In this episode of Learning Matters, host Doug Wooldridge sits down with Dr. Darick Bryant, Director of Learning and Organizational Development at Clean Harbors, to explore the power of personalized learning, servant leadership, and the evolving role of AI in L&D.

With over 25 years of leadership experience, Dr. Bryant shares how he shifted from a power-driven approach to a people-focused leadership style, why emotional intelligence is just as important as technical skills, and how to create learning pathways that engage, retain, and inspire employees.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

·      Why personalized learning strategies drive engagement and retention

·      How to measure the real impact of learning initiatives

·      Ways to shift employee mindsets toward continuous development

·      The role of AI in content creation, coaching, and skill-building

·      Why emotional intelligence is essential for today’s leaders

If you’re ready to rethink your learning strategy and embrace a people-first approach, you won’t want to miss this conversation.

Connect with Dr. Darick Bryant:

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-darick-bryant-55b7511ab/

Bryant Training & Consulting – https://www.linkedin.com/company/bryant-training-and-consulting-llc/

At ttcInnovations, we help businesses create lasting change with immersive learning experiences. Through instructional strategy, design, and content development we empower employee confidence, performance, and results.

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AI is exciting, learning more about how to integrate AI into the L &D world, but also educating leaders and employees on the usage of AI as well. Understanding that AI is designed to be a resource, but not the source. But looking at organizations and how they're integrating AI into the learning environment or whether it's through the usage of chatbots, to evaluate coaching skills.

interviewing skills, things of that nature, utilizing AI for content curation or creation.

Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host, and I'm very excited to be speaking with my guest today. He's a motivational speaker and thought leader. He's also an expert in learning strategy, large group facilitation, and talent development. He has over 25 years of leadership experience in various industries with a strong background in operations, P &L management, and aligning training with business goals.

And he's director of learning and organizational development at clean harbors. Dr. Derek Bryant. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Excited about today.

Me too. As always, we'll be discussing the latest and greatest developments in the world of learning and development. And I'd like to start with this first. What strategy do you think matters most in learning and development today?

would say personalized learning and rationale for that is learning and development is not a cookie cutter concept or approach. It is not a one size fits all. Sometimes you can buy the hacks that have the elastic in it and regardless of the size of the person's head, it'll fit. But that's not how L &D works. And then especially with the level of generational diversity.

that exists within organizations today. Employees as well as leaders alike, they want to know and need to know that their development pathway or career pathway is designed specifically for them because it's important for us to understand that each employee brings a unique set of skills, values, and other attributes that differentiate themselves from their peers. And in order to tap into those skills and the potential that each individual brings that

That development plan or process needs to be individualized. The personalized approach, it contributes to making the employees feel valued. Because if you're giving everyone an understanding equity within organizations, but when we talk about learning and development, it's important to develop a pathway that is going to suit the needs of the individual. And it just goes a long way with making that individual also feel valued. Think about when you go to

a whether it's a medical facility or whatever facility you're receiving some sort of service. And when they come to you and say, I developed this, especially for you. Think about how that makes you feel, regardless of what type of plan you're referencing. It does something to you intrinsically and makes you feel appreciated. And it makes you feel as though this person is concerned about my well-being. And as millennials continue becoming the larger generation,

in the workforce and the agencies follow, it's going to be important for organizational leaders to personalize that learning and development strategy as well as the tools and resources that are part of their development framework. Because research supports that. That's one of the things that's going to be important to millennials and agencies is that their career pathway is going to suit their needs so that they can experience the career advancement and progression that they desire.

which will contribute to organizations being able to retain employees also while increasing engagement and amid of enhancing team collaboration, efficiency, performance, all the above.

Thank you for that incredible insight. Has this always been your mindset or have you kind of adapted this mindset over the time?

that you wanted them and particularly they needed to move. But I've learned that it's not by position, not by power, it's not by mind. It is by displaying the behaviors that you desire the person to display and then also being able to connect with those individuals. Because a position doesn't move. Individuals in the position change, they're the ones that have the ability to influence behaviors, influence change.

And when you're able to connect with people and I'm a servant leader. And of course that is not an approach that I've always practiced. What I've learned through humility that showing others that they're your current and it doesn't negate the KPIs for the organization. We have to remember who drives those key performance indicators. It is the people that are behind the scenes doing the work that contributes to the metrics reaching whatever the desired level is. And when we show others that I value

and that your success is just as important to me as it is to you, they'll be willing to connect and also to give you more than potentially they would have given you if you tried to force them to do something. The traditional approaches to leadership no longer generate the level of success that they did in former years. It has transitioned into a more collaborative and relational approach.

Do you think that a part of this shift in your mindset besides, you know, humility and just kind of really changing your approach to learning and leadership, do you think some of it too has been the changes in technology that we've had within the learning community?

On the latter end of it for me, I will say it has, but the greatest impact was life itself. When you go through a, whether we want to call it a valley experience or a life changing experience where you hit that proverbial brick wall to where everything that you have tried that may have generated success for you throughout the year now is no longer applicable. You have to do something different.

And you have to find what that different looks like. And they also be willing to take the risk of applying that different to determine what results is going to generate. And that's what it was to me. I hit that proverbial brick wall and I was at a point to where everything that I thought would work did not. And I had to, I had to change my mindset. My mind had to be renewed that

what I was accustomed to doing was no longer applicable to my team, to my life. And when we talk about leadership, it is not one of those roles or topics that you put on when you arrive at the office and take off at the end of the day. You're a leader in every aspect of your life. And I'm talking about the whole community. And I had to learn that the hard way. I learned a huge lesson about pride in leadership.

but learn what one of the most valuable lessons ever about the power of humility and readership, humility and vulnerability. And those are two topics that it changed my honestly, it changed my life. It changed my life. It contributed to who you see before you today.

And what's your biggest application for the strategies? So how do you measure the success of the applied efforts?

Well, that can be done various ways. Of course, you want to validate whether the skills that the employees were given or the skills they acquire are transferred to the workplace. If not, what's the point? Therefore, you want to measure their ability to apply what they've learned. And that can happen in multiple ways. That can happen during the training session that you're doing, of course. You can always have skills assessments that can evaluate knowledge retention.

But then also you want to do some actual practice during the session. One of the things that I like to, how I like to conduct sessions that I facilitate is deliver the knowledge, assess retention by utilizing powerful questions, and then also provide an opportunity to practice. Give them different real world scenarios that are applicable to the environment that they're going to be leading the training session in to assess their ability to apply.

what they've learned. And then also it provides you with information on maybe what you need to review during that time. But then also on top of that, when they leave that session, having that manager involvement in their development, providing that consistent coaching and or mentoring that the employee is going to need as they continue practicing the skills that they have learned. And then on top of that, of course,

How does it relate to the business? Looking at the identified business metrics to determine how learning and development has impacted the organization. Who are people staying? Do an employee, you know, various survey, whether it's employee engagement surveys or customer satisfaction surveys, and then linking those surveys to the various L and D initiatives that are within the organization. At the end of the day, it still has to come back to the business, but you also

have to measure the skill application, the ability for the employees to apply what they've learned.

Yeah, and digging in a little bit further into that, I know folks are always looking to showcase ROI to their organization when it comes to L &D. L &D is a big expenditure and it can take a lot of time to showcase any type of progress. And I'm more interested though in how you're showcasing the importance of learning to the learners themselves who have usually very little extra time in their day to do learning.

First, it begins with changing their mindset toward learning. One of the probably largest misconceptions about L &D from the employee perspective and some of the managers is that once I take this training course, I'm good to go. I've been developed. ready for the promotion at this point. And changing that mindset that L &D is a marathon, not split. It is not something that...

It is not something that because you complete this training course today that you're automatically ready for that next level in advancement. It is a process. It is a journey to where you do several things along that journey to compile into one major component. L &D is one major component, but it encompasses several many components to make up the entire process.

And it begins with changing, changing that mindset. And that can be tough when you are part of an organization or maybe working for manager who has not viewed L &D from that perspective. But it begins with, again, changing that mindset, renewing that mind, taking off blinders, whatever we want to call it, but helping them understand that it's a process, that it encompasses multiple things rather than just one element.

What top trends are you most excited about here in our industry right now?

can't get away, as much as some may try to get away from it, we can. Therefore, AI is exciting, learning more about how to integrate AI into the L &D world, but also educating leaders and employees on the usage of AI as well. Understanding that AI is designed to be a resource, but not the source. But looking at organizations and how they're integrating AI.

into the learning or whether it's through the usage of chat bots to evaluate coaching skills, interviewing skills, things of that nature, utilizing AI to content for content curation or creation. Rather than, of course, I would be what some would probably call a subject matter expert. Therefore, content creation from beyond a powerful slide probably is not in my

It's not about wheelhouse or identified as a strength, but learning various platforms that can take my PowerPoint presentation and actually transition it or transfer into convert into digital learning is something that excites me. the second thing is I would say skill-based development. Years ago, when you talked about development, a lot of times a lot of leaders or organizations would look towards IQ.

But now, emotional intelligence, EQ, has become a highly discussed topic. And you have organizations now that, when looking at leaders, they're looking at leaders that have a good balance of emotional intelligence and raw intellect. And therefore, now also developing skills that don't put a person in the proverbial box, developing those skills that are transferable across many roles.

so that it increases the opportunities for advancement for other employees. And one of the things that, one of things I'm currently working on is a competency framework, identifying skills that align with certain roles. And what it does, it creates that map where the individual can be assessed based on where they are. You can create that.

personal development plan about where they desire to be, where their organization would like them to be based on these skills right here. And then tying those skills into the organizational values. That way you have those organizational values are now lived out through the skills of the leader.

I like the idea of, and I hope this is the case for most organizations of moving from that IQ to that EQ side of things. Do you think that there was anything that really shook the ground and forced that change on organizations?

It shifted organizations in multiple ways from COVID because when you talk about empathy and emotional intelligence, when you look at what everyone endured during that timeframe, if you didn't know what empathy was, you learned what it was during that time, real quick, during that time. If you didn't know what EQ was, you learned it during that time, which I think COVID is what catapulted both those topics.

to the degree of discussion that we currently see and the degree of research that has taken place over the last five years.

It was a little late, but I'm glad it happened.

And what it did, it changed the L &D space probably for everyone. You look at you and I doing this podcast virtually. Think about it. We have moved beyond. You still have talk shows, but you look at how rapidly virtual connections took place. that originally, you look at it, it came from COVID. We're now conducting teams meetings with individuals from another country.

We're doing virtual development sessions to where now you don't have to have those proverbial road warriors that organizations used to have to when you travel from location to location, doing your setup, delivering your training, and then you pack your bag and it's on to the next destination. Now you can do it from the compounds of your office and have individuals from all around the country, all in the same meeting, experiencing that collaborative environment and you haven't left.

Certainly, certainly. But it's important that we don't get away from still having that in-person learning. Because as I said in the opening, learning and development is not a cookie cutter approach. Therefore, whatever development framework an organization has, it should include multiple learning modalities. Because everyone learns different.

I want to go back just a little bit to AI and I'm interested to hear how Clean Harbors is leveraging AI in your guys' environment.

Well, of course, probably everyone is leveraging chat GPT to some degree or another. We utilize it in Microsoft Co-Pilot. are through, it's not our content, but through content that we have access through a partnership. We're utilizing chat bots as a part of enhancing coaching skills. And then as I mentioned, we're experimenting with an AI tool for content creation to help create

digital content to transfer some of the PowerPoint presentations into digital content.

Do you find that the chat bot side of things really helps folks get comfortable with those very difficult conversations that managers and leaders in general have to have with their team?

I think it does, but it's important to keep things in perspective because regardless whether you're utilizing the chat bot or a conversation planner, you really can't predict how a person's going to respond. Therefore, I think it's important that you utilize the chat bot for technique and delivery, but also understand that when you get in front of that individual, that conversation still has the risk of going

in a different direction. But I definitely think it does contribute to providing the individual with a higher level of competence to have those conversations.

And you mentioned that you're working on a roadmap of sorts for folks. Are there any other initiatives that you're super excited for that you and your team are working on this year?

One of the things that we understood is that we had to have a diverse learning and development framework because Clean Harbors is a diverse organization. Our business portfolio is very broad. Therefore, the demands of our employees, the needs as well as the demands of the business is diverse. And we have to create a development framework that was going to meet that unique need of the organization. Therefore, creating a framework, as I said earlier, that had that addressed the various learning

modalities to meet the unique needs of each learner. And we're really excited about what we've done thus far. We created a development program that is for leaders at all levels that addresses four core elements of leadership, which are communication, coaching, conflict resolution, and building and sustaining trusting relationships. And we have ability for those.

those programs to be delivered virtually in person and self-paced online, again, to meet the needs of the individual learner.

I'd like to get into a little more of the personal side of things. So tell me about you, Derek, take me back to little Derek days. So what led you to get into the world of learning and development and how did you end up becoming the director of learning and organizational development at Clean Harbors?

Learning and development was not something I initially wanted to do. I have a bachelor's, I have a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice from Elizabeth City State University growing up. wanted to work in law enforcement. I, here's the thing, service is the common denominator between the two, but I wanted to work in law enforcement. Therefore I got an undergraduate degree.

This is quite a difference.

And criminal justice early career started out working with the North Carolina department of corrections, transitioned later into the division of community corrections. And I was, I was doing what I set out to do and wanted to do and lo and behold, and when you, if you looked at my resume, you'd be like, this guy has done a little bit of everything. But the one common thing that I have done, every, every role that I've occupied service has been a part of it. And.

My kindergarten teacher saw me one day and said that she had a program that she felt like I would be a great fit for leading. And it was called a WIA Youth at Work program. was through, at that time, Bill Clinton was our president and he instituted the Workforce Investment Act to where you had, you were providing educational assistance and training to adults and children. So I was responsible for the youth program. I absolutely loved it.

It involved mentoring, young people helping them prepare for life after high school, or if they were high school graduates and really hadn't found their groove yet, they really didn't know what they wanted to do. It was mentoring them, providing them with an opportunity for work experience, and also giving them those employability skills to help them get started in their career. And I absolutely love that. And then a transition into human services for a little while.

And what I fell in love with the industry and I fell in love with the concept because it involved team. Very few things that we do without that it didn't, it didn't require a crew. And just because of bouncing back from a moment of unemployment, I was just thankful I would die. And I had the opportunity with Thompson to work for some, some great leaders. And I was blessed with various opportunities to elevate through the ranks.

in Thompson and I was, I think I was a general manager at this time and we were actually at a budget meeting and our vice president of HR at that time, there was a vacancy on his team for development, the director of training and development and at a budget meeting he asked me if I was interested and I reviewed the job description and I was excited about it and I'll kind of say the rest is history. I became the

Director of Training and Development for Thompson. He's actually the individual that I'll say contributed to inspire me to go back to school to get my graduate, my master's degree in organizational leadership with a concentration and mentoring and coaching. Once I got into L &D, I fell in love with it. I've always loved helping people grow. And I wanted to learn the practical side of it.

from a systems and process and technique standpoint. I knew that the intrinsic things that I brought to the equation, but I wanted to learn about strategies, about processes and techniques on how to make organizations better by making their people better. I wanted to learn about organizational culture and how leaders can contribute to making cultures better. I wanted to learn about organizational change. I want to learn about strategic thinking and

foresight and that led me to get my as I said, my master's in organizational leadership. And then lo and behold, I was led to go back and pursue my doctorate a couple of years after that in which I graduated May 10th of this year from Regent University with a doctorate in strategic leadership. Yep. And I've been with Clean Harbors now. July 1st was actually my senior anniversary with Clean Harbors.

Thompson Industrial was acquired by King Harbors in April of 23. And I assumed my current role shortly after the acquisition. And it has been a phenomenal experience. never imagined anything that I, everything that I've encountered over the last 14 years has totally blown my mind because I never envisioned any of it. But I absolutely love my role and I'm thankful.

to God just for placing me where he has placed me.

could go back in time and have a little chat with yourself, let's say 22, and if you could give yourself a little bit of advice, what advice would you need to hear at that time?

Never think of you, regardless of how much success you experience in life. Never think more of yourself than you are. Things that all the trophies, awards, those things fade. The things that last are the things that you provide someone intrinsically. The lessons that you are able to teach people. They have the potential to last beyond the life that I live because

If I'm able to help someone based on my shortcomings or the things that I've learned throughout life, they have that same opportunity to pass that information on to someone else to where what may have started with me has now grown generations beyond me. And that is what I'm called to do. Regardless of how much success I achieve, my life is solely a life of service.

I was created to serve others and I'm confident and I've experienced that because I'm obedient to God and what he's called me to do in return. I'm going to be rewarded double for anything that that I may have provided to someone else. And if my if I leave a legacy to where when I leave this earth, people don't talk about what I attain materialistically, but they talk about why the character, I was as an individual.

and the love that I showed them. That I showed them the love of price. That is the most important thing.

Well, thank you for that. That was beautiful. And I want to talk just a little bit before I let you go here about Bryant Training and Consulting. What do you focus on there and what led you to launch this new venture?

Well, my wife and I have always wanted to be business owners and just with the love for training and consulting. And I wanted to have my own brand per se, where I was able to conduct consulting services as well as training services for any type of organization, whether it's for profit, nonprofit, federal, know, state or local government. It was another way of me giving back.

to the community. And one of the things that Regent University hangs its hat on is that they create Christian leaders to change the world. And I bought into that. And that's something that I try to practice daily. And Brian's training and consulting was a spinoff of that being another avenue that would contribute to changing the world. And then I'm 51 years old, not old enough to retire. However,

I believe that I'll be someone that when that day comes, I'll still find something to do. And Brian's training and consulting will be part of that, that retirement.

There you go. You always got to keep yourself busy. Well, thank you so much. Where can people connect with you?

Well, various ways, of course, on LinkedIn. Find me there as well. And you have information on my profile, there's information on my role within Clean Harbors, as well as within my part-time consultant firm, Bryant's Training and Consulting. And I also have a page on LinkedIn for formal organizations. So if you type in the search box, Bryant's Training and Consulting, it will come up. If individuals wanted to reach out to me directly,

I'm gonna give two email addresses here because I'll say it's a hybrid approach. Questions about Clean Harbors, about employment within Clean Harbors, maybe questions about Clean Harbors approach to learning and development. You can reach me at dbriant, that is D as in David, Bryant, B-R-Y-A-N-T, at Thompson, T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N-I-N-D.com. No, it's not a Clean Harbors.

Email address however Thompson was acquired by Queen Harbors and we were all in the same server therefore my email address did not change but if you are seeking Consulted services in the areas of leadership development and would like to discuss that with me you can reach out to me to at Bryant train consult at gmail.com that is bryant

consult, c-o-n-s-u-l-t, at gmail.com.

Awesome. We will have those links in the description as well. Got to make it easy on folks.

My pleasure. Thank you so much. All of those are long email addresses. yeah. I want to make sure everyone was able to capture.

Well, I appreciate that. And I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your insight with us today, Derek. It's been a blast. And if you learned something new or how to laugh, share the show with someone you know. And this has been another episode of Learning Matters. As always, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't hesitate to reach out to us here at TTC Innovations to see how we can assist you with any and all training needs. See you next time.