Ragan Training instructor Cat Colella-Graham on leading with a trainer’s mentality

At Ragan’s 2025 Employee Communications and Culture Conference, Delonzo Rhodes, vice president of talent development at Dotdash Meredith, told Ragan’s Mary Buhay that the best performing organizations have one thing in common—they invest in the learning and development of employees.

With the rollout of the new Ragan Training last month, members will be able to bring that investment to the next level.

The learning portal will be updated frequently with new modules and courses featuring lessons from our subject matter experts — including those on staff at Ragan and subject matter experts in the community — in an easily-digestible format that aligns with how people learn.

While Ragan’s new learning hub provides you powerful tools and resources, it’s ultimately up to leaders to drive adoption and engagement of learning and development across their teams. How can leaders be the best advocate for continuous learning?

We  spoke to Cat Colella-Graham, Ragan Training instructor and communications professor at New York University, to understand what it takes for leaders to truly embrace a training mentality with their teams.

Here’s what she shared.

Ragan: When we first discussed your journey from comms practitioner to educator, you used the word “trainer” as a throughline and considered it central to your roles as an internal comms and HR leader. How did you come to ground that teaching mentality in your leadership?

Cat Colella-Graham: My first job was at Bank of Boston in 1991. If you weren’t an accounting major, you had to hustle for a job. I was a poli-sci and political philosophy major, so I really had to hustle. I ended up in investor relations and worked hard. My boss, Christine Cotter, saw that and raised me up. She said, “If you want the skills, I’ll help you. I’ll advocate for you. I’ll sponsor you.” I’d never heard the word “sponsorship” before, but she modeled it for me.

Sometimes I stayed at work until 10 or 11 at night, not because I had to but because I wanted to make sure we were compliant with SEC correspondence deadlines. She inspired that in me. She showed me that being shoulder-to-shoulder with your team, helping them learn from you and having someone to learn from, mattered.

Later, the head of HR saw potential in me and sent me to New England Banking Institute for an HR certificate. She mentored me, said, “Find the right mentors. I’ll mentor you.” That stayed with me.

Eventually, I moved on to Arthur Andersen, and later Accenture, but those first five years at Bank of Boston shaped how I think. That foundation of support and learning by doing—raising up others—made me who I am as a leader.

So it’s about teaching people what “better than this” looks like, especially if they’ve never seen it modeled before?

CCG: Exactly. It didn’t come innately to me. It came from people who lifted me up early in my career.

Where do you see the biggest training opportunity for future comms leaders? We’ve spoken before about balancing curiosity with change. But change management can be pretty regimented, often tied to risk mitigation, legal vetting and cross-functional processes. How does curiosity factor in?

CCG: For a long time, people wanted listicle answers—quick, snackable content. But real change requires a deeper approach. Start with the objective. Audit what’s been done. Then get curious. Who are our audiences? What really matters?

The best creative work comes when we zoom out and ask, “What’s possible?”

Curiosity should come before the workback plan. It’s not about skipping the process, it’s about making the process smarter by beginning with expansive thinking. Curiosity is part of the discipline. We can still have project management rigor—left-brain stuff—but also lean into creativity, nuance, judgment.

In your experience, is curiosity teachable, or is it something that learners have to innately possess?

CCG: Often, the best hires are your fresh-outs. They’re not locked into rigid ways of thinking. They’re curious. That’s why leaders need to actively listen and understand what each person brings. Stretch roles, lateral moves, those things can help people grow. Leaders have to create the space for that.

Maybe it’s not about teaching curiosity, but preserving it. We start out wide-eyed, but life makes us cynical. A good educator reminds students that curiosity isn’t juvenile. It’s a strength.

CCG: Exactly. Your courses can help people rediscover that. When they feel safe to share ideas—even bad ones—and stress test them, that’s where learning happens.

You’ve mentioned before that L&D programs too often prioritize what’s “top of inbox” instead of taking a wider, holistic view. What do most orgs get wrong about comms learning?

CCG: As change accelerates, we have to keep pace. Internal comms is a team sport. And learning should evolve too. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t grow without learning.

Internal comms often sits under HR, but that’s not always the case. For orgs where comms is a dedicated function, how can communicators position themselves as advocates and agents of learning across their organization?

CCG: Communicators absolutely want to learn. Many can’t pay for training themselves. But they can remind leaders that if they want ROI, they need to invest in upskilling. Times are changing fast. The best investment is training and then giving people the chance to use those skills in modern work environments.

Leaders who haven’t done the work can struggle to give informed guidance. What advice do you have for leaders who want to be trainers but haven’t done the work themselves?

CCG: Be curious. Don’t fear asking questions. And once you’ve learned something, socialize it. Share with your virtual advisory board. Continuous learning means continuing the conversation.

Sign up now for Ragan Training to access Colella-Graham’s first course, “Employee Recognition During Times of Change.”