Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

When I first started freelancing, nearly 10 years ago, I consumed every Seth Godin book I could find, and I eagerly anticipated reading anything that he posted on Seth’s Blog. He was my small business sensei! When ATD announced that he was one of the keynote speakers, alongside Oprah Winfrey, I was torn. I couldn’t decide who I was most excited for…Oprah or Seth. After seeing Oprah yesterday, I can definitely say it’s both, but initially I struggled to decide.

One of my first screencasts was actually a book review of The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? To say that I’m excited to spend a bit of time with my small business sensei is an understatement.

Seth comes out and talks about how we always feel behind the eight-ball. He discusses how there is maybe a different way for us to get ahead! When we’re asked “What do we make?”, we should respond with ‘work that matters for people who care’. We tell stories!

“The essence of your work is that you make change happen. If there isn’t change then why did you even bother?” – Seth Godin (2019)

He explains how development is really different than training. Development involves showing up continually for the people we seek to change.

“Learning is something we choose to do” – Seth Godin (2019) PREACH!

We’ve learned, through a system, to hold a little bit back because we’ll always be asked for more. 16,800 hours of being trained to comply has done this (the public school system). He explains how the public school system was created to generate a world of compliant people. We’ve been taught to produce more value, more productivity…there’s no wonder why people are holding back. Your resume is a piece of paper that shows that you can comply.

Seth talks about the mindset of industry: productivity that is managed to go up, people that comply, a system of rewards. The model is “get people to listen to their boss.” The rate of change this year is the lowest we’ve seen in our lifetime because next year will be faster. Everyone is yelling and there’s too much noise. He talks about the Yoga Pant District in NYC…this is bad news for people like Lululemon, because they’re no longer the older one. There are too many competitors. The industrial model of ‘more’ is broken forever, so it’s a lot more difficult to get to move up and to the right on and org. chart.

“It’s very tempting to deny that this world is changing, but I hope that we can agree that it is.” – Seth Godin (2019)

Your job in talent development is to help people figure out what to do next…to figure out how to connect the dots. It’s not compliance; it’s something else. People forget that there are deep roots, and that is where development hangs out. It is a “long-term process to help people see.” When you are the only one, people will cross the street. They will seek you out. How can you be different? We should be paying attention to what things are worth (people, products, etc.). Seth breaks things down, task analysis style, to explain that what we make is feelings. That’s the goal. You’re not shopping for a 1/4 inch drill bit, you’re shopping for the feeling your spouse feels when they come home and you’ve hung the shelf.

We have big cultural challenges to address. He circles back to holding back, in that we hold back because we don’t want to make waves. How do you develop these individuals who hold back? We are way too hung up on compliance, how fast we can type. It turns out that real skills can be taught, and they shouldn’t be referred to as soft skills.

What we actually need is grit. We need to be gritty enough to stand up for ourselves, to fall down, skin our knees, and get up and do it again. And right now it is cheaper than ever for us to adjust…to raise your hand, speak up, and try something new. We live in an economy that is based on connection, and it is connection that creates value.

Together we create value, and this needs coordination, trust, privilege, and exchange of ideas. The foundation these four things are built upon is generosity and art. We can either go from scarcity, living smaller and smaller, or an abundance.

What’s going on in school is ‘colour inside the line’. There’s a huge difference between responsibility and authority. Responsibility is taken and authority is given. Competence is overrated. We don’t need help to create a competent workforce. We’re in a unique position because we have the Internet at our fingertips. Innovation is rewarded, and innovation is all about failing over and over until you succeed.

He discusses how training involves doing, not being lectured at. Doing allows us to explore, to fail, to experience. We need to realize that flying higher is a privilege, and we’re the most privileged people to ever live.

“Privilege is to do better, not more, but better.” – Seth Godin (2019)

Final thoughts: It was a true honour to listen to Seth Godin speak. He. Was. Incredible. A dream from this little small business dreamer, and I left his keynote swooning!

THAT is how excited I am for today’s keynote! Oprah is an institution. As a child of the 80s, her 4pm show was a mainstay in nearly every household I spent time in. Growing up, I spent a lot of time being babysat by my two homemaker aunts and my grandmother. As with their beloved soap operas, The Oprah Winfrey Show was something they did. not. miss. And I know this experience was shared with millions of others worldwide.

Oprah’s annual gift guide was something I looked forward to every year, and I’ll admit I was a little sad to look under my seat today and realize that I was not leaving DC with a new car…shucks! As an adult, one of my favourite podcasts was Totally Laime, hosted by a husband and wife team, and usually interviewing a comedian or actor…Elizabeth and Andy had me hooked on “The Oprah Game” in the early episodes of their show….RUN ONNNNN!

Being able to see her keynote one of my favourite Learning and Development conferences is a true honour, and I am grateful to ATD for allowing us this opportunity…thank you, ATD!

Oprah comes on stage and immediately begins discussing Aha Moments. She discusses her ritual of pulling up the automatic blinds….she compares this ritual to resetting your life each day. A new day is dawning. Everyday is an Aha Moment. She discusses how great it is to be able to wake up as a human, in her right mind, and say ‘thank you’.

She discusses why the Oprah Winfrey Show was such as resonating success: Because every human being on the planet Earth is looking for the same thing…”to live out the truest expression of yourself as a human being” (Oprah, 2019). People saw some representation of Oprah, watching her show, that was a representation of what they wanted in themselves. The Oprah Winfrey Show became a platform for her to allow other individuals to tell their stories and be validated by them.

She explains that there is no immediate gratification, like many millennials want to feel, you need to work hard so that you have the ability to find your purpose.

“Your purpose is to do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.” – Oprah, 2019

Oprah ended up in Chicago because of her gut, a natural instinct that she uses to its fullest capacity. This gut instinct will tell you this way or that way. If you’re in a position where you have to say “what do you think?”, it means that you aren’t clear on the answer yourself.

“If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” – Oprah, 2019

She discusses the ‘browse phase’, in the context of shopping. Go home until you get clear. In the early days of The Oprah Winfrey Show, during interviews, she would sit in on interviews to get a ‘gut check’. When she didn’t listen to her gut, it was bad news. She explained to Nelson Mandela that she wanted to build a school, and he immediately called the minister of education…and she was like “buuuuut, not today!”. She asked herself ‘how to I use what I have in service to other people?’ What she realized during this process was that giving people money, does not change things. You must change the way a person thinks, the way they see themselves and the way they are willing to move themselves forward in life. Otherwise, they’re just receiving a cheque.

The mistake she made in building the school, was focusing on the girls who would benefit the most, but not on the leadership. She thought ‘we’ll just find the teachers, put together the administration…we’ll figure that out.’, and not long after the school was established, she was informed that some of the girls were reporting they had been sexually assaulted. She thought she had done everything she could to protect the girls from men, but the individual who had been accused, was a female dorm mother. Getting people to understand, in South Africa, how this was possible (a female assaulting other females), was a process in and of itself. She got through the crisis by remaining fully present in the moment.

“What is the next right decision?” – Oprah, 2019

The reason why this mistake happened was that she didn’t trust her gut and ended up with an enormous problem. She felt the same way when she was presented with the concept of creating a network. Both situations were similar because leadership is everything, she didn’t have a good gut instinct, and she let her ego get in the way. In 1989 she was doing a bunch of shows that didn’t align with her beliefs. The intention you have is going to determine the outcome. She asked herself ‘would I do this if my name were not on it?’ When she recognized that the network decision was made because of ego, every problem that followed was because she didn’t trust her gut.

Oprah began to use principled intention on The Oprah Winfrey Show, but having the team identify the intention behind their idea, and she would see if she could find her truth in that. They went from a show that was just a show to one that was a force for good in the world, and the changing factor was principled intention. Using the power of intention changed the way she does everything, by allowing her to consider how she can take her ego out of it?

The other thing she learned that was life changing, she began seeing a thread that connected each interviewee. People who are seeking validation. “Did I matter? Did you hear me? Did what I say mean anything to yourself? This is what we do as Learning and Development folk! We want to make sure our audiences are seeing us and hearing us. Giving your full presence, is the greatest gift you can give someone.

Oprah goes overtime; the teleprompter beeps at her, so she finishes her keynote sitting in Tony’s seat and calling him out to join her – in. her. element! Queeeeen! She talks about the time she cooked a goose for Stedman. He was so late coming home. After 40 minutes she stopped caring about the damn goose. He gets home, knows he’s wrong…he came home with a bag of tomatoes, and she said to him “this is why I’m really upset. I’m upset because I did this and it was active love for me to do it.” (Oprah, 2019). When she was done explaining herself, Stedman said “I hear you, and it will never happen again”, and it hasn’t.

Now it’s Tony’s turn. He discusses how Oprah went to Baltimore to be an anchor, but it was perhaps considered a setback. At different stages of your life, you’re presented with opportunities, and in these opportunities you can look to find the truest version of yourself. Anchoring was too emotional for her; she was told she would not longer be doing the evening news, and they demoted her to doing a talk show. That demotion lead to her finding her purpose. Her first day on the talkshow is when she realized what she was supposed to be doing.

This feeling happened to Oprah again recently, when she joined the team at 60 Minutes. She asked herself why she was doing this. She thought it would be an opportunity to have conversations and bring the community together. Each time she would do the voice overs for the stories, she was told she was too emotional, and she thought ‘hadn’t heard that in awhile…’

As talent developers, anytime we are trying to put someone into a position that doesn’t work, we need to change it. It’s not going to work out otherwise. It’s our job to help them see. What does Oprah look for when she’s looking for a good leader? Someone who gets your vision and knows how to execute the vision. You have demonstrated yourself.

YOU HEAR THAT FOLKS?! BUILD. YOUR. PORTFOLIO! OPRAH (BASICALLY) SAID SO!

She also explains that she’s looking for people who can take care of themselves. If they’re not doing something to take care of themselves, they will be better leaders. In your own life, what makes you the best at your job is when you’re the most whole…when you are balanced. When you’re able to execute the best, it’s when you can bring yourself as a whole and not as a fragmented self.

Oprah is optimistic about human potential..”that human beings have a desire for what is good, what is whole, what transcends darkness. Human beings have a yearning to reach for the light, so she is optimistic that human beings can be shown the light.” She sees today as a critical moment where things could go either way if we don’t awaken ourselves to this moment and speak up to what we see and know is wrong. It’s the apathy that allows less-optimistic things to happen.

“Every moment where you see injustice, you need to speak up.” – Oprah, 2019

Oprah recommends that we start where we are. How can you be of service? How can we change the paradigm of our lives to ensure we’re being of service to our audience? How can you use your offering in service to others? In work, in relationships, everywhere.

Keynote: Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis is an Assistant Professor at Harvard and is speaking to us this morning about the gift of failure and innovation. She begins her session by describing an image of a sun in a warehouse. She considered how we create our lives. How do innovators, artists, entrepreneurs achieve their path-breaking creative results.

Creativity is something we all want, and ideas that certain hemispheres of the brains are responsible for creativity have been proven wrong. She talks about Martin Luther King Jr., and finding a transcript of his from seminary. She points out two Cs on his transcript…in public speaking. How did that teacher feel when King went on to be a masterful public speaker? How did King’s experience in seminary contribute to his success?

What do these stories mean for our lives? Lewis explains how she became inspired by a friend who provided more energy, and allowed Lewis to feel more alive. She tells a story about a friend who couldn’t swim, but was watching a child who began drowning. The friend saved the child, but passed away. She explained how this death of her friend inspired her to pursue the things she didn’t feel she was capable of doing.

Lewis has written “The Rise: Creativity, the gift of failure, and the search of mastery.” She discusses group think and how that has allowed us to innovate. Previous spaces that were private are brought to the public, and she explains how this helps the broader community. She explains how all of the individuals discussed in her research were gritty, but they also knew when to quit.

In considering the topic of mastery, she shares some images of medalist; with bronze and silver medalists looking disappointed. Why is this? They’ve achieved so much, but it’s because of counterfactual thinking…thinking about what might have been. Success is achieving once, while mastery is being able to achieve again, and again, and again. Mastery is a constant, curve-line pursuit that requires failure.

She discusses dysfunctional persistence, the concept of being unable to see things anew because you have done things so frequently. For example, in testing the same course over and over again. It was found that those who were furthest away from the domain of knowledge (deliberate amateur), were often the individuals who held the solutions.

Lewis discusses the film industry and the blacklist, a list identifying productions that weren’t being picked up…films such as Juno, The King’s Speech, and Lars and the Real Girl. The blacklist was able to undo previously held beliefs by decision-makers in the industry by creating public domains for risk taking, a feat that was yielded (in the film industry) production of incredibly successful masterpieces.

Referencing Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. If you haven’t read that book, you NEED to check it out. It explains so much and was truly inspirational. Some of the examples made my ‘problems’ seem like small potatoes, but it inspired me to become a grittier person within my profession.

Grit makes me think of Brene Brown and how she studied the concept of Shame for YEARS, and when she realized shame was really Vulnerability, she went off on a new research endeavour, not really leaving behind her previous research to begin her new research…after decades! While she was able to use much of her Shame research, it would have also felt devastating to drop that much research and start over…but she did it! And her research is helping thousands of individuals.

Sarah closes out her session by explaining that all of the individuals she has discussed today are gritty, but they all knew how and when to quit. She discusses how we should take failure and use it as a learning experience within our own creativity and learning endeavours.