For the first time ever, the “L&D Must Change Podcast” hit record in front of a live audience at the Learning Leadership Conference in Orlando. Here’s what happened.

October in Orlando gave us palm trees, conference buzz, and a little extra adrenaline while we recorded the “L&D Must Change Podcast” live at the Learning Leadership Conference 2025. No editing. No retakes. Just a room full of leaders, a few mics, and two powerhouse guests: Dr. Alaina Szlachta (proud data nerd) and David “DJ3” Jackson III (strategy-and-governance whisperer), to unpack how L&D earns real influence and credibility in the C-suite.

And yes, we got actual audience noise on the track. Proof of life. Proof of live.

The vibe: Conference energy meets C-suite real talk

There’s something electric about watching heads nod in unison when a point lands or hearing that low rumble of “mm-hmm” when someone says the thing everyone’s been thinking. Influence was the topic and the directive with an audience ready to engage as we discussed what really moves the needle in the boardroom.

We kicked off with a fast reality check: L&D gets ignored when we speak our language instead of the business’s. Yes, our nerdy L&D hearts soar when we talk about learning outcomes, the ADDIE model, engaging learning experiences, and more. Truth is executives don’t really care about the specifics of the learning profession. They’re focused on keeping the company moving forward. If we want to demonstrate that we care about that too (which we do, right?), then we need to start by speaking in business terms. Words like customer satisfaction, revenue, risk, and retention are the language of the C-Suite that we best adopt as our own.

Biggest ideas that stuck (& got applause)

1.  Speak business. Full stop.

DJ3’s take was refreshingly simple: leaders care about goals, risk, efficiency, and outcomes. Translate learning into those terms. Talk quarters and pipelines, not delivery cycles and objectives. Use your organization’s industry acronyms and metrics. In other words, their vernacular is your door code.

2. Find (& align to) your organization’s core metric

Dr. Alaina framed it brilliantly: every org has a core metric. That’s the thing that “keeps the C-suite up at night” and signals whether the mission is being fulfilled. It might be customer satisfaction, clinical quality, on-time delivery, safety, etc. Whatever it is for your organization, you’ll earn credibility by connecting every initiative to that core metric, not just to learning activity.

3. We are enablers of people, processes & systems

Dr. Alaina encouraged us to stop obsessing over “direct” ROI. Everyone in the organization contributes to ROI which means nobody owns the outcomes alone. L&D’s superpower is enabling the people, processes, and systems that collectively drive revenue, retention, and the core metric. It’s a story of dominoes that starts with intervention, leads to a change in behavior/process, impact KPIs, and then leads to a business result. That’s the story she encourages us to share.

4. For small/solo teams: Live by the “Big 3”

DJ3’s playbook for teams of one (or close): Strategy. Governance. Infrastructure.

• Strategy clarifies what you will and won’t do (and both are equally as important).
• Governance brings in cross-functional leaders as decision partners and champions.
• Infrastructure comes last. In other words, don’t buy tech before you know your strategy.

5. Data is a story, not a spreadsheet

Start with listening tours, audits, and interviews, then build data narratives that executives can act on. Pilot something small, capture the before/after, and use that story to earn a bigger swing. In DJ3’s case, he re-imagined onboarding and dropped first-year turnover from 41% to about 19% over a year. That’s a mic-drop data point.

Audience moments that made the session

This recording wasn’t all about the guests. Brittany, who is about to launch an L&D function as a one-woman show, asked how to make the biggest splash with the C-suite. The room leaned in.

The advice: spend your first month listening and building governance, not building courses. Invite leaders into a collaborative learning council; make them your champions and your pilots.

Josh, currently navigating a post-acquisition world, asked how to gain a voice (not just a seat) with a data-driven C-suite.

The answer: right-size the data, pick the KPIs that ladder to the core metric, and tell a clean before/after story. Start with 10 new hires, not 10 business units.

Behind the scenes: The fun stuff

• We opened by asking the audience to make noise so the recording would capture proof of “live.” (They delivered.)
• Conference soundtrack cameo: a burst of excitement from the room next door. Authenticity: 10/10.
• My favorite guest intros: “I’m a data nerd” (Alaina) and “I live for the light-bulb moment” (DJ3). Same energy, two lenses.

Practical takeaways you can use tomorrow

• Run a listening tour. Meet leaders where they are; learn their acronyms, timelines, and pain points.
• Name the core metric. Even if you’re 80% sure, socialize it and refine it with an exec sponsor or senior leader.
• Inventory your initiatives. Draw a straight line from each initiative to people/process/system outcomes, followed by KPIs, and finally the core metric. Kill or pause anything you can’t connect.
• Stand up governance. Create a cross-functional learning council. This leads to instant visibility, smarter decisions, and built-in advocates.
• Pilot with intention. Aim for a small win with a clear data story that will build momentum for a bigger mandate.
• Set the rule: Decisions require data. That expectation should flow both ways for both your team and your requesters.

My personal aha

Recording live forces clarity. You can’t hide behind jargon or bury the lead when the room is staring back at you. The experience reinforced a truth I want our field to embrace.  Influence is earned in the way we frame the work. When we show up speaking the language of the business, aligned to the core metric, and armed with data stories, we stop asking for a seat and start getting asked for our opinion.

If you only do one thing this week…

Just do something. (Hat tip to DJ3.) Book two listening meetings. Sketch your org’s core metric on a napkin. Map one current program to a KPI. Tiny actions, stacked consistently, create credibility faster than the perfect comprehensive plan that never ships.

Thanks to everyone in the room who laughed, questioned, and nodded along. And huge gratitude to Dr. Alaina Szlachta and David “DJ3” Jackson III for bringing the spark. If you missed the session, the episode is now live! Find it here or wherever you like to listen (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.). Download the episode and listen for the crowd. Do you hear it? That’s the sound of L&D stepping into its power. Let’s do this!

Image credit: ronstik

The post Hot Mic, High Stakes: Securing C-Suite Influence Live from Orlando appeared first on Learning Guild.

Many L&D professionals are on a quest to move from a role where they are regarded as transactional order takers to one where they are strategic business partners within their company. This is awesome! Working as strategic business partners, we can have a much larger impact, add more value, and solve talent challenges. But getting there can be complicated…

I wish it were as simple as L&D professionals deciding to do our work differently. But this work isn’t about us alone. The rest of the organization also needs to embrace this change. Many organizational leaders aren’t even aware there is a need to change or that L&D leaders could be more potent contributors. That means the move for learning leaders to work as strategic business partners is a cultural shift for the entire organization. It involves changing behavior patterns, expectations, and legacy thinking about L&D and what we do. How do we get there?  

The strategic business partner spectrum

The concepts of order taker vs. strategic business partner, while different, are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they exist on a spectrum, with order taker at one end and strategic business partner at the other. Most L&D leaders find themselves more toward the middle than either end or they move along the spectrum in both directions from day to day based on several different factors, like the emergence of new strategic initiatives, critical issues, or stakeholders.

Some stakeholders in the company may see you and your L&D team as strategic business partners while others, on the very same day, see L&D as order takers and treat you as such. It’s more likely that you will be working as an order taker and a strategic business partner simultaneously to varying degrees than entirely on one side or the other.

The goal is to position yourself closer to the strategic business partner end of the spectrum. The work to get there and stay there is continuous. Maybe the most surprising part? To get there you often need to start by taking the order.

Take the order; make the change

It turns out that taking orders or requests for training is a vital part of the change process for L&D to move from a transactional role to a more transformational working partnership with the business. If you have an order, you have an opportunity to begin making a change. Finding and capitalizing on that opportunity is a powerful strategy to start moving the needle down the spectrum. Begin this process through the use of the “4S Opportunities.”

The 4S opportunities are the most common ways to tap into and utilize an order to start moving the needle. They are:

1. Shift Mindset Opportunity
2. Strategic Approach Opportunity
3. Surprise and Delight Opportunity
4. Sure Thing Opportunity

The Shift Mindset Opportunity

Start working within the training order by shifting your mindset. Instead of thinking of yourself as performing a support function or as someone who takes and delivers on orders, think of yourself as a partner who is working with the business as an equal.

It’s akin to wearing the clothes for the job you want vs. the one you have. Remember, even those working more frequently as strategic business partners occasionally need to take and deliver on a training order. Imagine this is one of those times. How do you approach the work differently? What questions do you ask as a partner instead of a support person?

By acting like a partner within the request instead of waiting for the day you are seen as a partner, you will begin to crack open the door on what is possible. Your own mindset shift begins to enable the mindset shift of others.

The Strategic Approach Opportunity

When you must take a training order, chances are you won’t be able to proceed according to the ideal plan of doing a needs analysis first, followed by design and delivery. At least, that’s been my experience. The training is needed stat, the key influencers are already on board, and your ability to push back and ask questions is nonexistent.

But you still have an opportunity to be strategic: It’s the opportunity to put pieces in place that allow for the next request to be handled according to the ideal format. This means thinking about what you can do while fulfilling the order that also illuminates a better way for the future.

For example, can you add in measurement to show what did and did not work? Can you ask to do a full needs analysis after the fact? This might seem backward, but it can work. When I was asked to do a last-minute webinar series to “fix” a customer education issue—without any analysis and no time to negotiate—I agreed, but only with the stipulation that I be allowed to conduct a full analysis of the current customer education process after the webinar series was complete. I wanted to help the requesters make customer education even better; a full analysis would more specifically show us where customer education was working and where it was falling short.

The Surprise and Delight Opportunity

How can you add unexpected value to your work within this training order? Using your learning and performance expertise, get creative. Deliver something that they didn’t see coming or show how performance is positively impacted without being asked. In other words, don’t just fulfill the training order as it is written, expand on it to add value.

I recently spoke with Sarah, the learning and OD manager for a mid-sized retailer who shared how she received a request to update the company’s safety training videos. She added unexpected value through changes that resulted in a more effective and efficient training program. After interviewing managers to find out the most common safety mishaps, Sarah created shorter, more enjoyable videos that used humor and thus, were fun to watch. She set up a program that would deliver the shortened videos to employees throughout the year, when each incident was most likely to happen, instead of asking employees to watch all the videos at once. She also calculated the cost savings accrued from pulling employees off the floor for shorter periods of time. Finally, she put measurement in place to monitor the safety incidents before and after employees watched the videos. Note that the initial ask was simply to re-create training videos and the expectation was to do this the same way it had always been done. No one expected the surprise and delight of increased efficiency, measurement, and fun.

How might you surprise and delight the requester to exceed their expectations and highlight more of your skills and expertise?

The Sure Thing Opportunity

There is one opportunity that is completely within your control, no matter the request. It is a sure thing. You can always build and/or improve relationships with stakeholders and learn something about the business with each project you take on.

As you work to fulfill the training order, engage in conversations with the stakeholders to learn more about their business. Get curious about what it’s like to sit in their seat. Aim to discover more about how their portion of the business functions, their team’s biggest challenges and successes, and their goals. Listen to their responses as insights. Refer to what you learn when thinking about how to work more proactively with them in the future, especially when it comes to partnering with them to solve their challenges and achieve their goals.

Leverage opportunities to move the needle

I guarantee there will be times in your L&D career when you need to take and deliver on a training order, when conditions and processes are less than ideal. It doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t be able to work as a strategic business partner. Especially if you can find the opportunities to move the needle and work differently within that request.  

Stretch your strategic muscles

Join Jess Almlie at Learning 2024, where she’s presenting “What Learning Leaders Working as Strategic Business Partners Do Differently” and participating in Leadership Insights conversations on developing strategic relationships. While you’re there, select from dozens of strategic or skills-focused sessions, network with other learning leaders, and find solutions to some of your greatest challenges. Learning 2024 is December 4–6, 2024, in Orlando, Florida. Register today!

Can’t get to Orlando? Jess Almlie is also presenting at DevLearn, November 6–8, 2024, in Las Vegas. Catch her session, “Proven Tactics of L&D Leaders Who Work as Strategic Business Partners,” build new connections, and explore the latest in learning technology. Register for DevLearn today!

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