#121 - From Seller to Coach: Gail Behun’s Playbook for Building Better Managers Artwork

The Learning Culture Podcast

Join your host Andrew Barry, the Founder and CEO of Curious Lion, as he interviews learning leaders practicing the cultivation of Learning Culture; experts who tease out critical theoretical components of this idea; and shares learning nuggets from real-world experiences, and our own research and writing.By following along, you’ll learn:• How a shared vision sets the tone for a Learning Culture. • How shared assumptions determine our current reality. • How shared stories foster commitment to a Learning Culture. • How shared experiences, or Cohort Learning Experiences to be specific, instill the practice of a Learning Culture.Stay curious, my friends.

All Episodes

The Learning Culture Podcast

#121 - From Seller to Coach: Gail Behun’s Playbook for Building Better Managers

March 09, 2026 • Andrew Barry • Season 4 • Episode 20

0:00 | 38:30

Most companies take their best sellers and promote them into management, expecting them to magically know how to coach a team.

It rarely works that way. Gail Behun, who leads frontline manager enablement at Zoom across 300 managers globally, learned that lesson firsthand when she made the leap from seller to manager and realized she had no template for what good looked like.

In this conversation, Gail breaks down how she builds manager capability without overwhelming people who are already stretched thin, why the best enablement comes from managers themselves rather than top-down programs, and how she uses AI, including a custom "Gail Voice" bot, to scale her impact and communicate in a way that actually lands with CROs.

If you've ever wondered how to make enablement stick beyond the training session, this one's for you.