Alex Bayer has a framework for entering any situation. When a patient arrives in the emergency department, everybody gets the same initial assessment. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Nobody is different at that stage. The individualization comes later, once the universal baseline has been established and the specific presenting problem comes into focus.
He has been thinking lately about how much that framework describes his emerging approach to instructional design.
“I start the same way, with the same kind of questions,” he says, “and then once I have a clearer idea of what’s going on, I start to focus. Take a little more specific.”
Henri Maindidze has a different but parallel framework from industrial-organizational psychology. He calls it job analysis: building a role from the ground up by asking what experts actually need to be successful, what knowledge and skills are prerequisites versus what can be trained, and how all of those things connect to organizational and societal context. He never fully considered, before entering the field, how often that analysis gets done on roles the analyst has never experienced. The questions still hold. The rigor still applies. The domain expertise is irrelevant to the quality of the inquiry.
Both of them arrived at learning design through doors nobody told them existed. Bayer is an ER nurse and EMS instructor completing his instructional design program at Quinnipiac University. Maindidze just finished his PhD in industrial-organizational psychology at Portland State University, where he researched what actually motivates people in their learning. They joined Jason Gorman on The Learning Experience Ops Show as part of an ongoing effort to hear what the field looks and feels like for people who are just getting started.
What they said was worth hearing.
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The Hardest Skill Nobody Is Teaching
When Gorman asks both guests what is genuinely hard to build in a formal program, the answers are specific and complementary.
For Maindidze, the gap is scientific communication. Not producing the research or the technical analysis, but translating it. The organizations and clients he will work with do not share his theoretical framework. They do not have his vocabulary. They need to understand the complexity of his findings in a way that meets them where they are, without sacrificing the rigor that produced those findings in the first place.
“It’s about how you effectively share the complexity in a way that’s best fitting the needs of that organization,” he says. “That recognizes the context within which it’s going to be applied.”
For Bayer, the gap is separating the subject matter expert role from the designer role. In clinical education, he has always learned a skill and then taught it. He knows the material. He has instinct about where to start and where the critical points are. Designing for something outside his domain requires a completely different mode: spending extra time listening, building mental models from scratch, and crucially, designing the questions before designing the intervention.
“Designing even before the actual product,” he says, “designing the questions I’m going to ask and probing the right way to learn the things I didn’t know I needed to ask.”
Both gaps are real. Both are partially addressable through program design. Neither disappears entirely without getting thrown into the actual work.
On Being a Good Listener Before Being a Good Designer
One of the more consistent themes across both guests is listening as a foundational practice. Bayer describes it as the thing he is most likely to be doing when he is fully dialed into his work: not building or prototyping, but listening, gathering, diagnosing. Figuring out whether the presenting problem is even an instructional design problem before reaching for a solution.
Maindidze connects this to something broader: employee motivation. People come to a training opportunity from a context the designer did not create and often does not fully understand. They have competing demands on their time and attention. They may not arrive with the same energy or enthusiasm as the person who designed the program. The question that matters, he argues, is not how do I get them to engage but where are they coming from and how do I meet them there.
“Employees are not always in a place to be automatically engaged and motivated to the extent that you might be as someone designing and delivering training,” he says. “How do I make sure they’re getting the things they need, even if they’re not coming at it with the same energy?”
That reframe, from assuming engagement to diagnosing its absence, is not a soft skill. It is a design principle with real consequences for how programs get built and evaluated.
What Healthcare Reveals About Learning at High Stakes
Bayer brings something to this conversation that most instructional design discussions do not include: a genuine stakes environment. In manufacturing, if something breaks, you stop the line and try again. In healthcare, you cannot.
That asymmetry shapes everything about how clinical education needs to be designed. The threshold for getting it right the first time is not just a quality preference. It is an ethical requirement. And the current state of healthcare education, he suggests carefully, does not always meet that standard.
He is particularly interested in nursing retention. The field is experiencing a significant shortage, driven in part by people leaving after a few years. He suspects that initial and on-the-job education plays a role, though the connection is not simple. If people were better prepared, if the transition from training to practice were less abrupt, if the ongoing learning experiences were better designed for how people actually learn, the attrition might look different.
It is a hypothesis, not a finding. But it is the kind of hypothesis that comes from someone who has lived both sides of the clinical education equation, and it points toward a genuinely important design problem.
What Newer Professionals Want Senior Ones to Know
The final question in the episode asks both guests what they would want a more experienced learning professional to understand from where they are standing.
Bayer’s answer is about agency. He notices, in his peers and to some extent in himself, a strong preference for self-directed learning. People want their input taken into consideration in their own education. They want permission to arrive at the same learning outcomes through a different route. He is careful to note this is anecdotal and that he does not fully share every sentiment of his generation, but the underlying design principle resonates with him: universal outcomes with flexible pathways.
Maindidze’s answer is structural. The world of work is shifting in ways that require a fundamentally different approach to supporting employees. Skills-based frameworks, micro-learning, individualized programs, meeting increasingly diverse and globally distributed workforces where they are. These are not preferences. They are requirements that the field has not yet fully caught up to.
“The way in which you support employees fundamentally has to change,” he says. “Making sure that the needs, even if particularly disparate, are being met individually.”
Neither answer is a critique. Both are offered in the spirit Maindidze names explicitly near the end: they want to learn from people who have been in this longer. They are not here to replace anything. They are here to add something that the field needs and does not yet fully have.
That posture, curious, diagnostic, genuinely interested in the people on the other side of the problem, is perhaps the most transferable skill either of them brought with them.
Listen to the full conversation with Alex Bayer & Henri Maindidze on The LX Ops Show or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast Transcript– Jason Gorman with Alex Bayer & Henri Maindidze
Jason Gorman (00:00)
Welcome to the Learning Experience Ops show, where we talk about making learning better that’s future ready. I’m Jason Gorman. I’m the founder and CEO of JackRabbit Learning Experience. In one way or another, I have been responsible for creating learning experiences for over 25 years, I’m sad to say. In that time, a lot has changed. Things like our understanding of how people learn or the tools that we use and the processes that we follow.
How we structure our teams when we do this work. Even our titles and the names that we give, the roles that we play as we do this work. It’s all changed over the last 25 years. But even though there has been a lot of change, for me, there’s no doubt that what we’re going through right now is the biggest change yet. And what the change really means is what this show is all about.
And I’ve had the great fortune of talking with some wonderful seasoned learning professionals. But reason but recently I started thinking that there are people I need to be spending more time talking with. And those are the people who are a bit newer to this work as a learning professional. because in this crazy moment, what I really want to know is what is all of this like for people who are just getting going? What are they thinking about? What matters right now?
And fortunately, that’s what today’s conversation is about. I am really fortunate to be talking with two people who are newer to this field, but are starting with a huge amount of previous experience. Alex Bayer is an emergency room nurse and EMS instructor who found instructional design almost by accident and is now completing his ID program at Quinnipiac University. Henry Mindidze just finished his PhD in industrial organizational psychology.
At Portland State University, where he researched what actually motivates people in their learning. Alex and Henry, welcome to the show.
Alex Bayer (02:00)
Hey Jason, thanks for having us.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (02:02)
Lovely to be here.
Jason Gorman (02:02)
All right.
Excellent. Well, you guys ready to start with some lightning round questions? All right. Alex, I’ll go to you first. what is the sixty second overview of what your work is right now?
Alex Bayer (02:17)
Yeah, right now I’m working in the emergency department. I help people on their worst day, and try and make better.
Jason Gorman (02:24)
And what and you’re also d we wanna mention what you’re doing in in school as well.
Alex Bayer (02:30)
Yeah, finishing my program at Quinnipiac University. They have a instructional design and technology program. so without a little little over halfway through that, really enjoying the program.
Jason Gorman (02:41)
That’s great. And you, Henry.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (02:44)
Yeah, so I really seek to help employees enjoy the work that they do by helping them understand the perspectives, motivations, any intact characteristics and their experiences at work. and this can look like using research and analytical skills to really diagnose what’s going on in an organization and come up with any evidence based recommendations for how a company can can move along better.
and so, you know, I do research, speaking, and consulting around anything with workplace hiring, training and discrimination processes. and I do this work in in partnership with various organizations and universities. so essentially I spend a lot of time asking questions and trying to find answers.
Jason Gorman (03:32)
That’s great. And we’ll stay with you for a second here, Henry. What do you love the most about your work?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (03:39)
So as someone who loves to ask questions. I I love getting getting paid to be able to do that. and and I think that the the opportunity to constantly explore what the world of work looks like is exciting and as someone who also loves statistics and research, true two things many people do not enjoy to to the same degree. I I’m happy to
be able to be in a space where I can you know use you use those skills to hopefully help people enjoy work and learn from
Jason Gorman (04:18)
Great.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (04:19)
learn from people.
Jason Gorman (04:20)
And Alex, what you love most in your work?
Alex Bayer (04:23)
Yeah. I really enjoy problem solving and helping people. And I feel like you know being able to work in emergency medicine puts those two together. I find the instructional design kind of leaps over in the problem solving piece and I’ve been enjoying finding where those two things meet.
Jason Gorman (04:40)
And I’m really curious because this is a is a show about kind of about work and the things that we love doing. Doesn’t have to be necessarily specific to instructional design, but when you are like really, really dialed in to your work, Alex, what are you most likely to be doing?
Alex Bayer (04:57)
Hmm. well, I mean in the clinical setting, you know, it’s it’s helping people on their not so best days. but then in the design piece, I think it’s listening, being a really good listener and figuring out what’s the problem and is this an instructional design problem? And if so, how can I learn more about the audience and needs and problems and
Come up with a come up with a solution.
Jason Gorman (05:28)
Great. Henry, what are you when you’re like totally in the zone, what are you what are you most likely to be doing?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (05:35)
I I’m probably analyzing data, and you know, any sort of survey responses from employees about how they feel about organizational initiatives or anything like that and trying to tell a story with that data of of what that means. think about what that means for the organization, what it means for the the world of work. or I’m at a
at a conference, you know, learning from other talented professionals, talking about some of the work that I do. but it’s yeah, depends from the like the training evaluation phase to you know the the advanced planning phase of you know getting new ideas and and processes.
Jason Gorman (06:27)
Great. And I just have one more lightning round question, which is what’s a skill you’re trying to pick up right now? And I’ll just caveat this by saying does not have to be work related. Could be something outside of work, related to work, whatever. What’s what’s something you’re learning at the moment?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (06:43)
I would say for myself, I really want to to get more more exposure to data visualization tools. so like Tableau and seeing how people make these amazing dashboards of you know what people’s perspectives are looking like and you know, getting to understand how to do that better and more efficiently than I’m currently able to is what I’m really looking for.
Jason Gorman (07:13)
Great. And Alex, anything sounds like you’ve busy person. You guys are both busy, but what’s something you’re learning these days?
Alex Bayer (07:21)
learning how to manage my time, that’s for sure.
Jason Gorman (07:23)
Ha ha ha.
Alex Bayer (07:26)
But I think I’m I’m definitely interested in learning more LMS tools, how to display learning information, how to deliver content in appropriate ways for audiences.
Jason Gorman (07:38)
Fantastic. All right. Well, let’s kind of jump into the longer questions and and Alex, we’ll stay with you for a moment. I’m just really curious what attracted you to the work of a learning professional? You actually, right? You were fully you were fully in a career that was a perfectly great career for the rest of your life. So
Why why did you get pulled into the instructional design program?
Alex Bayer (08:10)
Yeah. I find that I’ve been kind of making similar steps at different levels. I was a EMT well even before that I was a CPR certified kid that became a C P R instructor, and I was an EMT that became an EMT instructor, and now I’m a nurse and looking for kind of the next, you know, instructor level position. but like you mentioned, I kinda stumbled upon this instructional design piece and
I think the thing that really stood out to me was the problem solving. Once I got into the coursework, and really understood what this was all about, I really loved the almost like mystery solving and getting to kind of similar to how Henry was saying, getting to learn an organization’s needs, figure out what’s going on, maybe less from a data and analytical perspective, but more from a qualitative that I’ve understood it to be. of how can I help? Right. And sometimes it’s not an ID problem.
And that’s that’s a valuable lesson to be able to differentiate. but when it is and it’s something I can help solve, I think it’s it’s invaluable to be able to like you said, diagnose that. and I I find a lot of similarities between emergency medicine and entering the learning profession, oddly enough in that sense.
Jason Gorman (09:32)
say more about that.
Alex Bayer (09:33)
Yeah. you know, emergency medicine we have we have very
i i to it almost feels like two categories of modalities. We have the initial, everybody gets the same, right? I’m looking for airy breathing circulation. Everybody needs to breathe. Everybody needs to have an open airway. Everybody needs to have the blood go round and round. That doesn’t change. After that, our needs might be different, right?
Jason Gorman (09:57)
Hm.
Alex Bayer (09:58)
You might be of having pain to your leg, you might have chest pain, you might have abdominal pain. We’ll treat these things differently. and then in the ID world I kind of find it
similar like I start the same way with the same kind of questions with the same kind of you know open ended I want to learn and listen and talk to everybody and then once I have a clearer idea of what’s going on I start to focus, do a secondary assessment. Taking a little more specific. Yeah.
Jason Gorman (10:29)
That is very interesting. So I’ve I’ve I I love that and I I totally resonates with how I think about my work, but I’ve never really thought about it through that clinical lens. It’s really interesting and cool. Thank you for that. Henry, I’m curious to hear from you too. Like what attracted you to the work that you are doing, will be doing?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (10:52)
Yeah. I always wanted to help people enjoy their lives more broadly. I didn’t want to do that in a therapeutic context, as many people who pursue psychology might might go on to do. but I wanted to find ways to you know, go beyond a one on one setting to to help, you know, larger groups of people. I
always knew I was interested in data and statistics and doing this like allows me to kind of bring that together. and especially as I was thinking about PhD programs and starting my program, I was really curious about, you know, organizational decision making and about, you know, what goes into the processes that precede the delivery of a training program.
So, you know, as as Alex was was bringing up, you know, some of these organizational needs, any organizational constraints that might be in place, you know, employee characteristics and you know, what that means in the the broader context of organizational and societal progress. so you know, being able to do that and ask those questions and from there thinking about
you know, employee motivation to be in training opportunities and being able to do work around assessing employee perspectives on those training opportunities, has just opened a a Pandora’s box of more questions for me to try to get answers to.
Jason Gorman (12:41)
And I’m curious, what are some things that you did maybe in previous jobs or in
Previous experiences that feel like valuable skills to pull forward into the work that you’re doing now and that you want to do in the future.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (12:59)
Yeah, I I would say two roles come to mind. so one my first internship was with a structural engineering company. and you know, very much not industrial organizational psychology. but I appreciated the process oriented perspective I got from that work and I think now as I think about organizations and
how to improve those systems. I look at it from that process perspective of you know, someone is hired and you’re you have these certain set of skills and then depending on those skills that might affect what you train them on. And depending on how they’re trained and what that looks like, that might affect their performance after the fact. and thinking about it in that the sort of connected system. And then
you know, before my program I did some strategic planning work for, you know, the universities at Shady Grove and for for that it was, you know, getting to see or an organization from like a thirty thousand foot view. and that was a nice perspective to have coming into a program where I’m thinking about individual employee behavior in a particular system where
it was, you know, okay, so an applicant’s perspective as they’re thinking about joining a company or an employee’s perspective as they’re considering going to a training opportunity in the context of organizational decisions about what learning experiences look like. and so, you know, getting to to have that has yeah shaped a lot of what I do.
Jason Gorman (14:44)
Great. And I’m curious, Alex. I noticed really you’re s you’re still mostly in the in the clinical space. So I guess there kind of a could be a couple of ways to answer the same question. and you kind of already have, actually, in the way that you talked about diagnosing a patient similar to diagnosing a kind of a learning problem. But I’m curious, are there are there other things in
in your past work experience that feel like they will be particularly particularly relevant, useful to the work that you’ll do as a learning professional.
Alex Bayer (15:25)
Yeah, certainly. I think I’ve seen a lot of really good education. I’ve seen a lot of education that I think could be improved. and I think that for me right now, where I am about like halfway through the program has been the most kind of thing that resonates with me as I’m working to design, you know, pieces for school. I’m thinking about is this something that I would want to go through? Right.
Especially in the clinical world, we do a lot of initial and then renewing education. and you know, it’s it’s difficult to educate, you know, a thousand people in a building, within a week, on something new, right? So we have distributive education methods and, you know, that’s appropriate for some for some cases. And then there’s other things that, you know, I maybe wish I received in a different way. but
You know, real world constraints also dictate how products end up getting delivered. So I think that lived experience over the last year has been pretty influential in how I look at going forward.
Jason Gorman (16:40)
Actually, it kind of leads perfectly into my next question, which is really definitely not definitely not here to ask a for a critique of any learning experiences that you’ve actually had. But I’m really interested to understand, you know, the world just as I said, the world just changing so fast. It’s changing fast for us, but it’s changing fast for everybody. and if you were responsible for
Creating a program for somebody who maybe was interested in creating learning experiences for other people. How would you design that program? What would be important elements of that from your perspective?
Alex Bayer (17:28)
Hmm. Well I think about how Quinnipiac program’s currently set up, and I’ve been really enjoying it. I would have to model it after that. I don’t have too many critiques on on how they’ve done. It’s very it’s very interactive, it’s very student forward, so
kind of handing you a a plethora of resources and saying, you know, make sense of these and just try something. it might not be great, it might not be, you know, what you’re expecting, but just try. and then you know get feedback, revise, show it to your peers, get instructor feedback. and I I like that revision cycle.
Jason Gorman (18:17)
Great. Henry, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this too. What how would you how would you kind of construct the right kind of training or path for people to do the kind of work that you are doing now and want to do going forward?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (18:36)
You know, similar to Alex, I think there’s there are a lot of components of my educational experiences I appreciate. so, you know, I think the exposure to research about, you know, different areas of the field, and about specifically about learning, you know, different components of learning from
the designing of a program, to the delivery of a program, to have the different stakeholders in that, to evaluating it, as well as, you know, the experiences of the the trainee and the trainer and, you know, all those all those different things. I think those different lenses are really important to have you know, opportunities to do research on topics of one’s choosing within that. So
you know, you’re you’re in a training evaluation class, and you’re getting to you know, ask a new question about what training evaluation practices could look like. or you’re getting to think about what that could look like in non the nonprofit sector compared to in, you know, the public sector. and I think more opportunities to contextualize it in
you know you know in other organizational contexts I think that there’s always room for for classroom like applied like projects and things like that to better reflect you know organizational realities.
Jason Gorman (20:15)
Mm-hmm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (20:16)
and I think those sorts of things push really meaningful conversations in the classroom and you know can really you know drive meaningful change.
Jason Gorman (20:28)
Actually I’m just a follow up question for both of you.
Which is that, you know, you you both described a lot of different elements of a program or a pathway into the work. And some of those things are, you know, reading the research or learning the interpersonal skills or understanding a new kind of organization that you’re working within and what it values and how it operates. it could be specific skills to get specific things done and different parts of your process. In in a
program or a pathway into a job, of the things that you think are really important to do the work well, what do you think are the hardest things to learn on that path to get there? So what are the things that that maybe you feel are the biggest gaps in terms of preparing people for the work? And then maybe the hardest gaps to fill. And we’ll we’ll go back to you, Henry, and then to Alex.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (21:28)
Yeah, it’s a it’s an interesting question. I I feel like the one that stands out most is not even necessarily about the content itself, about but about the way that it’s shared. So,
Jason Gorman (21:41)
Mm-hmm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (21:42)
you know, we have this concept, at least within our psychology, but in some other disciplines as well, of scientific communication. So, you know, you’re producing research a lot of times or or other sort of highly technical work, but
a lot of the organizations and clients we’re working with don’t have that same you know theoretical or technical understanding of those of those different concepts. So
Jason Gorman (22:09)
Yeah.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (22:10)
it’s about how do you effectively share the complexity of those findings in a way that’s best fitting the needs of that organization and that you know is is meeting the perspectives that they’re coming from. so
you know, I think I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people in my field about this and presenting at different conferences about it and writing about it. but I think continuing to try to improve the way not just academic programs but also, you know, in corporate settings,
you know, highly technical professionals can communicate the the value of their work in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the rigor that it took to make it, but
Jason Gorman (22:58)
Mm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (22:58)
it also recognizes the context in with within which it’s going to be applied.
Jason Gorman (23:05)
That’s a good one. Yeah, that’s
Alex Bayer (23:05)
What a cool answer. I love that.
Jason Gorman (23:06)
a pretty good answer. All right, Alex, give do your best to follow up on that one. Sorry.
Alex Bayer (23:12)
Ooh, I don’t know if I can. Yeah. I I may not nearly be as eloquent of a science communicator
as Henry here. when I think about hard skills for me, it’s been separating the SME role from the instructor or from the designer role. because in the past I’ve always just learned a skill and then learned how to teach it and really enjoyed teaching the thing that I was good at already. But
Jason Gorman (23:33)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Bayer (23:33)
now I’m coming into the hey, design this thing for something you have no idea about.
Or for school it’s me trying to challenge myself for, you know, something that I I don’t know much about. and that’s proven difficult to me. I think I’m finding it difficult because I’m having trouble making the mental models of what’s important.
in a field that you’re already comfortable with, you kind of have an intuition of like, this is where I’ll start, this is where we’ll end up, this is where we need to be. I know I need to hit these certain things on the way, because it would be detrimental if I don’t. and it c kind of comes together a little more smoothly. When I’m thinking about designing something that I don’t know much about, or it’s just, you new to me, I think I I have to purposely spend extra time listening and really understanding
you know, what is this that we’re we’re we’re getting into? What would it be critical if I missed? and I think designing even before you know, the actual product, designing the questions I’m going to ask and and probing the right way to learn learn to ask the questions I didn’t need I didn’t know I needed to ask.
Jason Gorman (24:45)
This is I’m gonna keep I’m actually have another follow up question and and I know that we I know that we are time limited, so but I’m gonna keep going ’cause this is very interesting.
Alex Bayer (24:54)
Yeah,
love it.
Jason Gorman (24:56)
Do you feel like for the things that you mentioned that are most challenging, are those difficult to build into a formal program? So are these, is that the things that you each mentioned, is that a thing that people can get at bats with, right? That you can get a lot of experience. So by the time you are in a job that you have some degree of comfort with? Or do you just have to just like get thrown in?
thrown into the mix and you just kinda learn as you go. I’m I’m kinda curious. We’ll start with you, Alex.
Alex Bayer (25:27)
I I think for me it’s been a mix. Quinnipiac did a great job at preparing us with our foundations course which had in the needs analysis piece, they kind of they kind of designed that course to go through like an ID project start to finish. So
Jason Gorman (25:41)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Bayer (25:41)
we started with a needs analysis. in that we learned how to do some question asking and get you know, info gathering and and think about what kind of things we’d need to consider. and that was kind of my introduction to it.
And then as we move through the course, you know, each program or sorry, each course in the program would, you know, reference those skills again and we’d get another opportunity to practice it or at least simulate it in our heads. I think that was really helpful for me. And then getting to practice it in real life in the clinical setting has been even more beneficial. So I think the repetition, the formal introduction and then you know, referencing it each time, that’s that’s been helpful for me at least.
Jason Gorman (26:24)
Great. Sounds like an effective sort of an effective thoughtful programmatic approach. Henry, curious to hear your thoughts on this one.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (26:35)
Yeah, I I would imagine that it can be added. I think it’s somewhat a matter of the level of appetite for it to be added.
Jason Gorman (26:46)
Hm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (26:47)
that that presents its own sort of barrier, but I think there’s yeah, wonderful opportunity to do it. And it doesn’t require wholesale changes, you know. I feel like some of the coursework I’ve done, you know, there’s been
you know, opportunities to write a research article or to write a technical report for for an applied consultant, consulting company, or to do any of the sort of practitioner oriented pieces. so I think continuing that thread and building those things in is is really important. and, you know, adding assignments around
students delivering information in different ways, and you know, forcing them to, you know, to be assigned to different audiences and think about, you know, w what are the needs that they have, what is the context they have, you know, how much time do they have? Do they would they actually, you know, glaze eye their would their eyes glaze over if you’re talking about certain things enough? so there’s that. And I think
quickly coming back to what Alex was saying before, about you know, being able to train someone about something that you might not have expertise about is interesting, because, you know, in in our psychology we have this this one aspect, you know, called like job analysis where you’re you’re essentially building a job from the ground up of saying, you know, all the work that goes into building a job description to say, you know, what does what
to do experts in this role you know, need to be successful with this role? What sort of knowledge and abilities does someone need to have and skills to be successful in kind of pulling that information together and from there thinking about whether those things need to be trained or they need to have them before they’re hired. And I never fully considered that in how
a lot of job analyses are done on roles that, you know, I might have never experienced before. and so it’s still needing to ask those key questions and kinda uncover that. So just to appreciate
Jason Gorman (29:12)
So I’ve talked a little bit in my intro and about the uncertainty just across our field now and
For people like you who are at the beginning of your careers in this field, anyway. I’m curious to hear your take on what you think the unique opportunities are for you and your cohort now. And at the same time, what are the threats maybe to you and your cohort? And Henry, we’ll stick with you for now.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (29:44)
Yeah, if I think about this specific to to IO psychology for a second, I think well I actually, you know, this applies broadly, but you know, generative AI tools as as an opportunity, you know, for for organizations, I think there’s there’s rightly there’s a lot of skepticism around around them, the ways in which they’re they’re implemented.
making sure their the use cases are are used in the right way. But I think with this sort of skill set it becomes interesting in helping organizations look at when is the best time to use it. you know, what kind of roles might most benefit from it. you know, where can you adjust role responsibilities and things like that and weave it in, you know, for certain clients or different things. so there’s opportunity there. and
I think in terms of threat in the same way with generative AI, just kind of applying broadly. you know, concerns around job security, you know, hearing a lot of working professionals and recent graduates and soon to be graduates talking about you know, worries about their their industries disappearing or particular roles disappearing, companies, you know, doing mass layoffs as a result of implementing these tools.
and you know, then kind of going back and hiring people. And I I think that there there’s always, you know, a different kind of stages of evolution in the way different technology is applied. There’s always, you know, new opportunities that come and, you know, things that that go. And it’s just a unsettling to think about you know what the
how like what the process, the journey to the other side looks like. so intrigued to to see what that ends up as.
Jason Gorman (31:49)
Alex.
Alex Bayer (31:50)
Yeah, when I think about opportunities, healthcare will always need learning professionals. So it’s reassuring to know that I’ll always have something to do there.
think there’s opportunities to improve how we deliver content in healthcare. in the academic setting, in the in the
Like clinical setting once you’re on the job.
I think there’s a
sense of this is how we’ve always done this and this is the standard and this is how we’ll continue to do it. which for some things work well in clinical medicine. but I think as we are learning more about generational differences and how people learn best, and how people are communicating differently now with each other,
Jason Gorman (32:44)
Mm, mm.
Alex Bayer (32:45)
I think there’s a large role in helping to adjust
our content delivery for the times. so I think that’s that’s a kind of overarching opportunity in the well I guess everywhere, but specifically where I’m I’m thinking about in healthcare. when I think about threats, I guess systemically there’s a lot of or s system wise rather, there’s a lot of
threats to delivering learning.
I was kinda mentioning before, right, without critiquing any, you know, particular institution or or piece of training, it’s difficult to deliver, you know, mass amounts of content to mass amounts of people, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing. in the clinical setting you have, you know, a background of of regulatory compliance that may be stricter than other areas. and then also just the human aspect of we wanna do what’s right for people.
Because we’re taking care of people. And,
Jason Gorman (33:51)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Bayer (33:52)
you know, in manufacturing, if something breaks, we can stop the line and try it again. But we can’t do that with people. That’s not cool. So there’s a higher threshold of we need to get it right the first time. in the medicine piece, and then I think in the education piece too. this might be a bit of a tangent, but I feel like Jason, when I was talking to you when we were we were chatting before this, about
nursing and and there’s shortage in the in the field right now.
Jason Gorman (34:23)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Bayer (34:24)
and a lot of it being due to people leaving the field after after getting into it a few years. Right. I think if we can prepare people better.
And I think initial education and on the job education plays a role in that. I would love to see that be something that can help the field. And that’s kind of something I’m interested in in the periphery as well. So lots of opportunities, lots of threats.
That’s kinda where I see it.
Jason Gorman (34:51)
I’m kinda curious for
Well, this doesn’t have to be hypothetical. I’m a little later in my career, and I’m curious for people like me or just me. I’m curious, you know, do you have any any insights, thoughts, takes, points of view on work, just on this on the learning professions, on the work that we do in general that
That you’d wanna communicate to somebody who’s maybe been around a bit longer and maybe they have a blind spot about what work is like for somebody who’s newer, that you’d wanna share.
start with you Alex if you’re if you’re ready, if you have an answer.
Alex Bayer (35:34)
Yeah, that’s a great question. Hmm.
I’ll start by saying I don’t know if I necessarily understand my own generation’s perspective in a shift in perspective. I think I have a bit of a old soul in that I
don’t necessarily know if I agree with all of my peers in in conversation with their sentiment of, you know, work just being clocking in and out. but
I think we’re in an age now, it just seems I this is just anecdotally. it feels like everybody values their input being taken into consideration with their own education.
Jason Gorman (36:21)
Mm.
Alex Bayer (36:22)
and I don’t necessarily know if there’s data to back this up or not, but it feels like self directed
in just conversation with my peers is is preferred over other styles. and what that means practically I think is finding ways, even in structured programs, to allow students to choose what they focus on.
Almost taking now I’m now I’m thinking kind of about that like those universal design principles, accessibility where right, we can we can have a formal structure, we can have a formal program and have the same goals and outcomes for everybody, but you can arrive to it in different ways. And giving students permission to take a different route that they might find is more interesting to them.
to still arrive at the same conclusion, right? Or or to arrive at the same learning outcomes.
That’s kind of been on the
front of my mind as you’re asking as you’re asking these. I don’t know if that kinda answers what you’re thinking about.
Jason Gorman (37:34)
Yeah, that’s helpful. I think it it does give a good perspective on what people value in their own experiences. I think it sounds maybe both as a as an as a a a worker, right? For lack of a better word, just person working, but also as a person learning.
And there definitely are generational differences in some in some of those things and I think they can be blind spots for all of us. So I appreciate that. And I’m curious, Henry, any thoughts in this particular question?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (38:10)
Yeah, I I would say that supporting employees in being successful is always an interesting task to do. you know, making sure that they have the skills they need is is interesting, especially right now. as, you know, there are these you know, not existential, it feels a little dramatic to put it as ex existential, but you know, important questions about what the world of work looks like.
Jason Gorman (38:39)
Hm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (38:40)
that
means that the way in which you support employees fundamentally has to change. and, you know, especially as organizations, you know, in some cases are shifting quite frequently, you know, having a more skills based approach to learning is really important. so, you know, kind of dovetailing with the prior question, you know, thinking about, you know, micro learning opportunities or
you know, if the needs of your employees are particularly disparate, then how do you think about more individualized you know, learning programs and how do you use the the tools that you have to be able to help them kinda do that. and, you know, keeping in mind that
employees are not always in a place to be automatically engaged and motivated to the extent that you might be as someone designing
Jason Gorman (39:35)
Hm.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (39:36)
and delivering training. you know, especially as someone having, you know, taught taught classes and sat there and wondered, like, you know, like this this is exciting. What do you what do you mean? Like you’re not
Jason Gorman (39:48)
Yeah.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (39:49)
you you’re you’re not jumping at this. But then like kind of taking that step back to say, you know, okay, so w where where is the place that they’re coming from?
And how do I meet them where they’re at? and how do I make sure that they’re getting the things that they need, even if they’re not coming at it with the same s energy or same lens that I’m coming at it with. and I guess that the last point just being that you know, especially in more like more and more globalized workforces, the perspectives brought to those tables continues to shift.
and so thinking about, you know, those universal design, you know, learning principles that that Alex brought up. and how in some cases whether some of those principles might need to be shifted depending on you know, the the makeup of your given workforce, is something to consider.
Jason Gorman (40:49)
That’s great. I really appreciate this. this has been such a great conversation. I so appreciate this. before we go, if people want to learn more about you or connect with you, where’s a place where they might do that?
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (41:05)
Yeah, so they can can find me on LinkedIn. I have a website, www.henrimaindidze.com talk a little bit about the the you know, my kind of background and thoughts about work. happy to connect and ha have more conversations about it.
Alex Bayer (41:31)
Why not? Yeah, LinkedIn for me too. people are interested in the intersection between design and healthcare. I’m all ears.
Jason Gorman (41:39)
Beautiful. Great. Well again, thank you both for coming on. This has been such a fun conversation. Really appreciate it.
Alex Bayer (41:47)
Thanks very much, Jason.
Henri T. Maindidze, PhD (41:49)
It’s been a pleasure to be here.