ATD22: people, perspectives, potential
This year, ATD22 International Conference and Exhibition took place in Orlando, Florida, from May 15 to 18. ATD continued its hybrid event strategy after these last two years of the global pandemic and managed to bring together 5,400 participants in person and another 2,500 virtual participants, and 1,167 of all, were international participants from more than 68 different countries.
ATD organizing committee created new curated “learning paths”, a more practical approach with a pre-selection of sessions based on your preferences: consultants, DEI, first timers at ATD, global perspectives, trends in instructional design, improve your TD tools, you are new to learning and development, lead your professional career and talent development leaders.
ATD Global brought together all its international partners and its 30 international delegations’ leaders for a special luncheon. We met again with Tony Bingham, CEO of ATD, members of its board, and the entire international team led by Wei Wang. The ability to reconnect face-to-face with colleagues, friends, and the entire international ATD family is priceless. The power of connections, the exchange of ideas, and synergies that are generated at the Global Village with professionals from around the world are unparalleled in any virtual event. And don’t forget that we are worth, the network we have.
ATD also launched its first of its kind, ATD Talent Development, and Training Healthcare Handbook. The manual has 6 key topics (L&D, OD, employee development, healthcare business acumen, digital transformation, and patient-centered care), practical solutions, and strategies for a sector that has suffered in this country the highest number of cases of burnout.
Purpose was in my opinion the main topic that was very present through all keynotes. Jay Shetty gave it a lot of relevance and it also came out in many educational sessions; it seems that we are strongly moving towards the economy of the purpose. Connecting your individual life purpose to that of your team or your organization is key and in my opinion, it is the first thing we should talk about in organizations, to be able to develop and keep the best talent.
Monday started with Sara Blakely’s keynote, who was interviewed by Tony Bingham (ATD’s CEO). Sara Blakely, SPANX’s founder, is a $1 billion lingerie company that has revolutionized the sector. She started working at Disney, then door-to-door selling fax machines for seven years, and finally knocking on doors with her red backpack and her undergarment prototype, trying to get a retailer to buy it. She pitched Neiman Marcus with her prototype designed to help women feel food when wearing white pants.
Photo by Les Kamens
After a successful entrepreneurial journey and a long self-discovery process, she learned to visualize and write her goals and look for signs in the universe. She discovered her strength in sales and went further, identifying her passion for making products that improve women’s quality of life. Her best recommendations: honor and follow your intuition, fall in love with your customers, not your products, as soon as you can afford it, hire staff in areas that are your weaknesses, and delegate tasks that you are not good at. Spend time with yourself, to drive your area of genius and the new ideas that come up when your mind wanders.
On Tuesday, Jay Shetty, the former monk and New York time’s best seller author, who is succeeding in this country on meditation platforms like Calm, told us about his idea on purpose. His formula of purpose = passion + strengths + service. I recommend his book, “Think like a monk”.
Photo by Les Kamens
• Passion: passion can take us on unexpected paths. He shared the four habits he practices, under the acronym TIME (Thankfulness, inspiration, meditation or mindfulness, and exercise). Gratitude drives our mood and activates our immune system. We can get inspiration by changing our first thought of the day and our last thought of the day. Meditation is a matter of practice. And exercise has to be a constant in our lives. He added a final letter S for sleep, sleeping improves our memory and energy levels, functioning as a purifying effect like a “dishwasher.”
• Strengths: we all have innate strengths, and we must use them or the world will miss our unique gifts.
• Service: The opinion we have of ourselves is important, quoting Wayne Dyer, “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Let me summarize my learnings about some of the sessions I attended that impacted me the most. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), continues to grow in organizations here in the U.S., and talent development professionals should lead and develop all DEI initiatives in organizations. Alex Draper's session, “How to create psychologically safe and effective teams.” He presented his CARE model (clarity, autonomy, relationships, and equity). Teams waste 30% of their time on duplicated tasks, clarity is critical to leading teams. And 71% of employees say that “micromanagement” interferes with their performance, autonomy is the solution to lead teams.
Why do we still have so many managers who micromanage their teams?
Relationships build empathy, with 7 out of 10 leaders saying that showing empathy in their work is difficult, and they also feel they will be less respected. Silence kills business, it kills relationships. Most DEI initiatives fail because they don't focus on equity, we should treat everyone according to their needs, and we don't need “one-size-fits-all”. Treat others the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated.
Another interesting session was by Maureen Orey, "Inclusive Mentality: Designing Accessible Learning Programs”, who shared with us a great example of an error trying to be inclusive by the LEGO Foundation. They designed a brilliant commercial, featuring their new bricks in braille, yet the video had no sound. Imagine the miscalculation, when there are descriptive audios for excellent video content on the market. Maureen recommended “appreciative inquiry” as a methodology to design more inclusive programs. She suggests starting from an inclusive mindset from the beginning, it's about what accommodations you must make for the learner to access the content.
Dr. Britt Andreatta, with whom I collaborate, gave us a session called “The Neuroscience of Purpose”. According to her research, the 4 aspects that have driven the search for purpose in people have been: the global pandemic, burnout, routines, and post-traumatic growth. She shared key data on how purpose is neuroprotective, it protects our mental and physical health, and it protects the health of our communities. Her six purpose-driven strategies were: help your employees find their purpose, identify the purpose of your organization, help employees and managers align work and organization, identify and resolve hypocritical situations, train your employees and managers to have authentic conversations about purpose and meaning at work, and help employees create positive relationships at work. She shared great resources on purpose.
This year I was selected to speak at the conference too. My session was: “Exploring the power of masterminds for talent development professionals”. I shared the concept and benefits of being part of a mastermind for both individuals and organizations. The benefits for individuals: you focus on your WHY (purpose), you learn accountability, you “fail” faster, it’s a support system, and it also helps you take action. The benefits of implementing it in an organization: it generates an entrepreneurial mentality, it breaks silos, it creates a learning culture, it fosters accountability, and boosts motivation. We had the opportunity to demo live on the key elements of the masterminds, the “hot seat”. We had a TD director of a major transportation government organization. Her question was: How to encourage knowledge transfer in an agile setting in my organization? She left the session with many ideas to improve that process.
The last session I attended was the one that surprised me the most, by Mike Rener - “Onboarding to Stay”, from the Arbinger Institute. He shared great tips for onboarding. The manager's role is not to make employees accountable but to develop accountable people. He insisted on the importance of clarity in each employee’s role. His onboarding proposal: 1) lists the 4 main roles of your position. 2) list the stakeholders your roles will directly impact. Afterward, focus on interviewing your stakeholders during your first weeks in your position, and ask them the following questions:
1) How do you think someone in my role can impact your work positively or negatively? 2)From your perspective, how do you think someone in my role could be of help to you? 3) How often and how would you like us to be in touch about my impact on your ability to do your job? Then meet with your manager and share how you perceive your roles, what adjustments you should make, and ask for feedback.
My ATD22 session: “Exploring the Power of Masterminds for TD Professionals”
The EXPO with more than 300 exhibitors, from LMS providers, learning portals, mobile learning, and experiential learning to a greater presence of collaborative platforms or learning ecosystems such as Degreed, 360 Learning, SAP Success Factors, and Cornerstone. Immersive learning continues to grow, we are moving toward placing the learner at the center, focusing on their individual needs and giving them personalized development goals. Inviting the learner to virtual or face-to-face simulations to replicate scenarios or learn certain skills. It's very much in line with the trend of driving micro-learning as a way of retaining knowledge and learning new skills, and we know from neuroscience that we retain no more than 20 minutes of content at a time. The use of video and micro-content nuggets continues to grow in content delivery. And the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) also continues to advance. And Metaverse begins to emerge with several companies introducing it into training.
I cannot forget to mention what for me is TD’s bible, which was also released at the conference. The ATD Training & Talent Development Handbook is a masterpiece, for all of us who want to continue developing people. Elaine Biech, a true guru with 87 books behind her, has curated, edited, and perfectly brought together “la crème de la crème” in talent development to write each chapter. I recommend you to have it on your desk.
Bert Jacobs, Life is Good co-founder and CEO, a $150 million T-shirt brand, closed the conference with his optimism about life. His brother and he started selling beach t-shirts from a van for 5 years until they got inspired by a conversation about the negativity of the press. His first design on “Life is Good” began with a simple way to thank life and the good things around us. We are all human and we all want something simple: to live a happy and fulfilling life.
Photo by Les Kamens
In Life is Good, they have a saying: “Life is not perfect. Life is not easy. Life is good.” His recommendations to business leaders: the more we focus on filling our cup of self-care and happiness, team members will do it too. The more we connect on a human level, the more our teams will get involved and engaged. Their clients have become co-authors of their success stories. His key tips are clarity and consistency in our communication as leaders. The idea is to join the fine line that unites work and play. We must all become players.
Its closing was very powerful to me:
“Protect your time with your life. Your time is your life.”
Let's #keeponlearning every day. My recommendation is that now that you will be preparing 2023 learning budgets, set aside funds for your professional development, and make sure you attend ATD2023 from May 21 to 24 in San Diego (CA).
See you next month.
#keeponlearning
Íñigo Sánchez-Cabezudo
Source: original article at AEDIPE CENTRHO