Intersections in Learning & Development with hosts Lisa Crockett & Monique St Paul with guest Kassy LaBorie

Lisa Crockett  
I can. Hi everyone, welcome to intersections and learning. I am Lisa Crockett. And next to me or above me or however you're looking at your crowdcast is Monique St. Paul say, hi. So Monique is going to be our producer today. And just for a little background, we're producing these intersections in learning webcasts in order to really foster the relationships that are important to us to facilitate effective learning. And that's wherever you start. We know folks in this community are new ideas or new facilitators and we know that people have been in have done this for a long time. So the idea is to bring all of us together and talk about that. And that's why we have Cassie laborie. Did I say your name correctly? Cassie? Good. Thank you. With us today. Cassie is a virtual training master. I'm a complete fan. If you can't tell from the look on my face. She has like fortune 500 clients and she teaches these people how to do virtual facilitation. Well, she's also the author of two books, one of which I get to read next week, because it finally came from Amazon. Thank you. You guys like amazing. And if you haven't followed all of her blogs and her stuff on LinkedIn, like the superhero stuff, Cathy's amazing, but I'll stop talking and let you talk about that. And then we'll get started talking about the intersection of virtual learning, design and facilitation over to you.

Kassy LaBorie  
Thank you so much for having me, Lisa. And Monique. It's so good to be here with this wonderful, wonderful community at the TLD cast. Love it. The Virtual Training Carol, thank you for mentioning her. She's my gal. And I have some exciting news. I'm going to be releasing all the tips that I put out over that last year, all into one ebook, and put it all together and the amazing Betty Danna Woods has helped me design it. So of course, it's beautiful. So I know. And I've sort of like written the hero's journey story, which is where she was born out of and added that into it and added additional resources and things. So it should be a download on my updated and new website that's coming here in the weeks to come. So Oh, I'm so excited.

Lisa Crockett  
I'm excited to collect those you don't even know like I've screenshotted them, I have them all over the place. So congratulations,

Kassy LaBorie  
I have they're hard to find back on LinkedIn. Like they need to be all in one place. And I've had more than one person asked me and I'm like, I know you're right, needs to be in one place. So why not put them into a little ebook and continue to bet he's awesome.

Lisa Crockett  
Never too soon. So sorry, sorry, like new new host getting used to getting my feet here. So everybody out in the cast Monique's actually going to put a poll up that relates to all the amazing stuff Cassie does because we want to know what your experiences with virtual life facilitation, but especially virtual facilitation. So check out the poll and let us know what you're thinking and Monique will come in and tell us the results in a little while. And now I get to put casting on the spot which is always super fun. And one of the things that we we exchanged messages about and I think you're as passionate about his as I am and as Louis says right from our accessibility conferences accessibility. And so my question for you is how does accessibility come into play in your programs being that their virtual live it's such a such an added challenge than what many of us who do e learning face?

Kassy LaBorie  
I think Yeah, for me it is it is it's not necessarily such a challenge because because I'm teaching people live and my business is all based on live instructor led training, I always know I always get the advantage of knowing exactly who I have. And so I can alter and I'm super excited for you know, the options that we have nowadays. To to be able to reach people in different ways. I think the challenge with elearning is you have to develop it for anyone to be able to access it at any time and you never know who that might be right? Whereas for me I can know specifically and now I can add in things specifically and also I can have conversations with the actual people on what are your needs and what do I need to do to better serve you and I actually feel very thankful for that and then it's easier today than it's ever been because of all the features that they continue to add and have a super awesome story that I'm just recently I was using was teaching a global beverage making company Oh the scientists that that company by the way measurement science does anyone know what that is? What is measurement science I know it as products that we drink and eat.

Lisa Crockett  
So like the FDA stuck the

Kassy LaBorie  
stuff into that but um, these guys amazing measurement scientists they like when you look at your like, let's say at sodapop can and It tells you how much caffeine is in it. The measurement scientists have told you that. So they're the ones that are measuring all the stuff that makes up the stuff. So anyway, not so I had, let me get back to my story I had previously, I was working with a client who was one person was hearing impaired. And so we had enabled the closed captioning, we were using zoom. And you know, people have the option, I love this, they have the option to use it, and they have the option to hide it or pull it up when they want to. I just love that so much. And so when I went under Weber, the beverage company, the scientists, they're in another country, and everyone is English speaking, but for them English as a second language. And so I left it on, and it actually ended up serving me. Because it was helping me to hear what they had to say it's a sink, because sometimes until I got used to their, their way of using English, I didn't exactly know that that's what they had said. And you would miss so much. And so the closed captioning was helping me and just a whole different way. And so it's just kind of a new thing that happened for me. And I'm super happy that I had that experience.

Lisa Crockett  
You know, I learned that in, in the accessibility conference, I actually someone said in one of their conference, or one of their, one of their sessions, using the closed captioning in your elearning isn't just for, you know, for folks that needed that you think need it. But if you think about ESL, and it did, it opened up a whole new line of thinking for me that I was like, how did I not think about that, that was just it also shows some diversity issues, right? That I have personally, but that we all have, we all can bring to our to our work sometimes.

Kassy LaBorie  
Yeah, physical thing going on, it's your job that we didn't know existed. So the measurement scientists also on that same team are the sensory scientists. And when I was a little kid, when I got over wanting to be a fashion model, and I never grew taller than five foot six, the other thing I wanted to do is that I wished that I was in a family. I wish I was French and I wish that I was in a family that were professional nose noses, I want it to be a professional nose, because I have a perfume nose, and I thought it'd be so cool I love perfume. And I want it you know, it's it's a great isn't it's an incredible world to be a nose. But um, it turns out, there's a whole nother world that's kind of connected to the nose idea. And that's sensory science and sensory sciences around how things taste, feel, you know, like all the senses that we have going on when we in this particular case with these recent scientists drink that beverage is so cool. I learned all these things. And when they were doing their teach bags with me, they were going through like how sensory science works. And I'm like, you guys, I seriously missed my calling, but wasn't going to be a trainer. I want to be a sensory science, like why did I not know that this exists?

Lisa Crockett  
I seriously, you know, where were these options? When we were in high school going, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life,

Kassy LaBorie  
you probably want to be like, I want to be in science and I was too busy going I want to be in theater. Soon me both, I'd like to have a different path to learn about that thing.

Lisa Crockett  
But it's nice to come around to it at this point in life and learn about that's the beauty of of the work that we do. Like you could be doing that one day, and you could be doing something completely different the next day teaching people how to something in the medical field, for instance, like what Monique works on, it's crazy. It's crazy to me,

Kassy LaBorie  
it's so neat. I like I do love that about the work that I do, because I'm I'm training trainers to do the training that they do and the content they do. And you know, sometimes people will say, well, what's your content? And I'm like, Well, my content is your process for teaching. You know, how do you how do you assess what's happening? How do you ask questions? How do you listen and connect to objectives, like all of that stuff? And they're like, then it goes over their head pretty fast, right? People not in our industry. But then you know, they're like, so do you teach web design? I mean, no, I don't personally but I might be teaching people who do exactly you know, it's a one day I might be with my sensory scientists. And the next day, I'm with insurance agents, and the next day I'm with property managers, you know, it could the content is never what I'm focused on. It's the process and the way that you teach your content. So what that all means for me, is I get to learn about some really neat stuff. Yes, you know, and sometimes for some of those people that are really immersed, like in the in their world of science or what it may be maybe Monique, I can relate to those with the people that you work with. They don't realize we have no idea what they're talking about. And they're just like, here's what it is and I'm going I have no idea what he just said. Let's go back and look at how you presented that and see if you can make me understand and if you can make me understand you can make anyone that's

Lisa Crockett  
the artificiality nation Really? Yeah. The appreciative inquiry, right and all of that, man, I just made that sound. I did that very reducing Lee and I don't mean It is one of the hardest things to do. But it's a simple concept. You just need the right tools to do it and someone like Cassie to really help you to be comfortable and confident to do it. You don't just get that on your own all the time. You just don't actually I don't know, any anyone who hasn't had to work at that.

Kassy LaBorie  
I work at it too, actually, all the time. You know, there's there's days where I'm like, okay, I didn't coach that nicely.

Lisa Crockett  
Why did I say, Why did I say that.

Kassy LaBorie  
But my friend and former colleague, forever friend, former colleague, Jackie Regan, is here today. And she and I used to work at Dale Carnegie together. And she, I learned so much from that, from that company, and, and actually, specifically from Jackie to just on how to how to help people have their own realizations about what they're doing, and to encourage them along the way. You know, I think that like in the beginning of my career, I wanted to, okay, I know how to do this. So let me tell you how to do it. And I had I had, I've had great success, let me show you how I did it. But you know, it doesn't really impact people as much they need to maybe see that model and then decide they like that. And then and then they need to have success themselves. And so how can I work in that space of having them hat, letting them have experiences, and then helping to encourage them? Okay, because you know, a lot of times when people are doing teach bags, and they're brand new age Virtual Training, hardly anyone's brand new at it anymore. But you know, they're brand new and growing their skills, after eight months of survival of skill. They have to feel good about what they're doing. So we're not going to come at it being great at every angle. And so I always encourage people, I'm like, Listen, before we start this teach back, what's one thing you want to do well, today? And of course, the first answer is I want to engage people. And I'm like, Yes, okay, that's great. We all totally want that. What would be one thing that you would do if you were engaging people? And then Okay, and then I give them examples, you want to pay attention to the chat today, the chat is gonna be you're gonna be at one with chat today. Or maybe you really want to use the annotation tools and be clear on when you're using them. Or maybe I want to have two people unmute at least two people unmute in my 10 minute segment, you know, I'm like, get specific with one thing. And then that one thing, guess what, that's going to equal, you are engaging in that moment, because they were engaged in that one moment. And then if they do that thing, I'm going to pick that thing and say, how did you How do you feel about how you did that? Like, how did that Hi, or How's it going? What's your thoughts on what you just did? And then usually, they're like, I didn't do it good enough. And I'm like, in what way? So then I don't need to do anything to say, to think these and they already know, and they're already feeling like, I need to be better. And so what they need from me is for me to say, you know what, I noticed that you did it really well. You called on Jackie and Craig and Susan, and notice what they had to say. And you use their names when you did that you watched the chat? And if that's the only thing they did, that'll be enough for that moment, because they can hold on to that and start to build on the rest of it as they move forward.

Lisa Crockett  
Yeah, one thing at a time. Yeah. Yeah. So it can be so overwhelming.

Kassy LaBorie  
Yes, it's totally overwhelmed. Me too. it

Lisa Crockett  
overwhelms. I don't think anyone's not overwhelmed. It's very, it's healthy, to walk in with a little anxiety. But on that note, like when you're working with people, what do you find specifically is is a challenge like a something that often sticks people in those many things that you have them testing and trying out?

Kassy LaBorie  
new things you think right now in our day and age, where we are, there's a good long list that you know, those old cartoons where the father or the grandfather grandfather would pull out the picture of all the kids and it would roll down the block Family Service maybe? I don't know I have this image in my mind. Every time someone asks something that has a long answer of the pictures rolling out of the wallet, and they go down the block. There's all these answers. But the big thing right now it's finally people are on webcam. And you know, zoom started to change that before. In the before times. Zoom began that change, but then the pandemic and what happened, we you know, webcam and so everyone's always been like, and I'm taking this back 20 years. If only we could see each other I could engage. Right? And that the truth is, I'm sorry, but there's all sorts of stuff now like zoom fatigue. I don't even believe in that. That's called I'm staring into a webcam for 24 hours fatigue.

Lisa Crockett  
Let's, I'm looking at you. I'm not looking at you. Yeah, that's lame.

Kassy LaBorie  
People really freaking out about the webcam and then also watching the chat. I think they think they have to deliver a monologue and they think that chat is bothering them. And so I'm always helping people, if let's just be the normal people that we are, when you're running a conversation, that's not a script, and you're answering someone's question, look into the camera. But otherwise, guess what? It's been normal. You can you can move your chair, you can look at the zoom on the side, I've just read zoom with Craig said, you can look at the chat on the side. And then you can look up to the camera and say, yeah, that's a really good point that Craig said in the chat, everybody take a look at that, I think we can to be normal. And I always tell people, as much as I might have wanted this, or may have dreams of this, I'm actually not a person on TV, doing the newscast and wrote the script around me and makeup artists in perfect lighting, perfect sound. They're like, not my life. As much as I might want it to be, I'm actually a real person. And what we're here to do is help you with what you need to do. It's not about my performance and my monologue in you know, the so that I've got that in my background, and I can do that. So I have to push that away. For myself.

Lisa Crockett  
It's hard, I'm sure sometimes when I like when Craig said there, when he talked about like zoom fear, or any right any webcam, fear, but like, I'm sure you've been in meetings or work with facilitators remotely and nobody speaks. And nobody, it's like this. Well,

Kassy LaBorie  
no one's comfortable. So the biggest thing we could do like yesterday, somebody asked me about, like, what's a low hanging fruit that someone could reach out for right now and do better at facilitating? make people feel comfortable? From the moment they connect? Can you What's going on? use their names? Yeah, notice who's here, ask them questions that aren't like this, come off camera, and tell us what your challenges are. I don't want to do Oh, my God. How about you know, hey, Lisa, what's been going on? What are some of the things that have been hard for you as we've been trying to manage this new process? And thank you for sharing we so you know, we can I'm certainly gonna be able to relate to it. Like why wouldn't it be doing something like that? And then next thing, you know, you're gonna be like, well,

Lisa Crockett  
it's just a conversation. But it's, it can be awkward. Craig actually asked a really good question. I'm going to throw this in. She wants to know what your opinions are on what COVID has done for or against online live learning. What do you think?

Kassy LaBorie  
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think that mostly it's positive, because people are finally people were forced to try it. And a lot of people are going, oh, I've been missing out, I didn't realize this was that I couldn't make this much of an impact that we could do this much. There's going to be and there are those people that are hanging on to well, you know, we need to get back in person, because we're so bad at it. Like they're not, they're not looking at, oh, this was survival mode that we were all in reaction mode, maybe not survival reaction mode, and that there are things we can do to make it better. You know, that there are we need to look at that. But I'm finding that most people are seeing what they have been missing. So just in the way that we're recognizing, working on a remote team, or being more, you know, mobile, and all of the positions and the jobs that are out there today. I think that that's happening in virtual training, too. So I think mostly, it's been positive. And I might have sort of a biased view, though, because people come to me to get better. You know, my business lives in the world. Have we tried this? We're not good, or we're okay. But we want to be better. That's a nice place to be it's a nice place to be really isn't it? I used to when I was employed the in the place of Please listen to me, I promise you this will work. And I probably saw something a little different than that. Now the world I live in is different. And I choose to live.

Lisa Crockett  
Yeah. 100% inside of an organization, it can be such a challenge. Even if folks want to do things better. Is the money there is the support at senior leadership, all of that.

Kassy LaBorie  
Correct. follow up question. Back to the classroom. I think all the things, I think that we won't go back in the same way, but we're going to continue to add in person experiences and we're going to try to figure out what's going to work. And you know, right now that's the follow on question to that is, you know, how do you make hybrid work? And all I have to say about that with our existing technology and our existing experiences. As soon as you have one person online, and you're no longer willing to ignore that person? then guess what? Your whole thing's online. So you know, in the past, we just used to ignore the person online because oh, I don't know what to do with that. They'll be fine.

Lisa Crockett  
I was that person for a few years. I was the first remote person and it is you're dead on.

Kassy LaBorie  
I know. Yeah. So as long as As long as we have one person online in our world today and the technology that we have today, then everything is online. So otherwise you're leaving people online out. But I do think we're going to continue to try to do things people are going to be in person again, I mean, we already are. And we're trying to work through that. But I just don't think it's going to be the same. I think we're always going to be striving to do more in different and I think we have a better awareness of what we were what we're capable of. And it's exciting to me, because it's a world that I've lived in for a long time. I'm always late, you're missing out. Talking about work life balance, really, I got that over here.

Lisa Crockett  
Even just needing a minute in the middle of the day, don't walk away and breathe and being in your own home to do that and shutting a door or walking away from a laptop.

Kassy LaBorie  
priceless. Yeah. Hey, just a quick question for you. Do you hear like a waterfall behind us right now?

Lisa Crockett  
What I am in, I am in northwest Connecticut, and we are literally having an insane thunderstorm right now. So I'm praying that we don't go down but if we do Monique's already because we've already talked about it although it seems to be lightening up but I can't believe you could hear that I know I have the window open that much.

Kassy LaBorie  
It's amazing. It sounds kind of beautiful. I

Lisa Crockett  
know what you come visit someday in a nice Monique actually just visited me recently and we actually do have a stream that goes alongside of the house not quite as bad as the thunderstorm and then it's quite nice like when you say work life balance like even in a stressful moment if you can have some of your peace and that's what what this work brings to me is that that bit of peace what's your weight and I think to Craig's point as well like I miss people in person I do miss doing some live facilitation I Love Live virtual but like I miss getting in front of people or getting with people and talking with people and really interacting that way and I think the hybrid model is amazing. Blended Learning is always a good way to go. So anyway,

Kassy LaBorie  
let's face an opinion though I mean what you just described you doing person is how it feels for me online.

Lisa Crockett  
Both I feel honestly I like both

Kassy LaBorie  
i know i know Yeah, I my personal preference right now is that either we're all online or we're all in person because if I'm in person and you're in person I too am leaving out the online viewer right? I am yeah and even if I get like a helper you know I'm still like what's going on online?

Lisa Crockett  
You're right you're right you're totally disconnected when you're trying to do both at the same time.

Kassy LaBorie  
Yeah, that's totally Yeah.

Lisa Crockett  
So I have some fun questions we have in the chat for you as we're in the in these questions for you as well. What do you do to like get into your routine when you're prepping like when you're getting ready to teach you're getting ready to go online?

Kassy LaBorie  
I would love to give you like a really interesting answer on this one. But I don't necessarily have a super specific routine other than I do I do I drink a lot of water and I like to have this Tiki glass and right now I have a little bit of berry flavoring in it so that's why it's coming up pink but look at him He's so cool. Right? So gorgeous. This thing is always with me and I I love him he's always with me and all around this beautiful Oh, thank you yes, um, I tend to also I like to, I do a lot of exercising a lot of working out so I make sure I have that on a regular basis because I find that that helps with energy and making sure that I'm controlling the energy like a lot of times when I'm on that treadmill I'm thinking about being in class like how do you manage the breathing and all those things like all those things translate and I also I live in the forest and I will take a walk out there I live on an acre so it's not huge but enough and I walk out there and there's a lot of deer in my life back there and so I pretend like I'm Snow White and I call the deer as I call them deer use I'm kidding if I were to go out there right now and go theories they would come around me I go out there I hold my hands

Lisa Crockett  
up so much fun. I think that's a great way to get into the zone honestly.

Kassy LaBorie  
Yeah, it's it's you know, it's nice it's those sort of simple things and you know what, oh here's one from old theater days to is that you may be familiar with I will run through my voice some vocal warm up things. And one of my favorite ones is to go through the vowels but to attach the consonants to each vowel Do you notice when

Lisa Crockett  
I do not I like diphthongs and I that's about all I remember. Oh, I'm awful.

Kassy LaBorie  
I mean, like I won't do the whole thing because you guys don't want to go to sleep. If I do this, well, you'll probably get real excited, but we're supposed to be in a circle when you do this. Okay, you start with B and so you're gonna go Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, ba, ba ba boo boo, boo, boo ba si is to say this So Susa. Susa did the whole thing. You attach all the consonants to each sound of each vowel. And then by the end of it, you're like high energy, and you've pronounced everything and you're like stretching out your face. To walk through the house doing that.

Lisa Crockett  
Oh, that is fun. That is fun. I can only imagine pets, friends and family seeing this going, okay? If we

Kassy LaBorie  
were like a content site, let's go. That's a lot of physical stuff that I do to get ready. Content wise, I'm always really I keep roster and I keep notes, because most of my programs are multi session programs. So I have typically like, if we're not using a team's channel, then we're using like, we use what is that? Padlet thanks, Joe Koch for introducing me to Padlet. I'm out here reading comments on things on their assignments. I'm rewatching stuff. I'm looking at rosters and getting reacquainted with what did we do last time? Because I am teaching a lot of different programs to make sure that you're remembering the right persons experience. And it's important to me to connect and remember Oh, you know, you know, like, john, I noticed you posted about this, and it's coming up in our content today. So let's take a look at that. I know you were interested, I want to be able to do that kind of stuff and create a personal experience for them. And that way,

Lisa Crockett  
you're modeling for them to I mean, that's exactly what you're trying to teach them to do. Right. Exactly. You're right. So going to throw another one at you of what do you think people would find unexpected?

Kassy LaBorie  
That is a really good question. I wonder how I'm searching. Okay. All right. I'm trying to think of something because I share and I let people know and I like to let people know that I do silly things like read, escapist type novels and fantasy and superhero stuff. I love all of that. I think you will know that about me though. And it's not exactly unexpected.

Lisa Crockett  
You my heart.

Kassy LaBorie  
Yeah. What might be unexpected is that Believe it or not, I do like to not talk. After a day of traveling, I have a degree in talking I have a job in talking. I love talking. But I can go real like I just want to be on the couch and watch Netflix and not talk to anyone pretty easily. And another little part of that too is that my one of my very first jobs after being what I call a bagel slinger and an ice cream scooper I had those jobs. But the other job that I had was I was a bank teller. And I really I'm not that bad at math. I'm good at it. I like things to balance out perfectly and I like things to be highly organized. as creative as I am and as extroverted as I am there are parts of me that are more introverted and highly organized, and I do crave more of that in my life at times. I see you. Funny. That's just a fun question. Thank you

Lisa Crockett  
for such a funny answer, actually. So we I see Monique, we are approaching the 1130 mark, so I guess I should get some speed questions in here just for fun. You ready? Ready Cassie? Ready? Okay, so what was the last song you listened to?

Kassy LaBorie  
Oh, um, oh, how come I don't even know me? Look at my Spotify.

I'm not getting okay. Okay, you're gonna laugh at this. It's Amy Lee from Evanescence. She appeared she put out a child's album as a result of that but there's this one called the end of the book. The end of the book is not the end of the story. I love that so much Yes Yes.

Lisa Crockett  
Great answer oh my god I have to look that up okay last I I'm going to say last book you read not last thing you read the last book you read

Kassy LaBorie  
now what why am I so slow at this this is so interesting is we put you on the spot? I know it's because the last book I read is inappropriate to share with

Lisa Crockett  
just leave that there and that's cool. I like it. I like it. Okay, so we'll skip the guilty pleasure question then and go straight to piercing

Kassy LaBorie  
it's like a vampire book. Okay.

Lisa Crockett  
I love team very sorry guys. escapism judge me mental escapism is very important. I am 100% with you there we need to talk

Kassy LaBorie  
very, you know one that I will admit to this not inappropriate per se is because of that whole fashion industry thing. I did actually read beauty disrupted about that model carry in the 80s going on Mary, what's his name? Mickey Rourke. I did read her whole thing. So I was like what happened to her

Unknown Speaker  
Someone asked me

Lisa Crockett  
but I know we don't have time and he shouldn't have been alright just one less speed round since you so I found girl you Who do you found girl?

Kassy LaBorie  
Oh, girl, so many people I'm sort of obsessed with a lot of people that are here today actually. Kristin and Joe and Jackie. I love Betty janowitz she inspires me constantly and she is so brilliant and also so completely fun. And her she I fangirl, Betty.

Lisa Crockett  
Totally got it. I think Bonnie turned me on to Betty's did you turn me on to her podcast?

Monique St Paul  
I just can't remember I did I told you about it. Yeah, and

Lisa Crockett  
now it's like, now it's bookmarked. So. Alright, so I think that closes up our our time with you, Cassie. So I'm going to pass the mic over to my partner Monique to close this out for the day. Unless, Did I miss anything? Monique?

Monique St Paul  
No. Question. Kassy is kicking butt and I'm watching you because I'm not seeing you typer hearing it, which is really funny. So I'm always very conscious of feeling good, quiet. And anyway, thank you for joining us today. It's fantastic for a second episode. I thank you all for listening and join us again on October 12, where we're going to talk to a voiceover actor Michael Levine. And he's also an instructional designer. And join TL DC for more great content from the community. I know many of us are part of TLDC already, but if you didn't make sure you check out cast us within and for guests. And if you're interested in gifts in the past, and especially at intersections of learning. Thanks all for coming today.

Lisa Crockett  
Thank you so much, Kassy. Thank you all offline talk. I need to hear about the vampire books. there there's one of those Why did I say it's okay, I see you It's good. Have a good day guys. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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