Learner spotlight: What changes when a manager goes all-in on learning

Tyler Winn has been at ActivTrak for nearly nine years. He started in tech support, built the team from two people to almost ten and now co-manages it. When his company gave him access to Electives Membership, he leaned all the way in. What happened next is a great case study in what learning can do when you put the time and curiosity into developing.

Certificate Programs changed everything

Tyler started the way a lot of people do: poking around, taking a live class here and there, not quite sure what the point was.

"I kind of found a couple classes, started taking them, wasn't really sure where I was going to go with it yet."

Then he found the certificate programs, and things clicked.

"The certificate programs came up, and I'm like, oh, I'm all for that — because that gives me really good guided learning, and just kind of goals to set."

Having a structured path gave his curiosity somewhere to run. 

He started completing programs and discovered that the classes outside the certificates were just as useful: AI, productivity, communication. Tyler doesn't limit himself to the obvious choices.

"I branch out every now and again and take an Elective, so to speak. No pun intended. There's a bunch of AI classes right now, and I think AI is fun, personally. Like, I'm all for it."

The leadership habit he had to break

Before Electives Membership, Tyler had a habit common among managers who were once strong individual contributors: when someone on his team needed help, he'd just do it for them. Fast. Easy. Done.

Instructor Sharon Danzger's classes changed how he thought about that.

"Electives has really given me that human touch of being able to step back and say, 'Let's teach you how to do this,' rather than, 'Let me write this for you, or let me just do this for you.'"

That's the difference between a team that depends on you and a team that grows without you. Tyler saw it, named it and changed it.

He also improved his communication

Tyler describes his pre-Electives self as someone who had trouble getting to the point, someone who'd lose the thread mid-sentence and take the long way around to everything.

Not anymore.

"I used to ramble a lot, and I wouldn't get to the point very fast. Now I'm like, alright, let's get to the point. Where's the meat of this conversation so we can solve it?"

He laughs when he says it, aware of the irony of delivering that line with zero wasted words. The growth shows up in how he runs 1:1s, how he presents to leadership and how he holds space for his team.

Learning doesn't stay in his notebook

Tyler shares everything. After a class, he takes notes. His manager does, too. So does a co-manager. They drop all of it into a shared folder, then use AI to pull three perspectives into a single team learning document.

"We'll all take notes on the individual classes that we take, and then we have a shared folder that we drop in all of the notes... and then we can use AI to bring it all together and figure out how to make it a nice single document versus three people's perspectives, and produce that for a team learning."

Three learners. One shared artifact. Multiplied across a whole team. Electives didn't prescribe that approach. Tyler built it himself. And it's exactly the kind of ripple effect that happens when learning becomes a habit, not a task.

The safe space he didn't expect

One of the more surprising things Tyler talked about had nothing to do with skills or certificates. It was about how the classes feel.

"I enjoy the vulnerability that Electives [Membership] gives me. To be able to be vulnerable to the more or less random strangers that aren't really strangers anymore, because I've kind of learned who people are because we all take the same classes. Nobody cares who I am, which is really nice."

Showing up without ego, asking the question you'd normally hold back, admitting what you don't know: that's what makes the learning stick. And it's what keeps Tyler coming back.

His advice to anyone on the fence

If you have access to Electives Membership and you're not quite sure it's worth your time, Tyler's take is direct:

"If you feel like it might not be for you, it's probably for you. Because whether or not it's a class specifically, or the program in general, it's almost certainly for you. You are likely identified as an individual that would benefit from this, like me."

And his closing thought, delivered without hesitation:

"You won't be disappointed."

About Tyler

Tyler Winn is a Technical Support Engineering Manager at ActivTrak and an Electives member. He's taken classes across leadership, productivity, communication and AI…and he's just getting started.

‍