The question I dread being asked the most is what do you do for work?

I never know how to best answer this. In reality, performance is what L&D teams really do.

Yet, I find myself, rumbling through something like:

“I’m in learning and development, but I’m not an educator, I don’t do classroom stuff. I’m more like a consultant that’s a problem solver and coaches people rather than instructs. I basically help people unlock their potential and improve performance, kinda like an engineer but in a non-techy more behavioural change sense, if you get my drift.”

Of course, this prolonged statement leaves me and the asker of the question, both confused and wishing that it never came up.

It’s a problem.

The past, present and future of L&D

What I’m about to say to you is not new.

In fact, many have said it before too.

Guy Wallace, Michelle Perry-Slater and David James are a few of many that come to mind right now. I know what you’re thinking. What do each of us say?

→ Workplace learning is about performance.

Shocking. I know.

In a time of AI-obsession and fear, I keep getting asked “What do L&D pros do now?”…Erh…the same thing.

The tools might change, but our focus doesn’t. We are here to improve performance for workforces. I get that’s not a sexy line. It’s what we do though.

You should be proud of it. Own it.

What do L&D people (actually) do?

This was my most hated question in my corpo days.

→ What do you do?

My problem has always been that I don’t feel comfortable with any of the labels for roles in our profession.

Perhaps I was in a constant identity crisis. Our industry always seems to be.

There was a time when we focused on L&D alone. Now we’ve gathered:

1. Diversity and Inclusion
2. Wellbeing
3. Performance management
4. Talent mapping
5. Building a compliance training module for that one guy who doesn’t understand why they can’t bring their dog to work

You could say we’ve become the dump site for all the things a business can’t find the right home for.

When I tell people I work in the L&D space. I know these two assumptions come to mind:

• So you’re the guy boring the hell out of everyone with those 100 slide PowerPoint decks.
  
• You’re that fool who sends annoying emails for compliance training which I’ll never do.

Of course, neither is true.

Yet, these are the cards we’re dealt.

Sadly, I often shy away from saying L&D. I find myself tongue-tangled trying to explain what I do in a way I’m not vilified.

In reality, we know our work is focused on:

1. Identifying and supporting in solving organisational problems created by performance gaps (you can call this capability if you wish)
   
   
2. Removing barriers to allow people to get stuff done in the simplest way possible (aka creating learning ecosystems or you may call it architecture, understanding how to build a digital learning stack etc)
   
   
3. Influencing the behaviours, mindset and experiences of a workforce to enable real change
   
   
4. Building a better performance experience

Granted, you won’t see that on many job descriptions.

We need a new look

How does one move from PowerPoint villain to a loved strategic partner?

It starts at a team level.

I know plenty of misunderstood learning professionals because of their job titles. It’s stupid when you think about it. Constrained by a bunch of words.

I’ve never known an industry that has to evolve so much at speed.

When I started in the industry, e-learning was considered a high-performing technology. Now we talk to AI-powered assistants about our work, troubles and what tea we should drink for breakfast.

Beautiful, but oh so fast.

Organisations love to put everything in a neat little box. It’s not ideal, but we can and do make it work, don’t we?

Let’s get tactical.

Get clear how L&D teams deliver value

You can’t define what you do to others if you don’t know yourself.

The image above paints our dilemma. The left is what most workforces believe you do. The right is your reality. The job is, as you might have guessed, to move from learning → performance.

Don’t get confused. These are not the same.

Not in a business context, anyway.

The goal of any good workplace L&D team is to enhance the performance of teams to achieve business goals. That’s often done through learning. Not exclusively.

Some don’t like it when I say that. Yet, the bottom line is what we each work to improve.

Learning is cool, performance is better.

This change begins internally with your team. Align on what you do so you can deliver that vision across your organisation.

Change your L&D brand = unlock your value

You might say there’s nothing in a title.

Experience has taught me otherwise. Too much is determined on titles and words. You associate particular titles with what a person does.

You do the same with brands too.

The words Apple and Google conjure images of big tech. At work, you hear the golden boredom trio of Finance, Legal and Procurement. They each paint a clear picture of what they do.

But…say L&D or my despised word of “training” and it gets quite murky.

So, the task is to reposition how you’re perceived.

This is where levelling up your performance consulting capabilities can change everything. I view our work as engineers of performance.

Before I left the corpo world to take this newsletter full-time. I would position myself to senior leaders as the person who enhances workplace performance.

They understood that better than “L&D guy”.

It went something a little like this:

I’m a performance engineer. I help remove barriers to essential knowledge, work on solving workforce performance challenges and ultimately make sure people can get the stuff done to help them and the business thrive.

Simple but effective.

Words matter, so make the most of them.

---

Become the strategic L&D Partner they can’t ignore

In case you missed it, I have something to help craft your performance mindset.

The Art of Performance Consulting is an online experience to improve your skills with me. Come with me and I’ll help you with:

• Reshaping your mindset: How you ditch the order-taking mentality and shift to a performance-focused mindset.
  
  
• Demystifying performance consulting: The biggest question. We’ll unpack this and why you should even care.
  
  
• The big picture: Connecting performance with the essential 7 skills every L&D pro needs.
  
  
• Tools of the trade: The frameworks, templates and insights you need to look smart, be smart and enhance real performance.
  
  
• Getting clear on your company context: All of this is pointless unless you know where you’re starting today.

---

Before you go… 👋

If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.

You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.