Debbie Richards  
Both coaching and mentoring isn't always done by someone who's been in the business for a long time. It may be somebody who has just graduated from college or just, you know, come into the industry, I think that we need to be open and willing to listen. And, and, and understand the other person's perspective

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders tend to shy away from. And we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I am your host, as always, Jeff Ma. And I want to have conversations and hear stories from real people, build real businesses and see where love might fit into that equation. My guest today is Debbie Richards. Debbie is a learning architect, self proclaimed geek and early adopter of learning technologies. She's passionate about working with and mentoring other talent development professionals. And she's the past president of the Association for Talent Development, or ATD, the Houston chapter, and a past national advisor for ATT chapters as well. She sits on the board of directors for L&D cares, which is a nonprofit providing coaching mentoring and resources for a town development professionals so that they can thrive and flourish. So I'm so excited to have her here today. And I want to welcome her here on the show. And I'm excited to have her share wisdom and experience around coaching and mentoring and other topics. So Debbie, welcome to the show. How are you?

Debbie Richards  
I'm fine. Thank you, Jeff. Happy to be here.

Jeff Ma  
You know, before we hit record here, you had just mentioned a trip you just had. And I just wanted to hit it real quick, because you won a very, very big award this past week. Can you tell us what that was?

Debbie Richards  
Yes. So I was at learning 2022 in Orlando, that is a conference for learning leaders in our industry. And I it's it's sponsored by The Learning guild, which is an association for people in the talent development world. It's a free organization to join in, I would recommend that anybody is interested in talent development, join that association. But they have an honor called the Guild Master. And the Guild Master is the idea of recognizing members who've contributed to the community, both quantity and quality of content. And it's for outstanding contributions to the Learning Technologies industry. So I was excited to get that award. It was unexpected. And I joined about 20 Plus professional learning professionals in our industry, attaining that award. Oh, I'll show you.

Jeff Ma  
Oh, yeah. Beautiful. It's a beautiful plaque. I love it. Congratulations. That'd be That's amazing.

Debbie Richards  
Thank you.

Jeff Ma  
So let's start by talking about the the journey the path I guess from wherever you'd like to begin the past and all the way to GuildMaster. Where Where does your what is your where's your passion come from along the way, what what has made you kind of arrive at where you are today.

Debbie Richards  
So I, I've always been interested in technology ever since I was a little girl. I have a computer science background was a robotics program early on in my career. And I've done a number of things. I live in Houston, Texas. And when I moved to Houston, I didn't have I didn't know too many people and I wanted to get involved in our community and meet other people. So I joined a local association, which is the Association for Talent Development. And it is an community that allows you to network with people that are like you. I know sometimes when we talk about what we do for work, sometimes people don't understand what we do. I know when I used to describe what I did to my nephews and nieces, I would talk about it and they would say well, so you work in an office, you send people email, you talk to them on the computer, and that's what you do all day long. And you know, just trying to explain to people what you do is sometimes difficult. So having a group of people that you can hang out with and talk to that do things that are very similar to what you do and and they can share experiences. You can gripe about things or you can celebrate things is wonderful. When I joined the US sociation it was a very different Association in for me as a technology person, I still kind of felt lost because I couldn't find people that had my love for technology and who were interested in pioneering, learning into technology. And this was in the early ages of when we were just putting things out on the internet. That kind of ages me, but I've been around the industry for a long time. And I was at I remember I was at a meeting one time, and this, I was complaining to this woman, about how the topics and things that that the association discussed, were not very interesting to me, I couldn't find people that were doing the same thing or had the same passion. And I remember this woman said to me, she says, Put your big girl pants on and get it started. So that was a, that was a mantra for me. And I took that to heart. So I started bringing in technology and searching out for those people, and then bringing them to the association. And that has been my passion for many, many years is introducing people to technology, making it easy for them. I taught a class yesterday to a group of people that worked at a company on how to use a software package to create elearning. And we had people in the class that had all different levels of experience. They some who were instructional designers and had formal training and developing online learning and some who didn't, that were just subject matter experts. And it was my job to help them understand how to use this tool to create learning, and to give them enough information so they could get started. And, and be successful. So I'm excited about that. I'm also very excited about bringing in people into the organization. So the talent development organization overall. And I mentor a number of people. I have a number of folks that that contact me. And they they either need like one time advice or ongoing support. And I feel like particularly in our industry, that is something that that we all can share and help with. And that's part of the mantra for L&D cares, which is our nonprofit organization is we're there to help people who have been either displaced, or who are trying to get into the talent development field. And our current mission right now. In fact, we've been talking about this week, and we're, we're trying to help is that help the number of people who've been displaced at Amazon, especially those in HR and L&Dd trying to help them coach them mentor them as well.

Jeff Ma  
Amazing doing so much have done so much. Do you? Are you still in touch with the person who told you to put your big girl pants on?

Debbie Richards  
I am. She's retired now. But you know, I keep in touch with her. I keep I let her know what I'm doing and how things are going and and she's still she's a coach for me and a mentor as well.

Jeff Ma  
That's amazing. Does she know the impact that her words have had on your life? Oh, she does. Awesome. So I guess just last mentioned, L&D cares. And this mission, you're, you're on? Can you talk a little bit about I guess learning and development in general as as, like these professionals, and what's what's unique about this, this realm that you've experienced,

Debbie Richards  
so, um, talent development, learning and development is a part of sometimes it's a part of human resources in enterprise organizations. Other times it's a separate component. It has its own silo, but it is the the agency within an enterprise organization that helps their employees with professional development. Now, some of that professional development may be compliance training. So for example, I've been working with a company as a contractor and so even though I'm not an employee, the company I like, like all the contractors, like all the employees, had to take a course in cybersecurity. So we had to, to learn how to set up and, and use passwords. And you know, I've been doing this for a long time, but I'll just tell you, I took that course and I learned something new. And so there are some things that are acquired by different companies that may be safety related, that may be things around cybersecurity or harassment in the workplace. And then there are other courses that are courses on how to use software, how to communicate and work with others in the workplace. During the pandemic, we had to push out training on how to use communication tools like Microsoft Teams. So, L&D has plays a very important part in the organization to help educate and promote professional development. And there are a number of people who are very passionate about that. There are four, there's so many different components to that. In most enterprise organizations, you have a learning management system that employees go out, and they take, they log in, they take their training, they can see their transcripts, they can search for classes, and those courses may be developed in house or they may obtain those courses through an agency, for example, SkillSoft or LinkedIn learning or something like that. But now, the learning management system is a little more holistic, it has other components. So it may have a talent development component as well. So it may have the ability for people to have succession planning or performance or any number of things. So it's the hub of of that, that skill set. And recently, learning and development has taken on the task of helping with DEI as well. So a number of the companies that I work with, they've established communities. So they have a community for women in the workplace, or different minorities, veterans, any number of, of, of communities that meet and talk about different topics, and they're able to share experiences, and provide support for each other. Because of that, because of the diversity of all these different types of, of things, the talent development, learning and development DNI, there are so many opportunities for people to come into our field. And there are, amazingly, there are a number of job opportunities. Something that we see we've been seeing a lot of are people that are leaving education and wanting to come into the enterprise learning. I'm a little sad about that, because we really need teachers that are working in our public schools. But we've seen a lot of the shift of those people moving into enterprise organizations and, and wanting to work with adult learning. And it's, it's a little different than then teaching in the public system.

Jeff Ma  
For sure, I know a lot of your focus is around talent development, learning, development, and also mentoring. Where do you think you get this passion from? Where is this What draws you to it?

Debbie Richards  
I, for me, personally, it's just thinking about the ability to, to help others to help in the community, because we have, it's up to us to shape and, and to share our experiences for the for the future. You know, if we've spent a lot of time building an organization, getting it the, you know, getting it to a certain point, I certainly don't want to just leave without a good succession plan, you know, want to leave with information. So people can handle different scenarios, if something happens, they understand how to handle it. And they're able to communicate, they're able to take on those roles. And it's a challenge. I mean, a lot of the associations that we belong to, the majority of people in the association are volunteers. There may be a couple of people who are paid, but everybody else is donating their time. And so sometimes things go by the wayside because we're really busy trying to just accomplish the big tasks. But there are a lot of little tasks that we need to do to keep the association's going as well.

Jeff Ma  
That makes sense. And, you know, the reason I was so excited to have you come talk today is because we we, with love as a business strategy and everything we talk about, and everything we work towards. It's about organizational success, but it really always boils down to individual behavior and individual mindsets and all these things and A huge variable and factor in that is coaching and mentoring and learning systems and how these norms and these behaviors, you know, spread within organizations and how they're gained and how they're retained. And so I really wanted to pick your brain today on kind of love as we just sum it up in one word is really made up of so many different behaviors, right from, from building trust, to being vulnerable, to having empathy, all these things. But there's this element of coaching and mentoring through those things, and helping others achieve those things. It's just, it's just paramount. Rather, it doesn't happen on your own it needs, it needs the leaders to not only demonstrate it, but then guide others through it. And it needs people to lift each other up through it. So I really wanted to get your perspective and maybe your experience in in this specific arena of coaching and mentoring and learning, right? How, what have you seen that works? Or doesn't work? I know, it's a very broad question. But I just I just want to know, like, what does love look like in your in your experience?

Debbie Richards  
Yeah, I think it starts with an open mind. Because both coaching and mentoring isn't always done by someone who's been in the business for a long time. It may be somebody who has just graduated from college or just, you know, come into the industry, I think that we need to be open and willing to listen. And, and, and understand the other person's perspective. And, yeah, I've read the the book as well. And I think that's a theme that runs throughout the business, the book as well is that you need to, you need to put yourself in other people's shoes. And and I think that's true with anything that has to do with both coaching and mentoring is understanding where somebody else is coming from understanding what you can do to help them and whether it's something that you know, that you give them a, you have a conversation, and you come out of that conversation and say, Okay, here's what I'm going to do. And here's what you're going to do. And you have that you have that commitment to each other to accomplish that task. And you know that that task is going to help both parties, it's important to have a have that type of relationship. And again, I've I've been coached and mentored by young people, and I learned so much from them. And I think that's the mindset we have to have is that it's not always a you know, a one way street, it goes both ways. And we can learn from each other.

Jeff Ma  
What's your your favorite coaching and mentoring success story.

Debbie Richards  
So I will say, so, when when, when you're mentoring, we're trying to help other people grow and develop. And again, that person could be a younger person or an older person. And for me, the the kinds of things that I've really enjoyed doing is, is having somebody have their first experience with technology. So I right now I'm doing a lot of work in virtual reality. And I'll just say in general, when I put somebody in a virtual reality headset for the first time, and they have that experience, it is just a joy to hear them. And to hear them talk. I worked with a group just recently when we're working on a training project, and I put somebody in the headset, they'd never been in headset before walk them through an experience. And then they they tried the experience a couple of times and then we brought somebody else in who also had never had that experience. And I watched the person who I just had had just taught teach the other person and walk them through and I mean it had been a matter of like 15 minutes and and he did a great job of taking this this other person in and I was just sitting there going yes, you know it's it's just a joy to see that happen. So for me that's a that's an example of of something that that gives me great pleasure is to to see people experience new technologies.

Jeff Ma  
Can you help me I guess in your words define the difference between coaching and mentoring. Is there a difference and what do you Yeah,

Debbie Richards  
so No, for mentoring, I think you use the your knowledge to help somebody else grow. So it's the idea of, of, you know, like I have been in technology for a long time, I have also done a number of different jobs. I've worked in a corporation, I've worked on my own. At the learning 2022 conference, there were a number of people who came up to me and asked me about about starting their own business or becoming a consultant. And they wanted me to give them some advice and some, some things that they should do. So I shared my experiences and my skills with them to help them with that. So I consider that being a mentor, somebody who's a coach, not only do they do those sorts of things, but they ask the person that they're working with, what goals they have, and then they help them achieve those goals. So it's slightly different.

Jeff Ma  
Are you saying that coaching encompasses mentoring? Like, are you to coach you have to mentor but not vice versa? Are they two separate things?

Unknown Speaker  
I kind of think sometimes the lines get blurred? Yeah, but but I think for if you're coaching someone, there is a clear objective, so that, you know, they say I want to learn this by x date, or I want to be able to be proficient in something by x date, and then you help them along the way. A mentor could be a one time mentor, or it could be a lifelong mentor. I had a wonderful mentor for many years, her name was Sandy State, and she's no longer with us. But she was someone who I would reach out to because she helped me along the way with her experiences, she had worked in enterprise learning for many, many years. The first time I wanted to do a presentation, I'd never done a presentation to an association. And she had done that, I reached out to her for advice. And, and she provided a lot of knowledge and information for me. So in that stage, she was a mentor, but she also coached me through my goal of becoming a speaker, and she helped me achieve that goal. So now I speak probably at 10 Plus conferences a year. And I feel like I owe a lot of that to Sandy.

Jeff Ma  
That's amazing. I'm really curious, what in your experience makes like what qualities or behaviors really make a good coach and mentor?

Debbie Richards  
Um, I think, number one, I think it's somebody who has really good listening skills, who can who can listen to the person that they're mentoring or coaching, and they're able to, to format in their mind, something that would help that person. To me, that's the number one thing that they need to do is, like I said, they if you are doing a coaching, you're trying to achieve a certain goal mentoring may last for years. It's, it's something that it's a long term relationship, whereas coaching may be, you know, just let's let's work on this specific thing that you want to accomplish. And the person who is helping needs to understand the difference, and needs to be able to relate to the person that they're working with.

Jeff Ma  
That makes sense. In my mind, I feel like a strong, like mentor mentee relationship includes a lot of, you know, in my mind, at least, it feels like it requires a lot of trust and vulnerability. That between the two, the relationship really, would you say that's true? And if so, you know, how do you go about, you know, properly building that in that relationship?

Debbie Richards  
Well, there's, if you want to become a professional coach, there are a lot of things that you can do. There is the there's actually Association of Professional coaches that you can join. There's a lot of of training that you can go through. And but you don't necessarily have to you don't necessarily have to do that. I think that that the that you've got to have like I said this at that ability of listening, you need to if you were like a manager and you're coaching or mentoring support, you know somebody who is under you, understanding your particular goal, like you may be mentoring somebody or coaching them to achieve their goal. And your goal is to retain them as an employee or to meet certain business goals as well. And how are you going to? How are you going to do that? Communication is huge. For in any case, and then just, it just kind of depends on the nature of it of the coaching program that you're doing?

Jeff Ma  
Yeah. And I think the context that I'm asking under is, I think many of the listeners are in leadership roles already. So like various right team leads all the way up to CEOs, or whatever it may be. And I'm, I know that for them. There's this connection that at least I draw to this role that the leader should be a mentor should be a coach and be playing that role for their team at any given time. I'm not sure everybody understands what that might entail. And so regardless of the type of team, that type of leader, you know, what would you what advice do you have for for them as they're building their team and growing their team and how to move in that direction.

Debbie Richards  
So for the mentoring standpoint, I think it's really important to be an active listener. And to get an idea and to talk with the person that you're going to mentor prior before you enter into that solution. You want to make suggestions, maybe you make connections for them, you give them a connection to something that's going to help them so for example, I'm actually mentoring a young lady right now. And she's wanting to get into learning and development. And so I made the connection and, and suggested that she join our local ATD chapter and attend a meeting, which she did, and she, she met some people there that are probably going to help her with her her journey to become a member of the l&d community, from the coaching side. The idea is, is to help somebody find a solution, but you don't tell them how to do it, and you don't lead them to that solution, you help them find a solution, you listen to the person, you help them identify a plan or a solution. And then and, and then help them actually achieve that plans or achieve that goal or whatever they're they're trying to do. So the with, with, with mentoring, you may have different choices, different goals and different things that you're doing. Coaching is much more structured. And, and it's it may have a shorter time period. And usually, you may have a coach that's within your organization and a mentor might be outside of your organization. They might be somebody who works for a different company or somebody that you meant on you met on LinkedIn or at a networking event or conference, who, who you think could help you with what you're trying to do how you're trying to build your career, or you're at a fork in the road, and you need to make a decision. This was something I talked about at learning 2022 Is there are a number of people who need to make a decision, do they want to become a manager, you know, they're at a certain level in their organization? And they say, Do I want to become a manager? Or do I just want to be a high performer? Or do I want to break away from this organization in and start out on my own? And so a mentor is a good person to talk to and to kind of help them with that as well. And you wouldn't do that you wouldn't have that conversation with somebody in your organization. You know, because that's, that could be very sensitive.

Jeff Ma  
Last question, for we are out of time here. But it may be I guess it started just it's starting to feel like an old topic. But I still always want to know, how has the pandemic in the changes that have happened the last two plus years affected these this your ability or what you've seen people's abilities to be in terms of effectively coaching and mentoring has it impacted and in what ways?

Debbie Richards  
Well, I think when we first started into the pandemic, people were getting used to communicating virtually because for before that I mean, we had meetings that were virtual, and we had things that we were doing. But that wasn't our only option, you know, we could go meet for coffee, we could do things differently. And when we were thrown in the pandemic, to only meeting virtually, there was a challenge to that, because there isn't a sense where you can, you know, you feel like you're really making eye contact, you're really having that personal discussion. And it's carried through because now a lot of companies are saying, well, this worked out great, we can downsize our organization, we don't have to have everybody come into the office, a lot of companies have, have Hotelling that they're using, where people can go in and they can, they don't have a real office at their organization, they reserve a space to come in for meetings or, or, or to just work in the office. And so there isn't that sense of being able to go over to the watercooler where, or the break room and have a conversation. I am actually mentoring a young woman who was hired into an organization and she, the only way that she has communicated with others in her department and in your company is virtually she has never met her boss in person, she's never met any of the people she work works with IT person. And so she feels really isolated. You know, she understands why we're doing that. And, hey, we used to do that. I mean, we're black enterprise organizations or global enterprise, and yet people working all over the world. But you know, we would come together at different times, and, and meet and break bread together. So it does feel a little bit isolated. And we have to figure out a way to break that and to, to reach through the screen, and have that have the mentoring and have the coaching where people feel like they're still having that, that bond between them. And I'm I don't know, for some people that that works, others, and they just can't, they still just can't do it, they really want to meet in person. And I know, with our local ATD chapter, that's been a big challenge. Once you, you know, you live in the city of Houston, it's 60 Miles anyway you go. And to get people to come to an in person meeting now is difficult, because people say, Well, you know, before the pandemic, I would come, because we, you know, we didn't have any other option. But now you could have a webinar instead of having me come to them. And I could just jump on that webinar, and I don't have to leave my house or my office, I would prefer a webinar. And you know, it's a matter of, you know, if you, if you go to an in person meeting, you're not just spending one hour, you may be spending three hours combing in traffic to the location, and then going back. And we really have to make a commitment to doing that in person meeting. But it's so important, I think it's it's so important for us to meet in person, at least once in a while. And, you know, we don't necessarily have to hug, but just to share a conversation across a table. And to work together is very important. And I hope that our society doesn't lose that.

Jeff Ma  
Agreed. Debbie, thank you so much for spending your time today and chatting with us. And I've learned a lot. I really appreciate the perspective and clarity around coaching and mentoring that you gave us today. So truly, truly, thank you for coming on the show today.

Debbie Richards  
Thank you. And best of luck to you and your organization as well. The book is fantastic. I've been giving it to all my friends.

Jeff Ma  
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You segue perfectly into my closing plug, please check out the book, as Debbie says it's great. I'm not allowed to say it, but she said it. But check it out. It's available on the retailers that you might use. And thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. We try to get those these episodes out every week for you. And if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it. Please subscribe and rate and tell friends we love to share this community in this conversation with you. And so with that, I want to say thank you again to Debbie, thank you to the listeners and everybody have a great week.

Debbie Richards  
Thank you Jeff