Conscious relating – a contribution to L&D

A little context

My first personal development workshop was thanks to the Learning and Development (L&D) department at City Environments.  They organized the planning team to explore styles of conflict.  I learnt my boss was a ‘shark’ and I was a ‘teddy-bear’.  Suffice to say, it was eye-opening.

For sure, L&D and HR (Human Resources, or rather Human Relations and their counterparts) serve a social good for this reason.  Being ‘put on’ a course at work can be anybody’s first gateway to consciousness.

A special relationship

And as a leadership consultant, it is a special relationship that is developed with this part of the business. L&D are usually the ones you bond with first and the ones you co-create with.  The ones you have the most fun with.

Some of my favourite programmes have been helping these leaders and teams build their own coaching, facilitating and consulting capabilities. And working with them and their stakeholders, some of the themes covered include:

• Encouraging leaders to have 1:1s
• Addressing one of the greatest sources of suffering in the workplace – underperformance, with love.
• Coaching to liberate talent
• Being a ladder for leaders
• Being (one or more) of those 3 key supporters for leaders.
• Getting lucky
• Visioning 
• Boredom training 
• Mindful learning
• Jazzing up agility

Earthconversepodcast stories

As it happens, on the earthconversepodcast, I interviewed four L&D professionals, and it is fascinating to listen to their respective journeys, the programmes they initiated and how they each transitioned out, as true curious life-long learners.

• Roy White – roles included HR Director, Sony Europe and Global HR Head for Sony Mobile: his own phase in life inspired an ‘energy project’ for the business, and he liked Impact International (a learning company) so much, he went to work for them.
• Diana Bacana – roles included Global HR Strategy for Schneider Electric: she tells of her moment of realization in a meeting with the boss and facilitating a ‘grass roots’ global wellbeing programme, before leaving.
• Emma Taylor – roles included European Talent Manager at Denso: being in the heartland of manufacturing, the artfulness and incremental improvement culture and the niggle that became a question.
• Nando Garcia – roles included being a director in the European Commission responsible for the integration for health and wellbeing: he speaks of competence, power and focus, authentic relationships and introducing mindfulness into the Commission. And life (and death) in retiring.

Future vision

L&D and those leaders who care for their own and other’s people’s learning and development, are my best client hopes. Through being committed to their own development and wholeness, they are transformational role models for the business. They are the ones that see the ecosystem and aliveness of the organ-isation.  Reminding us of our own humanity, potential and luminescence.

They are the ones that know sustainability is not simply a technical solution, process, or intellectual exercise, but that it needs to be a full bodied experience. That any gritty business issue, from recruitment, supply chain to innovation, has its roots in the disconnection between ourselves and wider nature.  And so they do all they can to help us consciously relate to ourselves, each other and the earth that is our home. Encouraging everyone in the business to step up to their people and planet responsibilities. Understanding that our real evolution essentially relies on us listening to our hearts, nurturing our souls and visioning the futures we want to create.