Speaker 1: I have a question for you. How did you decide to become a learning and development practitioner? Did you stumble on it by accident like I did, or was that part of a bigger career plan? I was working in a call center for a few months before I realized I wanted something more. When a trainer position opened up, I applied immediately and was approved. After some time, I would notice a new position in the field, I would apply to it as well, and so on and on. My career wasn't planned, I just stumbled onto it. But then I realized that having a clear idea of where you want to be in the future is step number one of mapping your career journey. Step two is walking the talk and putting in the work to get you from point A to point B. If you want to learn how to progress in your L&D career, stick around. In this lesson, we'll take a look at the vertical and horizontal career progression options. One of the great perks of understanding the L&D career progression is discovering the vast scope that this career offers. There's so many branches and paths that even the most experienced L&D professionals will find themselves amazed at how much is still out there to learn and then share and impact others. To understand how you can develop your career in L&D, you first need to know the lay of the land. The first step is to understand how L&D is positioned in the organization. A recent CIPD research from 2020 found out that there are roughly seven configurations. For a majority of organizations, L&D is a specialist function or role within the HR department. Then it can also be a part of the generalist HR activities. In certain cases, some aspects are part of HR and others report to a different area. L&D can also be separate from the HR function and have a different reporting line. L&D can also be part of operational delivery within a business like operations, marketing, and IT. On a rare occasion, L&D can also report into the regulatory and compliance functions. And finally, L&D can sit with operations and or the line managers, which is a fairly regular occurrence, especially in smaller companies. Looking at these options, where do you sit? Let me know in the discuss tab. But also fill it in in your lesson worksheet. This will be important in just a moment. Another thing you need to know is how the L&D function itself is organized. Usually, the structure of the department can be based on office locations, business units, functions, and programs. In my first L&D role, I was responsible for the office in Eastern Europe, where I took care of all the learning requests for the 350-plus employees. These were people from different departments like customer service, IT, marketing, HR, and finance. One of my larger clients have structured their L&D department by business unit. That means that one person takes care of operations, another of IT, a third one handles corporate functions like HR and legal, and a fourth one takes care of commercial. These business units are spread across multiple locations, but they all have similar learning needs, so this structure works. Sometimes the L&D department will be broken down into functions. That means you would have a separate person or team taking care of needs assessment, another of designing and delivery, and a third person or team taking care of evaluating the impact. This separation is usually more common in larger organizations. One of my favorite ways to structure an L&D department is by program. In one of the companies I worked for many years ago, I was responsible for the general L&D activities. But we had a separate team taking care of leadership and management development, another team responsible for technical and customer services skills development, a third team was handling the development activities of all high potential employees, and so on. So why is this important? Well, because the structure of your L&D function will largely dictate your career progression options. First, let's go back to the worksheet and note down what is the current structure in your team. Pause here, and we will explore how these relate to career progression. Let's begin with the vertical progression. In L&D, there are three main roles, administrator, specialist, and a manager or director. Most newcomers to the field start out at the administrator level. This role is mostly dedicated to supporting the activities of the L&D specialist. An administrator would send out invitations to learning events, collect feedback and create reports, maintain training materials, administer any learning management systems, manage projects, documentations, book training venues, and so on. Basically, they take care of the administrative tasks of the department. An L&D specialist is someone who's responsible for selecting, designing, and implementing the most appropriate learning solutions. They do this based on the needs assessment of the employees, their managers, and the overall organization. On top of it, this person would collaborate with stakeholders, partner with external vendors, create and curate learning content, and assess the impact of their work on the organization. Finally, the L&D manager or director is the person who leads the function and is responsible for developing the learning strategy. Their tasks include things like championing learning throughout the organization, influencing executive leaders to invest in learning initiatives, aligning with the business needs, and coaching their direct reports. It's important to note that most of the time, someone at a managerial role within L&D wouldn't spend a lot of time delivering learning solutions. Or said simply, you will rarely find an L&D manager or director training or coaching people from the business. Their role is more strategic and helps in managing the team and developing people within it. So if you wish to progress vertically, this is more or less the path. Now let's take a look at the horizontal progression. And simply put, that means to specialize in one particular area or niche within L&D. What are those niches you ask? Well, there are several options. Some of them include things like instructional design, e-learning creation, leadership and management development, team development, soft or hard skills training, coaching, and high potential employee development. You may also want to specialize in one particular area of the L&D cycle. For example, analysis, design, delivery, or evaluation. Each of these roles comes with their own capabilities and attitudes. For example, if you want to develop as a coach, you need to build up skills like listening, asking effective questions, guiding mindset instead of telling, building trust and rapport, and so on. Training, on the other hand, requires a completely different skill set. You need to know how to present in front of an audience, how to give instructions, how to engage learners, how to facilitate discussions, and how to even deal with difficult people and many, many others. And that pretty much sums up all the career progressions within L&D, both vertical and horizontal. In the lesson worksheet, you will find more information about each step in this career roadmap. I have prepared a blank personal development plan that you can work on throughout the course. Download the file to your device and follow the instructions. And to make sure that you're starting off on the right foot, I have one more surprise for you. In the lesson worksheet, you will find a skill map. It's a great tool to help you understand what skills you need to develop in order to reach that next level. If you'll allow me a small tip, do this exercise yourself first and then share with colleagues or your manager to get honest feedback. It is rather common that we're hard on ourselves when it comes to evaluating our skills, but we are also notoriously bad at figuring out our blind spots. For more tips and tricks, head over to the L&D Academy, where we share useful resources specifically designed for learning and development practitioners. 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