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Lori Stockel has been an avid learner, she says, “from the moment I was born.” She worked full-time while attaining both her undergraduate and graduate degrees. After six years, she wondered: What else is out there?

She packed a suitcase, said goodbye to her boyfriend, and backpacked around the world alone for a year.

“That was the most incredible learning experience I have ever had,” Lori recalls. “I had to navigate new challenges daily: Where am I going today? What is the language spoken? What currency do they use? The detective work in solving problems, the resilience when things went wrong — those travels were where I learned to be a learning practitioner who is nimble, agile, and curious.” 

Today, as vice president and global head of learning and development at artisanal chocolate company Godiva Chocolatier, she faces a new set of challenges on a daily basis — including uniting a workforce of 1,800 employees spanning North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. In her role, she helps Godiva employees (known as “chocolatiers”) see a trajectory for themselves and their development at the company.

Previously, Lori spent 28 years at Nestlé Waters across the business development, marketing, operations and e-commerce departments, and most recently was director of learning and development in the company’s center for sales excellence.

Whether she’s building organization-wide L&D programs or coaching employees 1:1 on their individual development plans, Lori is motivated by unlocking potential within people — and in turn, unlocking new potential for her organization.

Below, Lori shares more of her story.

Q: How much chocolate do you get to eat at work?

A: It’s dangerous. The chocolate is as good as you would think. My favorite is a raspberry star, which is white chocolate with a raspberry filling. We sometimes get shipments to the New York office, and people are elbowing each other to get to the chocolate. You give them out to friends and family — and you’re the favorite guest at any party you’re invited to.

Q: How does your background inform your quest to make learning just as tempting as chocolate?

A: I started my career in marketing, and I had the opportunity to work in sales operations for our e-commerce business development, and then was tapped to lead L&D for the sales team. Little did I know that L&D was going to end up being the job that I loved most, because I got to use all of the skills that I learned from all of those other business operations roles to focus on people and unlocking their potential.

Q: What does L&D mean to you? 

A: L&D unlocks people’s possibilities to deliver new skills and business value. L&D is also like a currency — you can market L&D to talent to get people to invest in themselves. That’s a value proposition for attracting and keeping talent.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you’re facing in your role? 

A: Convincing employees that spending time on L&D is worth it is a challenge. People will tell you, “I don’t have the time.” I try to help people understand why they should invest in learning and development and why it’s really for you. It’s about a growth mindset — it’s your commitment to yourself versus being one more thing you have to do today.

Q: What are some ways you help get individual Godiva employees excited about taking charge of their own learning and development?

A: We tie employees’ learning to their personalized objectives and key results (OKRs). We want employees to not only think about their career development, but also, based on their objectives, identify skill gaps that they want to close — and we help them prioritize learning those skills so we can meet our business plan. 

To raise awareness of learning programs, we started with the rebranding of L&D to Godiva Youniverstiy. We want our chocolatiers to see our solutions as a benefit, enabling them to deliver on their goals and grow their careers. The team markets L&D with videos, social posts, and regular communication encouraging employees to use programs like LinkedIn Learning. We create a surround-sound approach so employees are aware of these learning programs and inspired to engage.

We recently launched an internal marketing campaign around individual development planning (IDP) season. One aspect this year was a teaser video in our Yammer channel about what an IDP is and why it’s important. From there, we did a variety of programs, how-to videos showing how to work on IDPs in context.

Our HR teams are available via both scheduled individual coaching sessions and pop-up shops, where we sit in the cafeteria and talk individual employees through their learning goals.

Q: What do you wish more managers paid attention to as it relates to helping employees learn on the job? 

A: Over the course of my career, I find some people leaders misunderstand what their true job is. Too many times individual contributors were promoted to managers because they were good at what they were doing. A manager’s role is about leading, inspiring, and bringing a team together. And if that is not both understood and practiced, managers are missing opportunities to unlock employees’ potential that benefits the company.

Q: Who has helped you along your personal learning journey?

A: A lot of people along the way have helped get me to where I am. It was reciprocal — I worked hard to help support them, but they went out of their way to help put me in positions of learning, presenting, and being among other leaders. One leader at Nestlé had a saying, “Pressure makes diamonds.” Years later, I realized he was asking a lot because he was trying to make a diamond out of me.

Q: Which of your prior experiences have helped you become an effective L&D leader? 

A: My sales experiences have most helped me become a good L&D practitioner. Any good salesperson knows questioning, curiosity, and understanding the customer is where value is from — and you need those skills to prove your value as an L&D practitioner. 

Most of my work starts with understanding business needs for my client groups. What are their business challenges and what are they doing well? Questioning versus telling promotes understanding, and then I come back with solutions based on the problems that they have.

Q: One vulnerable part of learning is asking for help. Any advice for employees working to ask managers for help in areas they want to grow?

A: Every leader must cultivate an environment that encourages people to bring their authentic selves to work — and ensure every employee’s voice is heard. Leaders should foster ongoing dialogue between employees and make time for more personal relationship building with their team. People want to help others — it’s inherent. But managers should focus on creating those environments. 

Q: Finally, what is the most inspiring part of your job? 

A: The most inspiring part of my job is the people. It’s an honor and a pleasure to use L&D as an opportunity to build relationships and help people grow. I hope my legacy is not about how many cases or boxes of chocolate we sold, but how many impressions we left on people and how we helped them to do better things. 

It’s about that Maya Angelou quote: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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