The human side of learning. And why it gets ignored.

There’s a lot of focus in learning and development on platforms, methodologies, frameworks, and dashboards.

There’s far less focus on the humans involved in the work. The ones designing it, the ones delivering it, and the ones it’s all supposed to help.

That’s a bit of a problem.

After nearly four decades doing this, I’m increasingly convinced that the most important conversations in learning aren’t the technical ones. They’re the human ones. About how we talk to people. How we listen to them. How we design for the full range of ways human beings actually learn, rather than the imaginary average learner most content is built around.

This is what I want to talk about.

Why plain speaking matters more than it should

Plain speaking is my superpower. It’s the thing my clients reach out to me for and the thing my testimonials mention most often.

It’s also, frankly, what gets in the way of looking sophisticated. There’s no jargon to hide behind, no clever framework to point to, just words that mean what they say.

But here’s the thing about jargon. In my experience, it’s usually one of a few things. Sometimes it’s a shortcut between experts, which is fine when everyone shares the same definitions. Often it’s a way of sounding more impressive than the underlying idea actually is. And occasionally it hides the fact that the person speaking doesn’t quite know what they’re talking about either.

Plain speaking strips all of that away. It forces clarity on the speaker before they ever open their mouth, and gives the listener a fair chance to engage properly.

Inna Horvarth, a Learning Strategist I’ve worked with, once described my approach as “refreshingly human.” The implication, gently, is that most consulting in this space isn’t very human. Clients are used to being processed rather than understood. Sophistication often comes at the expense of empathy.

If plain speaking feels refreshing in an industry, that tells you something about the industry.

The other half is listening

The thing nobody mentions when they talk about plain speaking is that it has to come with plain listening.

That’s the more difficult half.

Anyone can learn to speak more clearly with practice. Fewer people are willing to genuinely listen. To stop preparing their next sentence while the other person is still talking. To sit with a silence rather than rushing to fill it. To follow a thread that initially looks irrelevant but probably isn’t.

Kim Ellis, founder of L&D Free Spirits, once said something about me that I think captures what good listening actually does.

“Andy truly cares about getting to the heart of what people actually need rather than just what is wanted.”

There’s a real difference between those two things.

What clients want is often shaped by recent pressure, internal politics, or what someone else has just told them they should do. What they actually need is usually something quieter, more specific, and harder to articulate without help.

A Discovery Workshop, done properly, is mostly listening. I’ll spend two hours asking questions and trying not to fill the silences. By the end of it, I’ll have a far clearer picture of what the business actually needs than any pitch deck could have given me.

Most of the value I bring at this stage isn’t insight. It’s patience.

Accessibility is not a checklist

Most accessibility conversations in learning are about ticking boxes. Closed captions. Screen reader compatibility. Sufficient colour contrast. Alt text on images.

All of these things matter. None of them are accessibility on their own.

Real accessibility is about whether the learning can actually be done, properly, by all the people who need to do it. People with hearing differences. People with sight differences. People who think differently. People whose first language isn’t English. People who learn at different speeds, in different environments, with different levels of confidence.

A box-ticking exercise satisfies an audit. Designing for real humans satisfies the actual brief.

The average learner doesn’t exist. Most learning is still designed for an imaginary person who sits at a desk, has thirty minutes of uninterrupted focus, and processes information in a tidy linear way. Real learners are nothing like that. They’re distracted, time-poor, multitasking, and varied in ways that no single design choice can cater for.

Good learning design doesn’t pretend everyone is the same. It makes deliberate choices about who it’s primarily serving, and provides credible alternatives for everyone else where it can.

Designing for difference

There’s a quiet truth in learning design that doesn’t get said often enough.

Some people learn differently to others. Not less effectively. Differently.

Plain speaking helps everyone, but for some it’s the difference between learning and giving up. Clear structure helps everyone, but for some it’s essential rather than nice to have. Short, focused content helps everyone, but for some it’s what makes the whole thing possible at all.

Designing for the people who need it most usually produces better learning for everyone else too. The reverse is almost never true.

I’ll be honest about something here that’s relevant to how I work, and something I don’t talk about much on LinkedIn but share openly in conversation. I have strong dyslexic traits and almost certainly have ADHD too, although I’ve never been formally diagnosed. At 56, I’m comfortable not seeking that diagnosis, although I’m open to being challenged on that.

The way my brain processes information has shaped everything about my approach. The plain speaking. The instinct to cut through jargon. The patience with people who don’t follow a tidy linear thought process. The structured Discovery Workshops that give everyone time to think out loud. The relentless focus on whether the learner can actually do something with what we’ve built.

For a long time I believed those traits were obstacles to overcome. Now I’m sure they’re the reason my work tends to work.

That’s worth saying, because there may be others reading this who recognise themselves in the description and could benefit from reframing what they’ve been treating as weaknesses as their own superpowers.

Why the human side gets neglected

If all this matters so much, why does the human side of learning get so little attention?

A few honest answers.

The technical side is easier to sell. A platform is concrete. A methodology has a logo and a TED talk. Plain speaking and patient listening don’t fit on a slide.

The human side is harder to measure. It’s tempting to focus on completion rates and dashboards because they look like progress, even when they tell you almost nothing about whether the learning actually worked.

And it’s slower. Spending two hours genuinely listening before you start designing anything is at odds with how most consulting engagements are scoped, priced, and delivered.

But the slow, human, plain-speaking approach is what actually produces results that last.

The fundamentals don’t change

The technology in learning has changed beyond recognition in my career. Platforms, authoring tools, AI, virtual reality, mobile-first design, social learning. The toolkit keeps evolving.

The fundamentals haven’t moved at all.

People learn when they feel respected. When the content is relevant to their actual job and life. When they’re trusted to figure things out rather than being talked at. When the timing fits their reality rather than their employer’s preference. When the way it’s communicated actually meets them where they are.

Every new platform claims to solve learning. None of them ever do. Because the platform isn’t the bit that matters.

The humans on either side of it are.