I can’t believe we’re wrapping up 2025 already! My professional highlight by far was gathering in person with our certified community in Houston, Boston, Orange County, Seattle, and Jersey City for Crucial Learning Live. We built on 2024’s Trainer Tour to create a longer lunch-and-learn format that opened the floor to our attendees during the second half of the event, asking for their input on best practices. I loved learning from our certified trainers and certified facilitators—they shared so many helpful insights and actionable ideas!

“Combine Human and Artificial Intelligence.”

“Is Your Team Ready for AI?”

“No Tricks, Just AI Treats for Business.”

If your inbox looks anything like mine, it’s overflowing with AI-themed emails. The world can’t stop talking about artificial intelligence—and sometimes it feels like the robots really are taking over.

As trainers and facilitators, it’s our wheelhouse to help people gain the skills and abilities they need to excel in the workplace—especially the ones with high impact. But what are those behaviors? And how can we make a case to our organizations in favor of what’s often dismissed as “soft skills”?

Combining the relationship intelligence of the Strength Deployment Inventory® with the framework of Crucial Learning courses seemed like a natural fit to Kate Abshier, a seasoned trainer of both the SDI and Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue who helped test the new Crucial Teams® course last fall. “Every time I facilitate the SDI, I mention …

What factors play into a team’s ability to perform well? The answer might surprise you. According to our recent research study, it wasn’t the size of the team, the type, or even whether the group was homogenous or diverse. Rather, what matters most is how strong the relationships are between team members.

December always rolls around at a dizzying speed—and for us here at Crucial Learning, this year has felt like a marathon at a sprinter’s pace! With so many changes within our certified community, it’s been a densely packed year of announcements, and I’m thrilled to carve out space to unpack and reflect on those changes with you… and to share a little of what we have to look forward to for 2025.

Making an impact is what fuels Jessica Thompson—and thanks to technology, Thompson’s reach is amplified across a seven-state healthcare system.

In a school district with 188 schools and more than 19,000 educators, how can you help teachers develop leadership skills and grow in their careers?

Melanie Collins is director of human resources, talent, and culture at the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, which opened in June 2023. As a human resources department of one, Collins has been busy growing the museum staff from 20 people to about 75 people in the past two years.

Chris McGill and Cheryl Becker aren’t your typical trainers. Chris is an industrial engineer, and Cheryl was once afraid of public speaking. They’re Lean Six Sigma blackbelts who work in the process improvement space at Cintas, a global business services corporation. They do not work in human resources or learning and development, and yet this …