The Changing World of Learning & Development

It goes without saying that we have lived through an overwhelming number of changes in the last two years. As we settle into 2022, and manage all of the uncertainty, many are cautiously beginning to ask, what happens next? Is this the year that we return to what we once knew as normal? In the world of Learning and Development (L&D), that’s unlikely. But I’d suggest that this may actually be a good thing.

We’ve moved past the days where employees were confined to offices for 8-10 hours a day and where we believe that corporate culture sits within the walls of an office building. In some industries, employers have even begun to transition out of the traditional 5-day-work week. For companies that want to retain high-performing employees and attract new talent, now more than ever, it is critical that they begin to focus on cultivating environments and supporting a climate that is employee centered. What we are likely to see in L&D spaces are trends that compliment and integrate the rapid workplace changes we’ve experienced at a global level over the last two years. Here are a few thoughts and suggestions on how these changes could benefit your workplace.

Rebranding Soft Skills as Essential Skills

You’ve heard me say it before, and I’m definitely not the only one. We need to stop calling them “soft skills”. In a traditional work-environment, the importance of essential skills can easily be overlooked. While empathy, collaboration, and resilience will always be important, changing work-place structures have revitalized the importance and necessity of transferable essential skills. Now more than ever, workplaces are in dire need of employees with exceptional communication skills and emotional intelligence. This trend will likely result in learning and development programs that prioritize interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and we would do well to embrace these opportunities.

It’s crucial that employers understand (and I mean actually understand) that many employees are burnt out, exhausted, overwhelmed, and feel undervalued. Leaders are feelings this, too. While it may seem inconsequential to prioritize essential skills, it’s a clear reminder to your team that they are more than what they produce. That reminder couldn't be more critical for the employee suffering from pandemic fatigue. By pouring into your team, and acknowledging what they bring to the table, you’ll be better equipped to strategize for your business and your team will know that they are valued.

Continued Focus on Learning and Working from Home

Remember that one time when most of us had to learn how to work from home? It was a difficult transition, but some of us have embraced it. We found our routine, our favourite chair, and what we needed to not only manage, but thrive. As a company that has spent the better part of the last two years transitioning staff remotely, you may find some resistance in bringing the team back to the office. There will also, of course, be those who are eager to get back into the office because they personally thrive in shared working spaces.

While 2020 forced many of us to work from home, by 2021, some of us were choosing it. In 2022, we see employees who are actively seeking flexible remote options. Some organizations I work with are struggling to differentiate between flexibility and autonomy. The expectations between employees and employers are being challenged, and this is causing concerns with return-to-office planning. There is a difference between the two and you can have both. L&D will be called upon to help with transitions.

Leadership Training for All

We should also expect to see a new work culture that champions the leader in all of us. The world changed, how we work changed, and so how we interact, communicate, and lead has also changed. As we continue to work remotely, set our own hours, and manage our days independently, some employees are seeking ways to improve and enhance their essential skills to be even more effective. Employers should invest and capitalize on this. In doing so, they’ll have the opportunity to elevate the diverse skills and knowledge in their workforce and catalyze new stages of growth by tapping into their team's truest potential.

Although many of us are still experiencing the fatigue that comes with living in flux, the trends and new focuses we’re seeing in the L&D space have the power to help and support. In 2022, development programs will begin to refocus on whole-person growth because we bring our whole selves to work. It will focus on the needs, passions, and skills of the individual. That is my hope at least, and there’s no doubt that will benefit us all.

PS: Excited to share that our next cohort for the 3x3 Executive Leadership Program (in partnership with Women of Influence) begins on February 22nd! Details here!

Breaking down Tall Poppy Syndrome

CELEBRATING A PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT with those around you isn’t always as easy as it sounds, at least for Australians and New Zealanders.

There’s self-deprecating nature that is intrinsically linked to our collective attitudes and interactions within society; meaning when complimented, often our first instinct is not to accept it, rather to offer one in return. Similarly, when achieving a goal — professional or personal — sometimes sharing it feels like ‘humble bragging’ or it becomes a task in itself. This is a phenomenon called Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS), and it’s more common than you may think.

Read more at HarpersBazaar.

How to Recognize and Prevent Parental Burnout

Dear Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers:

You’re not failing. You’re experiencing burnout. You’ve spent nearly two years faced with impossible choices and overwhelming responsibilities, in an effort to keep your family safe. For 20+ months, you’ve been in a prolonged state of uncertainty, living in survival mode. It’s okay if you’re not feeling like yourself right now. The truth is, many of us aren’t. Give yourself permission to have a moment.

The anger, frustration, and overwhelm you feel aren’t signs that you can’t handle this – you’ve handled this for 20+ months. It means you’re human. It will take us years before we fully understand how the pandemic has reshaped how we once were. But what we now know is that the effects are multifaceted and deeply personal. Our roles as parents, guardians, and caregivers meant we were not only trying to survive a global shutdown; we were also tasked with the responsibility of keeping our children and family members safe.

It’s a lot to take in but many of us haven’t been able to yet; we haven’t had a moment to catch our breath in nearly two years. Mark Henick references that our brain, “does not let us process traumatic events until the threat is over.” With the constant stream of information, new rules and restrictions, and heightened anxieties, we haven’t been able to process and digest what we’ve lost, experienced, and how the world has changed. We haven’t had time - and in some cases the capacity - to grieve. With 2022 around the corner, we’re faced with the heaviness of winter months, and the added pressure of the holiday season. It’s time we step back and talk about parental burnout.

The first step is recognizing the signs. The danger is that we often don’t recognize burnout, until we’re in the depths of it. We overlook the early signs because we’ve normalized them. In some ways, we’ve become a society that’s turned the first few stages of burnout into a status symbol, and I’d suggest that we need to re-think this and fast.

Signs of Burnout

Here are some early indicators:

• Decreased stress tolerance

• Experiencing apathy, irritability, and/or feeling unproductive

• Avoiding situations and/or having trouble concentrating

• Change in sleep patterns and/or eating habits

• Increase in panic attacks

• Head and body aches

• Exhaustion (feeling excessively tired, even though you may have had adequate rest)

We often find ourselves justifying a few weeks of poor sleep hygiene or overworking ourselves as the price to pay in order to keep it together and “do it all.” The danger in doing so, however, is we tend to dilute the warning signs that our bodies are signaling to us. Further, the transition back to in-person work, school for our children, and/or social situations can create tension - but what this can also do is magnify other areas of disagreement.

Proactive Strategies

A few strategies to consider:

• Planning. Develop transition plans for different scenarios and plan out routines. It can help to feel prepared (as prepared as one can be) and can help to alleviate fears related to uncertainty. If you’re someone who tends to worry, it can also be helpful to plan “worry time,” and then shift from what we can’t control to what it is that we can control.

• Boundaries. Shifting from managing our time to managing our priorities is useful. Creating boundaries around technology (going from one screen to another), tasks (home and work), and sleep can help us to be proactive against burnout. As an example, I go to sleep at 8:00 p.m. because that is what works best for me and my family in my specific context, and that boundary is in place for me as a proactive measure.

• Kindfulness. A new term I learned during the pandemic: to actively bring attention to being kind to oneself. We are often our worst critics. We might feel guilty about how we handled managing our home tasks and work tasks and/or life tasks during the pandemic. We might feel guilty about missed opportunities with our children during this time. But it’s important to challenge our self-talk and remember that we’ve gone through a lot, and we are still going through quite a bit of transition.

These are just a few strategies – consider what works best for you in your context and circumstance. And let’s keep having these conversations. Healing and moving forward from this requires all of us to hold space for ourselves, and those around us. It’s going to take time to recover, but we’ll get there.

When Women Achieve: The Burden of Success

There is this unspoken knowing that there is a price to pay for success. It’s not just the missed birthdays or long hours. Instead, it’s much more subtle, lurking behind every promotion or accolade. Through the actions of others we sometimes learn that playing small can make us more desirable. Through words unsaid, we are sometimes made to choose; to dim our light or risk being ostracized for succeeding.

Many women I know and admire share a similar story, of needing to choose between belonging and showing up as their full selves. When we dared to be ourselves, we were taught that we had to pay a price. It’s why some high-achieving women tend to self-sabotage. Almost like succeeding triggers a deep-set fear of abandonment and exclusion that we can’t quite place.

But there is a word for it. It’s called Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) and it occurs when people are attacked, resented, disliked, criticized or cut down because of their achievements and/or success. In 2018, I authored a study, alongside Thomson Reuters and Women of Influence, that looked at how TPS specifically affected women in the workplace in Canadian companies. The research looked at the relationship women have with their co-workers and superiors, and how that relationship influences not just their productivity, but also their psychological well-being.

The study was jarring. We found that of the 1,500+ respondents, 87.3 percent felt that their achievements at work were undermined by colleagues or superiors. Over 80 percent said they had experienced hostility and were ostracized or penalized at work because of their success at their job. “In my first few weeks at a new job, I received praise for something I had done in a weekly email from the boss,” said one participant. “Co-workers openly stated their jealousy and talked about it all week. It ended up being embarrassing rather than rewarding. This has set the tone for me not wanting to declare any achievements or try to move ahead in this role. I know I will be cut down.”

Tall Poppy Syndrome has impacts beyond the corporate world and begins long before women enter the workforce. Although the findings in the study were shocking, in many ways, they simply reaffirmed something many of us already knew; there are consequences to being successful.

“After having joined the organization at a director HR level, I was promoted two years later to the position of vice-president,” said a respondent. “This promotion caused a rapid deterioration in what had been a positive working relationship with my colleagues. Previous peers resented my success and the individuals on the executive leadership team became distant and openly distrustful.”

For this respondent, who she was before her promotion didn’t seem to matter anymore. The relationships she cultivated and the impact she had on the office were irrelevant; she had become the opponent because she dared to be great. She dared to realize her potential. In the study, 64.7 percent of respondents reported that they had suffered lower self-esteem, 60.3 percent said they downplay their achievements and no longer speak about their accomplishments with others, and 46.2 percent began engaging in negative self-talk.

The impact of TPS is layered, with consequences that are detrimental for the individual, corporations, and for the general collective. But change is possible, and it starts with us, all of us, at home, in schools and in the workplace. We can no longer normalize teaching young girls to play small for the comfort of others. For employers, solutions to TPS can be implemented in different ways, which is especially important for retaining top talent. It first starts with acknowledging that this is occurring in our workplaces and each of us leading by example.

Let's stop just asking ourselves why there are not more women in leadership roles and start asking ourselves what happens to women when they get there.

For more data, quotes, and the whitepaper: www.tallestpoppy.ca

Worried about your child or teen's mental health? Here are some signs they may need support

VANCOUVER -- A resilience researcher says a lower attention span or a change in appetite can be signs that children or teenagers are burned out or needing support.

Speaking to CTV Morning Live on Monday, at the start of Mental Health Week, resilience researcher Dr. Rumeet Billan said recent data suggests more than one million youth have been affected by mental health in Canada, and yet only one-in-five have actually received appropriate treatment.

Read more at CTV News.

Managing burnout, building resilience strategies as pandemic stretches

Alberta just marked one year since the first case of COVID-19 in the province, and it’s safe to say life hasn’t been the same since.

How do we cope as the health crisis drags on?

Read more at Global News.

Feeling burned out by the pandemic? Resilience expert offers tips

VANCOUVER -- The COVID-19 pandemic has upended people's lives and left many people – children and adults alike – feeling understandably worn out and exhausted.

While some students have struggled to navigate new ways of learning, some employees have found their office hours bleeding into their personal time as they adjust to working from home.

Read more at CTV News.

The New Face of Learning and Development

Last year, much like everything else, the Learning and Development (L & D) space was forced to change. As a result of the pandemic, the mode of delivery for professional development quickly switched from classroom learning to online. However, for the most part, the structure and content for training and leadership programming was left unchanged. As a result, many learners experienced frustration, exhaustion, and pressure to balance the demands of work, life, and the expectation to develop further. 

L & D teams were reactive, as they needed to be at the beginning of pandemic, especially in the face of so much uncertainty. Many questions arose as to whether people wanted professional development during this time, whether there was capacity, and if it should even be a priority. 

Read more at Women of Influence.

Trust is in a State of Crisis

I had the pleasure of connecting with the Alumni Association at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto for a Q & A about Trust ahead of our webinar on November 17, 2020. Enjoyed answering the questions, and here's a snapshot of our interview:

1. Why is trust important?

Trust is a human feeling, and our brains are hardwired to trust others. We are naturally inclined to trust others, but that’s not to say that we always do. Rachel Botsman, Trust Fellow from Oxford University, describes trust as the currency of interactions (compared to money being the currency of transactions). This is incredibly powerful when we consider the interactions that we have on a day-to-day basis. Further to that, trust, social connectivity, and well-being are intertwined (and this is where the work that I am deeply passionate about intersects). It can be powerful for navigating uncertainty and times of change. We know that trust has always been important, but I’d suggest that it has never been more important than it is at this moment in time.

2. Let’s build on that. You believe that trust is in a state of crisis. Why do you think that is?

If you look at what is happening around the world, in our own backyard, and in our organizations, let’s be very real, trust is absolutely in a state of crisis. Whether we are discussing the response to pandemic by leaders and organizations, or what is and has been happening around the world, or politics, or the police, or journalism, or capitalism, or – and I can go on. Trust, and our relationship with it and with others, has been tested so deeply over the past eight months. We need leaders that we can trust – well, actually I’d challenge that, and say that we not only need leaders we can trust, we need to be able to trust the systems, policies, programs, initiatives, and each other. Right now, many of us don’t.

3. So, how do you build trust?

I’d suggest that it’s not a matter of building trust, because that assumes that we are in control. Trust is something that is given to you, it is earned. For leaders, the question isn’t, “How do we build trust?”, the question should be, “How do we earn trust?” Research has found ways to earn trust, and that’s what we will explore in our webinar, in addition to how we can lead and manage for trust. I do want to share the importance of small, consistent actions over time, and that there is a direct connection between vulnerability and trust. When we dismiss vulnerability, this can destroy trust over time. We’ll spend time on this, and we will also examine the misperceptions of trust. For example, more transparency doesn’t actually equate to more trust, instead, it reduces the need for trust. There’s a huge difference between the two. I’m looking forward to exploring this further.

4. How does well-being and emotional intelligence play a role in this?

This is where my heart is. I’ve spent the last eight months vocalizing the importance of focusing on the echo pandemic we are experiencing as it relates to well-being (our mental, emotional, and physical health). The impact of what we have experienced this year alone is going to be lasting. For years, I’ve discussed the importance of developing our emotional intelligence (EI) and resilience, and just this month I launched our online course Emotional Intelligence for Professionals, which has been incredibly well-received. When we think about EI and well-being, there are strategies that we can use to help navigate times of uncertainty, challenges, and changes that we face. Examining these strategies helps to not only develop our EI, but it helps us to develop the foundation for self-trust. That’s not something we often talk about.

5. What don’t we often talk about?

Self-trust. Self-confidence. Self-criticism. This is where we need to start.

Join us on November 17, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. for our free webinar on Earning Trust. Link to register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ehe6hptabfe3eef7&oseq=&c=&ch=

Dr. Rumeet Billan is an award-winning, internationally recognized entrepreneur, learning architect, speaker, author and humanitarian. Dr. Billan was named Canada’s Top 10 Power Women in 2020, and has been twice named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women. For details, visit www.rumeetbillan.com