Association for Talent Development

Zach holds a PhD in organizational learning, performance, and change from Colorado State University, where he serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Meaning and Purpose.

His research has been awarded by the Academy of Management, the Association for Talent Development, and the Academy of Human Resource Development.

He is also one of Simon Sinek's optimist instructors, teaching a top-rated course on mattering-centered leadership.

He's also a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in many outlets like Fast Company, Inc.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to this podcast from the Association for Talent Development.

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Josh Cavalier runs joshcavalier.ai, which trains learning teams to work with artificial intelligence.

He's also a co-founder of Talent Rewire and last year had a book published by ATD, Applying Learning in Learning and Development from Platforms to Performance.

Important word there.

He trained as a medical illustrator at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and for most of the 30-odd years since, he's been teaching L&D teams how to use each new technology tool as it came along, authoring software, video, learning platforms and the rest.

go out and you're going to execute it.

Like last thing I'll say is this, the American Society of Training and Development did a study on accountability.

What they found was is if somebody has an idea to do something, just an idea, like let's just say it's January 1st and I have an idea I'm going to get healthier.

They have a 10% success rate.

Learn more at www.csod.com.

Welcome to ATD's Talent Development Leader Podcast, featuring monthly conversations with the greatest influencers in the talent development field.

We cover the latest trends, hot topics, and future-focused ideas that current and aspiring TD leaders need to know.

Learn more by visiting www.td.org and searching

for Talent Development Leader Podcast.

Hi, my name is Anne Parker, Director of Executive Programs and Awards at ATD and host of ATD's Talent Development Leader podcast.

Today, I'm joined by Matt Confer.

Matt is the Chief Strategy Officer at Ability, an Austin, Texas-based leadership development company that helps organizations develop better leaders through immersive business simulations.

So I'll just use an example.

So I spoke at Association for Talent Development's National Conference, I guess, a workshop leader conference.

two years ago.

And that was, you know, they paid for like my flight and my food and like that in the conference.

But it goes deeper than income.

The American Society of Training and Development found that you're sixty-seven percent more likely to achieve a goal if you commit to someone else.

But if you have regular check-ins with that person, ninety-five percent likely.

Think about that for a second.

Yeah, we're looking at the 2025 State of the Industry Report from the ATD.

That's the Association for Talent Development.

We also have David Elser's book, Doing the Churs, and his DTC Academy writings, plus some paradigm-shifting research from Joseph C. Rost, Matthew Chudkowski, and Robert E. Kelly.

It's a fantastic collection of material, honestly, mostly because it attacks a problem we all feel but rarely articulate.

So one of the things that I struggled with the most was I actually have two books that are coming out.

So the first book is being published through ATD, and it is really my professional story.

I've worked in learning and development.

I really believe in motivating people and also giving them voice, and so that book is about a framework that I created.

At the same time, a few years ago, my family and I were impacted by the loss of my son very tragically, very suddenly to gun violence, and my second book is about that.

Where I was stuck is that all of the work that I've been doing for the past three years since my son passed away, including the book for ATD, was inspired by his life and his passing.

And having two books come out, and one is so deeply around a personal journey and grief and how that manifested itself in the workplace, and the other one being learning and development, which has been my 20-year career, I really didn't know how those things would come together.

And so before working with you, I would get people who would see that side, and they would say, "Oh, come and speak to our ERG about grief." And I was like, "Okay, I can do that." And then other people would say, "But you're a professor, so should I be talking to you about this?" And then that third lane of, "You're in L&D, so where do you fit?" And so all of those things made me, but I was just struggling with how do I share that so as not to confuse clients, and they really understood what to come to me for.