I read an excellent article in People Management magazine from Michelle Parry-Slater the other day. Called ‘Podcasts are a powerful, purposeful learning tool’, Michelle asks a bunch of podcast hosts some smart questions about podcasting, and I liked the questions so much, I thought I’d have a go at answering them too.

What does a podcast do that other forms of professional learning can’t?
This is fascinating for me; in the conversations I have when I record, people are really happy to share – and share more than they might in a written piece. There’s something about sitting down with someone, putting them at ease and finding a way to craft intimacy with the listener that most learning can’t do.

Have you ever had listener feedback about how a specific episode changed something for them: their thinking, their practice or their confidence at work?
All the time. And that’s why we are at episode 133+ of the Women Talking About Learning podcast. What stays with me is the listeners who became guests and then advocates and then started their own audio approaches. That they heard something, felt able to speak and got in touch is because the podcast created the conditions for that. That’s not a completion metric either – that’s outcome and impact writ large in real-world activity.

Who is the podcast listener learner that most L&D teams are forgetting to design for, and why does audio reach them when other formats don’t?
The primary listener is the subject matter expert who doesn’t know they are one. Too often we want to celebrate the senior, influential and public face of the org. Often male – I know, right? – designing for the underserved means the audio reaches them because it doesn’t feel like learning. When it feels like a conversation, they are keener to be part of it and, at that stage, prepared to record.

How do you suggest L&D professionals incorporate podcasts into their learning offering?
The first thing to do is NOT to start a podcast. Understand the learning architecture you have, how people are accessing learning and where and why. 30% of your employees will listen to podcasts regularly; you need to tap into them. You don’t do that by adding them to a resource library. Start with what you’re trying to shift, then curate the right content, at the right time, in the right place. Only then can you scaffold the content and structures to bring it in.

What should an L&D professional do the day after they discover a podcast that feels genuinely useful? 
Tell people – your teams, peers, and managers – and share what you learnt across the organisation. The power of the podcast comes from sharing: the speakers with the audience and the audience with each other. This is where podcasting taps into a different approach to workplace learning. Most importantly, tell the host. The feedback loop in podcasting is thin, and if something moved your thinking, say so – it will shape what comes next.

Podcasting works because it turns listening into belonging. The listener becomes the guest, the guest becomes the advocate, and the advocate becomes the host. That’s not a learning pathway but community forming in real time. Michelle’s questions are worth stealing, and if you want to see what happens when you put that community in a room together, watch this space for future PodLearnFest news.