Mixing Sand

How well do each of us fully understand the roles that come to define us at work?? We’re all able to say what it is we do, but it’s much more challenging to speak about the potential of what we’re capable of becoming.? Do we allow ourselves to dream big, strap on our helmets, buckle into the captain’s seat on the space shuttle and aim for the point that appears light years away?? Perhaps that point may be a lot closer than we think?

All too often in my role of #ChiefLearningOfficer (#CLO) at Pershing Technology Services Corporation 北祥科技服務股份有限公司 (#PTSC), I define my job as the scope and reality of what I am able to do according to the company culture, opportunities, and limitations within my current organization.? It’s easy to create a micro-world within the companies where we work.? The rules and politics within our organizations are the boundaries we find ourselves occupying, and if we’re creative thinkers we may have the ability to expand our freedom within the scope of our respective sandboxes.?

It’s necessary to step outside of the boundaries of our constructed realities and play in others’ sandboxes from time to time.

We have to remember that while we may sometimes feel alone in our roles, there is a greater world outside of where we work.? In order to provide ourselves with a sense of #adventure and #opportunity, we need venture outward and enter into the larger ecosystem of the multiverse where there are scores of individuals who are trying to accomplish goals similar to what we want, but they do so ever so differently due to their own Earthly boundaries and rules.? We need to "mix sand" with them together, and not worry about the mess we might make by bringing back some of those grains to our own boxes.?

I recently returned from a trip to a playground of sandboxes where I was able to mix sand with other like-minded individuals all hailing from the learning and development industry.? For four days I made my pilgrimage to the mecca of CLOs and #HR teams and managers, attending the #2023 Association for Talent Development (ATD) International Conference held in San Diego California.? Along with 26 other professionals, I was part of the “#Taiwan Delegation,” officially representing my company as an agent of change and learning.? The lessons I took back from this conference are myriad and overwhelming, and I’ll be processing them for weeks, if not months.

Below I’d like to go into 3 takeaway points of value and action that my experience at the conference left me with.? These all align with the theme of bringing more adventure to our workplaces as we strive to build learning organizations and create stronger company culture and cohesion through risk-taking with a growth mindset.

Build a Challenge Network:

This point came out during keynote speaker Adam Grant 's session about Rethinking our ideas and decisions.? In addition to being able to #rethink and #unlearn what we accumulate through our own experiences and beliefs, we also need help from a community of people who we trust to hold the mirror up to our faces so that we can see the blindspots to our own ways of thinking.? Grant concedes that we all aim to have a #support network to encourage us and cheer us on, but in addition we need to seek out individuals who are willing to be our biggest critics not to spite our efforts, but in order to make us stronger individuals, team players, and leaders.? How often do we proactively reach out to those around us and ask them to show us the cracks in our ideas and plans?? Who around us are the “disagreeable givers,”? or as Grant says, “those who are gruff and tough on the surface, but are doing it because they want to help.”

Give your audience a chance to co-create

The facilitators at the ATD sessions didn’t have the luxury of knowing their audiences, but they involved their audiences in workshop style brainstorming sessions that have helped to inspire me to become a more effective facilitator in the future.? To cite one specific example, Verity Creedy Creedy of DDI | Development Dimensions International used multiple polls to engage her audience, as well as getting participants to move around the room and write strength areas for their organizations, while making photographic documentation of good ideas that others suggested on poster boards.? Her session was titled “Unsung Heroes: Designing Leadership Development for Middle Managers.”? She didn’t just tell her audience that she didn’t like the term “middle managers,” she tasked participants with rebranding the term “middle manager,” and the room full of mostly strangers left the one hour session knowing that we had helped create the new replacement title, “strategic connectors.” All participants left this session feeling like they had made a valuable contribution to the speaker’s topic.?

Consistently highlight, reevaluate and build upon what your organization does well

All too often we look at ourselves and our organizations and our first reaction is to say “what’s wrong,” or “where can we improve ourselves?”? This is most certainly a good practice to maintain.? At the same time, we need to make sure we know what it is we are doing right.? In my previous company at The Hutong , we spent a long time analyzing our strengths through the #cliftonstrengths assessment (highly recommended).? This was a fun exercise that ultimately culminated in every member of the company creating an online internal profile where every colleague could know more about each individual’s strengths and styles of communication.?

In an ATD session led by Angela Stopper, Ph.D. titled “Using the You-Me-We Learning Model to build a Winning Portfolio,” she facilitated an excellent multi-leveled group workshop where one of the steps was for participants to list 5 company “assets” (programs, company initiatives, etc) and place them within a quadrant on an X/Y axis.? How often do we reassess our assets and measure the amount of input and impact we correlate with them?? When was the last time you got together with colleagues to analyze these assets and compare the benefits they provide your people?

These points above were not the only take-aways I left the ATD conference with–far from it.? I was fortunate to join other wonderful interactive sessions that stressed the value of play and #appliedimprovisation at work, two topics I’m extremely passionate about.? These were led by Gary Ware and Viet Hoang in two separate workshops.? I also joined multiple sessions related to coaching, mentoring, and how we create more innovative learning cultures. ? These were led by learning industry leaders Kevin Wilde , Jack Zenger , Diana Ideus, MCC, ACTC , Jennifer Labin , Robert Garcia, MBA, ACC, CAE , Sandy Stansfield , Karin Hurt , and David Dye . I encourage everyone to delve into the impactful endeavors these individuals are pursuing within their respective fields, read their works, and follow them on Linkedin.? The worst that can happen is that we all might learn something new while getting a bit of sand between our toes!