network.
Here is a fantastic template to keep track of your career wins by The Foutain Institute—Brag Doc.
Craft Your Career Narrative for Interviews: Prepare for interviews by framing your career through the problem-journey-solution structure. For example, when asked about a challenge, share how you tackled it, the surprises along the way, and the insights you gained. Check out IDEO U’s Storytelling for Influence for actionable tips.
Map Your Hero’s Journey: Reflect on the key thresholds in your career: transitions, risks, and triumphs. Create a visual journey map using platforms like Miro to connect the dots between past roles and future aspirations. Draw parallels between your career and the Hero’s Journey—what was your “call to adventure,” and how did you grow through “trials”?
Leaving you all with this resource on storytelling by Jeremy Connell-Waite.
That’s all, Shakers! This week, reflect on how you can start sharing your work or experiences more authentically.
Coming Up Next
Community Calendar 🗓️
Our upcoming events are just around the corner, designed to inspire and inform. Make sure you're on the list—register using the link given below!
Community Creations 🖌️
Our community Podcast, UNSCRIPTED, is making a comeback—and it's going to be epic!
A massive shoutout to Joost Brouwer, who’s stepping up as our new Podcast Host and breathing life back into this project that has been waiting patiently for its moment.
Joost’s vision? To uncover and share real stories from L&D professionals who’ve experimented with frameworks, tools, and approaches—showing what worked, what didn’t, and what they learned. Expect raw, honest, and inspiring conversations.
We're on the hunt for guests who can share their experiences implementing learning models and frameworks. Whether it's the 5Di model, the 12 levers of transfer effectiveness, or any other game-changing approach, we want to hear about it!
Have you put these models into practice or know someone who has?
Please join me in welcoming Camilla Smerieri and Guillem Daniel as the new Event Catalysts for the Playground!
Both bring a shared passion for learning design and facilitation, and we’re so excited to see their magic in action. Welcome to the Core Team!
A huge shoutout to Susanne Heiss and Angela Dionysopoulou, who’ve held the Playground with such creativity, inspiration, and care over the past years. Your contributions have allowed us to experiment, play, and grow. Thank you!
Cool Stuff You Don’t Wanna Miss Out
Resource Reel 🔖
The 2024 TechSmith Video Viewer Trends Report by TechSmith contains how viewers feel about AI avatars, the main reasons people stop watching videos, the three things viewers think are most important for great videos and more.
Flow Game is a tool for creating an interactive reflection, dialogue and action space for groups, teams and individuals. Learn more about it if you have an important personal or group question to explore.
7 Experiment Playbooks for Product Innovation by The Foutain Institute to fill up your toolbox with the possible experiment methods, different innovation techniques in lots of different industries and many more.
How To Build Your Facilitation Skills (and Why You Should) again by The Foutain Institute if you are looking to boost your facilitation skills and get comfortable with ambiguity.
No More Beanbags: How People Leaders Can Ditch HR Stereotypes and Drive Results by Thinking Like Product Managers by Kaylee Davies where the author explores the case for creating a People function that’s an engine for growth, resilience, and performance—with a product mindset.
A Collection of 2025 Trends Reports by Amy, Iolanda, Ci En & Gonzalo from culture, innovation, future trends and many more. Explore at your own risk!
The Actual Science of Change: Richard Boyatzis, PhD, on PYP where Richard dives into what's the recipe for change, what are the key elements, and what are the tipping points to pay attention to. In other words, how do we put it all together and lead change effectively and not just creatively and heartfeltly?
AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching by Ethan Mollick, a course which will help educators use tools like ChatGPT, and provide practical guidance on how to use these technologies to enhance teaching and learning experiences.
〜See you soon
Till then, keep spicing up your learning! 🧠🧂
Sejaal