Get Started Now. Take Action. Staying ahead of change in the world, your organization, and your profession requires action. You learned a lot to launch your organization’s talent development effort. As you position it for the future, what you need to know grows exponentially. As futurist Ray Kurzweil once said, “If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.” How do you prepare for exponential growth? In ATD’s Action Guide to Talent Development: A Practical Approach to Building Organizational Success, industry expert and bestselling author Elaine Biech lays out the steps you can take. The companion volume to ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development: Launching, Leveraging, and Leading Your Organization’s TD Effort, this book follows an eight-step framework for defining your organization’s learning foundation through preparing for the future. You are your organization’s trusted advisor, and Biech offers practical questions, organizational assessments, and tips for each step you must guide your organization through. She also presents the newest thinking from university educators and researchers that organizational experts have relied on for years, as well as from industry practitioners and luminaries in leadership and development. Open this book to any page. Jump in where you think it will be most beneficial to you or your organization. Whether you work inside a company or as an external consultant, whether you work for a large organization or a small one, whether you are launching your first talent development effort or fine-tuning a function that’s been in action for decades—you are sure to find valuable concepts, designs, and ideas. Get started now. Take action.

Your Talent Development Atlas If you’ve been directing your organization’s talent development effort during the last few years, you might think you’re on a journey without a map. There are few published resources to guide you in a challenge that many experts promise will only become more urgent, and necessary, in the coming years. Elaine Biech, a legendary leader in training and development, understands the road ahead and has partnered with ATD to present a new book that will point the way—ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development: Launching, Leveraging, and Leading Your Organization's TD Effort. Biech imbues this comprehensive volume with the energy and passion she has manifested in a career spanning more than three decades. In her hands, you have a trusted adviser who provides guidance, leadership, and direction to your organization. Biech painstakingly guides you over 36 chapters—taking you from developing your talent development strategy, creating an operating plan, and reinforcing your organization’s talent development mindset, through design and delivery, measurement and evaluation, and preparing for the future. No matter where you are in your development, you will be able to pick up this book and select chapters that describe how you can help your organization. What’s more, Biech has included a new customized model to assist you. Plus, she’s invited dozens of her friends and colleagues to contribute—well-known authors, ATD subject matter experts, and icons in the field—to present a cross-section of voices and approaches in the field. In 2018, ATD celebrates its 75th anniversary by delivering ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development, its first published reference to the profession it leads and supports. Think of this book as your professional atlas. Table of Contents: I. Identify and Clarify the Organization’s Learning Foundation 1. Your Organization’s Learning Culture 2. Leaders Champion Learning 3. Employees Value Learning 4. Everyone has a Learning Mindset 5. Clarifying Your Organization’s Readiness II. Develop a Talent Development Strategy 6. Build A Business Case for Learning 7. Enhance Your Organizational and Industry Savvy 8. Expand Talent Development’s Purpose 9. Partner with Business to Become Trusted Advisors III. Create an Operating Plan: 10. Align TD to the Organization’s Needs 11. Manage the TD Function 12. Balance Services and Budget 13. Leveraging Technology for Learning IV. Reinforce an Organizational Talent Development Mindset 14. Maturing Your Organization’s Learning Culture 15. How Your Organization Learns to Perform 16. Managers Develop their Employees 17. Employees are Accountable for Their Development 18. Talent Development Professionals are Consultants V. Design and Deliver Learning 19. Formal Learning 20. Learning from Others 21. On-the-Job Learning 22. Contemporary Content 23. Services Provided by TD Professionals VI. Fortifying the Learning 24. Enable Social Learning 25. Empower Employees 26. Coach Managers 27. Foster Continual Self-Learning 28. Develop TD Staff VII. Define and Measure the Impact 29. Determine and Demonstrate Organizational Impact 30. Evaluation Methods 31. Getting Started with Evaluation 32. The Future of Evaluation VIII. Prepare for the Future 33. The Workplace of the Future 34. The Workforce of the Future 35. Talent Development Future Trends 36. Guiding Your Organization’s Future

Start, Build, and Navigate Your Training and TD Career ATD’s Handbook for Training and Talent Development is the premier resource and compendium of everything a training and talent development (TD) professional needs to know to start, build, and navigate a thriving career. Now in its third edition and grounded by the Talent Development Capability Model, this is more than a revised volume. This edition offers an up-to-date view of the growing roles of talent development professionals, our changing world of work, and the critical need for business alignment. Edited by Elaine Biech, the third edition is divided into eight sections comprising 57 chapters authored by 100 expert practitioners—the brightest thinkers in the field—who share foundational and advanced perspectives and information. The Handbook dives deeply into growing professional expertise and personal skills, virtual learning and remote work, trends affecting TD, managing organizational and career change, growing roles in TD, and understanding organizational impact and business alignment. Fifty online tools are available to download, and there is also a glossary and references. TD professionals, keep this practical, companionable volume close by; it’s the reference you will always turn to.

What you need to know to manage a workforce. The complex and ever-changing nature of today’s—and tomorrow’s—workforce demands that all involved in talent management rethink how to attract, engage, and grow future talent. This forward-looking handbook captures talent management’s evolution from a series of transactions to a fluid process that includes talent development. With 20-plus chapters written by more than 30 contributors, the ATD Talent Management Handbook challenges you to think about the talent model of the future through the lens of different workforce models. It offers progressive thoughts on the current state of talent management and on how the function needs to adapt. Leaders, practitioners, and consultants alike will find useful insights and answers to relevant talent management challenges. Edited by learning and development authority Terry Bickham, this handbook covers the entire talent management cycle, from talent acquisition and engagement to leadership development and succession planning. ATD’s first handbook on talent management, this book includes a foreword by ATD President and CEO Tony Bingham, highlighting the foundational components of talent development and its role within talent management.

Creating Transparent AI From agriculture to transportation, entertainment to medicine, and banking to social media, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how humans do practically everything. We experience AI in our daily lives through our fitness trackers, home digital assistant systems, and curated news services, to name a few examples. For talent development, this is no different. The fields of artificial intelligence and talent development have been on a collision course for decades, and their convergence has already occurred. It has just taken many in our profession some time to recognize this fact. On the horizon, AI-powered innovations are transforming the workplace and the role of the talent development professional, affecting recruiting to training to compensation. As such, there are actions TD professionals should take now to prepare ourselves and our organizations for the evolving AI revolution. In AI in Talent Development, Margie Meacham describes the benefits, uses, and risks of AI technology and offers practical tools to strengthen and enhance learning and performance programs. In layman’s terms, Meacham demonstrates how we can free time for ourselves by employing a useful robot “assistant,” create a chatbot for specific tasks (such as a new manager bot, a sales coach bot, or new employee onboarding bot), and build personalized coaching tools from AI-processed big data. She concludes each of the six chapters with helpful tips and includes a resource guide with planning tools, templates, and worksheets. Meacham dispels fear of AI’s black box—the term used to describe its unknowability and opacity—and points out ways AI can help us be better at creativity and critical thinking, what we humans do best.

Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is about people. And so is talent development (TD). For TD professionals to succeed, they must be comfortable with all aspects of working with people. The best tool for their success is emotional intelligence. Part of the ATD Soft Skills Series, Emotional Intelligence in Talent Development is your resource for developing your emotional intelligence skills. Expert Patrick Malone explains emotional intelligence and explores its five dimensions: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. He examines why emotional intelligence matters to the self, to organizations, and to your business, along with the barriers you face when building these competencies. While improving your emotional intelligence can seem daunting, Malone demonstrates that developing strong emotional intelligence is attainable by examining real-world challenges that TD professionals face. Learn how to manage the stress of constantly doing more with less; focus on one task at a time and do it well; effectively communicate your message; and identify and address conflict. Included are reflection questions and exercises to practice and test your development. Other books in the series: Adaptability in Talent Development Creativity in Talent Development Teamwork in Talent Development Influence in Talent Development

Elevate Your Impact Through Influence Skills At work, we often find ourselves in situations where we can and do influence others. We are negotiators, persuaders, conciliators, and maybe intermediaries and mediators. While there used to be little to no emphasis placed on developing these skills, organizations now recognize the ability to influence as critical for effective employee relations and productivity. Part of the ATD Soft Skills Series, Influence in Talent Development examines the growing importance of personal influence at work and its impact on your relationships, career, and organizational success. Talent development professionals have a tremendous opportunity to influence at a deeper level—with learners, SMEs, and stakeholders—to achieve business and learning results. This book considers what it means to influence in general and in the TD context; how to use your ability to influence tactically and strategically; how to overcome barriers to success; and how you can be more impactful and empathetic. Vivian Blade shares a framework of five powerful principles at work to guide and expand influence: social capital, courage, authenticity, passion, and engagement. Engage the principles in this book to build your influence among your colleagues and employees, and you will be more effective at getting things done with others. Other books in the series: Adaptability in Talent Development Emotional Intelligence in Talent Development Creativity in Talent Development Teamwork in Talent Development