Acknowledgments

It is an honor to edit ATD’s Handbook for Training and Talent Development for the third time. It’s impossible for anyone to complete a task like this alone. Providing you with the absolute best resources takes a team—but not just any team. It must be a team of dedicated, talented professionals who are not afraid to work long hours and meet insanely short timelines with incredibly high-quality standards. And that’s the team that delivered this handbook to exceed your expectations.

So, who are these wise, committed, and talented team members? I am thankful for the thousands of hours contributed by these dedicated people:

•  First and most important, thanks to the 101 authors who responded to our call for content. We appreciate your expertise. I am especially grateful for your willingness to accept the topic we defined, conduct your research, and create a chapter that enhanced the flow of the handbook and met the needs of our readers. Lead authors are listed in the table of contents, but you will also find sidebar authors and contributing authors within several of the chapters.

•  Thank you to the eight luminary guest authors who shared their wisdom in each section’s introduction: Tacy Byham, Bev Kaye, Bob Pike, Elliott Masie, Rita Bailey, Kimo Kippen, Ken Blanchard, and John Coné. I know your time is limited and I appreciate that you dedicated some of it to this project. A double thanks to each of you.

•  Thank you to the ATD staff who recommended timely topics and awesome authors. Your ability to extend our reach to seasoned and new authors was a bonus, as proven in the table of contents. I am grateful to Holly Batts, Justin Brusino, Kristen Fyfe-Mills, Patty Gaul, MJ Hall, Jack Harlow, Jennifer Homer, Melissa Jones, Paula Ketter, Kathryn Stafford, and Courtney Vital.

•  Thank you to the fabulous people beyond the ATD staff who helped me connect with exceptional authors, including Howard Farfel, Cheryl Flink, Jonathan Halls, Michael Hansen, and Walt McFarland.

•  Thank you to everyone who helped to ensure that this handbook represented a diverse audience.

•  Writing the content is the first big task, but honing it into clear, concise, coherent, consistent, and grammatically correct language is the second task—almost as big as the first. I, and all the authors, value the various editing tasks that it takes to make a superb book: developmental editing, copyediting, content editing, structural editing, and proofreading. We appreciate Caroline Coppel, Melissa Jones, and Kathryn Stafford for your editing prowess. You make all of us look good!

•  Thanks to everyone who helped me wrap up the details, including Renee Broadwell, Fred George-Hiatt, Jeanenne Ray, and Melissa Smith. You went above and beyond.

•  A special and delayed thank you to Capt. (ret.) Joe Ruppert. Without his trust in me, most of this would never have happened.

•  Last—but probably should be first—an interminable thanks to Dan Greene, who supports and encourages me to assume these enormous projects. Thank you for your devotion and trust.

And of course, thank you to ATD, Tony, Justin, Jennifer, and Courtney, for continuing to offer me projects that allow me to grow, develop, and be a lifelong ATD volunteer.