This person went on to share that they found a lot of value in connecting with L&D communities outside their company. But in my experience, those aren't always easy to find. And with the ones that do exist, the people I meet are always nice and interesting, but they often don't have situations or challenges like the ones I face.
That said, there are some resources that I've found helpful. Here are a few:
- Virtual online meetups like my L&D Leaders Roundtable specifically for those leading L&D at midsize tech companies, or the Learning Leaders Collective with Hank Wethington and Ashley Aguirre.
- Slack communities like Resources for Humans from Lattice, POPS United from LifeLabs, and People Geeks from CultureAmp.
- Conferences and chapter meetings from organizations like ATD, though I find that it's hard to meet like-minded folks at those broader events.
- Individual networking with other L&D/HR leaders -- I've learned to push myself out of my introverted comfort zone to ask others for 1:1 virtual chats, and made great connections that way (if you'd like to chat, let's connect!).
But these don't solve for one of the core reasons for feeling isolated as a leadership developer: not having anyone to actually talk to in-depth about our work.
In addition to L&D, I've also led DEI and internal comms functions, and in those areas I was fortunate to have outside partners and consultants who were incredibly valuable members of my extended team. ROI Communication (for comms) and ReadySet (for DEI) served as thought partners and experts, but also as colleagues I could bounce ideas off of, and even vent my frustrations to.
But I never found anything quite like that in the L&D world. Sure, I worked with some great consultants and service providers, but I never felt like any of them were true partners that I could really talk to about my overall job, strategy, challenges, etc.
There are really only two solutions I've been able think of to this challenge:
- Build our own circles of trusted advisors. We can all do this, but it's a lot of work. It's also hard to ask for too much time from colleagues in our circles, because they've got their own highly demanding jobs to attend to.
- Find a cost-effective L&D partnership offering the CFO will sign off on. Many of you have told me directly that you'd love more support, but you'd never get budget approval for something that only benefits L&D.
It's this second one that I've been noodling on a lot lately, and I have an idea for a way we might be able to make it work (more details below).
But in the meantime, I'd love to hear what you think... do you feel the loneliness of being a leadership developer? What has worked for you to build community? Hit reply to share your thoughts -- or even better, grab some time and let's connect live!
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