Collaboration, Connection, Cocktails... And Trust

I'm just back from the ISA — The Association of Learning Providers 2024 Annual Business Retreat (ABR) in Scottsdale, Arizona. If you're a subscriber, you may recall my article just a year ago reflecting on the 2023 ISA ABR. If you missed it, you can catch up here:

Last year, I reflected on the level of connection that I experienced at the 2023 ABR. This year again brought lots of connectedness, but for me there was more in 2024 - more work, more play, more fun, and loads of trust and collaboration.

The 2024 ISA Annual Business Retreat

Saturday Highlights -

This year I joined the ISA Board and spent the first full day of the 2024 ABR learning the ropes and participating in a strategic planning session facilitated by the amazing Kristin Arnold . It was an honor to be sitting at the table with fellow board members Jeff Hayes , Susan Smith , Tricia Naddaff (she/her/hers) , Colin Hunter , Glain Roberts-McCabe, PCC, CTDP (she/her) , Bill Treasurer , Steve Gielda , and Susan Driscoll . If you don't know these folks, they're all energetic leaders of outstanding professional services firms in the learning and development space.

Missing from this picture is Deborah Molique , ISA's Managing Director, without whom this event would not have been possible. Thanks, Deborah!

Talk about trust - It's a rare treat working side-by-side with friends, collaborators - and competitors, all in service of an organization that exists to make us better, make our companies better, and make the workplace better.

The first day ended with a social recognizing the board and our committees.

Sunday Highlights –

The first major event of the day was ISA’s Financial Benchmarking Session, facilitated by members Kevin Cope and Howard Farfel . All members who completed a survey of 2023 financial results were treated to a presentation of the aggregated and anonymized results – broken down by company size, products/services offered, etc. It’s an excellent way to compare your results against a wide range of competitors, and to fine tune KPI’s for the e year. Thanks to Kevin and Howard for all their hard work on this major effort.

Next up was the 1st Time Participants Welcome Program, a great opportunity for first time ABR attendees to buddy up with experienced members to help them get oriented and off to a quick start. This year we had a record number of 1st timers – representing new member companies, new attendees from existing member companies, and guests. It’s a blast meeting ABR newbies in an energetic and fun setting.

At the end of the day, long-time learning and development industry scion Elliott Masie officially kicked off the conference with a keynote on The Future of AI Within the Training Industry. I hadn’t seen Elliott speak in years. Believe me, he hasn’t lost a single step! His talk was predictably contrarian and set the stage for many ?lively conversations among attendees about AI, the hottest topic in our industry.

After an enthusiastic ovation for Elliott's opening, we all headed outside for the famous ABR group photo shot. Slaven Gujic , our intrepid event photographer, is also a master drone pilot! Thanks, Slav, for this and most of the other pics in this post! (Here's me (far left in blue) with 110 members, guests and speakers.):

We wrapped up the day with The Great Graze - the opening social event featuring a large assortment of hors d’oeuvres, drinks and networking. Although a badly-timed rain shower kept us indoors, a good time was had by all.

Monday Highlights –

After optional daily walks and hikes, each of the next 3 days started with themed breakfasts that gave attendees the opportunity to sort ourselves by company size, business issues discussed, or just general networking.

The first session of the day featured David Horsager , keynoting on “A Framework To Build Trust In An Uncertain World”. If you’ve never seen Dr. Horsager and aren’t familiar with his 8 Pillars of Trust model, definitely check him out. Not only is his work backed by good science, he’s an entertaining and fun speaker. Better yet, David stayed and participated in the entire ABR conference which gave me and other attendees an opportunity to get to know him and his work better.

The morning continued with a member panel discussion moderated by the amazing and talented Kristin Arnold . The panelists - Chris Williams , Liane Davey , and Mike Esterday had an energetic conversation around the topic of igniting and sustaining innovation in their organizations. Their ideas gave us lots to bring back to our own organizations.

The afternoon was devoted to serving ISA's Value Propositions – Making you better, Making your business better, and Making the workplace better.

This featured “Fishbowl Sessions” around the topics of Business Development, Operations, and Technology. These were moderated sessions designed to encourage attendees to share their ideas and processes with one another in an informal, collaborative setting. We each walked away with fresh ideas and solutions. Sometimes we can learn more from each other than from experts on the podium!

The afternoon continued with a new feature called “School of Hard Knocks” – breakout sessions similar to fishbowls, but where attendees talked about the stresses and successes they’ve experienced across several domains including Products/Programs, Sales/Marketing, Operations, and Tech/IT. It was incredibly helpful hearing leaders of other training organizations honestly sharing real-life adversities that they faced and overcame, and what they learned in the process.

By the end of the day, we were ready to relax. Some hiked Camelback, some went on a bike ride, some played pickleball, and some attended the always popular whiskey tasting!

Tuesday Highlights -

As Chair of the ISA Awards Committee, I was particularly excited about the Tuesday agenda. ISA is proud to recognize individuals who exemplify its values, and our committee had been tasked with researching nominees and selecting recipients for four awards that would be presented at a dinner that evening.

Two of the awards featured general sessions with two recipients.

The first was a panel discussion recognizing Box of Crayons, the company receiving the inaugural 2024 ISA Business Showcase Award. This award was created to identify and honor an innovation story that is relevant and applicable to other ISA members.? Box of Crayons was founded in July 2002 by ?? Michael Bungay Stanier and was now being led by Shannon Minifie, PhD (she/her) . In the panel conversation, moderated by David Dye , Dr. Minifie and her team talked about the process of transitioning away from founder leadership. They explored the challenges, opportunities and pitfalls they experienced along the way. They fielded questions from the audience, many of whom worked at founder-led companies and were in various stages of the same process themselves.

Next up was a session honoring our 2024 ISA Thought Leaders Award winners, Patti and Jack Phillips. Drs. Phillips are luminaries in the learning and development field and have been recognized often for their leadership in and contributions to the process of measuring impact of training programs. I had never met Patti and Jack and was privileged to moderate an on-stage conversation with them about their decades of work at the ROI Institute. We had a free-wheeling discussion, answered audience questions, and left attendees with some ways to better measure the effectiveness and impact of their own training programs.

The first half of the afternoon was devoted to another round of Fishbowl Sessions. This gave attendees the opportunity to rotate into a session or two that they missed yesterday, and to network with different and varied subgroups in the process.

The afternoon ended with a closing keynote by author and speaker @pamela slim. In her session, titled “Casting The Widest Net and Developing Partnerships”, Pamela drew on ideas and practices from her 2021 best-selling book to help people discover how to discover and engage with the most effective strategic partners, and how to drive thought leadership through a focused and effective marketing plan.

Tuesday evening featured the 2024 Gala and Awards Dinner. After a few intense days of learning and networking, everyone was ready to have some fun. The evening started with cocktails and dinner, followed by awards presentations:

And for those left with energy at the end of a long and busy day, some dancing...

Wednesday Highlights -

The ABR wrapped up with a hands-on session led by Lucas Petty , Chief AI Officer (CAIO) at AI Daddy. His workshop - AI Implementation for Training Firms - gave us the chance to drill into the creation of custom GPT's real-time. Lucas led us through the process of custom GPT building, from setting up ChatGPT and uploading content to prompting that generated real usable output. Many attendees have already reached out to Lucas for deeper dives back in our respective offices.

If you've made it to the end of this story, thanks for hanging in there! Granted, it's never the same reading about a rewarding experience as it is to experience it yourself. But hopefully, I've given you some ideas and inspiration for how to make yourself, your company, and your workplace better!

To wrap up, as my good friend and colleague Glain Roberts-McCabe, PCC, CTDP (she/her) said in her post about this event:

If you’re in the learning and development space and looking for a community of peers, come and join us. It truly is like no other.

We're all counting down the days until the 2025 ISA Annual Business Retreat!

To bring this story home, what resilience tools and techniques did I use to create greater connection, collaboration and trust?

• I said Yes at every opportunity.
• I always tried to go the extra mile.
• I saw gaps in performance and jumped to fill in.
• I connected with everyone I met on LinkedIn and am developing personal relationships.
• I took every opportunity to engage with lots of empathy, warmth and humor.
• I always tried to give more in every conversation than I expected to get back.

What about you? What do you do to connect - or reconnect - to your meaning and purpose, with a clear line of see to how you make a difference? How to you foster collaboration? How do you build and engender trust? Please share in a comment below!

We all know what it's like to be part of an experience like this one that helps us build a Resilience Superpower or two.

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