Collective problem-solving within L&D Leaders with Emilia Åström

#9 with Emilia Åström, Community Lead at L&D Leaders. This episode zooms out from a single organization to look at what's happening across the entire L&D field. What are senior leaders struggling with right now? What experiments are they running, and what’s actually working? Emilia shares her unique perspective from daily conversations with L&D leaders.Other themes in this episode include:The shift to problem-solving: Why L&D is moving from content delivery to becoming a strategic partner that helps the business solve its most pressing challenges.The challenge of distributed learning: As teams increasingly create their own learning initiatives, L&D's role is shifting to "enabling the enablers" by providing tools, guidance, and expertise.Learning in the flow of work: How to design learning systems that support continuous development with social support and nudges, rather than relying on one-off training sessions.AI as a design partner: How one organization used AI agents to design a leadership program, resulting in a more human-centric, facilitation-led experience.Building trust and relevance: The core principles of community management that every L&D leader can apply to build engagement and ensure learning initiatives are valuable to participants.Chapters [00:15] What's happening across the L&D field? [01:08] Who is Emilia Åström? [04:04] What are L&D leaders discussing right now? [06:47] Innovative experiments in L&D [10:06] What makes these approaches non-traditional? [14:22] What is frustrating L&D leaders? [18:21] How L&D can support business problem-solving [20:49] Cutting through the AI hype [24:20] Why is it hard to scale a community approach in an organization? [29:07] The future of L&D [31:10] What to focus on when feeling overwhelmed [32:49] How the L&D Leaders community actually operateTakeawaysCo-create to build ownership: Involve learners in the design process. When people help build something, they are far more likely to use it and find it valuable.Enable the enablers: As learning becomes more decentralized, the role of L&D is to equip and empower teams to create effective learning experiences for themselves.Listen first, design second: The foundation of any successful learning initiative or community is a deep understanding of the participants' real needs and challenges.Combine synchronous and asynchronous learning: Give people time to reflect before and after live sessions. This makes discussions richer and more inclusive for everyone.Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.