"Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable": Rona van der Zander on how we must innovate for 21st century careers education and training

Rona van der Zander is a TED X keynote speaker, change enthusiast and start-up founder who focuses on the future of work. She is exploring the necessary intersection of the world of education with digital transformation to encourage future-ready thinking. Fascinated by change, she has studied and worked in eight different countries across the globe, has worked with large corporations, NGOs and the United Nations, and has worked as a university lecturer, which made her fully realise the need for fundamental changes in our education systems. A founder of two startups, and sought-after keynote speaker, Rona’s goal aligns with ours at Xperienceships: to super-charge audiences and bring in a young, global and critical perspective on the topics of change and new, emergent modes of work.

We met Rona a couple of weeks ago to ask her about how we keep innovating after the pandemic in our education institutions. You can watch a short clip on our YouTube channel, or read her full interview below.

Xperienceships: Rona, at Xperienceships we are about exploring careers and helping people pilot and prototype their careers. So we would like to know, what was your first job?

Rona: My very first job was teaching English and French in high school. So my mother always said, I had to focus on school. I'm not allowed to get a side job, the only thing I was allowed to do was teaching French and English. So when I was around 15, 16, I started to give English and French classes, to students at my school that were younger than me - a family who had three daughters. And I went there every weekend, and I was teaching all of them. And again, that was my first job. The first time I made money, basically.

X: How well have your formal studies prepared you for the career that you have today, so far?

R: For my undergrad I studied Business and Economics. And then later on in my Master's, I studied Politics and International Relations. And now I am running basically two companies, we do different things. But of course, it's very entrepreneurial. I would say that my Business and Economic Studies, they prepared me in some way for that, because I got an overview of a lot of topics of finance, marketing, and so on. And there were some skills in my master studies, I think, that shaped my outlook on the world. I wouldn't necessarily say that they equip me with a lot of hard skills for what I do now. But generally, I think, it's not so much about the hard skills and the actual content, because everything is changing so quickly, right? Everything is constantly updated. 

I have to learn every day, I have to keep up every day with new things. And I think the soft skills in terms of living in different countries, collaborating with people, communicating in different cultures - that's what I learned from my study. So yes, they prepared me for where I am now. But I think it's not even so much about the content. It's more about the setting. I studied in four different countries, I work with people from all over the world. And I think these skills I acquired through doing that was what really prepared me for where I am now. 

X: So you mentioned that you have two different companies. We understand the companies are two quite different things. So tell us first about your two companies, si:cross and Grow Beyound? Since you are a founder of two companies, tell us what is a typical workday like for you?

R: With si:cross, we are working mainly with higher education institutions all over Europe, and also in the United States, on topics around the future of work and future skills. We are also looking at the strategy of universities and how to adapt to a changing environment.

We are building a software for company internal communication - you can share audio messages on the software inside large companies. We are looking at how do we want to communicate in the future and how do we want to collaborate inside of companies?

With Grow BeYOUnd it is much more hands-on. Working with students and with professors in workshops on strategy, while it was sacred, it's much more strategic in many ways. I'm currently talking a lot to clients and I'm doing a lot of legal, tax administration, hiring people. So there are a lot of different topics that I'm looking at every day. And what does the day look like? I usually live in Berlin, and I moved to the countryside during Corona. So now I'm staying by a little lake in the north of Germany, with a very good internet connection here. That's all I need. And I have a walk in the garden in the morning. And then I'm basically at my desk all day speaking with people from all over the world. And yeah, working hundred percent digitally. It's cool.

X: So let's focus more on Grow BeYOUnd for a moment. You mentioned that you work with universities, helping them to strategize about the future of work, and develop curriculums to embed the future of work or prepare students for that. So what would be the challenges that you see that universities are currently facing about this?

R: I mean, I think it's so obvious. But the whole digital aspect of things and how we have to digitize everything has been a huge challenge in the past few months. I think I mean, this is a huge topic, but how we are structured still in higher education systems, how we are teaching, how we just basically deliver content, it's not communication and collaboration. And that, of course, has to change. So the whole setting has to change. And the key issue is really also the digital world. So that's what I'm seeing at the moment. 

We really see that young people are digital consumers and not necessarily digital natives. So they grew up with technology, but they haven't learned anywhere really to use it in a professional setting to work with it. And that's why I also see that the divide between the working world and the higher educational education general is growing, because while we're still teaching with pen and paper where the rest of the world has moved on.

So I think that's something that we really have to go into now and see how we can equip people, students and professors, lecturers, everyone in the system with the right skills.

X: Can you give us some hope of things that are happening that are interesting? Tell us a couple of things that you see that are promising or exciting from your experience.

R: I think that in this COVID crisis, despite how horrible everything has been, there were also a lot of good things in this. I have seen how universities have moved online. Life has become much more digital. And I can even see now the difference between spring where students were not at ease at all, they were not used to using digital tools versus now: it's become much more natural, they are much more curious as well, they have lost their fear in a sense. 

I also learned a lot. It's not it's not about “teaching” anymore, it's about collaborating and exploring together and working together.

So I definitely see that in some countries and some universities, not everywhere, but that really hasn been a huge learning curve, a great shift; a realization of this is how we're going to continue, this is how we want to work in the future, and we have to equip our students. And I think we have to stick to this now. We need to stay on this path for a little longer to really implement this, because of course, it's a whole system that has to change.

X: We think the future of work is already here. From our side, we look at career exploration and how people can try out different things to understand how to get into those careers. From your perspective, what do you think the future of career exploration could look like? How could people explore these uncertain futures and prepare themselves to do so?

R: Like you say, the future is already here. We already live in this time of change, flexibility and concept adaptation. I think that's also what we need in career exploration. The times are over where we advocate work and retire. It’s become much more flexible. And I think that's exactly where we have to go in, we have to prepare people basically to have 30 different jobs in their lives, maybe staying in the same sector, but really constant adaptation, constant changes, new trends.

So I think one really has to know what your strengths are, what you're good at, what you're interested in, and, and explore that and find some sort of strength and knowledge in that. And at the same time, I think adaptability is super important; opening your mind and being prepared for constant adaptation. And that's also very tiring for people. So we have to train them.

I think there are many ways to train that to constantly expose yourself to new topics, to different things. Technology is very important, because it will have an impact in all kinds of aspects of our lives and our jobs. The future is really, you need to be tech literate, to understand what's happening, and also how we want to shape the future that we're already in.

X: Our question is how to train adaptability. How do you think we could prepare people to be adaptable? Any ideas on how we could do that?

R:  Exposing yourself to new topics, and also to uncomfortable situations. It can be small things. For me the biggest things have been that I lived in a lot of different countries - that has prepared me a lot. I worked in eight different countries, I constantly had to get used to very different circumstances, very different life settings, to open my mind. 

Right now, for example, I'm attending online events that are out of my usual working world yet expose me to new topics that are out of my usual comfort zone, trying out new things.

Last year, I took DJ lessons, and I think at first, that's always a bit of a stupid example, but I had to expose myself to a completely new thing. I felt like an idiot, you know, because I have no idea about DJing like all these cool DJs in this DJ school, so there were a lot of elements and like feeling uncomfortable trying something new. I had to really, you know, learn beats and tracks and technology and new things I had never heard about. I think that small things like this, of really going into uncertain situations, trying out new things, and exposing ourselves really to topics that we don't deal with every day maybe also makes us feel uncomfortable. But then we understand: “Oh, it's actually not so bad.” And we can ease into the situation.

I think events are also talking to people and finding networks that are out of your usual bubble. Having different conversations and learning new things is something that we can do online now. And then of course, hopefully also again soon in the real world.

X: From an educator’s perspective how do you think institutions could foster this kind of attitude? We are asking our students to have an attitude of being explorers, to take risks. So how could institutions make that embedded in their curriculums or their way of working?

R: We could include going to events, attending new things, trying out new things. Starting with the teaching group together feels more secure, and then from there, you can go out and explore. I think that training this entrepreneurial mindset is about trying new things and failing and seeing that it's fine. Collaborating with startups or with companies where they can do projects, real world exploration, I think is something that is super interesting.

There are also so many great projects and ideas in terms of how we think about the future. It’s something that we should do much more where we can. I also think you can always start small. It's not that you have to live in a country, sometimes it's enough to once a month, try something that you haven't tried before.

X: Where can we go to stay up to date as lifelong learners? 

R: What has changed in the last few months? One of the biggest topics is remote work, and also remote learning. How will we learn if we're decentralized? How will we then later on work if we're decentralized? I think that's a huge topic, no one of us has really learned that. We're still in this mindset of going to a place nine to five, having someone telling us what to do. 

I think there's so much in this of self leadership, knowing yourself, knowing what structures you need, what routines you need. I think that's something that we all have to explore, that we also have to bring more into our institutions, to help learners with that, or like to explore this together with learners really how it can work in the future.

How can we become lifelong learners? There is so much content, so many networks, so many opportunities, and how can we do this sheer sum of things? How can we use it to develop our skills? I think that's something that we have to explore much more. You can learn everything online. We really need to learn how to use the tools and like I said, be digital natives versus digital consumers. If we look at the top tools for learning, formalized learning is far at the bottom, so Coursera, YouTube, it's LinkedIn learning, it's open source, it's networks. So ask yourself: how can I position myself here and how can I use them? ?