We’re just back from TICE, and if you’re anything like us, there’s always a little sadness when the conference ends. The community, the conversations, and the connections that begin there each year are exactly why we do what we do.
If you missed it, at TICE this year we hosted a panel on the frustration (that’s the group therapy bit) every L&D leader knows — earning a seat at the table vs being able to influence. We kicked off by arguing the “seat at the table” was never really the problem — and we focused on what separates the L&D functions that shape decisions from the ones that only respond to them.
Our panelists — Karen Ganitsky of 3M, Brian Jarvis of WM and Valerie Marsh of Jushi — have each made that shift, and what follows is the insight from their on-stage conversation.
Influencing the order
If you already have that seat, the next thing you will probably hear is that you need to stop “order taking” — and we completely and utterly disagree.
As L&D we will always take orders; that’s the job, not a failure of it. What we want and where we should focus is influence. Influencing decisions and influencing what is asked of L&D. Influence lives in what happens before you build, in the questions that shape a request. What are we actually solving? What would success look like to you? Is training even the right tool?
Piqued your interest? Watch the panel:
Reshaping the order is where influence starts, but it only gets you so far. The rest comes down to proof, and here are the practical moves these leaders used to build it.
1. Be honest about where you stand
Start with an honest look at where your function actually stands, strengths and gaps and all.
Each of our panelists used the Learning Strategy Scorecard to assess their own teams from the outside, and they found either something surprising or something they’d been avoiding.
For one of our panelists, governance was vague, with no clear line around what her team actually owned. Another had built deep relationships with a few key business partners while newer ones got a much thinner version of the same team. The third got a real surprise: her stakeholders rated the team more highly than the team rated itself.
The gaps were all different and ‘warts and all’ clarity is what gave each leader a clear place to start.
2. Speak the business's language
We hear that a lot in L&D, but what do we really mean by it?
Knowing where we stand only counts if we can say it in language the business cares about. Leadership doesn’t fund completion rates or satisfaction scores. They fund revenue, retention, lower costs and less risk. For example, if you talk faster ramp time or more deals closed that’s where you’ll get the full attention of a sales leader.
It’s not just choosing business words over L&D ones — the exact word matters. Match it to the context and day to day reality of whoever you’re talking to: revenue for the revenue team, proficiency for the operators.
Sometimes a single relabel does all the work. On the panel, one leader mentioned renaming ‘soft skills’ as ‘power skills’ to get people to lean in. We think the modernization of that term matters even more now that AI is doing routine work, and human skills are what sets us apart.
3. Look outside of your learning systems for proof
Language gets us heard. But proof keeps us funded — and that proof almost never comes from the LMS. Our platforms tell us little about whether work output changes after courses are completed. The numbers that move leaders live in the systems they already use: think the CRM, the sales dashboard, and the attrition and ramp-time reports.
That’s exactly where our panelists found their proof points, and we discussed access to that kind of data. Getting to it takes two things:
- First, partnership: your best ally is usually whoever owns the system the numbers sit in.
- Second, the discipline to measure what matters.
On that second point — measuring what matters means getting past the easy numbers. Completions and satisfaction scores only confirm a session ran and nobody hated it. What counts is whether someone can do the job better afterwards. For our panelist Valerie, whose teams work in cannabis production, that means watching someone run an extraction safely rather than pass a test. For all of our panelists, it means measuring confidence and behavior change in the weeks after training.
Remember this needn’t be complicated. When stakeholders can’t agree how to measure learning, you can take an established framework and show them where you land. It’s a starting point and we often overcomplicate this far more than we need to.
4. Make your work visible
We can probably all agree that L&D is brilliant at doing excellent work where no one can see it.
So stop waiting to be asked!
Our panelist Brian Jarvis, for example, started sending leadership a short impact report just to remind them his team was doing good work. People started reading it, and the work coming back to the team changed as a result. The lesson here is to put your results where they’ll be seen, and let them make the case for you.
How influence is truly earned
Do these four things consistently and, over time, the business starts to see a team that helps cut attrition and grow revenue.
You won’t always be able to prove training alone drove those results, and that’s fine. Being a real part of the result is enough.
Our panelists earned their influence by connecting their work to what the business cared about and proving it in numbers leadership trusted. That took time, patience, and strategy.
Interested in assessing your L&D function? Try the Learning Strategy Scorecard
