Building Deep Trust: Transform Business with Proactive & Value-Driven Talent
📑 Chapters
00:00 - Dr. Keith introduces himself
02:29 - What prompted Dr. Keith to write his book
06:33 - Dr. Keith’s view on business strategy
10:04 - What is the Innovation Lab
14:45 - How to build trust
23:30 - Steps to level up the learning development
29:41 - Defining curiosity
37:35 - Learning Development in the future
43:25 - About Dr. Keith’s background & motivations
45:45 - Dr. Keith struggles growing up
48:45 - Dr. Keith’s magic
Watch the full episode here.
💕 Story Overview
In S4E6, Dr. Keith Keating joins us at the @MAGICademy Podcast. He is an author and a learning advisor who’s passionate about encouraging and empowering people to take control of their futures by truly learning how to learn. We talk about his recent book, “The Trusted Learning Advisor” and his views on formal education, which require a change since they don’t provide the right tools for talents to fully develop their potential and be the figure the business needs them to be.
Dr. Keith shares some insight into business strategy; the pivoting from its business without a clear goal to what the Innovation Lab is now; and some other stories about learning and analyzing the potential and gaps in businesses, which invite reflection on how we, as professionals in the modern business environment, need to properly develop our talents and our company culture.
🌼 Magical Insights
Strategic Business Partners: Talents need to start looking at themselves and preparing themselves to be strategic business partners. Workers who are embedded in the business, who understand the clients and their needs, who are trusted, value-driven, and respected; otherwise, they end up being order-takers and proactivity is extremely important in the modern business environment. For companies to prepare talents such as these, they need to teach them how to do their tasks but, most importantly, teach them the tools and insight knowledge they need to become what the company needs.
Fresh Eyes: It’s hard to be aware of gaps in your business or room for improvement since we’re usually too involved in the process. Sometimes it’s good to ask for outside professional advice on how the company is doing and where it could be improved, and harness the power of childlike curiosity when proposing the question “How can we fix this”, to foster critical thinking from within the company.
Building Trust: Advisors or specialists have their own language, acronyms, terms, etc. But trying to look smart by using those with clients or companies is not always the best idea if the goal is to build trust. The way to gain trust is to be involved, care about the clients, and always look for ways to improve. Those are the talents that are valuable in today’s environment.
Developing Curiosity and Making the Best of It: The reason why we’re able to learn and remember some things faster than others is because of our interest in what we’re learning. It’s important to leverage and expand this idea of curiosity because that's where people's interests start to peak and they're willing to make the time to invest in something, while also developing a growth mindset and practicing critical thinking. The sense of wonder is characterized by curiosity, openness, and willingness to explore. It fosters creativity, innovation, and engagement.
⭐ What’s Dr. Keith’s Magic?
Dr. Keith was able to overcome the fact that he was a high school dropout and now become a professional learning advisor by truly understanding how to learn and helping people by truly helping them learn “how to learn” and move away from traditional models where that part of the process is overlooked.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we need to challenge ourselves into rethinking formal education, because it’s not only what we learn, it’s also about the way we learn and how we improve our mindset. Dr. Keating's perspective on formal education highlights its shortcomings in fostering real talent development, urging business leaders to pivot towards a culture that prioritizes continuous learning and growth.
If you would like to stay tuned with our future guests and their magical stories. Welcome to join us.
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Li, B., Fan, X., Álvarez-Otero, S., Sial, M.S., Comite, U., Cherian, J., & Vasa, L. (2021). CSR and Workplace Autonomy as Enablers of Workplace Innovation in SMEs through Employees: Extending the Boundary Conditions of Self-Determination Theory. Sustainability, 13, 6104.;
McAnally, K., & Hagger, M.S. (2024). Self-Determination Theory and Workplace Outcomes: A Conceptual Review and Future Research Directions. Behavioral Sciences, 14.
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Dr. Keith Keating is a prominent figure in the Learning and Development (L&D) sector, recognized for his extensive expertise and innovative approaches. With over 20 years of experience, he serves as the Chief Learning Officer at BDO and holds the position of Academic Director for the University of Pennsylvania's Chief Learning Officer doctoral program.
He is the author of The Trusted Learning Advisor, a guide that emphasizes the transformation of L&D professionals from mere order-takers to strategic partners within organizations.
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Jiani (00:00)
Welcome to MAGICademy Podcast Today our guest is Dr. Keith and we're so excited to have him on our podcast today. He just wrote a book. It's called The Trusted Learning Advisor. He is one of the few thought leaders out there who uplift the learning development role from content.
development all the way to trusted business advisors for business leaders as well. So as learning development professionals, we're not only solving the content problem, we're solving the business problems no matter where you are. So welcome Dr. Keith to our podcast.
Dr. Keith Keating (00:38)
Thank you, I'm really excited to be here and to make some magic.
Jiani (00:42)
Magic. Oh, yeah magical moment. So for those who are curious to learn about you Are you open to share like a brief introduction of yourself a quick career? Overview and then we can dive deeper into the man mission and the vision of your book Yeah 30 seconds
Dr. Keith Keating (01:03)
I'll give you a 30 second overview. So the best way to describe me would be I'm a high school dropout who is now a doctor from University of Pennsylvania. So I struggled with the formal education system for most of my life because it didn't teach me how to learn. It was trying to take what I would call a round peg and force me into a square hole.
And it wasn't until years later that I learned how to learn. And once I learned how to learn, it truly unlocked my human potential. And now my passion and my mission is to empower, enable, and encourage people to take control over their future through the power of learning. Because once we learn how to learn, we're all unstoppable. And so I've been blessed and lucky to find the intersection between learning and
corporate L &D and adult education to where I think that we can truly drive value because at the end of the day, learning changes lives. And so when we think about talent development, learning development, what we do has the power to change lives.
Jiani (02:19)
Beautiful. And for me, I think learning is a sort of like alchemy. Like you give them information in or forms and shapes and depths and then they become a new person and beautiful. So what prompts you to write this book, The Trusted Learning Advisor and what's your...
mission and vision behind this this book.
Dr. Keith Keating (02:51)
So someone said to me recently, it's a book that had to be written, which I really loved and I didn't think of that myself. But for me, it did have to be written because it doesn't exist right now. So I've read a ton and ton of talent development, learning development books in the industry, and they're all niche.
about a specific topic, maybe instructional design, maybe project management, maybe, I don't know, not learning technology, but there was nothing that really supported us in our growth and development in terms of what we need to do to evolve. So the answer is why? It's because our industry has to evolve. We are on the verge of irrelevance. So I started a few moments ago saying,
Jiani (03:38)
Mm.
Dr. Keith Keating (03:46)
how important learning was and we have the power to change lives. But at the same time, if we are not true learning and development practitioners, if we are not true trusted learning advisors, which that definition means you're a strategic business partner embedded in the business, you understand your clients, you understand their need, you are trusted, you are value driven, you are respected, you're sought after, but again, you know their business. If we are not all of those,
then what we end up being is order takers. And we have been order takers since L &D began in organizations in the 1800s when managers were deciding what the employee needed to do. They told L &D and we went and we trained the employees to move this widget here. And that mentality of being an order taker has stayed with us for two reasons. One, a lot of L &D practitioners don't have the skill set that they need.
And two, because everyone seems to think they can do our job. If you're one of the businesses like, oh, it's just learning here, go do this. But if you look at IT or HR, if you went to IT and said, oh, I want you to go and do this, and you try and give IT an order, they come back and say, no, that's not part of our process, or that's not the way we operate here. And then we listen. And the same for HR. You can't go and say, hey, I want you to promote that person or create a new employee benefit. They'd say, that's not our policy.
But for some reason, everybody thinks they can do our job. And so they give us these orders. And every time that we just execute on that order, we continue this perpetual cycle of we have no value to add other than whatever the order is being given. So long story short, we have to evolve or else because there is a new order taker in town and that's Gen .ai. And Gen .ai is a way better order taker than we are.
It doesn't ask for more resources. It doesn't ask for more money. It doesn't ask for more time. It solves your order in 30 seconds. And then you can export it to another gen AI tool. And then within a few minutes, you can have this whole program built out and no one's pushing back. And so gen AI does a good job. We can also do a better job if we're not order takers. And so the book is a coach. It's.
It's practitioner's guide. It's a how -to manual for evolving from being an order taker to being a strategic business partner embedded in the business. Otherwise, we don't need to exist.
Jiani (06:26)
Yeah, and as I, let me grab this book. As I am reading your book, I think it's more than like a book, more than a manual. It's helping folks to change their mindset. It's like awareness. Because a lot of times we think, oh, this is usually how it's being done.
Therefore, we're going to continue doing that without being reflective and say, Hey, wait a second. So why, why should I do this? Okay. Yeah. So my next question would be when we're talking about like learning development, it's like very human centered, you know, it's like human development and talent development. And when we're talking about business and sometimes.
we may feel, oh, business, cold -hearted. And it's kind of like an internal potential conflict in terms of when usually we think about it. So can you explain to us what do you mean by business strategy and how definitely not all the business strategies that learning development can potentially support? So what kind of the business strategies that?
loan development are usually easier to help and help to consult with.
Dr. Keith Keating (07:56)
Uh, so before I answer that question, there was something else I wanted to add on. I started the book with this quote, uh, those who do not move, do not notice their chains. And so when I think about us, L and D, talent development, needing to do something differently, we first have to realize that we can move, that we can change. And that's hopefully what the book inspires is, is change. In terms of.
the business strategy, it's a bit of a complex question because I think there's several schools of thought. One is we just focus on LND, but that's not the school of thought that I follow because as a trusted learning advisor, my goal is to make my stakeholder the hero of their own story.
And so that means I'm not limited to just L &D speak. I can be a business partner and I can be integrated throughout the organization. And one of the value propositions that we can offer as L &D talent development is that we have a holistic view of the organization. We can see things that most people don't because we're working with this business unit and this one.
this one and this one, and we're talking to employees across the organization, we're gathering all this data, we're distilling the down to find problem statements, and not all the problem statements we can solve, but we can still help connect the dots. You know, I think back to systems thinking, and the organization is like a system, and we can be the arteries that connect all of the different functions in the organization. And so the question about...
Jiani (09:39)
Hmm.
Dr. Keith Keating (09:49)
you know, what business strategies do we focus on? In theory, it's talent development related, but I don't limit it to that. I limit it to what does my business need? You know, I'll give an example. A strategy at most organizations is you want to make money. That's normally the number one strategy is we want a certain amount of money. Yeah, we're in business. So is that an L and D?
Jiani (10:10)
To survive, yeah, to survive and to thrive, yeah.
Dr. Keith Keating (10:18)
explicit strategy, not necessarily, but implicitly I can find how L &D is related. So in order for us to make money, we have to have talent that knows how to do their job. We have to have talent that has the right skill set. We have to have systems in place that support that skill set. So those are all areas where L &D can play a key role. So I guess I don't have an answer to what are the right business strategies other than our job is to support
the business strategies.
Jiani (10:49)
Hmm. And I think having the learning mindset, we constantly learn about the needs because in learning development, we learn about the needs. So like needs assessment. So other than like a content need assessment, we do business astrology needs assessment and come from that perspective. That's very interesting. Can you, I'm curious to learn. You mentioned in your book, you mentioned about the innovation lab.
And I think that's one of the kind of a great example where align with your thought is to whenever we align the learning development with the business strategy, great impact happen. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about the innovation lab?
Dr. Keith Keating (11:37)
Sure. So the reason that it started was we didn't have a good reputation. Our business viewed us as an order taker and they didn't really want to work with us. But they kept saying, you're not innovative. And so we would try and do something innovative and really it wasn't innovative. So what we would do is we'd go out to the market and we'd find out there's this new tool or there's this new approach and we'd run back and say, hey business, you know, there's this new tool like VR.
or there's this new LXP and they would say, okay, so what does that mean for me? And it was like, oh, I don't know, but maybe you want to try it. And so rightfully so, like this is not valuable at all. And they were right. In fact, I remember one stakeholder said, do not ever come to me again unless you can tell me how this is beneficial for my business, which is like, that's so basic. We should have thought about that, but we didn't. So as we tried to evolve,
they still didn't want to listen to us. And so we had this idea of what if we rebranded the idea of innovation and rather than it be the learning and development team name, we just call it the innovation lab and we give it a logo, we give it a tagline and we think about our business partners and we think about three problems that they have or could potentially have in their business and we use design thinking to prototype a couple of solutions. And then we package it up in a very,
beautifully clean succinct manner. And so, you know, we would spend weeks and weeks on this, but what we would do in the end is we would distill it all down into one single slide. And the slide would start off with the how might we question of the problem. And then it would have five lanes of things like here's how your problem could be solved. Here's ways it could be applied in the business.
Here's maybe how you're using it now. Here's how you could use it in the future, et cetera, et cetera. And we set a 20 minute meeting with each business partner. And the first 10 to 12 minutes we were sharing like, hey, here's a problem you might have. Here's some solutions. And that gave them about seven or eight minutes to start asking questions. And the reason we did 20 minutes was because we knew they wouldn't finish their questions. But at the 20 minute mark, we said, we want to be really respectful of your time.
We only set 20 minutes today. So if you want us to continue, please let us know and we'll set up more time." And without a doubt, they're like, no, can you please, can we finish and can we keep going? This is really exciting. And so we left them wanting more. And so then they would reach out, we would set up another meeting or then they would tell somebody else. And then all of a sudden the Innovation Lab started to take off as its own brand. And people would reach out and say, hey, can the Innovation Lab come to my business and look at some business problems I have?
And the funniest part of it is it's the exact same team they were always working with. It's just we rebranded it a little bit different and we made it specialized to each stakeholder. And so that was really the aha moment for us was creating a road show, packaging it up in a meaningful and digestible manner and quick and succinct. So we weren't just wasting time and an hour going around a conference room. It was just like, boom, boom, boom, here's a problem. Here's some solutions. Here's how you could think of it.
Here's how much it would cost. Do you have any feedback? And then they would, you yes, let's unpack this. And then oops, we ran out of time and then kept them coming back for more.
Jiani (15:09)
I like how you leverage the learning design and how adults, how you trigger curiosity and how some of the marketing strategies that you're leveraging to kind of repackage the whole experience. And in one of the say, they say like they want to join the fun. So what do you think that makes it so fun for the stakeholders?
Dr. Keith Keating (15:33)
Because it's a little bit of, and we'll talk about this later, but it goes back to the idea of curiosity and childlike thinking is we made it a safe environment to have this discussion and quickly jumped into, yeah, what are some other ways that we might be able to solve this? And just using some design thinking, empathy, brainstorming tricks so that it felt like a safe space to think outside of the box, which I don't think we often give ourselves.
that permission.
Jiani (16:05)
Yeah, that takes time and just kind of a brief detach about day -to -day busy work and really focus on what's most important. You mentioned about the safety, like I think whenever we have that sense of curiosity, safety and trust is very important. And in your book, you mentioned a lot of times that trust is very important.
What do you think, and you mentioned a few, like a five pillar of trust. Can you, how do you build trust and not just build it, but build it fast?
Dr. Keith Keating (16:44)
Yeah, so I think the value of trust, well, there's so many value aspects, but it allows us to persuade and influence our stakeholders. So, you know, some practical tips that you can use to kind of cultivate trust and establish yourself as a trusted advisor. Number one is understanding your stakeholders' needs.
So taking time to really understand them, you one of the challenges that we have is we use our own language, our own acronyms and vocabulary. Our business doesn't care what Kirkpatrick level three is. They don't care what an LXP or an LMS is or any of that. Those are, that's our language. So we need to understand their language and it starts when we understand their needs. And then to understand their language, here's a couple of tricks you can use.
Ask for a vocabulary guide, an acronyms guide, a definitions guide. Ask for the last five or 10 PowerPoint decks they've created. Ask for their strategy, mission, vision, value statements. And then start to pull all those key words into your own vocabulary when you're talking with the stakeholders or referring to them because it subtly lets them know that you do understand them and that you're using their vocabulary.
I think collaboration is really important with your stakeholder. A lot of times we look at our stakeholders as adversaries or combative. Sometimes your stakeholder is also an order taker. And I don't think we think about that enough. And it took me years to recognize that, that maybe somebody told somebody told somebody and now that somebody is telling us.
And then we're going back and we're saying, oh, we need this, this, and this. And what about this? And how about this? And they're like, I don't know, just get it done. So, you know, that collaboration is really important when building trust. One of the other tools that I use is a partner commitment and expectation charter. It's a lot of words, but it's a very simple tool. And it's just a template that you use at the beginning of your relationship.
Jiani (18:40)
Hmm.
Dr. Keith Keating (19:00)
and you share insights into yourself, you're asking insights into your stakeholder, you are documenting what success looks like, you're documenting the way that your stakeholder and you like to communicate, the way that you're gonna work together. So basic example, I never ever answer the phone. If anybody ever calls me, my ringer is never turned on, and even if I see someone calling, I just will not answer it. I have an aversion to the phone.
I don't know, it gives me anxiety. But I will text you and email you all day. I'll respond to you in 30 seconds, maybe two minutes. I just will never answer the phone. So if you and I were building a new relationship, you should know that immediately. And I should know how you like to communicate. I should know what you think is success, how often you'd like to meet, what is important to you, what you want to achieve in the next 90 days.
how we're going to share feedback, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, like I said, you don't have to use my template, you can use any template, but what the purpose is that it is a template and it forces you to sit down with your stakeholder to kind of go through line by line and answer these questions. So that way you're very clear and articulate on day one. And then you go back and you can revisit this document. I think of it more like an organic document that's going to evolve over time.
Jiani (20:27)
Hmm.
Dr. Keith Keating (20:27)
So those are just some ways in which you can start to build trust. But I think the other point you had kind of alluded to was for me, there's five pillars that I think we need to be well -versed in when we're trying to build trust. And it's credibility, reliability, our professional intimacy, our self -orientation, and communication.
Jiani (20:38)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Dr. Keith Keating (20:55)
And so what I mean by those is we have to have credibility in what we're doing. And you have to evaluate whether or not you do have that credibility. You we often...
want to demand trust and respect from our stakeholders, but the question is, have we done anything to earn it? And that's only something that you can answer for yourself. And there's some questions in the book that you could ask yourself in terms of where you are on that credibility factor. Like, why should someone trust you? You know, what have you done to earn that trust, to earn that credibility? Reliability.
is extremely important. How reliable are you? Are you showing up on time? Are you following through on commitments to your stakeholder? For me, I try to always stay two steps ahead of my stakeholder, meaning I try not for them to ever have to reach out to me. We should have concurrent check -ins. I should be following up with them. I should be talking to stakeholders in the business or frontline employees and
bringing proactive information to my stakeholder. So I like to stay two steps ahead where I can, but reliability is about establishing trust through actions that show you are a consistent and dependable partner. And then for professional intimacy, and some people think, what do you mean by intimacy? Well, what I mean is you're creating a safe space for you and your stakeholder.
where you truly invest time to understand them. You're empathetic, you're understanding, and you're genuinely concerned about your stakeholders. So it's knowing them as a person, you know, knowing a little bit about who they are outside of work. We tend to, when we think about our stakeholders, be 100 % business. Like we got on the call, we start with business, but those few minutes before the meeting, those few minutes after the meeting,
Knowing what their passions are, what their interests are, and playing into those builds a different level of intimacy in that relationship. And so it's really fostering a relationship where they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, their challenges, their successes, because you are trustworthy and you treat those moments with actual respect and candor.
And then there's self -orientation or your intentionality. And our intentionality is extremely important when building trust. You know, what are your motives? What are your motives? Are you just trying to sell something or do you truly have their best interests at heart? And so I go back to my earlier statement that our ultimate goal is to make our stakeholders the hero of their story.
Now, through that, our learners win, the business wins, but if you think about who's that immediate person, if we make our stakeholders win, if we make them the hero, we win by proxy. It doesn't need to be about us. We don't need to put ourselves on a pedestal. We put our stakeholder in the pedestal and we help them be successful. And so having your intentionality be very clear of what you're trying to gain from this, that it's a professional,
success of helping your stakeholder win, they're going to recognize that and begin to trust you through that. And then the last one is communication. And that's just making sure that you have open and transparent communication and actions. I think one thing that my stakeholders really respect about me is I'm very transparent. I don't play political games. I'm not hierarchical bound. I want my stakeholder to win.
I want to build a foundation of trust and I am want to make sure that I'm seen as honest, transparent and straightforward. So I know that was a huge mouthful. I'll just do a quick recap credibility reliability intimacy intention and communication are five pillars of trust.
Jiani (25:16)
Communication. That's beautiful. And when we're, you talked about like the ability to kind of understand the stakeholders and put them as the hero going through their own journey. It's quite an interesting perspective. And when we're talking about, you know, you also talk about how you can potentially,
Level up the learning development through the order taker all the way to the business strategic partners. You have this like framework of like elevation. Can you share with us what are all the steps and what they look like?
Dr. Keith Keating (26:08)
So I think of it like a continuum, if you will. There's order taking on this side and there's trusted learning advisor on this side. And here's the best statement that I can provide. I don't believe we ever get fully to this side over here. This being a trusted learning advisor is aspirational. It's a North star.
I've been in the industry for 25 years. I am a doctor, a professor, I've written a book, I'm a chief learning officer. I'm still treated as an order taker. I still have to work extremely hard on all those pillars of trust to build credibility so that I can move myself and my team on the journey towards being a trusted learning advisor. What I'll share is it's a pendulum, it's a continuum.
Some days I feel like I'm over here more and some days I feel like I'm back to square one. So I think it's important to recognize that it is a journey. It's not a destination. You're not ever going to get to the point where you say, okay, I'm a trusted learning advisor. All done. No, we have to continuously work at it. And so the question that I think you have to ask yourself, there's, there's three questions. Where am I on?
the journey from order taker to trusted learning advisor. Whereas my team, because I might think that maybe I'm a trusted learning advisor, but my team may not be. And we have to look at us collectively and holistically. Just because I may be great and my teammates aren't there yet means that we're going to have a challenge of the experience that stakeholders might receive. They might receive one experience with me and something else with my team members. So,
we need to try and bring the entire team along on that journey. And one great way to do that is through a book club so that everyone learns the same language and gives you a chance to elaborate and idea generate on what's in there and figure out how you can apply it. The third question though you have to ask is, where would my stakeholders say that we are? Or to take her to trust and learn and advisor. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think I am and doesn't matter what I think my team is.
Jiani (28:22)
Mm.
Dr. Keith Keating (28:29)
it ultimately matters what your stakeholder perceives because their perception is reality. We might think we are the best L &D team, but that we're trusted learning advisors, we're embedded in the business, that we're great, great, great. If our stakeholder does not think that, then are we really that great when our job is to support our stakeholder? So if you don't know today what your stakeholder thinks, ask them. You know, conduct a qualitative,
research study and find out, you know, would they recommend you to other business units on the scale of zero to 10? Where do they see you as an orator take her to trust to learn an advisor? You know, do they believe that you bring innovative ideas, things like that? So ask them, you know, one thing I do is each year I'll do a qualitative research or a business partner survey. That's another way to think of it with them to see kind of where we are in our journey as they're
Jiani (29:09)
Hmm.
Hmm
Dr. Keith Keating (29:28)
business partners or strategic business partners.
Jiani (29:31)
That's beautiful. And also sometimes even for our stakeholders, like you said, they may be wanting to be somewhere, but their stakeholders may see them differently. I think this is like for every party, maybe it's the same challenge, but on different perspectives. So I guess understanding their challenges and their limitations is going to also help us to help them better as well.
Dr. Keith Keating (29:51)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, I mean, to that point, asking, this goes back to transparent communication, you know, asking them, if they're giving you an order, have a discussion with them to find out, like, hey, yeah, where is this coming from? And is this a fire that I need to help you put out? Because imagine that your house was on fire. You wouldn't just stand back and say, oh my gosh,
Jiani (30:11)
Where does this order come from?
Dr. Keith Keating (30:26)
Let me do a needs analysis. Did I leave the stove on? Is it arson? Is it electrical? No. You're going to get everybody together to try and put the fire out. Yeah. Save the pets. And then once the fire's out and the damage is minimized, then you'll do a needs analysis. And so the same thing applies to us sometimes. Like, look, there are things that I do where I'm thinking like, this is not the best approach.
Jiani (30:35)
Take the dog out first.
Dr. Keith Keating (30:53)
And I'll have that conversation to say, Hey, I don't know that this is the right thing for us to do and that we're going to get the quality output that you might think that we're going to get. Do you need me to just get this done? And then we can figure out maybe next time how to do it a little bit differently. And then sometimes when I had those conversations are like, Oh yes, please just, I got to get this off my table. You know, my boss is putting a lot of pressure on it. I know this probably isn't the right thing, but can we just get this done and win and get some credibility? And you know,
So is there a fire? Is this just a tick the box exercise? Like they just need to get it done? Is my stakeholder also an order taker? And is this a brand new relationship where I need to build some credibility? Like right now, I've only been with BDO for about two months. I'm saying yes to things that I probably wouldn't say yes to if I were two or three years down the line, but I need to build up some credibility.
and it takes a little bit of time and it takes some wins to do that. So right now I'm doing some things where I'm like, but it's going to give me that credibility.
Jiani (32:00)
Yeah, and it's also like a process like trust, trust building, it all takes time. Beautiful. And I'm, now I'm very curious about you mentioned about the role of curiosity, because in your book, you put curiosity as number one, like, oh, key skill to have. How do you define curiosity? Do you think curiosity is this like childlike wonder, or it's more something different, more disciplined or more business driven? And then
how does that impact skill development or talent augmentation or enhancement as we continue to do our work across organizations, across industries?
Dr. Keith Keating (32:45)
I think one of the biggest gaps in organizational learning and development is when we don't help our learners understand the context and the relevance. So that's one of the reasons I struggled so greatly in school was I didn't understand how it applied to me. Why am I learning this? What am I going to do with this? Like math. I probably have a fifth grade education when it comes to math.
because I just knew early on, like, I don't, I have no use for this. I don't know how I knew, but I knew then and I was right. I've never ever, ever used it beyond basic arithmetic. So why?
Jiani (33:26)
Yeah, daily life that's as much as it will take us.
Dr. Keith Keating (33:33)
Yeah, so why do I need to learn this? And as an adult, when we put our talent through programs and we don't give them the context and the relevance, they don't understand why it applies to them. So the reason I share all that is it goes back to me for curiosity. You know, you think about...
People will say our attention spans are getting shorter. I don't believe that. I believe that our distractions are increasing and I have 18 different devices that could be pinging and distract me, but we can sit down and we can binge watch our favorite show, eight episodes in a row. That's like, what, eight hours. So how is that even possible?
possible because we're interested in it. We're curious about it. And so we need to leverage and expand this idea of curiosity because that's where people's interests start to get peaked and they're willing to make the time to invest in something. And curiosity is what helps lead us to a growth mindset and helps us double click.
to try and start to think critically because there's so much data out there. There's so much information out there. And if you just look at it from a superficial level, you won't be able to tell the difference between real and spurious headlines or data. And so we've got to be curious about these things so that we can figure out what's the real data, what's the real story, or where did that come from?
Jiani (35:08)
Hmm.
Dr. Keith Keating (35:20)
And so it all comes back to what's interesting to me and what's interesting to me all spins from this idea of curiosity, you know, being curious about wanting to understand more. And that's what we, that's the best gift that we could offer our talent is cultivating an environment where they can want to learn more and giving them the space and the time to be able to do that.
Jiani (35:30)
Hmm.
That's beautiful. It's like almost like an incubation environment for the seed is the curiosity and they can learn and we can help them, we can guide them. And as long as the incubation space is shaped alongside or in alignment with the overall business strategy that we've been talking about, it's going to be a beautiful flourishing and well -meaning and targeted development space for people.
Dr. Keith Keating (36:18)
Well, there's so much, you used the phrase childlike wonder and the sense of wonder is characterized by curiosity, openness and willingness to explore. And those attributes, there's so much value that comes from them. It fosters creativity and innovation. It enhances engagement. It promotes this idea of discovery. It encourages lifelong learning. It helps to contextualize.
Jiani (36:18)
who are curious.
Dr. Keith Keating (36:48)
and make relevant what it is you're learning, builds empathy and collaboration. There's so much that comes from it. And the sad part though, is that our education system stifles it. I grew up in a military family. We grew up all over the world, military schools, Catholic schools. I can't ever remember having curiosity.
cultivated. But I distinctly remember having it stamped out and getting in trouble for thinking differently, for thinking outside of the box, for drawing outside of the lines. In the US, we have become a pharmaceutically addictive culture, ADHD and Ritalin. My brother and I both were labeled as disruptive.
We were just children, we weren't disruptive. And so we were classified as ADD and put on Ritalin. I don't have ADD. But because you did not fit into the box of what they expected you to do, then it just became a pharmaceutical solution. And it was years and years for me, and I'm still struggling to try and be creative and
expand this idea of curiosity, but I think we just do such a disservice to children.
Jiani (38:23)
I'm just like, I feel so happy to hear that from you and I resonate with you a lot. And, um, and I think also when I, when we grow up into quote unquote adulthood and become a professional in the business space.
there's even less room for that and people see that sort of quality as even though it's childlike people see as childish and not being productive and
seen as disruptive actually. They are seen as. So I think, you know, hopefully in the future, more and more people are waking up to the potential of childlike wonder, curiosity, and hopefully our future generations will be able to thrive and be a playful adult, but you know, a responsible one and.
And as a result, hopefully businesses are always booming. People are loving their work, their tap dance to work every day. I think that would be an ideal world. It's beautiful.
Dr. Keith Keating (39:46)
I think it's slowly, very slowly shifting. You know, Lego has done a lot over the last few years in organizations through Lego play. Design thinking, I think, has helped to reinvigorate this idea of brainstorming in a structured manner that's still fun, but can meet the organization and business need. So I see some gentle shifts.
in the right direction, but I think we can do more. I mean, that's, if you just think about from an L and D perspective, that's one of the things that people love with simulations or role plays or the synchronous environments is when they get to play. And that's why your stories are such an important part of learning and development. And there's,
art and a skill to storytelling and there's the creativity associated with it. So I'm hopeful that we're moving in the right direction. We definitely could do a lot more for adults and I think a lot more for children.
Jiani (40:58)
Yes, definitely. That's beautiful. And as we're talking into the future, so let's talk about future. How would you see learning development in the future? Maybe, you know, 10 years, maybe two years, because technology develops so fast. People's mind changes so fast nowadays. So maybe next two to five years.
With all the advancement of technology, being our servant rather than our master, as you mentioned, like virtual reality, you mentioned about simulation. Now we have like Neuralink, like, you know, brand machine interaction. Now, currently we're working with AI, Gen. AI. How do you see it going? How should we even imagine that?
Dr. Keith Keating (41:52)
If I was going to imagine it, I can't wait for the day that we can just download it into our brain.
Jiani (42:01)
Thank you.
Dr. Keith Keating (42:02)
I don't know how far that's off, if it'll be in our lifetime, but I think that it will definitely get there. I think something in the more near future I'm looking forward to is AI or GenAI helping to create equitable learning experiences. You the power of GenAI, we haven't even begun to really fathom it, but initially I can see it has the opportunity to democratize.
learning and you get to have your own custom coach, if you will, mentor that knows everything about you, knows how you like to learn, when you like to learn, what you need to learn, what you want to learn and can help you throughout the day with that. So imagine in, you know, out of three to five years, all of us have these private coaches that we have access to.
to help us grow, develop, and learn. I think it's very exciting. Now I say all that, half the world still doesn't even have the internet. So, you know, in one breath, some AI enthusiasts are like, oh, this is gonna change the world, blah, blah, blah, but they're not thinking about the fact that we haven't even gotten the internet to half the world yet. So we gotta get over that hump. But then once we do have the internet globally, I think it will democratize the way
that we're thinking about how people learn.
Jiani (43:33)
Hmm. That's, that's beautiful. Yeah. I think the coaching part, um, cause we were dealing with like, Oh, I was talking with Kevin from Tindisha and he was talking about this like two sigma problem where group coaching's impact is always less as we compare to one -on -one coaching. So you brought a very interesting point where if we can potentially, um, custom made a coach for each person.
based on their own situation, that would be a very interesting progress. Obviously we still need master coaches, but at least... The humans are important.
Dr. Keith Keating (44:12)
I was going to say, yes, let me clarify. I don't want to get rid of the humans. I will always pick, not all, but I mean, I will pick a human coach over an AI coach, but I will use AI to supplement, you know, I mean, already for me, AI has replaced Google. You know, you used to go to Google to ask your questions and then you had to go through and kind of find the answer. Now I go to chat GPT first. So it's already circumventing and changing that simple behavior.
because it means I don't have to read through 1 million search finds. It automatically does it for me. So I think, you know, we're going to have this, this coach, this tool that's going to help us learn.
Jiani (44:56)
Beautiful and um Are there any particular challenges? That we need to be aware of I mean there's many but like maybe major ones
Dr. Keith Keating (45:06)
Well, I mean, the biggest challenge is it's an inequitable experience right now because half the world doesn't have the internet. So there's that piece. There's still the concern around, can I trust it? Is it going to hallucinate or what type of data is it going to get back to me? And that's an ongoing challenge.
Jiani (45:25)
Yes, it's a big challenge.
Dr. Keith Keating (45:35)
The way somebody described it at the World Economic Forum when I was there in January was, this is actually a beautiful moment because we're all having this baby together and we all need to nurture and love this baby. And to do it means we need to treat it with care and intentionality. And there are going to be some bad players that are going to try and use it.
in a different way, but hopefully there's enough of us good people who are trying to develop it in a positive way that's going to support us. Because there's no going back. It's like, there's no going back from the internet. There's no version of the future that exists without the internet. There's no version of the future that exists now without Gen .ai. But we have to just nurture it and treat it very carefully.
Jiani (46:26)
Hmm.
Beautiful. And before we move to the magic part, let me give a recap for our audience. So up to this point, we've talked about the story of Dr. Keith and how he developed this book, The Learning Advisor, and how as learning professionals, one of the next step is to elevate us from order -taker, content developer, all the way to progressively.
to business strategic partners and by maintaining our curiosity, by emphasizing and trying to understand as much as we can with the stakeholders and their unique situations. We also explored five pillars of trust. We explored the framework of the whole taxonomy of learning development roles from content all the way to the business strategy partner. We talked about
the role of childlike wonder. And we also talk about the future of learning development and where both of us are thinking if one day we can just download a chip and we can download all the skills that we need, that'll be perfect. We just need to like design the chip and that will be solve the problem. Beautiful. Thank you so much to learn. That's great. That's great. So magic. So.
Dr. Keith Keating (47:45)
Bravo, great, great recap.
Jiani (47:56)
Dr. Keith, when you were 11 years old, what did you enjoy doing or creating and time just disappeared for you?
Dr. Keith Keating (48:07)
I was a child actor, so I loved acting, which I think is one of the purest forms of escapism, if you will. I really enjoyed acting in theater.
Jiani (48:24)
That's beautiful. And I would kind of delve a little bit deeper. So when you're doing the acting, what was the part that really kind of gets you in the flow and gets you really kind of like, oh, let me do it again tomorrow. Like, what was that feel like?
Dr. Keith Keating (48:46)
It was getting to be someone else. I did not have a good childhood. So any form that I could take to escape from it was a much safer space.
Jiani (49:08)
It's beautiful. I was, um, I resonate with you when I was little. My teacher asked me what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to be an actress. And she said, why? I said I wanted to experience all sorts of different types of lives on this planet and just to kind of get to experience that diversity. And I think when you're saying about like the safe, like I feel like, yeah, it's like a different type of like safety. Like you feel like your mind is.
playing and you feel like safe and it's not limited by a physical space where you have to sit in the classroom and listen to classes. Beautiful. Beautiful.
Dr. Keith Keating (49:48)
Yeah, what I would say is, you know, now that I'm an adult, I feel like we have the opportunity to live many, many different lives. And so, you know, if you truly, again, going back to the idea of learning, you can create all of these different opportunities for you to experience his lives. I mean, I've lived 14 or 15 different lives. But.
the foundation there was because I learned something that maybe took me in a direction or a different skill or just learned how to navigate life as well. So I'm very happy with kind of the way things turned out because I still feel like I get to be experience these different lives, but yeah, I'm still me.
Jiani (50:42)
the core that you're still centered in beautiful and was there any particular major challenge that you have to overcome to be Dr. Keith as of today?
Dr. Keith Keating (50:57)
Yes, the fact that I'm a high school dropout. So I struggled with it for years and lied about it so much that I actually forgot. And I didn't realize, I didn't remember until, I don't know, maybe six or seven years ago, one day it just kind of came out and I was like, oh my gosh, is that true?
Jiani (51:25)
Hahaha
Dr. Keith Keating (51:26)
I was like, oh, that is true. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, for years I wore it as a badge of shame and then I convinced myself that it wasn't true so that I could try and overcome it. And now I feel like I embrace it as a really important part of my story so that I can.
show others whether you're a parent with children or you yourself struggled with school that you don't have to follow that traditional path that other people have tried to set for us. You know, I was told if I didn't go to high school, I already didn't finish high school, I would amount to nothing and I would be working in fast food for the rest of my life, which by the way, there's nothing wrong with working in fast food. So,
I don't know why that was delivered in that manner. And I actually did get a job in fast food for a while. But there's this idea that in fast food, I guess that's a story for another day. But moral is yes, the moral of the story is you don't have to follow that traditional path that other people try and set for you. You our paths are like our fingerprints. They're all extremely
Jiani (52:35)
I hope you had fun of that.
Yeah, different experience.
Dr. Keith Keating (52:54)
unique and individualistic to us. And I went from high school dropout to a doctor with distinction from an Ivy League university. I now teach in that Ivy League. No one would have ever dreamed that it was possible, more or less me, and no one told me it was possible. And so I feel very honored that I get to sit here today and say that it is absolutely possible. You know, your past does not
define who you are for the rest of your life. What does define you is your ability to learn. And once you learn how to learn, you are absolutely unstoppable.
Jiani (53:35)
Yeah, and also disregard of age because I think sometimes we're like, oh, I'm so like, I'm this too late for me to do that. But I think we are living into like long years with the advancement of all the technologies and medical services. It's never you can always change your path and never too late.
and I hope your stories serve as a beacon of light for people across age, no matter where they are in their life. As we wrap up this conversation, what do you think is your magic?
Dr. Keith Keating (54:21)
The first word that comes to mind is surviving, but I guess if I were to reframe that a bit, I would say problem solver.
Jiani (54:36)
And I think all businesses are problem solvers and everybody in this world is solving some sort of problems for someone.
Dr. Keith Keating (54:45)
Yep. And I think once you tap into that recognition, it will hopefully reduce your fear about having a job because every organization has problems. Every organization has problems. And if you can develop the skillset to be a problem solver and to focus on problems, you should have no problem finding a job.
Jiani (55:14)
May us all be magical problem solvers. That's great. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Keith. And it has been such a wonderful conversation with you. Thank you for your openness. Thank you for your trust in this space. I feel very honored to hear your stories, your inspirations, your challenges.
your philosophy and your strategies and magic in what you do. And as we...
Dr. Keith Keating (55:52)
Yeah, thank you for your for creating this space and for being so empathetic and research oriented. And I know that there's a lot of heart that goes behind the work that you put into this podcast. So I appreciate you trying to help other people find their magic and share it with the world.
Jiani (56:15)
Thank you Dr. Keith. Thank you Keith.
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