Instructional designer and author Julie Dirksen’s first book, Design for How People Learn, is a core text here at Mind Tools Towers. So we couldn’t wait to speak to her about her follow-up: Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change.

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Julie joins Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson to discuss:

• What Julie means by the ‘rider’ and the ‘elephant’
• The many (often good) reasons that people don’t do what they are told
• Approaches for designing workplace learning that leads to behavior change.

During the discussion, Ross referenced an article on willpower from the American Psychological Association. A word of caution, this is from 2012.

Owen referenced Ferinand F Fournies’ book Coaching for improved work performance.

In ‘What I Learned this Week’, Owen discussed the CMI’s report ‘Taking responsibility – Why UK PLC needs better managers’.

Ross discussed the collective names for animals, from X user @CulturalTutor.

Owen also promoted Ross’ newsletter, The L&D Dispatch, and we mentioned a recent post on how to reduce the cost of compliance training.

For more from Julie, visit her website usablelearning.com

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:

• Ross Garner
• Owen Ferguson
• Julie Dirksen