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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training in your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Garrick Throckmorton and Brent Foote joining me to discuss the webinar Career Architect: a Comprehensive AI Companion for Development. Thank you both for joining me today.

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Yes, thanks for having us. Absolutely. And this is your first time doing a webinar here with HRDQ, you both personally. I would love if you could share a little bit with our audience about who you are, what you do, how you got to where you’re at today. Just a little bit of a background so people can get to know you a little bit. Yeah, perfect. I’ll kick us off, Brent. So I’m Garrick Throckmorton. I’m the Chief Product and Services Officer and COO at Talent-Telligent.

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We are a research-based talent management publisher and consultancy. Started really on the shoulders of giants. So started by Bob Eichinger and Roger Peerman, those that were intimately rather involved with the starting of the competency movement, the research around 70-20-10, the term learning agility, and so much more. So we’ve basically put together their life’s work.

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into a full suite of talent management tools. And just one other piece I’d say historically, I spent the first 15 years of my career in HR. So in a variety of leadership roles across several different industries and sizes. So I’ve left the inside of HR and now I’m fortunate to be on the outside serving those that I can relate to so well in the work they do. That’s great. And Brent, what about yourself? Yeah. So as Garrick said and Sarah, I’m Brent Foote.

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I lead our alliances business development here at Tal Intelligence. So my scope of my role is partnerships and trying to integrate our AI based tools with other HR tech platforms that are out there in the market. My background is I would say HR adjacent. I started probably the first 10 years of my career in the professional services and staffing industry and then have moved into software. And then at Tal Intelligence, I get to bring two of those interests together in that I am

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helping build with Garrick HR tech-based software solutions to then help with the learning and development of learners across whatever industry, right? But using that through a tech enabled platform. Great. And one of my favorite questions to ask my guests that come on is, know, what changes do you see happening in the L &D space right now and how it relates to your business? Yeah, yeah, very interesting. I would say there’s a couple of

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shifts that are occurring. Some are, you know, not necessarily super new, but impactful. And then some are very new. So to sort of pull those two things apart, I would say first, there is this movement towards what people are saying is the skills movement. So a skills-based organization, right? One of the things that I do think is important is we are, from an industry perspective, sort of stretching the definition of what a skill is.

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Right? So, you know, a real tactical skill would be something like, you know, being able to do Excel pivot tables, which I can’t. Okay. So just so that you know, I do not have that skill. Right. And the reality is those are really important and the need in organizations to be able to do what people sort of coin re-skilling and up-skilling really quickly, given the dynamic environment that organizations are operating in is really, really critical. One of the things that we bring to the table

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in this conversation, I would say, is that it’s really important to look at the employee holistically. So skills we can hire for, and the reality is the whole person shows up. So we have to think about not just their skills, but their knowledge and the attributes that they bring to the table. I mean, I can think about in the last 15 years that I was in HR, it was very, very rare for an employee to fail, let’s say be removed from the organization.

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or moved into different positions because they couldn’t develop a specific skill. Typically, the tripwires are on the attributes, the how those skills come to life in the workforce. So my point in saying all of that is this skills discussion is really important. And I just think it’s vital for organizations to not forget the whole person that we bring in that we’re trying to develop their capabilities.

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when you think about that kind of a movement. So that’s one of the things that’s continuing to happen. And as we talk to clients, we hear them grappling with the exact same sort of idea around skills and getting back to how are we defining this, I think is really important. The second piece, which ties a little bit more to certainly what we covered on the webinar, is the influx of artificial intelligence into our space around learning. I think generally speaking, it’s fair to say that

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talent acquisition and let’s call it comp and benefits and even sort of HR service has been impacted first inside the HR domain with AI, right? The ability to have a chat box that you can ask, how many hours of PTO do I have left? And it can tell you versus trying to find that module, excuse me, that module to hunt and peck it.

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and get that information and then being able to ask the chat bot, schedule me off for next Tuesday, put in that request and it does it. So we’ve seen AI really start to come along there, but I think what’s coming and it’s, I mean, it’s coming every single week, we’re seeing more and more players in this space is how can AI be used to expand the impact that we have on developing people? How can the talent processes

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the impact in a positive way. And so that is a disruption to me that is not dissimilar to the launch of the internet. I mean, it’s going to have a dramatic impact on what we do. So I’m sure we’ll talk more about that on this call. Those are two things that I would highlight. Yeah, it’s quite fascinating that this boom of AI, it’s almost like you have your own virtual personal assistant. Yeah, the little companion on your desktop. Exactly, your AI companion.

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And so what exciting things are you guys up to next? For me, it’s all partnerships. I think it’s kind of the real, I mean, that’s priority number one. I’m focused on building our partnerships. What’s really cool about what we’ve learned is we’ve gone down this path of AI and taking, as Garrick described, the life’s work of our managing founders is now that we’ve taken all of their work and we’ve created our own

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database for it and enabled it to be processed through a large language model, we effectively now have the largest evidence-based database of AI enabled content that’s available. And so that’s really the mission. When I say partnerships, it’s not necessarily of saying, hey, how do we get our tech put into someone else’s tech? But we know that AI is going to be a I would say roadmap item for these HR tech platforms. And then most importantly is, as we’re seeing with AI,

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quality of data matters and the way people interact with that data matters. And I think one of the things that we always talk about is garbage in does lead to garbage out. And we’ll probably go further into that later on in the conversation. And that’s really kind of the more critical part of my role. And Garrick and I had the opportunity to go to HR tech in Vegas back in September. And for anyone who’s keeping track of our buzzword.

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Bingo, right? We’ve already brought up AI, we’ve brought up generative AI. Well, now the next trend you’re going to see is agentic AI. And it’s essentially, it’s kind of what’s the AI tool that’s going to manage and all the other AI tools. And how we saw that kind of coming out for these HR tech platforms is they are going to put some form of an emphasis on either investing in these types of products and solutions, because it’s all centered around the employee experience. So instead of saying someone go and talk to all these different things, let’s talk to one

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agent that can now manage and interact with all the other agents. And what we know is that they’re going to need access to these data sets. because of the, I’d say probably the longitudinal view that we’ve built is 40 years of research-based and evidence-attested content, you can’t just develop it overnight. You can’t just go and acquire it. You can’t go and scrape the internet and find it. And so that

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What’s exciting about that opportunity that I see is to say, okay, we know these organizations are going to have a need for these data sets and they’re not going to have the resources or the bandwidth to go and do that. And we have the opportunity to bridge that gap. You’ve got the tech, we’ve got the enabled data. How do we create really bespoke solutions that are centered on the employee experience, but then are then bringing that learning development companion into the pocket of everyone, of an organization at all levels, anywhere in the world.

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in the time that they need it. That’s great. That’s great. Yeah, and I’ll add a few other things that we’re sort of focused on. One is, back to our use of the term companion, we’re building, I would call it just a little family of companions, AI companions. And so one of the first things we built was what’s called the Career Architect. That’s a lot of what we talked about on the webinar, but it allows organizations to

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fully customized the look, feel of the AI development companion to their brand. So it feels like they made it, right? We have a couple others. One we just launched called the EQ Architect, so focused on emotional intelligence development. And we have another one coming, personality type. because the database now has about 10 million words of intellectual property and over 15,000 evidence-based development tips, we’re able to…

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speak to many constructs that are being used inside organizational development initiatives. So just to sort of paint a picture of how that looks, imagine you’re doing a workshop on EQ or type or fill in the blank inside your organization. Well, at some point that workshop ends, right? At some point that coaching session with that assessment ends. Well, that’s where our companion comes in. So we supplement the work that HR is doing by extending a resource that can sit with that person as they continue to explore.

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you know, how do I improve my ability to show empathy at work? What does that even look like? What should I start doing, stop doing? Well, they’ve got a trusted resource to be able to do that. And they can load any of their assessments in and actually do ongoing sort of analysis of that information inside the system, all in a private and secure way. So we’re doing a lot of work in that space. The other piece that I would mention is we’re redesigning all of our certification programs. So we’re going to be moving towards

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a mix of self-paced modules to train HR professionals to be self-sufficient, also with a human-centered element to it. So still not throwing people all into digital. We’re still going to be available. We’re still going to have conversations and answer questions with them, but something that they can do at their pace on their own time when it’s convenient to them. So we’re launching that at beginning of 2025 as well and are very excited to get that going. And so you mentioned you have three different AI

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products? Are they all under the same umbrella or are vastly different products? Yeah, they all operate, I would say, in a very similar way. mean, if you think of chat GPT, it’d be similar in terms of the fact that an employee can explore any developmental concept that they would like in a conversational nature. So all you have to bring to the tables and employee is a question, right? So as an example,

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I’m heading into a meeting and I know there’s going to be conflict. How do I prepare to do this well? Or I’m managing a team and they seem to be struggling, hitting their milestones and goals. What are the first things I should do in a conversation with them to help get them on track? Or literally, how do I start this meeting with a new direct report? What do I say to create trust and safety as I build rapport with this new person? So all you have to do is bring a question.

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Each of the products are unique from the perspective that the story we tell on the page and the resources we provide get more specific. So obviously, if you’re in the EQ architect, there’s going to be EQ resources and videos that are unique there versus if you’re doing personality type. So that’s a part of the bespoke nature is we’re able to deliver different kind of educational moments on each of those tools.

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And so we recently did the webinar together on the career architect, a comprehensive AI companion for development. Could you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants at this event? Yeah, absolutely. What’s been cool about being a part of this event, if we go back to me joining in January and I’m sure for Garrick, you know, back to June of 2023 when we were first kind of really rolling out this idea of how do we bring generative AI companions into

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talent development space was that even 10 months ago, if you asked the question, what are you doing about AI? There was a lot of kind of, I’m not sure, maybe hesitation. So the first one was when we were engaging, right, was the number of professionals that are now saying as an organization, we are looking into this and that it’s only going to pick up steam and it’s not really slowing down. I think 12 months ago, it would have been a question of maybe. And now I think it’s more of a matter of when and not if.

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The other thing is we really saw that HR professionals need to quickly educate themselves on how technology works, how to vet vendors, how to really kind of qualify who we should bring into the organization, right? I think one of the things that has been great about, let’s say, these open sources of generative AI tools is that, yes, I can use my Gmail and I can sign up, but we don’t really think about the implications of like, well, where’s my data going? What do they know about me?

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What am I putting out there into the internet that I now can’t take back? And so that was an important thing is that we were able to kind of really help those HR professionals start to think about what’s the framework for vetting and identifying a vendor that we want to bring into our organization. And a couple other things were, know, HR professionals generally are really seeing that this is an opportunity to enhance their employees and their talent. You know, it is kind of becoming a bit of a cliche, but

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AI is not going to replace us. It’s the people that know how to best leverage AI. So I think you were starting to see that trend is there’s now this kind of shift from saying it’s not a threat, but it’s actually an asset. then, you know, lastly, when we talked about the what’s behind the scenes is again, it probably goes back into, you know, the safety and efficacy of what we’re doing. We’re talking about vetting, but there’s also that little extra layer that we saw maybe some.

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of I should really think about the data that is produced. When we talk about, again, these open sources, you can kind of pull anywhere that is publicly facing on the internet can be scraped and pulled into an answer. And what we really emphasize, and I think our learners are starting to see, is that the importance of a well-curated database that you’re pulling from. So one thing that we’ve seen in the open market is that you hear this term hallucinations.

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which is basically the AI model has been told you need to find an answer. Sometimes that answer may not be right, but produce an answer because we want to demonstrate that we can do this. And then the other thing that we’re seeing is these same open source AI models are using the answers they produce to reinforce some of learning in the future, right? So if it gives an answer, it’s not necessarily saying it’s wrong or right, but it’s just somebody saying it’s now produced an answer and it’s going to use that answer to kind of retrain part of its model on how it.

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provides answers, right? So then you start to see some degradation in the data quality of what’s been produced. And so we talked about that a little bit at the top, It’s garbage in, garbage out. And it’s very true for what you’re producing and also what is being produced by the tools. So I think that’s what I would probably shape it on and say, this is really what was stood out to us of what these learners were looking at when considering an AI vendor and their learning development or talent management processes.

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And with every new technology, there’s pros and cons. And we’ve talked a lot about the pros. But what do you think are some concerns or risks that you would highlight for those that are listening today? Yeah, a couple jump to my mind. mean, we’ve talked about a few, but certainly privacy. We have these conversations every week with clients. Privacy, security, are vital. And the reality is it’s going to be very rare.

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for an HR function to bring in AI without having to vet privacy, security, the fencing around the process, so on and so forth. So that’s always a concern that you have to lean into when you’re considering adopting this type of technology. know, another con I would say, or a watch out rather, is that just like with any technology, just because you turn it on doesn’t mean that all of sudden the world’s going to change, right? So what we work with our clients when…

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we partner is to say, want our companion to show up in the flow of work. Right? So we want access for employees to be placed when they’re in the performance management module, when they’re on HR SharePoint page, when they’re in the IDP creation process, when they’re preparing for talent reviews or doing the nine box or succession planning. And so, you know, if you just turn on a button and you throw it on the side of a screen or put it in your favorites, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to have the impact. So

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utilizing the right tool in the right place is a really, I think, important thing that is a watch out for people when they think about adopting a technology about this. And the other thing I’d say, and I won’t belabor the point because we’ve talked about it, goes back also to the data. If you just think about employees inside of an organization, the developmental needs vary from an intern to the CEO. Those are very two different worlds that they live in.

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The aspirations are very different. The impact where they’re trying to drive is very different. And so does that data allow the CEO and the intern to come in and get what they need from one source? That’s why the robustness is so important there. So the con of that is if you are using the open web, you’re getting career advice from Wikipedia. I mean, that’s really where those engines are. That’s one of the places those engines are pulling from, right? Yeah.

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I would add one other thing to what you talked about, Garrett, meeting in the flow of work. But this would probably go to more of a technology rollout practice. Same idea, right? Just because you made it available doesn’t necessarily mean that your learners or your users automatically know how to best leverage the tool or that they’re even going to be, I would say, natively intuitive to what’s going on.

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I think in that same breath to say, not only do you place it in the right place, but maybe level setting some expectations of how do you leverage this and what does it look like to use it? We’ve had one user say, hey, I typed in the word collaboration and I got nothing. And it’s like, yeah, you probably shouldn’t have because it’s not just Google. We’re not just asking you to give us a definition. We actually want you to provide it with context. So that would maybe be another one of those watch outs. It’s have that plan. How are you going to enable users on this? And actually, you know,

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methodically roll it out to your organization so that it’s not just a blanket, here it is, it’s available, why aren’t we adopting the technology? And AI, it’s on the fast track, it’s always changing every day. Where do you see the future of it going as it relates to supporting talent management and development strategies? Brent talked about it a little bit, but agentic AI.

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is certainly the next wave. And said in a really simple way, it is AI talking to AI. So think about a companion telling another companion to go do something, right? So it basically allows a broader integration of the work that AI can do on the behalf of, let’s call it just an HR professional. So that’s certainly one piece of it. I would say, you know, the other element of the future of AI, I think, is that it’s just going to be more and more.

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integrated into everything that we do. I mean, when I think of my children at this point, you know, they’ll grow up and not know a world without AI. So the future is that this is going to drive efficiencies and effectiveness in so many different ways when we use it in ethical and safe manners. And what about the misconceptions? What are some misconceptions that organizations hold about AI and HR?

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Yeah, I think one misconception is that I can ignore it. We don’t need to be thinking about this. It’ll go away. This is a fad. That is most certainly not true. There was a recent survey that was done, and I can’t remember the source of it, but it was something around 73 % of HR leaders said, if we don’t adopt AI in the next 12 to 24 months, we’re going to be behind. Right? And so…

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That’s why I would really encourage people to fight against the misconception that you can sort of turn your head to it. Start learning, what is it, right? And this is a great opportunity for HR to have a strategic seat at the table of figuring out how our organization’s going to manage this new technology in a way that helps us differentiate the employee value proposition, because the next generation is gonna come out of school, they’re gonna come in to the workforce and they’re gonna expect.

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that these tools are available to them. So I think that’s certainly one misconception that I hear. Yeah. what about talking about the future generations and how they will be growing up and all they’ll know is AI. Do you think that there will be an impact on critical thinking, problem solving, or those core skills that you work on and develop as you’re then maybe using an AI?

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assistive tool to help you, you know, manage those things and come up with ideas for yourself or things like that? Yeah, I would say that’s an interesting question. Yeah, I think, you know, every generation has unique gifts and I would say blind spots based upon the environment that they’re brought up through, right? And so just as an example, I know that Gen Z is probably by the end of this year, if not the beginning of next year, going to outnumber

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the boomers that are still left in the workforce. And that feels like that happened overnight, all of a sudden. So you just think about the preferences that people bring into the workforce based upon these generations. It’s very, it’s impactful. One of the things that they share in common though, as I think the red thread of the generations is more important than the differences, is that everyone wants to have meaningful work and they want their capabilities to be developed. So I’m gonna get to answer your question here.

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Which is, I think that we know from the evidence, the behaviors that drive effectiveness at work. Critical thinking is one of those, Collaboration, right? The ability to have emotional intelligence. I think that the successful employees of the future are going to not give up the need to have critical thinking or EQ, but they’re gonna be able to use these tools to propel the speed at which they’re able to…

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pick up those kinds of KSAs, right? Because even though the systems are gonna help us do analysis in a robust way, you still have to use critical thinking to question what you’re looking at, right? Especially if it’s garbage in garbage out. So. One of the interesting things that I kind of explored with these AI solutions in the beginning of the year was,

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It’s kind of a, so I think it helps actually enhance critical thinking. And my justification would be in that it’s actually a safe environment for you to get into an argument without emotions kind of ruling the day. you know, whether the use case is I’m going into a feedback and I’m going to go that way, or I’m preparing for an interview with an executive, give me questions, interview me, right? But one of the more fun ways to do it.

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is and you can do this with really any gener of AI model is go and find some assumptions you have or some ideas that you’ve learned about and then go and basically say, make your case, justify this. I’m going to make my case and justify it. And you kind of argue with it. And what I have found is because there is no really emotional motive behind it is I can challenge assumptions I have. I can learn more about things. can explore things in a safe space and not have to worry about.

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you know, asking a question and maybe not knowing all the facts, right? You just want to go and find out. So I think, again, it comes down to how you use it and how effectively you can leverage the tool. I think of it, again, if it’s an answer that says, give me the answer and I’ll go, yeah, that’s probably going to depreciate that critical thinking over time. But I think you can also then flip it and say, hey, I want to go challenge some things. Let me kind of spark up this conversation and really engage and investigate something so I can think deeply about it.

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And then maybe bringing that into the context of generative AI coaching specifically. And what we’ve talked about is, you know, one of the capabilities we have is take any assessment, it doesn’t matter who the publisher is, and now you can interact with it. And your background is evidence-based research tested, you know, data to say, I can get better at this. even down to, so, you know, for my personality preferences, I’m an ENFJ. And other than the reports I’ve always gotten that tell me what that means, now I can actually have a more meaningful conversation about myself.

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with a tool like this. And so maybe, know, critical thinking isn’t always boxed in the idea of how do I solve a problem and get around something. Maybe it’s just more critical thinking is also an exercise in exploration and learning deeper about a single subject and exploring something that you maybe haven’t had the opportunity to do so before. Great. Great. And what about your customers? So how are they adopting an AI coaching companion in their organization? Yeah.

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Yeah, we’re seeing it in a variety of ways. And I think it varies because the tools applicability can be used in so many different sort of environments. So I say that to say we have some clients that have launched our AI across every desktop in the entire organization. One single click of a button and I have a, you know, they call it the development coach. They have a development coach window that opens up with their look and feel and employees can get support.

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right when they need it to sort of extend HR’s usefulness. So they’re using it in that way to support performance management, preparation to support coaching and feedback, career aspirations, anything that people bring to the table. And then I would say on the other end, we see them hooking it up against coaching and workshops. So it is seen as an ancillary tool that can focus to go deeper on any

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given topic that they may be covering. I think such as emotional intelligence like we talked about or personality type that we talked about previously. So supplementing a supplemental resource to work they’re doing or broad scale support of coaching in the moment of need truly. Awesome. And before we wrap up today, lastly, I’d love to know where can listeners go learn more about your work? Where can they connect with you?

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So you can find Garrick and I both on LinkedIn. Talent-Intelligent also has a page on LinkedIn as well. So we’d love to connect with anyone that is listening or has more questions. And then you can explore all of our talent development tools at talent-intelligent.com and you can see everything we’ve been working on there. Awesome. Well, thank you, Garrick and Brent for your time today. Thank you, Sarah. This was a lot of fun. Yes, thank you.

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We will have all of the information linked below for you. So if you haven’t checked out the webinar, I highly recommend you do so. We’ll have that linked there in the description as well as some other information for you too. We hope that you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review. That’s how we’re able to continue to produce this weekly free content for you. And thank you all for tuning in to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast.

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