HR Indiana Conference: “Training that Transcends: Creating Connection and Belonging”

JoyPowered® author Denise McGonigal will be leading this session at the HR Indiana Conference.

When co-workers gather for a learning experience, the possibility of something even bigger emerges – always! – something intangible, mysterious, even spiritual. This greater-than-the-sum-of-our-parts transcendence dawns within a group when trainers embrace their highest task: to transform the isolation and self-interest of individual participants into a connected and caring community. To affect this dynamic you must craft the right questions. Properly worded and wielded, questions hold far greater potential for learning than any fact or figure a speaker can impart. Ironically, most great questions are sublime in their simplicity. Consider a favorite of consummate trainer Peter Block: What can we create together that we cannot create alone? Questions like this: Transpose participants from I to we; Redirect us from what are the problems to what are the possibilities; Summon our gifts in the pursuit of ideas; Generate communal ownership in the creation of common purpose; Replace stoic individualism with trust among participants. Training that Transcends challenges you with the awareness and skills to raise expectations and engagement of participants, lifting their desire for knowledge to a desire for wisdom, as they discover the elusive truth that when we connect and belong within a community, we experience the highest form of learning.